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her hand to
knock, her eyes hovering over the words engraved into the brass
sign like a warning: School Counsellor. It might as well have been
displayed in red flashing lights and accompanied by a siren.
Felicity had never met a counsellor before, but she was dreading
it. Counsellors meant talking about your feelings, and that was
nothing short of her worst nightmare.
    The door opened before
her knuckles met the wood. She blinked, surprised, and found
herself staring into the face of a man who looked as caught off his
guard as she was.
    He recovered himself
quicker than she did. “Ah,” he said with a smile. “You must be...”
He paused and glanced down at a clipboard he held in his hand.
“Felicity Lucas?”
    She nodded
helplessly.
    “Excellent,
excellent,” the man said. “Come in.” He turned and went back into
the office, Felicity following him dutifully and
reluctantly.
    The room was quite
large for an office, smaller than a classroom but still rather
sizeable. There was a computer at one end, beneath the tall, dirty
window, and in the centre there stood a small coffee table with
four soft chairs around it, their fabric fraying and torn slightly
to reveal the dull orange foam beneath. Some unfortunate students
had clearly been picking at it, possibly in frustration at being
held prisoner by previous counsellors, as it was missing little
clumps here and there, like half-eaten cheese. All around the room,
from ceiling to floor, were shelves and shelves of books. It was
cosy, if it a little musty, and in spite of the light that managed
to enter the room through the age-old smears on the window, it was
quite dark.
    “Have a seat,” Mr
Oakley said, and Felicity did so, watching the counsellor
nervously. He looked different to the rest of the secondary school
faculty. Some of the teachers seemed to take a lot of pride in
their appearance and suited themselves up with matching ties and
the shiniest shoes that Felicity had ever seen, as if they thought
it somehow enhanced their authority over Greenfields’ rebellious
students. Others were clued in to the fact that professional attire
was not a contributing factor to the education of the children in
this particular school and wore more casual, fashionable clothing.
The counsellor was like a bizarre mix of both. He wore formal
trousers and a shirt but no tie, and instead of a matching suit
jacket he wore one that was made of corduroy and had leather
patches at the elbows. A pair of thick, black rimmed spectacles sat
on the tip of his nose and on his feet he wore canvas shoes. It was
as if he was trying to be trendy, and though Felicity knew little
about fashion, she decided that he was failing. She was absolutely
certain that Hollie would think so.
    “So,” he said, sitting
in one of the soft chairs opposite her. “How was your first day at
Greenfields?”
    Felicity shrugged
awkwardly.
    “I know it can be
hard, moving schools,” the counsellor continued. “New teachers, new
buildings, new neighbourhood... it can be a lot for one young
person to take, and that’s before we even get started on homework,
the pressure of your GCSEs, making new friends -”
    Felicity stared.
Although Mr Oakley’s speech had sounded somewhat rehearsed, he had
spoken with a degree of excitement that unnerved her.
    He stopped when he
noticed her stare. He regarded her curiously, and then he leaned
towards her. “But that’s not why you’re here, though, is it?” he
said. “You’re here because your mother died.”
    The bluntness of his
statement caught her by surprise.
    “It’s okay, I’ve dealt
with this a hundred times before,” he said with a dismissive wave
of his hand, noticing her surprised glance. “You’ve got a lot on
your plate right now. I understand that you used to live in the
country, and that your father wasn’t in the picture much
before?”
    Felicity stared for a
few seconds, still taken aback by Mr Oakley’s frankness and stunned
that he seemed to know so