Birdkill Read Online Free PDF Page B

was a dark green leather couch flanked by armchairs with deep-studded buttons. The coffee table sported a book about horses.
    ‘Coffee? Something stronger?’
    She shook her head, hands clasped in her lap. Christ, but she was desperate to be anything but Miss Jean Brodie and yet playing the part so well she could be hamming it if not for her own confusion making her simper like a tweed-skirted idiot. Was the question a trap? Was she a raging alky after her ‘episode’? Whatever that episode had been because she didn’t remember any of it and her knees looked pale clasped together beyond her hands and she wished to God she’d worn jeans rather than this stupid M&S checked skirt; too short and tight.
    ‘No. No thanks.’
    Hamilton steepled his hands. ‘Welcome to the Hamilton Institute. We’re pleased you could join us and I’m personally delighted you’ll be adding your expertise to our little teaching staff. Your interview was rather brilliant, and backed up by your references—’
    ‘But my problem, the war. Lebanon—’
    His pianist’s hand batted down her objection. ‘Lebanon doesn’t matter. We’re about the future here, not the past. We actively encourage healing through positive, forward thinking. Leave the past to its ghosts. We’re interested in a prospect we can share.’
    ‘You’re being very kind, but I—’
    ‘Please. We know about the bombing at the school, but you’re not to blame yourself. God knows, you are least of all to blame. Dr Hass assures me you have made a remarkable recovery from a traumatic incident, so let us look ahead.’
    Paul Hass was her trauma counsellor. She’d given him as a reference and Hamilton had clearly been fast enough to take it up. She held the cornflower-blue regard steadily and nodded. ‘Okay.’
    He smiled, relaxed. ‘No more about the past. We’ve got brighter times ahead of us and you have the chance to make a real difference here at the Institute. We need your skills. As I explained when we met in London, our work involves a number of troubled and yet highly talented young individuals. Our goal is to harness their extraordinary potential and unleash their true aptitudes. We have two teams here, the teaching staff and the research staff. We encourage a division of tasks, allowing you to focus on your pedagogical goals while the research teams try to understand what remarkable accidents of genetics and science it is that sets these young people apart. Most of them would have been cast off on the junk heap of disturbed youth, sent to borstals or even worse if we hadn’t been able to intervene. The one thing they have in common is they are all possessed of extraordinarily degrees of intelligence.’
    ‘But surely we should be combining learning with feedback from the research.’
    He cut her off with an imperious wave. ‘No. Absolutely not. We have twenty years of experience in this work and although we still feel we are barely scratching the surface, we have learned valuable lessons in the course of our research here. And it is critical there be no interaction between the teaching and research staffs. In fact, it is an undertaking you make in agreeing to work here.’
    ‘You didn’t mention this in London.’
    ‘It was not relevant then. It is now.’
    Robyn gripped the arms of her chair. ‘Well, hang on a second. How not relevant? It’s a major condition of my employment. You chose not to mention it until I was actually here and committed to taking up the position. You’re asking that I submit to a research programme being undertaken with children I am to teach without knowing the faintest thing about that programme? It hardly makes my position in the classroom workable.’
    ‘It has no impact on your work in the classroom. As I have stated, we have considerable experience and the arrangement has presented no issues for other members of the teaching staff here.’
    Robyn forced herself to relax, ease her grip and sit back. Breathe, take it