Impossible to Forget(82)

Mr Johnson strolled into the classroom and stood at the front, waiting for silence to descend. It took some time before everyone noticed that he was there.

‘Good morning, year 13,’ he said when the room was finally quiet. ‘I trust we are all well and ready to get on with the biodegradable qualities of polymers. Get your homework out and we’ll see what a dog’s dinner you managed to make of it.’

And then there was no time to think about anything other than polymers, and that suited her just fine.



After school, Laura had a job looking after a couple of primary school children, and so Romany was left to wander home alone. At least she knew now that Mum was gone, and there was no danger of things having got any worse whilst she was at school. She found herself dawdling, though, wandering home the long way, window-shopping in places that normally she wouldn’t have given a second glance. Anything to avoid having to chat to Tiger. She felt bad about that. He was a nice enough bloke, but they had nothing to say to one another. What did he know about teenage girls? What did she know about middle-aged men, come to that? They seemed to have no point of connection other than her mum, and she was the one subject of conversation that they were both desperate to avoid. And so they hovered around each other in a strained kind of benign silence, neither having the raw materials nor the energy to begin a conversation other than to ask each other what they should eat. It was impossibly awkward, but there was nothing she could do to improve it. So, she spent as little time as she could at home, and when she was there, she hid herself away in her room to study or watch CSI on her laptop until it was time to go to bed.

It wouldn’t be forever, she told herself. It was October already and the arrangement was that he would leave once her exams were finished in June. But when she counted down the weeks on her calendar it felt like an impossibly long time.





41


‘Now, I don’t want you to worry,’ said Romany’s form tutor. ‘You still have plenty of time. The deadline isn’t for months yet. But we do find that it helps students to focus on their coursework when their UCAS applications have been finished and sent off.’

Romany wanted to cry. Didn’t she have enough to deal with? She knew what subject she wanted to study and where she wanted to go. Those decisions had been hard enough with everything else that had been going on. Wouldn’t that do? Why did she now have to go through all the hassle of actually filling in forms? Surely it would be simpler for everyone if she sent Durham an email explaining that this was what she wanted, and they would just say okay? Then she could just get on with the job of trying to get the grades.

It didn’t work like that, though. She had to fill in the form and write a personal statement to convince Durham that she was passionate about her subject and that they would be foolish to miss the opportunity of teaching her.

Unfortunately, this task was currently beyond her. She didn’t have the bandwidth for it. It was sitting pretty in the ‘too hard to achieve’ box. She had tried to make a start. There was a new folder on her laptop that contained a document handily titled ‘Personal Statement’, but every time she opened it and stared at the white page and its little blinking cursor her mind went blank. What could she possibly say about herself? What did she have to offer somewhere as prestigious as Durham University? She had never even been to Durham, but somehow she knew that that was where she needed to be. In Durham, she wouldn’t be the girl with the lost father and the dead mother. She would simply be Romany Osborne, biochemistry student, just like all the others.

Before her mum died, she had booked them on to the Open Day just like she was supposed to, but then her mum hadn’t felt that well on the day and they had put it off, saying to one another that they would go to the one in September instead. They hadn’t known then that there would barely be a September.

If Mum had been there, she would have helped her write something good for the form. Then again, if Mum had been here, she would have been able to do it by herself, because she would have been able get her thoughts to align themselves neatly in her head without everything becoming muddled and confused.

‘It won’t take too long once you start,’ said her tutor, cutting across her thoughts. She was speaking in that gentle voice that everyone seemed to use to her these days, the one that made Romany want to scream at them to stop treating her like a victim. ‘At least, you know where you want to go and which course, so that’s half the battle.’ She gave Romany a wan smile and Romany almost felt sorry for the woman. She doesn’t know what to say either, she thought. She’s probably been dreading this conversation for weeks, talked to her husband about it over a glass of wine in the evenings. ‘I have this poor girl in my Year 13 tutor group. Her mum has just died. It’s so tragic. Doesn’t it break your heart?’

That’s what Romany had become – a person who broke other people’s hearts. But that was going to change. She had to get a grip and show them all that she didn’t need their sympathy, that she was just the same person she had been before. And then maybe people would stop pussyfooting around her. It was her mum who had died, after all, and not her.

‘And I’m here to help you,’ her tutor continued. ‘If we work together, then I’m sure we can get this done and off in no time at all.’

‘Thank you,’ replied Romany, looking up and meeting her tutor’s eye for the first time in the conversation. ‘But it’s okay. I have someone who can help.’