‘I think this is beyond the call of duty,’ Cleo hissed under her breath so the masses around them didn’t hear. ‘BENEDICT. STOP THAT. I mean, you got a nice day out and a cream tea. This is – AIMEE, BACK IN LINE – this is hardly proportionate. DAVID, GET YOUR FINGERS OUT OF THERE.’
‘Hey, you agreed, any favour,’ Gray countered. ‘BENEDICT. MISS ADKINS SAID TO STOP THAT. And if you’re good, I’ll see if I can find you a teacake.’
Cleo was near certain that teaching was going to put her off having kids of her own. Okay, fair enough, seventy hyped-up thirteen-year-olds three hours from home were not going to be the best example, but still. She was exhausted and the whole weekend event had barely started. She hated doing field trips. As a maths teacher they weren’t something she had had all that much to do with since her teacher training. But, she conceded grudgingly, she had told Gray ‘anything’ … (and she’d never been to the Black Country Museum before so, well, there was that.)
Gray momentarily dipped back to herd some wayward tweens back into their crocodile. The parent ‘helper’ who was meant to be watching the rear of the line was instead watching YouTube on her phone (earphones in and everything). The two older, cannier teachers seemed to have split the group just so that Gray and Cleo got the trouble-makers (the dicks).
‘What time do thirteen-year-olds go to bed these days?’ Cleo asked Gray as he returned to her side, looking as decidedly frazzled as she felt, his hair sticking up around his normally impeccable parting. ‘BENEDICT. SERIOUSLY. LESS HORSEPLAY, MORE WALKING.’ Cleo just about stopped herself from clapping her hands crossly (she’d sworn to herself she’d never be the sort of teacher that claps at children, but she hadn’t known then what she knows now).
He shot her a conciliatory smile. ‘Chin up. Only five hours of scintillating Industrial Revolution fun to get through before dinner.’ He just about managed to avoid tripping over Aimee, who had once again stepped out of line in order to take a selfie with some interesting graffiti.
Cleo bit back a laugh as she watched Aimee simper and smirk as Gray put out his hands to steady her. There had been a marked increase in girls wanting to take history as a GCSE next year since the dashing Mr Sommers had joined the staff at Oakland. He was the very cliché of hunky professor, tall and well put together, just enough stubble to be interesting, Harry Potter-style glasses that Cleo wasn’t entirely sure he actually needed to wear, and with an astounding array of V-necked sweater vests that he wore well, over crisp shirts with the sleeves rolled up to his elbow. Hell, thirteen-year-old Cleo would have completely bought into it (even twenty-nine-year-old Cleo wasn’t entirely unaffected).
Cleo did another head count as they reached the glass-fronted entrance to the museum, just to be sure. She watched Gray’s lips moving as he counted too, under his breath. Helpful Helper Mum of Helpfulness finally tugged her earphones out and wound them around her iPhone, looking about herself expectantly.
‘OKAY GUYS, HAVE YOUR PRINT OUTS READY TO SHOW AT THE COUNTER, AND REMEMBER TO STAY IN YOUR BUDDY PAIR AT ALL TIMES.’ Gray steered the first clutch of students through to the ticket area and nodded companionably at Cleo. ‘See you on the other side of 1850, Miss Adkins.’
* * *
Eight hours, one near-miss, where the class clown nearly had a face-to-face meeting with the canal and a train of heaped plates of vinegary fish and chips later Cleo finally got to sit down. She flicked off her pinching Primark pumps and pulled the toe of her tights straight. ‘That wasn’t too bad, actually,’ she allowed. ‘I loved that story about the chain-makers going on strike. Got me all riled up: ‘shoulder to shoulder into the fray’ and all that. Did you know that women still earn on average twenty per cent less than men in this country? In this day and age!’ Cleo shook her head in disgust. ‘Those women back then were so brave … You know, I should go to a protest or something. I couldn’t be bothered to march when they put up tuition fees because I’d already graduated, and I’ve always felt shit about it. What do you think?’
Gray sank his head into his hands. ‘Please, no. No. Turn your teacher switch off. Can we just have a drink and a chat rather than analyse the socio-political landscape? Please?’
Cleo laughed. ‘Okay.’ They were off the clock, after all, with the senior teachers charged with roaming the corridors and keeping teenaged peace; the night was their own.
The hotel was almost entirely booked out with the kids, so the lounge area was empty. It had been quite a mild day out in the fresh air but the building was old and heavy-walled so there was a fire lit in the grate; the old, cracked leather of the wingback chairs in front of it was pleasantly warm against Cleo’s skin. She closed her eyes and let the heat kiss her face (maybe field trips weren’t that bad after all).
After only a few moments Gray was back cradling two crystal tumblers of ice in one large hand and carrying the matching decanter by its neck in the other. Cleo recognised the smell as he pulled the stopper out and groaned.
‘Yup,’ Gray grinned. ‘Your favourite.’ Cleo had gone through a big amaretto-and-cranberry stage at the end of last year, and it was precisely that delightful mixture she’d vomited all over Gray at the staff Christmas party (he’d joked that he’d smelt like a Bakewell tart for the rest of the holidays). Gray poured them both healthy measures over crackling ice cubes and sat back down in the other armchair. The chairs were only slightly angled, so they both watched the fire in silence for a few moments, enjoying their first few sips of the almond liqueur and the feeling of peace settling over them after the manic day. Gray’s profile was painted orange; holding the delicate etched tumbler in his big hand, he looked like the lord of the manor. Cleo thought back to the cheesy selfie they’d snapped in front of the porch of Withysteeple Hall last month and sighed.
‘So, how is trying to complete Tinder going?’ she asked. ‘Any future Mrs Sommers there in the mix?’
Gray looked at her, curiously. ‘I’m not sure many people find their wives on Tinder,’ he pointed out. ‘It’s more for fun.’
‘Not everyone sees it that way,’ Cleo immediately argued, thinking of Daisy, who loves to be in love and all the hopeful swipe-rights her fingers have given.
‘I can guarantee you that most of the men do at least,’ Gray assured her. Cleo fell silent at the thought of all those missed connections: one person looking for a forever, the other just looking for a shag. She refilled her drink, feeling vindicated.
‘And that’s exactly why I don’t go on these things,’ she confided. ‘I’d feel like some sort of cheap impulse buy, left out at the tills.’
‘Yeah, I, er, noticed that you’d never come up on Tinder for me,’ Gray poked his finger into the button indent on the arm of the chair.
‘I have technically been on a Tinder date, though,’ Cleo said. ‘I went out with this guy for about two months after my friend Daisy decided they didn’t have any chemistry together, and she’d met him on Tinder initially; does that count?’
‘If you want it to,’ Gray laughed.
‘Seriously, though, what is the appeal? If you’re not actually looking for a girlfriend, I mean. If you just want someone to go to the cinema or to have a drink with, well, there’s always me.’ (Ack.) Cleo regretted it the moment she’d said it; not the sort of thing you say to your colleague, however flirty (or dishy) he was. Gray regarded her thoughtfully.
‘I don’t know. I guess it was because one day I realised that I was thirty-two and had wasted my entire twenties in a really toxic relationship. All my mates had done their wild-oat sowing back then and were starting to settle down, but it was like I was coming at life backwards. Making up for lost time.’ He smiled ruefully and topped up their glasses a little bit more. ‘Anyway. You don’t feel like sowing any oats, then?’
Cleo grimaced. ‘Well, you have to remember, of course, that I am the field in this lovely analogy.’
Gray burst out laughing. ‘You are so not the field. You are the sort of girl that makes men want to settle down.’
‘You make me sound like some sort of mousy housewife,’ Cleo complained (but secretly she was filing that away as a compliment).
‘I don’t mean to,’ Gray assured her, still looking thoughtful. Cleo pulled her skirt a little further down her thighs. The combination of the heat from the fire and the gravity caused by Gray’s attention was leaving her a little breathless. ‘So, then how do you meet your dates?’ he queried.
‘The old-fashioned way, I guess,’ Cleo shrugged. ‘Through friends. At bars. I don’t know. Once I met someone waiting for a bus. I don’t really go on all that many dates, to be honest.’
‘That’s such a waste,’ Gray shook his head regretfully and Cleo lost hold of her breath again.
Gray seemed to sense something in her silence and sat back in his chair; Cleo hadn’t even realised how much he’d been leaning in towards her. ‘Sorry.’ He smiled sheepishly. ‘I’m being unprofessional, aren’t I, Miss Adkins.’
Cleo took a drink to lubricate her senses. ‘Not at all, Mr Sommers, not at all,’ she managed to tease back, just about pulling back to an even keel.
Gray studied the remnants of his drink. ‘Good. Because – trust me – I could get quite unprofessional this evening, if I was allowed.’
The popping of the fire seemed over-loud, and over-important.
Would it be so terrible if she slept with him, tonight, just this once? Because, God, in that moment she really wanted to. Grownups did it all the time (as Bea was always quick to scathingly point out). It wasn’t like Cleo had never had a one-night stand before, or slept with someone a little too close to home (must smile graciously at Harry and Archie’s cousin if I see him at the wedding, Cleo reminded herself, to lessen embarrassment at having been up close and personal with his knob last year). And (if she was being honest), there had been many, many unguarded moments over the last few months where Cleo had caught herself wondering how Gray felt beneath her fingertips.
But then she thought of the staff-room chats that would never happen, and of how Bea had once felt forced to leave her job, and of the disappointed awkwardness that might fall between them when Gray realised she was just another field to him, after all. And life was too ugly a place to be without a friend that you could call up at 8.30am on a Saturday and ask for a two-hour lift. And so rather than top up her drink, Cleo pushed it aside.
‘I’m really wiped,’ she announced, and Gray smiled sadly at her like she’d said something else.
‘Okay. Sleep well.’
‘You too. I’m sorry,’ Cleo gestured to the still mostly full decanter.
‘Hey, you’ve got to save yourself for the big party next week, after all,’ Gray said mildly.
Invite him, the Nora that Cleo had long-since internalised howled in her head: invite him!
Cleo’s fingertips tingled. He was her friend. Where was the harm?
‘Actually, speaking of the engagement party. If you’re not busy …?’