FOURTEEN
The idea of checking up on Jayne felt almost laughable to Jess. Jayne was a grown woman, a grown woman that had, at times, taken great offence at being treated otherwise. Jess swore she could still feel the slap she’d received after she suggested that Jayne had been late for a lecture after staying up “way past her bedtime”.
So what in God’s name was she hoping to achieve by checking she was at the doctor’s surgery, other than another painful red mark on her cheek? She felt ridiculous, she felt stupid, and, quite frankly, she felt embarrassed. Embarrassed for herself, but even more embarrassed for Jayne. The fact was, Jayne hadn’t done enough to make Jess trust her with this one. If she’d seemed a little more enthusiastic, or maybe even a little more interested, instead of just sitting there and nodding her head while Jess made plans for her recovery, then maybe Jess might have believed that she wanted to see the doctor.
Jess tried to call Jayne’s phone for the third time. She crossed her fingers, hoping not to be greeted by the same recorded message telling her that the phone was busy. A busy phone meant that Jayne wasn’t with the doctor. Thankfully, though the dialling continued. A voice spoke from the other end of the line.
“Hello”.
It was a man’s voice. Her brother’s voice.
“Daniel, is that you? Why have you got Jayne’s phone?”
“My battery’s dead, and I needed to phone someone”.
Jess could sense an odd kind of tone in Daniel’s voice, as if his mouth was working ahead of his brain.
“Phone someone?”
“Yeah, I…I needed to book a haircut”.
“Must have been an urgent haircut, if you couldn’t wait for your phone to charge”.
Daniel couldn’t find an answer to that one. His brain had obviously caught up with his mouth, and realised what an unlikely story he’d started telling.
“Jess, you’re my sister, remember? Not my mother.”
“Fine, Daniel. I won’t bother next time. Where’s Jayne?”
“She went out”.
“Out? Fancy expanding on that?”
“I think she said something about the doctor. She left about ten minutes ago”.
“Okay.” Jess was happy with that. “I’ve got a supervision in a minute, so I’ll be home in a couple of hours”.
Daniel made a slight grunting noise at the other end of the phone before hanging up. Jess got the feeling that she wasn’t exactly the number one priority in her brother’s life at the minute. Oh well, she could live with that.
Still, she’d achieved what she’d set out to do; checking that Jayne had stuck to her word and seen the doctor. Now she had nothing left to worry about during her weekly hour of joy.
Jess was sat outside one of the college’s many offices. Once a week, she had to sit inside that same room for a supervision; a one-on-one lesson with a college lecturer. It was the sort of educational experience that was supposed to be enjoyed and relished, with every student discussing their work with an expert in their field. For Jess, however, it had turned into a regular discussion of semicolon use with the unpleasant Professor Grant; a large man with very high trousers and an unhealthy obsession with punctuation.
The door next to her opened, and one of Jess’s classmates left the room carrying the essay she’d been discussing and wearing a peculiar smile on her face. Grant must have been having a good day if he’d let one of his students leave with anything other than a crushed self-esteem. Jess checked the timetable on the wall, making sure she was next in line, and knocked on the wooden surface of the door. It was pulled open for her from the inside. Grant must have been having a really good day if he was opening doors for people.
As she stepped into the room, however, Jess saw that Professor Grant wasn’t exactly having a good day at work. He was in fact, having a day off. Stood in his room, holding the door open for Jess, was a much younger, much taller and much slimmer man, wearing a pair of thick-rimmed glasses on his long, bony face. He had messy red hair that made him look exhausted, but he looked like the sort of person that seemed exhausted all of the time. He closed the door behind Jess and held his hand out towards her. She shook it.
“I’m Gareth Stone”, the man said, sitting behind the desk and inviting Jess to sit opposite him. “Professor Grant’s having trouble with his kidneys. Probably won’t be back for a while, so they’ve got me in to cover some of his work”.
Jess sat down and introduced herself. The room was uncomfortably warm; the hundreds of sticky notes on the wall by the desk peeling away from the faded paintwork, trying desperately to cling on in the heat. The room had taken on a whole new life without Grant. Last week, it had felt like the office of a company executive. The oak desk had housed nothing more than an in-tray full of essays and a dozen ballpoint pens in assorted colours. Now, on the other hand, it looked like the very epitome of organised chaos. Essays were scattered across the desk, pens lay on the floor and in open drawers, and sticky notes coordinated the day’s activities and duties with their own unique filing system.
Mr. Stone peeled a note from the computer screen, screwed it up and threw it into a bin into the corner. He adjusted his glasses, rolled up his sleeves, and pulled one of the essays from the pile towards himself. He sat back in the chair and read it, so quickly that Jess guessed it was the second time he’d done so. Eventually, he looked up towards Jess.
“You’re very passionate about literature, aren’t you?”
Jess nodded. She wasn’t sure whether to feel embarrassed or proud.
“Why do you say that?”
Mr. Stone smiled. He handed the essay back to Jess.
“You wrote twice as much as most of the others. So you’re either passionate, or you want to make me earn my salary”.
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As the clock approached midday, Mr. Stone added yet another sticky note to the bin and checked his watch. He looked at Jess.
“That’s all for this week”, he said, standing up to open the door. “What did you think?”
“What did I think?” Jess wasn’t sure what she was supposed to say.
“I want to know you think I coped, what with this being my first day and all”.
Jess smiled. “You did great. Better than old Grant anyway”.
Mr. Stone looked amazed. He ran his fingers through his hair, making it even more untidy, and he rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, as if he was making sure that Jess wasn’t just a figment of his imagination. Being told that he was better than a tutor like Grant, with his nine hundred years of experience, was obviously not something he was expecting.
“You think so?”
“Yes, I do. Now go and sort out your sticky notes ready for your next student”.
Mr. Stone raised a surprised eyebrow, but walked back to his desk anyway.
“I’ll see you next week, Mr. Stone”, Jess called as she left the room.
“See you next week, Jess”, he called back. “And call me Gareth”.
Jess closed the door behind her as she walked back out into the corridor. Compared to the stifling office, the corridor felt shockingly cold, but Jess couldn’t help but feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside, the way she always felt when she lost herself in that brilliant world of her imagination; the world of manor houses, rich gentlemen and non-conforming women that she loved to read about. She quite often lost herself there, but the last hour had been different. This time, she’d had company. It felt so liberating to be able to talk about what she loved, without being told to be quiet or to go and find somebody that cared. It made her feel almost as happy as that brief moment when she realised that Cuddles the tortoise was, in fact, hibernating, and not dead. An hour full of intellectual discussion with somebody that cared as much as she did was something that she’d never really experienced before.
Gareth had told her that she had some real potential and that she had really strong opinions to put on paper. He did mention the often erratic placement of her semicolons, but he didn’t have Grant’s habit of making it seem like it was the end of Jess’s educational career.
As she stepped outside and walked towards the bus stop, a question entered Jess’s head, and she made a mental note to ask Daniel when she got home. As bad as it made her feel, she couldn’t help but wonder how long it would take a man of Grant’s age to recover from kidney problems.
