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rise and a whole squadron of flying pigs. Alongside that a photograph of the Secretary of State for Education beamed down benignly and someone had written the legend ‘Edward Testicles’ under it. The Family Trust stats facing the door, which placed Leighford High somewhere other than the bottom of the league tables, continued to give frazzled staff the false impression that their daily toil had
some
purpose.
    ‘Sylv,’ Maxwell acknowledged, throwing himself down in the chair.
    ‘Max,’ she replied. Since her marriage at Christmas, she had become even more Madonna-like , serene, peaceful to be with. There were some days when Maxwell just wanted to be near her, to soak up some of the atmosphere. The days when she pined for him were long gone, but they had left a cool shadow where he could recharge his batteries. ‘Nolan’s OK, then?’
    ‘Fine,’ he said and gestured vaguely to hischin. ‘Few stitches. A bit of swelling.’ He fought down the memory of the screaming that morning as Jacquie and he had struggled to part the child from his pyjamas.
    ‘Very common injury,’ Sylvia offered. She hadn’t been the school nurse for three decades for nothing.
    ‘So I gather,’ sighed Maxwell. ‘The whole thing got me into a bit of hot water, actually.’
    Sylvia paused mid-sip. ‘Why? You didn’t push him over, did you?’ She twinkled at him. ‘I thought that you were just AWOL, not lurking in the bushes having done the deed.’
    He smiled at her. ‘No, no. I just didn’t have my phone with me.’
    ‘Of course you didn’t.’
    He waited for the next comment, but for some reason she seemed to consider the statement complete.
    ‘Oh, sorry,’ she said. ‘Perhaps you expected me to be surprised.’
    ‘A bit of empathy might be nice.’
    ‘Oh, no, Peter Maxwell. You’ll get no empathy, sympathy or any other athy from me. You have a small child and a wife who might be up to her neck in other peoples’ entrails at any moment of the day.’
    ‘Sylv, I must just stop you there. You seem to have a glamorised view of police work. This is Leighford, not Fort Apache, the Bronx.’
    ‘Glamorised?’
    ‘Well, perhaps that’s not the right word, but I can assure you that Jacquie is rarely up to her neck in entrails. I’m more likely to be in that situation than her.’
    ‘I’m talking literal entrails here, Max, not metaphorical.’
    Mavis, the rather shy little woman from the Textiles Department who had been about to join them, backed away. Entrails had never featured in her conversational gambits thus far and she had no wish to add them to her portfolio at this stage in her life. She had just fancied a little chat about her impending retirement, which had been her sole topic of conversation since the decision had been made on the day before they had broken up for Christmas. It had not been made so much as thrust upon her; Diamond had decided in the previous year that, should she be sewn up in Santa’s sack and left in the car park one more time, she’d have to go.
    ‘Mavis,’ Maxwell nodded in a friendly fashion as she retreated.
    ‘Don’t!’ hissed Sylvia out of the corner of her mouth. ‘Don’t encourage her. She’ll start talking about retiring. And,’ she added, in the nick of time, ‘don’t say the R word, or she’ll come over.’ She raised her head and smiled at Mavis, just to convince her that the hiss was not about her.
    ‘Can I spell it, like w-a-l-k-i-e-s for a dog?’ asked Maxwell.
    ‘She may only teach Textiles, Max,’ said Sylvia, ‘but I do believe she can spell.’
    ‘Oh?’ Maxwell was surprised but pleased to hear it. ‘Anyway, to get back to entrails … I know what you mean. You mean that she can’t leave her entrails, however metaphorical, at one bound, whereas I can leave thirty twelve-year-old homicidal maniacs to wreak whatever havoc they wish every time there is an emergency.’
    She leant back and looked at him long and hard. Then, ‘Got it in one, Max.’
    He