The Little Christmas House by Tracy Rees

Author:Tracy Rees [Rees, Tracy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bookouture
Published: 2021-10-21T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty-Six

Holly

There was another maths test on Friday and Evie Greavey cheated again. It was one of the many things that Holly pondered throughout that weekend. She’d made a tradition of a Monday morning discussion slot – a chance to debate or process anything the children might need to, whether difficult or just interesting. The subjects ranged from current affairs to school news to family concerns to the big themes of life (equality, self-esteem, chewing gum). The children would all get comfortable, curling up on their chairs like cats, chin in hand, or leaning their whole arms on the big white tables they sat around, some of them even sitting sensibly the usual way. Holly liked to think the classroom, with its creaking pipes and high Victorian ceiling and dust motes circling in sunbeams, provided a safe space for them to talk about anything and everything.

On Monday, Holly asked the children to come up with the first three words that came to mind when they thought of school and learning. (Jason Tillwell: Boring. Torture. But Miss Hanwell rocks. Holly laughed and gave him a special exemption for his extra words seeing as they were so patently true.)

Then she asked them each to come up with the one word they most closely associated with their three main subjects – maths, English and creative studies (which encompassed art, music and drama). She went round the whole class, making it casual and fun. When it came to maths, there were a lot of ‘borings’ and ‘hards’. Indira’s word was ‘beautiful’ and Eliza’s was ‘rewarding’. Matt Simmons described it as ‘eye-stabby’.

‘Remember and use that gift with words the next time you write a story!’ said Holly at once.

And poor Evie, quite forgetting that they were only doing one word for maths, said, ‘Success. Clever. Key.’

Of course. Evie’s father was a city banker and her mother was the finance manager of a care home. Evie’s older brother had achieved ten As in his GCSEs. Her sister was trying for Oxford. Hers was a very driven family. Very rich. Holly’s guess was that money was the Great Oz in that household, and if Evie was struggling, it could well be an issue. But she couldn’t just assume…

At lunchtime she asked Evie to stay behind and asked her straight out about the cheating. Evie looked mortified and scared and tried to deny it, but Holly had seen her twice with her own eyes and said so. ‘I’m not angry, Evie; I just need to know why you did it.’

And sure enough, Evie felt like the dunce of a very bright family. She couldn’t understand maths and didn’t really enjoy it but, because her parents and siblings adored numbers, she pretended to fit in. She was worried that if she didn’t do as well in school as her brother and sister, her parents would be angry and disappointed.

‘Have they specifically said to you that you must follow in the others’ footsteps?’ asked Holly.

Evie shook her head. ‘But only because I’ve never told them I don’t want to.

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.