Early on Wednesday, Sacha hurried along the dark street, the buildings the same grey as the early morning sky. One day soon, he’d have the time to phone the police about his bike, but until that day, he had to rush from the métro, past a Hindu temple, a youth hostel and two schools where he didn’t work. This involved getting up in the full dark and this morning, the darkness was amplifying his crowded thoughts.
He reached the corner where he’d agreed to meet her. He should have sent her the exact location of his workplace and given away the game completely, but she’d been determined to guess. He glanced around for her, wondering how she was.
He was so absorbed in his own concerns that he jumped when she appeared from around the corner. She beamed when she saw him, clasping her hands behind her back and straightening her shoulders.
‘I took the métro!’ she blurted out instead of a greeting. ‘All on my own! In the dark! I lost my ticket and had to pay a fine at the gates, but I made it.’ She was brimming with energy, which was not what he’d expected, after his two days of hurting for her.
He studied her with growing amusement. Taking her arm, he mimed pressing a stamp to the back of her hand. ‘Well done. B plus, with an A for effort.’
‘Are you going to give me a quiz?’
‘Maybe at the end of the day.’
‘Wait!’ she said suddenly. She took hold of the front of his coat and nudged him a couple of steps backwards. He blinked as the light of the streetlamp streamed straight down on him. She tilted her head, her eyes roving all over his face.
‘Something wrong?’
‘No,’ she said faintly, her gaze now travelling down his trousers to his neat loafers. She looked up at him again and blinked. ‘You cut your hair.’
‘And the beard. I don’t normally look like a gnome. It was Joseph’s idea.’
‘You looked like a handsome gnome,’ she said with a teasing smile. ‘But you left some fluff on your chin.’ He ran his fingers self-consciously over the trimmed bristles on his jaw. ‘I’m glad you didn’t get rid of it all. It looks good.’
He coughed and rubbed at his hot cheek. ‘Shall we go?’
She glanced around the intersection with narrowed eyes until her gaze settled on their destination. He smiled faintly, waiting for her to finally guess correctly. It was a plain building with a single tree in the courtyard and nothing else to soften the blunt lines of concrete that bore the name of the collège and the obligatory, ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité’, the motto of freedom, equality and brotherhood that had been formed in protest and was now so ubiquitous it symbolised little more than the French state itself.
‘Are the chinos and loafers an unofficial teacher uniform?’
He took off across the street, fishing his keys out of his pocket. ‘Is Louis Versace the unofficial uniform of heiresses?’ he called over his shoulder, but he straightened his trousers self-consciously.
‘I suppose I deserved that,’ she said cheerfully, skipping to catch up with him.
This early in the morning, there was only one moped chained up on the corner, where there was usually a haphazard pile. It reminded him of the grumbling when he’d told the class they needed to bring a métro ticket today. Since most of them had only just passed their traffic exam, driving a moped was the pinnacle of their lives.
Sacha was used to the numerous digs about how he must have failed the exam himself, since he still rode a bicycle. He was surprised none of them had noticed he’d been rushing in on foot for over a week. His explanation would be a mess of stammering and blushes that would make them hoot with laughter.
He’d told the class that a friend was accompanying them on their excursion, and the rest of the day had been mostly catcalls of, ‘Oooh, Prof has a girlfriend!’ and implausible conjecture about where they’d met, making him glad he hadn’t told them until the final class of the day. When he’d found himself groaning that no, he hadn’t used Leila’s aunt’s matchmaking service, he’d been more than ready to hear the school bell.
Now he was experiencing a flutter of anticipation that did not usually accompany his arrival at school. He took classes on excursions without help every year. They weren’t nursery school children. But Ren added a certain excitement, and such a good opportunity to practise their English was very rare.
That was what he told himself, anyway.
‘What subjects do you teach?’ she asked as he unlocked the gate and gestured her through.
‘That, I think, you should guess.’
‘I suppose that’s fair. Do you teach literature? French?’
‘No. French literature is not my passion.’
‘Your passion,’ she repeated thoughtfully. ‘History,’ she said confidently. ‘You’re a history teacher.’
‘Correct. And I have a principal class of kids in the troisième, the fourth year of collège. I think you say year ten?’
‘If it’s the fourth year, why is it called the third?’
‘It’s the third last, before the Bac. We count down.’
‘That’s crazy. Are teachers in France allowed to… have tattoos, then?’
‘Probably not in Catholic schools, but I don’t offend the state too much.’
‘It all makes sense now. I should have guessed, but you didn’t look like a teacher until you cut your hair and put on those loafers!’
‘This is how I usually look.’
She lifted a hesitant hand to tug on one of his longer curls on top. ‘Well, it’s nice to meet you, Monsieur Mourad. But I kind of miss my Christmas elf.’
He opened his mouth to say something, but she turned and hopped up the steps to the doors of the building.
‘Don’t you even have a Christmas tree?’ she asked as he led her through the warren of linoleum corridors.
‘It’s a school, not the Galeries Lafayette.’
‘The kids don’t deserve a bit of festive spirit?’
‘Their festive spirit comes from anticipation of the end of term. They can go and see the Christmas lights in their own time. What?’ he asked, catching sight of her poor attempt to stifle an amused smile.
‘These poor kids. You are such a grump.’
‘First Joseph, now you. I am not the Grinch. I have no problem with Christmas.’
‘The Grinch?’ she snorted a laugh. ‘That’s perfect.’
‘I assume it comes from the word grincheux in French. It just means grumpy.’
‘That only makes it more appropriate! It’s funny that we stole the French word to describe a grumpy person who doesn’t like others having fun,’ she said with a smile and nudged him.
‘I like to see others having fun. Just not during school hours,’ he added. ‘This is my classroom,’ he said when they’d reached a door with chipped paint and an iron handle. He had to admit, a few decorations would make a nice change.
The sound of the front door opening and then rapid footsteps made them look up and Rita appeared around the corner. Sacha rushed to unlock his classroom, giving her a wave and a mumbled, ‘Bonjour.’ It might have worked on another morning, but Ren was not easily ignored.
‘Bonjour,’ Rita echoed, coming to a stop and studying Ren with unconcealed curiosity. At least she was wearing her off-the-rack disguise, although, as she’d said, she hadn’t been able to part with the expensive boots. ‘Tu es bien matinal. Est-ce que tu as trouvé ton vélo?’ Rita asked after his bike as he gave her perfunctory kisses on both cheeks.
‘Non,’ he said and explained about the class excursion in clipped sentences, his hands shoved into his pockets. Rita was still shooting glances at Ren. ‘This is Ren, uhm, a friend from England,’ he introduced, switching to English for Ren’s benefit. ‘My colleague, Rita.’
Ren threaded her arm through his and held on and Sacha blinked, resisting a laugh at her less-than-subtle proprietary body language. Rita gave him a long look that ended in a nod, and wished them both a good day in impeccable English. He watched her go, wondering if the farce hadn’t been the kindest hint he could give.
He still turned on Ren when he’d shut the door of his classroom behind them. ‘Why did you do that?’
Her smile vanished. ‘Ouch, did I get it wrong? Did I just screw up your chances with her?’
‘No, no. You got it right. It’s just… You didn’t have to.’
‘Like you don’t have to help me? She is your ex, then? What happened?’
‘It’s not very interesting,’ he said, hanging his coat.
‘Unlike my break-up, which made headlines,’ she said darkly. ‘I take it you broke up with her.’
‘No…’
‘No?’ Her open-mouthed disbelief made the heat rush to his face again. Merde, he hoped he wouldn’t spend the day blushing in front of the kids.
‘You don’t really think I’m a… bon parti, Ren? A good… catch, you say?’ He gave her a pointed look. ‘I have not much to offer – not time, not commitment. Rita deserved more and I couldn’t give it to her when she asked. It was the right thing that she broke with me.’
He wanted to turn away from Ren’s thoughtful gaze, but he liked the soft look on her face too much. He tried to think about the kids, about the tour he had planned to bring to life a unique and little-known period of the city’s history, but Ren ruined all of his efforts by reaching up to press a kiss to his cheek and his mind went blank again. ‘Well, you are “très bon” to me and… she shouldn’t have asked for something you couldn’t give.’
The door banged open and he sprang away from Ren. ‘Ohé, bonjour! C’est ta meuf? Ta fatma, Prof?’ Hamoud grinned at him with his usual cheeky bravado as he sauntered into the classroom followed by his best friend Felix.
‘Votre,’ he corrected first, pinning Hamoud with a look. ‘This is…’ Would the kids know or care who she was?
‘I’m Ren,’ she said, ‘or should you call me Miss… Lewis?’
He cleared his throat. ‘You need to practise your English and your politesse, les gars.’ And he needed to stop imagining what it would be like if Wren Lewis really existed.
