Chapter Text
The hall was unbearable, too hot despite the rain hammering against the high, grime-streaked windows, and it smelled faintly of damp coats, floor wax, and the metallic, sickly tang of burnt toast, while the fluorescent strip lighting overhead buzzed with a rhythmic, dying stutter that sounded like the building itself was contemplating giving up on life entirely.
At the front, Mr. Cartwright was hunched beside the projector, muttering under his breath like a man performing a desperate exorcism, while Kevin hovered nearby, attempting to help in the least useful way possible by constantly hovering in the projector's line of sight and offering unsolicited technical advice that nobody had asked for, making the entire situation feel like a slow-motion car crash of suburban incompetence.
“You’ve got to press Source, mate,” Kevin said, his voice straining for a level of authority he clearly didn't possess.
“I have pressed Source, Kevin, I have pressed it four times,” Mr. Cartwright groaned, his face pressed against the plastic casing as if he were trying to communicate with the hardware through sheer willpower.
Near the refreshments table, Meg was busily reorganising the packets of budget biscuits into nutritional categories while talking down to Julia, who looked as though she were mentally rehearsing her own escape from the planet, or at the very least, wondering if she could fake a medical emergency just to get out of the room before the residential trip itinerary was read aloud in its entirety.
“I just think,” Meg said, her tone briskly corporate and completely detached from the reality of the situation, “if they’re doing serious hill walking, the school really should have specified a minimum sock thickness, because moisture-wicking wool is non-negotiable when you’re dealing with that kind of terrain.”
Julia stared at her, her eyes wide and bloodshot, her grip on her lukewarm carton of tea tightening until her knuckles turned a stark, jagged white. “Meg. Sincerely. What the actual fuck are you talking about?”
“It matters! If their feet get wet, they’re susceptible to blisters, and if they’re miles from the lodge and can’t walk, it’s a logistical nightmare.”
“They are ten, not Sherpas crossing the Andes, Meg, for the love of God, just let them be children.”
The heavy fire doors creaked open, and Amanda walked in, wearing a floor-length cream coat that cost more than Liz’s car, oversized sunglasses that she didn't bother to remove in the dimly lit hall, and the sharp, pained expression of a woman who had arrived unexpectedly at a crime scene. Several conversations died instantly, not loudly, but with the subtle, shifting silence of a group that realized their carefully curated social hierarchy had just walked into the room, and even the air seemed to grow colder as she stood by the door, scanning the hall with a look of profound, aristocratic disdain.
“Oh, fucking hell,” she muttered, a sentiment Liz felt in her very bones as she watched Amanda navigate the room, her heels clicking against the linoleum like gunfire while the other parents studiously looked at anything, a cracked ceiling tile, a dusty notice board, the inside of their own eyelids, rather than acknowledge her arrival.
Amanda spotted her immediately and marched over, and as she slid into the seat beside Liz, she placed her designer handbag on the empty chair between them with the surgical precision of someone marking their territory, effectively creating a physical barrier that screamed ‘don’t even think about sitting here.’
“You didn’t say it was in the hall,” Amanda said, her voice a sharp, cutting whisper that didn't bother trying to be quiet. “It smells like damp in here, not just regular, charmingly rustic damp, but Victorian-orphanage-tuberculosis damp, which is really just the icing on the cake for a Thursday evening.”
“It’s a primary school, Amanda,” Liz replied, not looking up from her pasta. “It’s built on swamp land and dreams and whatever the janitor decides not to mop up, so you’re really just going to have to lower your standards for the next hour.”
Anne offered a tentative, fragile smile that looked like it might shatter if someone breathed on it too hard. “Hi, Amanda.”
“Anne,” Amanda acknowledged, already turning away to inspect the room as if it were a particularly offensive exhibit in a museum, her eyes landing on Kevin. “Why is Kevin dressed like he’s about to inspect a caravan park? Is he auditioning for a role as a middle-management scout for a failing holiday resort, or is he just genuinely confused about what century we’re living in?”
“He likes layering,” Liz said, her voice flat.
“No, but emotionally,” Amanda hissed, her eyes narrowing as Kevin adjusted his gilet with the self-importance of a man who thought he was running the entire operation. “He’s so desperately, aggressively there, it’s exhausting to look at.”
Liz snorted, spraying a tiny bit of lukewarm pasta water, and Amanda looked smug for a fraction of a second before taking a sip of her coffee and grimacing as if she’d been poisoned, her entire face crumpling into a mask of pure, unadulterated regret. “This is fucking vile, how do they even make coffee taste like wet cardboard and despair?”
“You bought it, Amanda, that’s on you.”
“I needed caffeine, and apparently, self-respect wasn't on the menu at the local Tesco, so I had to settle for this liquid catastrophe.”
At the front, the projector flickered to life, vomiting a stretched, pixelated photograph of smiling children in high-vis jackets onto the whiteboard, and Mr. Cartwright stood up, his voice echoing painfully off the bare brick walls. “Right! Lovely to see so many of you here tonight.”
“He says, visibly devastated,” Amanda muttered to Liz, her eyes not moving from the screen, her posture rigid with the effort of not actually walking out.
“The Year Five residential trip to Foxhill Activity Centre will be a fantastic opportunity for pupils to build confidence, resilience, and teamwork skills-”
“Oh, they love resilience now,” Amanda whispered, her voice laced with a weary, biting cynicism. “Every minor, pathetic inconvenience is suddenly a character-building epiphany, as if we’re training them for a future in the trenches rather than a middle-school camping trip where they’ll just lose their socks and cry because there’s no Wi-Fi.”
Anne glanced at her, her eyes darting around to see if anyone else had heard, but Amanda just shrugged, completely unbothered. “When we were children, people just developed anxiety naturally; we didn't need a weekend of mandatory, forced-fun canoeing to achieve it.”
Julia barked out a laugh from across the aisle, a sharp, ragged sound that drew a stern look from Mr. Cartwright, who was now clicking to the next slide, which showed a group of terrified-looking kids in orange helmets huddled in canoes, looking for all the world like they were preparing for an execution.
Amanda physically recoiled, pressing her back into the hard plastic chair as if she were trying to fuse herself into the structure of the building. “No. I am not canoeing, I’m not doing it, I’m not putting a helmet on my head that has been sweat in by at least four different children today.”
“You won’t have to, you’re a volunteer, you just stand on the shore and look vaguely supportive,” Liz said, trying to keep a straight face.
“They always force the parents, Liz, they have this predatory instinct where they sniff out the person who hates the outdoors the most and immediately strap them into a harness, like last year when I got trapped on a zip-wire because some PE teacher called me a ‘good sport’ and I panicked and spent twenty minutes hanging over a ditch waiting for death while everyone filmed it on their phones.”
“You posted photos of that, Amanda, you literally changed your profile picture to you dangling in mid-air.”
“I looked incredible in the harness, and that is all that matters,” Amanda said, her voice brook-no-argument, and Liz couldn't tell if she was joking or if she actually believed that her vanity could override the physical laws of gravity.