On the Stroke of Midlife: A Paranormal Women's Fiction Cozy Mystery Novel (Midlife Moonshine Book 1) by Hermione Moon & Serenity Woods

Author:Hermione Moon & Serenity Woods [Moon, Hermione]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2021-03-19T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

At the end of the day, I take an hour or so after the children leave to finish up my work and clear up. I have some more reports to do, but I think I’ll do those at home. I’m tired, it’s been another long day, and I could do with putting my feet up and having a glass of wine.

I lock up the room and walk slowly down the boulevard towards the car park. As I pass Jackie’s classroom, I see her inside, sitting behind a desk, also doing some paperwork. I stop in the doorway and smile when she looks up.

“You on your way home?” she asks.

“Yeah, I’m tired today for some reason.”

“It’s all the emotion. It’s quite exhausting.” She looks tired, too, but I guess we all do this time of year.

“How long have you been working with Emilia?” I ask.

“Since she started at the school,” Jackie says. “This was her first placement. She was lucky to get it. Jobs in primary schools don’t come up that often. And she grew up here, the same as a lot of us did.”

“Oh, I didn’t know that. I suppose it’s quite common, isn’t it? People returning to where they grew up.”

“It is in Devon,” Jackie says. “Lots of us move away when we’re young, up to London or one of the other cities, and then we gravitate back as we get older to bring up our own children.”

“Yes, I was born in Devon,” I tell her. “Not here, but nearby. I don’t know if I’d like to work in the village I grew up in, though, that would be a bit weird.”

“Sometimes it’s difficult,” Jackie says. “You never throw off the reputation you gained as child or a teenager, and those old resentments never really go away. Emilia and I had an argument in our teens, and she’s never forgiven me for it. But there’s something comforting about living in a place where you have some history.”

“I can see that. What was your argument with her about?”

“Boys,” she says, and smiles.

I look around Jackie’s classroom. In my room, you can see how much I love history. I’ve got drawings and models of castles, maps of the Roman Empire, photos of famous digs like Sutton Hoo, and illustrations of excavations like Tutankhamen’s tomb. Jackie is clearly a mathematician. On her walls she has charts, diagrams, and shapes. A lot of it is done in bright colours and with illustrations, but there’s definitely a leaning towards maths.

Behind her, on the whiteboard, she’s been teaching about shapes. The board is covered in triangles.

Triangles. Three sides to a triangle.

Three.

Surely not.

I clear my throat. I need to dig deeper into her relationship with Emilia. “Earlier on, at lunch, you said Emilia liked tennis. I don’t know a lot about it, although I do watch Wimbledon sometimes. What about you, are you into it?”

She nods. “My husband, Dennis, runs the local tennis centre. We play doubles. Or we used to.” She looks down at her books.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.