My Secret Lover

at New Year, don’t they, he’d say, but none quite as spectacularly as
you. Which would sound like a compliment. But I’m not going to tell him because
he might start to hope that this was his chance.
    And if that sounds like I think I’m
some sort of siren of the First and Middle, I do not. I am plain. But Richard
Batty is considerably plainer. I’m the sort of person of whom people say, she
has a nice smile. But the best people could say about Richard is that he’s a
nice person. In the league tables, Richard would come below me. And league
tables matter. We may not like them, but they’re here to stay, as the
headmaster’s always telling us.
    The stranger’s arrival in the
staffroom is heralded by the sudden silence of the witches. He is of average
height, good looking, but it’s not just that that makes him look wrong in here.
He’s young, too young for the suit he’s wearing.
    Middle age really must be creeping up
if I think my colleagues look too young to be teachers.
    The witches are fluttering.
    Richard frowns, turns his back on the
stranger.
    ‘How’s Andy?’ he asks me, quite loudly,
annoyed by another male on his patch.
    Richard always asks how Andy is, as
if we’re all friends. Sometimes I think he’s hoping that I’m going to say, ‘Oh,
he died.’
    ‘Fine,’ says the stranger, as he
pings the lid off the catering tin of coffee and puts in a damp spoon. The
witches stare. Damp spoon in coffee tin is very bad news. By the end of today
there will be an anonymous Post-it note stuck on to the lid saying something
like, ‘Don’t waste coffee! Dry that spoon!’ in black felt-pen capitals.
    ‘Andy’s fine,’ I say trying to divert
the wafts of wrath away from the stranger.
    ‘Yes I am,’ says the stranger,
smiling.
    ‘Err, hello?’ Richard says, as if
it’s a question.
    ‘Andy,’ says the stranger, holding
his hand out towards me.
    ‘Andy?’
    It comes out as a bit of a yelp
because I know several Andys already. There was a period during the sixties
when every other boy child was called Andrew. There were four of them in my
class at school. Names come and go like that. People call their sons Tom and
Harry now, not Andrew and Richard.
    But this Andy is not my generation.
By rights, he should be called Kevin or Jason.
    ‘I’m marrying an Andy,’ I explain.
    ‘Steady,’ says the stranger. ‘We’ve
only just met!’
    Near hysterical laughter from the
witches.
    The stranger winks at me. Do you know
sometimes how you just know you’re going to get on with someone, like you have
a kind of understanding? I love that feeling.
    ‘Are you working here?’ I ask him.
    ‘Supply,’ he says.
    ‘Ahh,’ I say, as if that answers
every question in the world.
    ‘Lunch today?’ says Richard trying to
retrieve our conversation.
    I have a salad bag of rocket, spinach
and watercress in my briefcase plus a couple of rice cakes. The witches always
bring a packed lunch and sit in a circle totting up calories. I look out of the
window. The sun is trying to break through the wintry mist, but it really is
too cold to start a detox today.
    ‘Why don’t you join us, Andy?’
    ‘Sure,’ says Andy.
    Not like, are you sure? Like, sure,
I’d love to.
    Richard sniffs.
     
    Is there anything more comforting
than dipping a hot chip into the yolk of a runny fried egg?
    ‘So, what did you get up to?’ Richard
asks.
    We’re sitting in the café bit of the
nearby supermarket.
    Two eggs and chips for £1.99. At
least there’s no dairy, unless eggs count as dairy. I’m never sure. No red meat
anyway, and no wheat except for the slice of white bread and marg on the side
which is complimentary, and which I am not going to eat.
    ‘This and that. What about you?’
    ‘This and that. New Year?’
    ‘Had a quiet one,’ I lie.
    Richard’s face falls. I know he’s
imagining scented candles and sex on the carpet, with Jools’ Hootenanie in the
background, and I can’t be bothered to put him out of his misery.
    ‘How about you, Andy?’
    I keep calling him Andy as if I’m
teaching, or trying very hard not to forget his name and I must stop it.
    ‘Snowboarding,’ he says.
    He’s got a baked potato and salad.
He’s good at getting forkfuls of salad into his mouth. When I choose salad
there’s always a bit of raw red cabbage that goes in sideways and gets stuck so
that I have to hook it out with my finger.
    ‘You don’t look like an Andy,’ I say.
    ‘You can call me something else if
you