Nightshade

59

Miss Rider looked up as the classroom door opened. It was Bella. Miss Rider expected the headmistress to pop her head around the door but Bella was alone. The heads of the three dozen children in the room swivelled to stare at Bella. ‘Sit down, Bella,’ said the teacher. ‘We’re just talking about fractions.’

Bella walked over to her table and sat down. Miss Rider went over to her whiteboard. She was trying to get the children to rank a series of fractions in order of size but it was proving to be an uphill struggle. She looked over at Bella. The girl had her hands clasped together on the table in front of her and her head down so that her hair was hanging over her face.

‘So, Bella, which is bigger, a quarter, which is one over four, or a sixth, which is one over six?’

Bella didn’t say anything.

‘Bella, did you hear me?’

Two girls at the table by the window began to talk.

‘Hush now,’ said Miss Rider. ‘Let’s hear the answer from Bella.’

Tommy Halpin stood up and pointed out of the window. ‘Tommy, come on now, sit down.’ Tommy had what his parents called Attention Deficit Disorder but Miss Rider put down to a complete lack of discipline at home. The boy ignored her and continued to point.

‘Tommy, please, we’ve spoken before about how your disrupting the class isn’t fair to everyone else.’

‘It’s Mrs Tomlinson,’ said Tommy excitedly. ‘On the roof.’ He turned to look at Miss Rider. ‘Why is she on the roof, Miss Rider?’

Miss Rider frowned and hurried over to the window. The children took it as a signal that they could go too and everyone rushed over to see what was going on.

The headmistress was on the roof of the administration block. Her hair and skirt were flapping in the wind and as Miss Rider watched, the headmistress slowly raised her arms to the side as if she was being crucified.

‘What is she doing, Miss?’ asked Tommy. ‘Is she playing at Superman?’

‘She’s a lady, she can’t be Superman,’ said Kylie James, who was one of the most pedantic children Miss Rider had ever come across.

‘Children, I need you to all sit down,’ said Miss Rider in her most authoritative voice. Her pupils ignored her.

Mrs Tomlinson took a deep breath, tilted her head back, and began to scream the Lord’s Prayer. ‘Our Father, which art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name.’ She fell forward as she shouted and the wind ripped the remaining words from her mouth as she fell, her arms still out to the side. It was a perfect swan dive, except that below wasn’t a swimming pool, there was just the unyielding tarmac surface of the school playground.

‘Oh my God!’ screamed Miss Rider. She watched in horror as the headmistress plunged to the ground. Something snaked behind her and Miss Rider realised that it was a rope. The headmistress had tied one end of the rope around the neck and the other end to something on the roof.

‘She’s bungee jumping!’ shouted Tommy, and at that exact moment the rope snapped tight and Mrs Tomlinson flipped head over heels and then the head parted from the body in a shower of blood and the two parts fell to the ground. The body hit first with a dull wet thud that they all heard through the classroom window and the head landed a fraction of a second later and rolled across the playground like a miskicked football.

Some of the children screamed and Kylie burst into tears. Miss Rider flinched and turned away, her stomach heaving. As she retched over the floor she realised that Bella was the only child still sitting at her table, her head down and her hands clasped in front of her.