"Isla, look! It's Miss Annabelle!"
"Sophie, stay here. You'll see Miss Annabelle tomorrow, we're in a hurry!"
"Isla, honey, stop! We have to go!"
"Didn't you girls want to bake some cupcakes at home?"
Their mothers' warnings and bribing weren't enough for little Isla and her best friend Sophie to stop making their ways to their favourite teacher. Scooting down the school's street pavement, the two seven-year-olds quickly caught up with the woman they elaborately said their goodbyes to just little over an hour ago.
Annabelle Davies initially pretended she didn't hear her pupils gasping and talking about her when she walked the pavement along the street near school. Maybe this way, their mums would be able to hold them back. Finishing work early today, she wanted to catch the bus home as quickly as possible, allowing her with some more time to swiftly change clothes and head to the city as planned.
It shouldn't have come as a surprise when she found the two girls' mothers had been unable to control their offspring. Strict parents were underrepresented at Wendlesworth High School, an independent, private school for girls aged 3 to 18, in South London. It seemed like the time they had with their children was limited, so whenever they were around, their girls could get away with pretty much anything.
"Hi Miss Annabelle!" Sophie and Isla ran up to her, leaving her with no choice but to turn around and acknowledge them.
"Hi girls. How was today's after school club?" Annabelle thought about the day of the week. "French today, wasn't it? What did you two learn?" She put her heavy bag on the pavement for a bit and checked the time on her phone inconspicuously. The girls didn't seem to notice.
"Un, deux, trois, quatre, cinq," one of them proudly chanted, a smug smile on her face.
Blinking her eyes rapidly, Annabelle shook her head in pretend disbelief. "I have no idea what you just told me, Isla," she lied, "That is some great French vocabulary!"
"It's not vocabulary! They're numbers!" called Sophie.
Meanwhile, the girls' mothers who just collected them from school approached with apologetic looks on their faces. The looks told Annabelle they knew they should've been able to keep their daughters from running up to her. But the looks also held a spark of justification. Annabelle had seen The Look a thousand times by now and knew exactly what it meant. Every teacher at Wendlesworth knew. There was no way any of the parents gave their daughters a bath and put them to bed themselves every night. The fact that this afternoon, the mothers were able to collect their children from school was probably an irregularity. Normally, the girls' nannies would be taking care of that. Though that shouldn't be the reason of lacking healthy, parental authority, Annabelle thought.
"I think it's time to say goodbye, girls. Miss Annabelle is on her way home, as well. We don't want to keep her up!"
"I will see you two tomorrow, yeah?" Annabelle smiled down to the girls. "Remember what I told you today? There might be some snow when you wake up in the morning!"
The girls' eyes lit up and they gasped again.
"Is there gonna be lots?" Isla asked.
"Mum, maybe we can use my sled tomorrow! Or we can go to Toby's and have a snowball fight!"
With the girls' attention now diverted from herself to a much more interesting subject concerning the weather forecast, Annabelle smiled at her pupils' mums, simultaneously expressing regret for bringing up the possibility of snowfall knowing bloody well it would provoke a reaction and the girls' nagging about it could become annoying. The mums didn't seem to mind, gave in to their daughters suggestions, of course they did, and walked off.
It hadn't been another minute of making her way down to the bus stop when Annabelle was held up again.
"Oh, Miss Davies!"
It wasn't a pupil's voice this time, so she couldn't just ignore it. Annabelle closed her eyes for a brief moment before turning around with a contrived smile on her face.
It was Mrs. Rodgers. Fiona's mum. Of course it was. She'd already recognised her posh accent. Not that any of the other parents' accents weren't posh, but Mrs. Rodgers' was something else. Annabelle had the pleasure of hearing it quite a number of times the past few weeks, as Fiona Rodgers was a new student in class.
"I'm sorry to bother you, I apologise." Mrs. Rodgers walked up to her. "It's just that I didn't manage to see you this morning and wanted to ask you if there's a way we can rearrange the parent-teacher conference we set up last week."
"Absolutely. That's no problem at all," Annabelle assured, already making a mental note.
"Oh, wonderful. That's lovely, I was already worrying about not being able to make it this term."
"Oh, no, don't worry, we can change the date. There's absolutely nothing to worry about, Fiona is doing fine in class. She's really getting adjusted to the other girls the past few days, it's great to see."
"I'm pleased." Mrs. Rodgers let out a sigh of relief. "She really does seem to love you, as well, she talks about you all the time."
Annabelle's smile finally reached her eyes. "That's lovely to hear."
"I will contact you about the rescheduling. Again, I'm sorry for the inconvenience."
"Not a problem at all, I'll be available. My phone number is on the school website, you can ring whenever you'd like."
Mrs. Rodgers thanked her and Annabelle increased her walking pace to catch the bus she had aimed for.
~~~
"There she is, right on time! What's going on, has the school burnt down?" called Caitlin from the table, as she saw her friend entering.
Annabelle rolled her eyes but smiled, arriving at their go-to pub in central London later that evening, making her way towards her friends.
"Hiya, Anne, how've you been?" Valerie greeted, "Haven't seen you in ages."
"It's been, like, a month, Val," Annabelle commented, kissing her friend's cheek and wrapping her arms around her in a hug. She turned to greet Caitlin next. "Besides, it's always you lot who are busy." She got out of her coat and sat down. "You two alright? What have you been up to?"
"You know, same old, same old. Getting back to work. Already failing my new year's resolutions dramatically."
"Where's Laila?"
"Running a tad late. She just texted," Caitlin informed.
"Ah, there she is already, great timing," Valerie pointed towards the entrance of the pub, and the three of them saw their friend nearing.
"Look at you! Did you actually beat me this time?" Laila turned to Annabelle, "What's happened? Did the school burn down or something?" She smiled, making the others laugh.
"Is this an inside joke I am somehow not aware of?" Annabelle raised her brows.
"It's not, don't worry," Caitlin reassured, "Sit down, Lai, we've just ordered wines, how've you been?"
"Quite busy to be honest," Laila blinked, taking off her coat and putting it on the back of her chair. "Also, Dave has been a total git the past week. We consciously make an effort to go over our weekly schedules on the weekend, but my lovely husband failed to mention he'd be off to New York City for five days."
David and Laila were newlyweds, and despite their little fallout this week, they were still on the newlywed high after marrying last September. David, born and raised Londoner, works as a thriving project developer, accepting assignments all over the country, as well as abroad. Laila grew up as the only daughter of wealthy, Indian doctors, and had followed in her parents' footsteps by becoming a successful biomedical research scientist. Needless to say, money wasn't a worry on either of their minds. With Laila recently turning thirty and talking about cutting down her hours at the lab, Annabelle knew exactly where this was going. In about a year's time, she would probably be sat with her group of friends organising another adorable baby shower, celebrating a perfectly beautiful, soon to be born baby. She could already envision the amazing eyelashes on the kid.
"No way! And he didn't tell you at all?" Valerie gasped. "I would go mad if Chris had to leave town unexpectedly."
Chris and Valerie. Valerie and Chris. They were two peas in a pot, ever since they started dating in their early twenties. They had been together for over ten years already, four of them as a married couple, and were parents to two beautiful children. Annabelle and Valerie's friendship went back the furthest, having gone to uni together. Both of them were aspiring writers, majoring in English and journalism. It was quite ironic how neither of them ended up in that field.
"It was more like a 'By the way, did I mention I'm off to JFK tomorrow evening?' kind of thing. Either way, it was stressful," concluded Laila, "Anyway, moving on. What are you ladies up to, how have you been after the holidays?"
"Fine, I've been fine. Getting back into the programme at school. It always takes the girls a bit of time to get back into it after two and a half weeks off, but it's all going alright," Annabelle told her friends, "There's a new girl in my class, though. They moved to the area over Christmas break. It's going well, but some girls still have to get used to having her around, and I have to deal with the worrying mum every other day." Annabelle thought about Mrs. Rodgers and how she had to remind herself the appointment that was scheduled for next Tuesday would be off. She quickly grabbed her iPhone from the table to scratch it from her agenda and make a note.
"I don't know how you do it all, babe," Laila complimented, "Just the thought of having any person interrupting my work... I'm so glad I'm pretty much in the lab by myself all day."
"You girls wouldn't even believe what the kids get up to these days, it's pretty incredible," Annabelle added.
Caitlin shook her head, her eyes slightly widened as to say she was glad she didn't have a clue. One thing Annabelle knew for certain, Caitlin Jones would never have children.
"I know, right?" gasped Valerie, "I look at mine and I'm gobsmacked at times, wondering what is going on in their little minds. I can imagine what it must be like to look after twenty of them."
"No! No, you can't, Val," Annabelle argued. "Evie is three, Charlie is ten months old, they don't get up to proper mischief. I'm dealing with six and seven year olds all day. Way worse."
"Yet you call it your dream job and would go bonkers without any children in your life," Laila smiled.
Annabelle couldn't disagree and therefore kept silent. As much as she liked complaining about her kids in school after a long and difficult day, she was more than aware of the fact that she loved her job. She loved establishing bonds with the girls. She loved being able to actually teach them stuff. She loved seeing the kids' development over a year's time. She was truly lucky to have gone into teaching, a career path she hadn't thought of once until the age of twenty-five.
"Look at those sparkling, blue eyes!" Caitlin pointed out, "You love it so much, it's endearing to see." She paused for a second. "Astonishing, but endearing."
"Speaking of," Annabelle subtly changed the subject, "I have that appointment tomorrow."
"Wait. The appointment?" questioned Valerie.
"Oh my God, so you went through with it. How are you feeling about it?" Caitlin's eyes were wide.
"Alright, to be honest. It's probably just going to be some information about it all, isn't it?"
"Yeah, most likely, yeah," Laila imagined, pretending her experience as a biomedical lab scientist was of any use regarding the routine of certain doctor's appointments.
"Anyway." Annabelle blinked. "I've managed to get the afternoon off school. Didn't have to mention why. No one besides you three knows, by the way, and I'd like to keep it that way-"
"You haven't told your parents?"
"God, no." She turned to have a sip of wine, the mere thought of it provoking the need of alcohol.
"What about Daniel or Julia?"
"Nope."
Although no one but her three best friends knew about the pending doctor's appointment, Annabelle did try to talk to her mum and younger sister Julia about what had been on her mind for quite some time when she went home for the holidays. However, the both of them didn't really react the way Annabelle was hoping for, so she promptly decided against going into detail. She didn't feel like telling her friends about her family's stiff reaction, so she just told them her family knew nothing.
"Like I said, I'm just starting to read into things, I like to be properly informed, that's all. It's not like I'm off making drastic decisions before telling my family. I'm nowhere near that point, so it wouldn't even be relevant."
"Of course. We know you're being smart about this and that you're just gathering information," Valerie said.
"Which is the most sensible thing to do at this point," Laila agreed.
"Let us know how it goes, though," Caitlin added, "When you've found out something new or when you've decided on going through with... something."
"Yeah, of course. Let's meet up for dinner and wines soon. Are you girls free any time next week?" Annabelle asked, already knowing what was about to happen next. Her thoughts were confirmed when everyone grabbed their phone, going over their busy schedules.
Sure, Annabelle was quite busy herself, but that was at work. Her evenings would be clear ninety percent of the time, and mostly spent by herself at home. Her friends, however, seemed to have every minute of their days planned out weeks in advance. Visits to the in-laws, appointments at nurseries, date nights with their significant others... Meanwhile none of those kinds of engagements could be found in Annabelle's schedule.
As expected, the four friends couldn't find a time to meet up next week. Or the week after. But they agreed on seeing each other again soon, promising they wouldn't let another month go by in the meantime like they unwillingly had previously because of the holidays.
The subject of their conversations soon shifted from Caitlin's second date with a rich banker, to what type of handbag Laila would ask David to buy her in New York, to Valerie's confession of wanting to spice up her love life with Chris. Caitlin surely had some tips and tricks for her.
Dinner was great. Annabelle appreciated the girls' company, enjoyed the night and felt relaxed on the journey back home as the Northern Line tube brought her back to the south of the river Thames right before midnight.
| Next chapter coming soon > |
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