He gets to Shaun and grasps his hand warmly, wrapping it inside both of his as if Shaun is a small child with cold hands that need warming up.
Then he turns to Sophie and says, ‘Mrs Gray! So lovely to meet you at last!’
‘Miss Beck, actually, sorry,’ says Sophie.
‘Ah, yes, of course. Stupid of me. I did know that. Miss Beck. Peter Doody. Executive Head.’
Peter Doody beams at her. His teeth are unnaturally white for a man in his early sixties. ‘And I hear you are a novelist?’
Sophie nods.
‘What sort of books do you write?’
‘Detective novels,’ she replies.
‘Detective novels! Well, well, well! I’m sure you’ll find lots to inspire you here at Maypole House. There’s never a dull day. Just make sure you change the names!’ He laughs loudly at his own joke. ‘Where have you parked?’ he asks Shaun, indicating the driveway beyond the huge doorway.
‘Oh,’ says Shaun, ‘just there, next to you. I hope that’s OK?’
‘Perfect, just perfect.’ He peers over Shaun’s shoulder. ‘And the little ones?’
‘With their mother. In London.’
‘Ah, yes, of course.’
Sophie and Shaun follow Peter Doody, wheeling their suitcases down one of the three long corridors that branch off the main hallway. They push through double doors and into a glass tunnel that connects the old house to the modern block, and continue wheeling the cases out of a door at the back of the modern block and down a curved path towards a small Victorian cottage. It backs directly onto woodland and is surrounded by a ring of rosebushes just coming into late-summer bloom.
Peter takes a bunch of keys from his pocket and removes a pair on a brass ring. Sophie has seen the cottage once before, but only as the home of the previous head teacher filled with their furnishings and ephemera, their dogs, their photographs. Peter unlocks the door and they follow him into the flagstoned backhallway. The Wellington boots have gone, the waxed jackets and dog leads hanging from the hooks. There is a petrolic, smoky smell in here, and a cold draught coming up from between the floorboards which makes the cottage feel strangely wintery on this dog day of a long hot summer.
Maypole House is in the picturesque village of Upfield Common in the Surrey Hills. It was once the manor house of the village until twenty years ago when it was bought up by a company called Magenta that owns schools and colleges all over the world and turned into a private boarding school for sixteen-to-nineteen-year-olds who’d flunked their GCSEs and A levels first time round. So, yes, a school for failures, in essence. And Sophie’s boyfriend Shaun is now the new head teacher.
‘Here.’ Peter tips the keys into Shaun’s hand. ‘All yours. When is the rest of your stuff arriving?’
‘Three o’clock,’ replies Shaun.
Peter checks the time on his Apple Watch and says, ‘Well, then, looks like you’ve got plenty of time for a pub lunch. My treat!’
‘Oh.’ Shaun looks at Sophie. ‘Erm, we brought lunch with us, actually.’ He indicates a canvas bag on the floor by his feet. ‘But thank you, anyway.’
Peter seems unperturbed. ‘Well, just for future reference, the local pub is superb. The Swan & Ducks. Other side of the common. Does a kind of Mediterranean, meze, tapas type of menu. The calamari stew is incredible. And an excellent wine cellar. Manager there will give you a discount when you tell him who you are.’
He looks at his watch again and says, ‘Well, anyway. I’ll let you both settle in. All the codes are here. You’ll need this one tolet the van in when it arrives and this one is for the front door. Your card will operate all the interior doors.’ He hands them a lanyard each. ‘And I will be back tomorrow morning for our first day’s work. FYI, you may see some strangely dressed folks around; there’s been an external residential course running here all week, some kind ofGlee-type thing. It’s the last day today, they’ll be leaving tomorrow, and Kerryanne Mulligan, the matron – you met her last week, I believe?’
Shaun nods.
‘She’s looking after the group so you don’t need to worry yourself about them. And that, I think, is that. Except, oh …’ He strides towards the fridge and opens the door. ‘A little something, from Magenta to you.’ A single bottle of cheap champagne sits in the empty fridge. He closes the door, puts his hands into the pockets of his blue chinos and then takes them out again to shake both their hands.
And then he is gone and Shaun and Sophie are alone in their new home for the very first time. They look at each other and then around and then at each other again. Sophie bends down to the canvas bag and pulls out the two wine glasses she’d packed this morning as they’d prepared to leave Shaun’s house in Lewisham. She unwraps them from tissue paper, rests them on the counter, pulls open the fridge and grabs the champagne.
Then she takes Shaun’s outstretched hand and follows him to the garden. It’s west-facing and cast in shade at this time of the day, but it’s still just warm enough to sit with bare arms.
While Shaun uncorks the champagne and pours them each a glass, Sophie lets her gaze roam across the view: a wooden gatebetween the rosebushes that form the boundary of the back garden leads to a velvety green woodland interspersed with patches of lawn onto which the midday sun falls through the treetops into pools of gold. She can hear the sound of birds chittering in the branches. She can hear the champagne bubbles fizzing in the wine glasses. She can hear her own breath in her lungs, the blood passing through the veins on her temples.
She notices Shaun looking at her.
‘Thank you,’ he says. ‘Thank you so much.’
‘What for!’