Chapter One

Cars busied themselves through the wet, dark street below as beads of rain joined together and dropped from the window of their small flat. Impatient and tired drivers honked, pushed and cajoled their way through the familiar crush of Friday night traffic. Inside, two friends had surrounded themselves with the workbooks and jotters, representing the weeks effort from their two very different schools. Kids from two different worlds really, one rich, one poor but both churning out this week's government-approved attempt at a curriculum. Sat there, amongst he good, the bad and the downright depressing, sat Jess and Sophie who, between generous glasses of cheap red wine, were marking workbooks and comparing notes. "It's a horse" said Jess somewhat angrily. "Nope, it's a lion" scoffed Sophie. "Just look at its massive head. No way that's a horse, its legs are all wrong and what are those? Is that a pair of balls at the back? It is isn't it, it's a pair of massive balls! What on earth are you even teaching these kids , you sodding smut-peddler you! These posh kids of yours are going to be totally messed up, if they aren't already!" Sophie reached over to the generous glass of red wine on the coffee table, spilling workbooks all over the couch and floor as she went. "Ah.. fuck it, I'm done". Collapsing back into the soft cream sofa cushions, careful not to spill a drip before raising the thin rim of the wine glass to her lips. "You can't be done, you've hardly done anything you lazy mare. Get back on it. We're in this together remember" pleaded Jess. Sophie raised her eyebrows and pulled her best 'sue-me-bitch' face. "Pleeeease Soph..where's your ..'Dunkirk spirit'?" Added Jess, her voice trailing off into what sounded more like begging. "I'm using my 'Dunkirk Spirit' right now you tool" replied Sophie sardonically "Dunkirk was a retreat and right now.. I surrender" she said, raising her drink in the air, cheers-ing herself before sipping theatrically with her little finger forced conspicuously in the air. Anyway, I'm fairly certain you're thinking 'Blitz Spirit'? Because if you are, I have one more question, and that question" she held her index finger in the air for a theatrical flourish, "is how the actual fuck, did you end up teaching at Cranden?" "Pleeeeease Soph.." Jess clasped her hands in prayer, "see, that's one more reason why I need my nerdy-bitch sidekick tonight, please. It's Friday night and I can't do marking with a hangover!" She raised and slammed a wad of booklets onto her knees in a mock-paddy. "It's alright for you but I can't just write 'well done for not eating the pencils', like you can for your your little fuck-tards. This is proper teaching and their parents are a pissing nightmare Soph." Jess looked more desperate now, almost teary. "Did I tell you one of the mums complained to the Head about me, all because I put sticky stars on her sons artwork? She said I 'cheapened his endeavours' for fucks sake, it was a collage of cut up newspapers and it wasn't even the best one! They're all trying to eat me alive and I just want to get shit-faced, dance and pretend I can afford to pay my half of the rent this month". Sophie raised an eyebrow about the rent comment, but sighed and didn't even bothering trying to defend her class. She sipped at her glass as Jess dropped her paperwork onto the floor and lunged forward, craning her head up to come between Sophies face and her glass. "Come on you cow" Jess continued. "The sooner we're done, the sooner we can get to the pub! I bet Darren will be there" she continued, "With his designer stubble and his Turkey teeth and his tiny.. tiny hands. Sophie cocked her head, pushing her tongue into her teeth trying to stifle a smile. "Come on Soph, you can carry on your will-they won't-they thing, despite everyone knowing you definitely already have, you dirty girl! Just imagine those tiny little hands of his, all over you.. he'll be there for ages!" Jess started laughing while she mimicked someone with teeny weeny hands in mid-air. "Make him wait for it for once, it'll do him good. Come on.. just another hour." Jess teased. The skin under Sophies jaw redenned but she pretended not to feel it. "Fiiiine" she whined. "If it'll shut you up you bossy cow, but everyone's getting stickers, I don't care what they've done. And I'm writing fuck-all about effort, it's like teaching a class full of zombies this term. I had to tell one of the boys to stop playing with himself three times yesterday, and when he finally stopped, I had to tell him to stop sniffing his fingers!" Jess spat wine onto her chin and began to laugh. "Well, to be fair there are plenty of wankers in my school too you know. They just have 'people' to scratch things for them". Sophie took another sip and continued, "I swear there must have been a massive gas leak when they were born, or their parents are all cousins or something. The whole lot of them are fucking useless." Jess looked at Sophie with an incredulous stare. "Jesus Soph, it was funny when I said it but you can't say that, you're their teacher for chuffs sake, there's good and bad in every class remember" chuckled Jess, knowing full well which kids she was refering to. "Remember" said Jess, straightening up ready to imitate one of their least favourite college tutors "It only takes coming down hard on one or two disruptive kids in a class, and the rest will fall in line" as she started to smile. Sophie threw her a side-eye. She recalled that lecturer very clearly. Little Miss Bullins.. Miss Bullshit more like. She could feel the bile rising whenever she thought of that woman and her patronising advice, utterly bereft of any real-world experience this side of the seventies. Sophie's school could teach her a thing or two. With almost an entire year group of disruptive, loud and obnoxious little darlings from one of the roughest estates in the area, Sophie was confident she could run anger management courses for the riot police at this point. Hopefully she was dead or retired now and next batch of teachers didn't come through quite so green as Sophie had been when she had her first rabbit in the headlights moment. Consequences were nothing to these kids, detention was like receiving a badge of honour and expulsion catapulted the unfortunate youth into the strata of 'gangsta'. More often than not, setting themselves on a path of petty crime and social dip-shittery few ever got away from. To Sophie, it was clear early-on that most were just biding their time until the bell rang for home and few were ever likely to see the inside of a decent university, except maybe to rob it. But, despite herself, she just didn't have the temperament for being the bad guy in school. She wanted her kids to love her and for the last few years, the volume of gifts she'd received at the end of term was evidence this was working. So what if she let a few things go, she wasn't their jailor and if they left at the end of the day not having killed eachother, that could always be considered a successful day.. couldn't it? She didn't ask too much of them which they appreciated and consequently, they always made an effort to remove the security tags from the 'gifts' they gave her. Jess, and to be fair, a few of the other new teachers they knew couldn't help feel a little jealous when they saw the gift bags being lifted out of Sophie's knackered little Peugeot at the end of term. Jess' kids were supposed to be privileged and yes, very occasionally there might be an expensive wine or a smellies gift bag to share amongst themselves, but most of it was wasted on Jess' unrefined palette and delicate skin. She was a cheap pinot and superdrug moisturiser kind of girl at heart. They were all too polite to say anything though which meant there was a lot of re-gifting going on at her school. As even awful wine can be put to good use when the night out turned into a boozy night in. All of Sophie's kids got a high five at the end of class and the parents loved her, with only one exception over the years. Something which could still be used as a trigger whenever she got a little too high and mighty. A combination of bad timing, slippy hand cream and bad behaviour had led to a whiteboard pen flying from Sophie's wagging fingers and into the eye of that years' premier gobshite, Harry Knowles on the front row. Hearing the raised voices, a teacher from the next class had popped his head around the door just as the pen hit home and silence fell over the class. "Isn't that Harry Knowles' mum" was all it took to pull Sophie out of an episode of super-teacher narcissism, usually when she was making a tit of herself at the pub or trying too hard to get Darren's attention. Resting her glass on the coffee table again, Sophie made a big show of bundling up her home-marking and sat up again, mumbling and grunting as she applied yellow smiley faces from a side pouch in her bag. Every now and again, she would place an extra green tick on the page to make it look like she's really considered her appraisal. "Oh my giddy aunt!" she exclaimed dropping the pile beside her and lifting just one drawing up. "This is the one I was telling you about" almost waving the picture into Jess' face. "He's a total blank this kid. I've tried everything and I just can't get a read on him, every grunted conversation makes me uncomfortable, he just sits there sighing or shrugging when I ask him a question and then, out of nowhere he goes and does shit like this". "Wow!" exclaimed Jess, holding it still and giving it her full attention. Her face scrunched up as she pored over the lines and flourishes on standard issue jotter paper. "Nah, fuck off, that's not one of your kids, most of them can hardly hold a pen nevermind draw with one. He's probably just copied it from the internet or got someone else to do it for him". "I'm telling you, it's his, he's either a prodigy or a serial killer in the making" spat Sophie defensively, making a reach for the paper which Jess pulled back to take another look. "I swear, he'll either be a billionaire at 16 or murder his whole family with a spoon or something, gouging their eyes out while they sleep. "Ok calm down Macduck" coughed Jess. "Macduff! It's from.. nevermind. What I'm saying is this kid is sketchy as fuck but his drawings are amazing. Really really dark, but fucking brilliant at the same time". Jess put her wine to one side and studied the drawing, starting at the feint pencil border which had been hand-drawn almost exactly one centimetre around the edges. Inside it, the whole page was crammed with characters intricately drawn, some looked upside down,but they were kind of all walking the perimeter of the pictures, using the full three hundred and sixty degrees of the canvas space and all daubed in the chubby-ink of a school-issue black pen. The highly detailed buildings and cloud like shapes filling every inch of paper with swirling forms in the sky. "I can't quite wrap my brain around it" said Jess turning it around like a steering wheel between her fingers "It's like a goth-girl has vomitted her brain onto a piece of paper". "Are you sure it's his?" still not entirely convinced. "Certain" replied Sophie taking a moment to examine the lipstick mark left on her wine glass. As her eyes traced the figures, buildings and sky, Jess suddenly let out a shriek of embarrassment "Oh my god Soph..Is that you?" squinting deeper into the now upside-down drawing. "Is what me? quizzed Sophie. "Err, the woman in the drawing sucking off a dwarf Sophie! That's who! Oh my god, now I've seen it I can't see anything else!" Jess held the drawing out flat and pointed to the dark shapes hidden in the mass of details. "You can't say dwarf you knob and there isn't a woman in the drawing I've just... Oh my god there's a woman sucking off a dwarf!" shouted Sophie immediately clasping her hands around her mouth. "What the actual fuck!". "I just can't.." said Jess, her shoulders rocking as she began silently convulsing with laughter, tears forcing themselves from her eyes. "That is one hundred percent you and I don't think it takes a genius to figure out who that dwarf is, you fucking nonce!" "Fuck off" shouted Sophie, "It's a drawing you dick and that is NOT me so you can fuck right off! Give it here!" "Me thinks the lady does protest too much" laughed Sophie, waving the image above her head, just out of Sophie's reach. "It's Doth and.. Oh my god!" said Sophie finally grabbing the paper, as she scanned the image for anything else. "Oh my fucking god!" whispered Sophie, as the colour drained from her face. "It's on the walls" "What's on the walls?" asked Jess peering over back at the picture. "No, his artwork. Pretty much all of it, its on the walls all over school. It was so good I asked the Head to put it up in the entrance too. I thought it would be a way to get him talking, to get something out of him you know. Make him smile or chat or fucking blink or something. But what if they're all like this and I just didn't see it?!" "Well, you're definitely getting something out of him in this one" chuckled Jess smiling, as she took another generous gulp of wine. "Stop it, this is serious, what if a parent had seen this?" "Then Harry Knowles' mum was right about you all along" laughed Jess, now unable to sit up straight. "Oh my god, I am so fucked! Lucas you little turd!" Said Sophie exasperated, a hand now firmly placed over her eyes, squashing her hair down onto her forehead. "Stop stressing, he's probably just trying to get one past you. Anyway.." laughed Jess reaching out for some work from her own students, before holding up a drawing between thumb and forefinger, "So..What do you reckon Soph? Is it a Horse, a Lion or staff-room orgy?".