The Furies: A Novel Read Online Free PDF

Blackwell’s when you were here? Or was it still a James Thin? I lose track of the way these bloody bookshops change names.’
    ‘The one on South Bridge? It was Blackwell’s by the time I got here.’
    ‘Keep the receipts,’ he said. I nodded. ‘Now will you stop crying? You know I don’t like crying.’
    ‘I’m sorry. I just felt like a fraud.’ I mopped my face one last time with the tissue and dropped it in the bin.
    ‘But you aren’t. Have you got less professional experience than your predecessor? Yes. But things being as they are, you are the best woman for the job. The children will realise that as they get to know you. Why wouldn’t they? They’re naughty, they’re not stupid.’
    I raised my eyebrows at him, feeling the weight of my puffy eyelids stretching upwards. ‘Only you could describe Annika, a girl who apparently once threatened someone with a kitchen knife, as “naughty”.’
    ‘Well, I understand that he was a deeply annoying young man who had been harassing her for some time. If you will approach someone in a cookery lesson and annoy them when they’re using a knife, you can’t then be princessy about things. Anyway, her former school should have had a more robust bullying policy, in my opinion. Annika is impatient and rude because she’s clever and no-one challenges her.’
    ‘Perhaps that’s because of the knife thing?’
    Robert ignored me. ‘I took this job on to make a difference, Alex. It might be a cliché, but it’s still true. I could have stayed at the University until I retired, spending my days with lovely, hardworking girls like you. These children need us. I know it sounds mad when it’s your first day and I’ve already turned you to drink, but you’ll see. It feels good to be needed.’
    And, of course, he was right. Everyone wants to be needed. Even me, even then.
    Dear Diary,
    Christ, I did not write that. Is this the worst idea anyone’s ever had? Keeping a diary is lame. She asked us to, so this is kind of like homework. But she said we didn’t have to bring it in to the Unit, so how would she even know if I was doing it?
    I don’t need a diary to keep my secret thoughts in, because I don’t really have any. I do like writing though. I won a prize for creative writing at Bruntsfield, my old school. I wrote a short story about this old jakey woman you see on the Links sometimes. I used to notice her when I was heading into town. So I made up some stuff about her, and they gave me a book token for twenty quid.
    We don’t get to do much of that at Rankeillor. No wonder Annika’s bored. I haven’t decided yet, but I think I might want to be a journalist one day. I used to write for the school paper, when I was at Bruntsfield, but we don’t have anything like that now. It’d be a big waste of time. I mean, what would Ricky do with a school paper? Fold it into a hat?
    So that’s what I’ll do with this diary. Practise being a journalist, and write about actual stuff I’ve noticed or found out.
    Let’s start with the new teacher, call-me-Alex. She’s a state, that’s for starters. We were trying to work out when she last had her hair cut. I think two years ago, minimum. She doesn’t look, you know, grimy. She doesn’t smell bad, or anything. I’m just saying, she doesn’t make much of an effort: jeans, jumper, and not a fucking hairbrush in sight. We’re trying to work out if she overslept or if that’s how she usually looks. She might be pretty if she made an effort. She’s probably twenty-five, or maybe thirty. She’s got brown hair, which she used to dye, definitely, because the ends are a completely different brown from the roots. And she doesn’t have any make-up on at all. So I guess she isn’t trying to impress anyone at Rankeillor. Not that there’s anyone to impress, since Robert is clearly a poof and all the other teachers are female.
    She’s from London, she isn’t very good at teaching, and she likes plays. That’s all I know