My Name Is Not Jacob Ramsay Read Online Free PDF Page B

asked.
    "Admissions had a new member of staff. Didn't fully understand the process," Helen replied.
    "He's coming back," Michael said, watching.
    "Okay. We'll see how it goes. He may just be nervous. What's his problem with Afghanis?" Helen asked Patricia.
    Patricia shrugged again, not knowing what to say as Shaheen walked back in with a nervous smile. 
    Patricia, Helen and Michael - tight as tight can be. Although not always sociable outside of work, in the workplace the three of them were an open book. Nothing was really withheld when it came to the politics of the Education Service. Their personal lives often exposed and discussed.
    All three were trustworthy and loyal, assets to any workforce, and should probably have been renamed 'The Three Musketeers'. Wherever one went, the other two weren't too far behind, working and creating something that would benefit the young people and their own team.
    It wasn't long, however, before the dreaded Cardinal Richelieu entered the room.
    Catherine Riverdale was sixty years old. She was a short, white woman, with a slight hunch and a protruding chin. She resembled an archetypal school mistress of the 1950s or even, at times, a slave driver in charge of a Victorian workhouse. Riverdale was the temporary manager of a newly formed Assessment Centre. She psychologically mind-whipped fellow staff members, let alone the young, impressionable and extremely vulnerable children she was there to educate. If there was ever a spanner in the works, Riverdale was surely that very spanner.
    It wasn't such a bad thing. After all, she only had one month of her temporary contract left. Her job, manager of the Assessment Centre, was definitely in a limbo state. She left colleagues stressed; mentally and emotionally exhausted on a daily basis. Her random statements, social attitude and general approach to life itself were simply peculiar. She did, however, always put the children first, despite her methods being unusual, to say the least.
    Riverdale would, for instance, suddenly enter another teacher's classroom, or if Michael was in the midst of counselling a student, she would stare and point at them. She waggled her forefinger and removed them from class to the bemusement of the staff member. Riverdale took a handful of children outside to grow vegetables, rake up some grass or pull up weeds. She stood on the edge, watching each one like a prison warden. She'd return the pupils back to their classroom, grubby as hell, and expect them to settle back into their lesson, even though they would have missed the vitals.
    Michael often found Catherine Riverdale sobbing at her desk or in the corner of a classroom. 
    One day she explained to him that her partner of fifteen years was addicted to cannabis and it concerned her that she, also, smoked too much weed. It naturally surprised Michael to learn this, but it quickly lessened when she told him she hadn't been getting a lot of sex either. At first she reminded Michael of a troll, but then he settled on the fact that she was more of a dead-ringer of Fenella the Kettle Witch from 1970s children's animation Chorlton and the Wheelies.
    "Good morning everybody," said Catherine Riverdale. She nodded and smiled with her crooked teeth at some of the children sitting in the room. She waddled, in a witch-like manner, nodding to Michael, hearing him sighing. "Morning. How are you today, on this lovely, crisp morning?"
    Michael caught sight of the other staff.
    Paul raised his eyebrows and also his cup of tea. He smiled and lowered his head.
    "I'm good, thank you, Catherine," replied Michael. He pressed his back against the edge of the work-surface. Trapped.
    Riverdale moved her head rapidly up and down, like one of those annoying nodding dogs positioned on the parcel shelves of a number of cars. Pointless. Utterly and completely. Likened only slightly to those fortune cats found in Chinese restaurants. However, at least those nodding, paw-waving cats actually had a