Fishy
I don’t go to lunch. I’m not sulking per se, but I want to keep away from Josh in case he says something clumsy that will make me explode in the lunch hall in front of all the staff and pupils. So, I stay in my lab with a bag of Maltesers and start to search for a new job.
It turns out physics teachers are in demand.
There’s a job going at an all-boys school in Ealing that has particularly caught my eye.
The science department has an excellent reputation, and Ealing would be far easier to get to once we move to the country.
Sure, teenage boys come with their own set of problems, but I can’t take any more of Dr Therone’s blatant favouritism.
I begin the application. This is exciting.
A new chapter. My own world. And this could be a positive thing for Josh and me.
It will be like the old days, before lockdown, when we were working in separate schools.
I will have my stories about my job, and he will have his.
Heck, even our sex may go back to how it used to be.
I am typing the answer to the first question when my lab door opens. It’s Josh.
‘Why is nobody at lunch?’ he says, in a jokey way. He spots the Maltesers packet on my desk and shakes his head. ‘Oh, Amy. You’re not eating chocolate for lunch, are you?’
I swallow a Malteser.
‘I have a lot of work to do,’ I say, with one eye on the job application. Josh wanders to the tank with his hands in his pockets and observes the fish as they dart about.
‘I reckon we should go for the full 30 tonight,’ he says.
‘I don’t think that will be possible,’ I say.
‘Why not?’
‘Nina isn’t coming.’
‘What?’ His cluelessness is extraordinary.
I envy it, really. Can you imagine walking through life thinking everything is fine?
To get the job you hardly wanted, to have your wedding planned for you by your fiancée, to have that same fiancée quietly sort herself out to a science podcast. How easy it would be to be a man like Josh.
‘Well, she’s disappointed about the promotion,’ I say. I see it hit him – the realisation that Nina may be upset that he got the role over her. He rubs his eyes and groans.
‘That’s why she wasn’t at lunch,’ he says.
‘Yeah, so maybe limit the fist-pumping.’
He exhales at the tank, then says, ‘Fish have it so easy, don’t you think? Just floating around without upsetting anyone.’
‘They upset Jenny Wilson. She cries every lesson. Terrified of them. Ichthyophobia.’
‘Ich . . . what?’
‘Fear of fish.’
‘Oh, that’s why she screamed at that picture of a salmon in the ocean textbook.
’ We share a smile for a moment. Then he says, ‘I don’t understand why Dr Therone didn’t promote you.
’ I want to say something about Dr Therone being a female misogynist, which is why she would rather promote men, even though they are less capable, but I bite my tongue.
‘She hates me like Jenny hates fish, that’s why.’
He shakes his head. ‘Mr Rawlinson will mess it up in the first term; either that, or he’ll accidentally burn the school down, and then nobody will be head of the department.’
I smile. ‘Yeah, true.’ He heads towards the door.
‘Shall I swing by at five and then we can head to The Cock and Bull?’ he says with his hand on the door handle. The application for Ealing Boys is glaring at me.
‘I’ll meet you there. I have some marking to do,’ I say.
‘Okay. Let’s smash them tonight, Lab Rat,’ he says and leaves. I pop another Malteser in and go back to the application. ‘I would like to apply for the role of physics teacher at Ealing Boys because . . .’
I stop typing and think of Josh. If I get this job, Josh will no longer be able to pop into my lab like he just did, brightening my bad day.
We couldn’t pull faces across the assembly hall when Mrs Lector does one of her painfully slow announcements, or I will no longer see a spare seat at the lunch table and know Josh was saving it just for me.
Who would I sit next to at lunch in Ealing?
‘I would like to apply for the role of physics teacher at Ealing Boys because I’m pissed off and think my boss is a misogynist . . .’
I close my laptop, grip my head and let out a groan over the school bell. The door opens, and Year 8 shuffles in. I flatten my hair and try to remember what I’m meant to teach them today. Ah yes. I go to the cupboard and take out 14 foam apples.
‘Right, Year 8, gravity.’