Islanders by Cathy Thomas

Author:Cathy Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Published: 2022-06-02T00:00:00+00:00

Mein Herr

L’Ancresse, 2012

September has settled with a smart wind and a rattle in the stripping trees, and the season’s colours are beginning to stipple the headland. L’Ancresse Common is booby-trapped with rabbit holes so the students are running slowly, delicately stepping around the slippery stains of alpine moss. The teachers are huddled in one of the only sheltered patches of land behind an outcrop of rocks. The female teaching staff are flirting with the ambulance men, waiting it out until one of the students breaks an ankle or sprains a knee. Mascara is smeared like tears over the faces of the sixth-form girls as they huff their way across the makeshift cross-country course.

You can do it, Mr Martel shouts at his students. A flurry of middle fingers stick up at him as the students bob past but he does not let his encouraging smile falter.

Headmaster, comes a strained voice in his direction. Mr Priaulx lumbers over the headland like a woodlouse. He is panting heavily, exhaling a strong smell of cigarettes and Murray Mints. They are similar in age, these two men, but Mr Priaulx’s forty years of smoking make him look like another generation.

Yes? He waits for Mr Priaulx to catch his breath.

Two of the Year Twelves have gone, Mr Priaulx says. Run off somewhere.

Who?

Luc Batiste, Mr Priaulx says, and Gavin Mauger.

Where were they last seen? he asks, squinting across the headland. The clouds today are enormous, hulking. The weather on this island can change within a breath, especially in September.

Hard to say, Mr Priaulx says. Certainly at the start of the race. They were on the bus earlier, and we ticked them off on the register, but we haven’t seen them since. None of the other students seem to know either. Should we alert their parents?

I think that we’d all like to avoid that, Mr Martel says, knowing full well how Mr Priaulx thrives on chaos. Whenever there’s an asthma attack or a panic attack or a student gets their hand stuck in the drinks vending machine, there he is. Mr Martel would rather things were done without the whole student body whispering about what’s happened, or without a journalist from the Press cornering him at the garage asking for a printable quote.

I bet they’re sniffing glue, Mr Priaulx says. Or worse.

Or worse, Mr Martel repeats. Really. How long do we think they’ve been gone for?

Twenty minutes, maybe.

I see. I’ll go first.

I could help—

No need for the search party just yet, he says. I’ll call you in half an hour if I haven’t found them.

He marches away from his colleagues towards the cliffs on the other side of the common. Luc Batiste probably is sniffing something somewhere, he knows. Mr Martel has previously caught him dealing wraps behind the hockey pavilion, and the police have asked about him on more than one occasion. He needs more evidence to enforce a permanent exclusion. He quickens his pace over the tufts of grass and clover.

The hawthorn is bare and the wind tousles the gorse.

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