Read Online The Butterfly Effect by Julie McLaren - Free Book Online Page A

appreciation for our efforts by buying a few bottles of wine and making a very dull speech. That is what Richie told me the day before, on one of the several occasions since the gig that he had sat beside me in the staffroom for a few minutes. The conversations had been friendly but nothing more, and I wondered sometimes if I had misread the signs at the gig, but at least we were talking.
    That’s why I spent some time deciding what to wear on the morning of the last day, and put my make-up into my handbag. I even thought about taking my straighteners, but decided that would be too much. Apparently it was common for people to leave their cars at home if possible, and the younger ones would often head into town and get wasted in a succession of pubs and bars. Would Richie be part of that crowd? Would he ask me to come with him?
    As it happened, events overtook us and that was all decided well before the end of the day. When I arrived at school, the receptionist stopped me and handed me a huge bouquet of flowers.
    “Here, these came for you, about fifteen minutes ago. It’s lucky I was here,” she said, as if it was my fault they had been delivered at such an inconvenient time.
    I thanked her, picked them up and took them to my tutor room. How lovely! I was hoping they would be from Richie, although it did not seem very likely, or maybe it was something to do with the gig. Maybe they were from Olga and the others. There was a little envelope tucked between the blooms, with my name on the front and a card inside.
    ‘Something beautiful and precious for someone beautiful and precious,’ it read, and my blood ran cold.
    Suddenly, whatever emotion I had been feeling at that moment – fear, suspicion, anxiety – was replaced by another: anger. How dare he do this? How dare he intrude into my life when everything was going so well? He had no right, no right at all, to expect me to receive these flowers with what? Thanks? Is that what he was expecting? I had given him absolutely no reason to expect anything from me at all and he could fuck off. That’s what he could do.
    I almost growled aloud as I crammed the flowers, head first, into the bin and squashed them down, but it was hopeless as it was a fairly small bin and most of the stalks, together with a lot of the cellophane wrapping, protruded from the top. The more I pushed them down, the more they sprang up again, until I sat down on the floor with my head in my hands. I couldn’t leave it like this, the kids would be bound to see it and then there would be a barrage of questions.
    “Miss, why are them flowers in the bin?”
    “Miss, did you fall out with your boyfriend? Did he cheat on you?”
    “Ahh, look at her. Bless! She’s all upset!”
    I didn’t hear Richie come in. If I had, I would have leapt to my feet and tried to push the bin out of sight, but as it was, he was witness to my despair and there was nothing I could do to hide it.
    “Shall I go away again?”
    I looked up, and part of me wanted to make a pretence that everything was fine, but it was overwhelmed by the apparently greater need to burst into tears and tell him the whole thing. There was a moment when I thought I’d blown it, as he, naturally enough, thought there was some kind of relationship between me and Greg and didn’t want to get mixed up in anything complicated. But when I told him what had happened, he was sympathetic and sat me down at one of the tables.
    “Look, do you want someone to cover?” he said. “We’ve only got ten minutes until the bell, but I could say you suddenly felt sick, or dizzy or something.”
    I didn’t want that. It was the last day of term and I had cards for my tutor group, each with a little chocolate snowman or Santa inside. I wanted to hand them out myself and, besides, it was only a bunch of flowers. I was over-reacting. I shook my head and said I just needed a couple of minutes to fix my face and look respectable, then I would be fine.
    “Thanks