Catching Falling Stars by Karen McCombie

falls in the pond? Or bullies bother him?
    “Oi!” the girl’s voice hisses behind me. “You, Land of Hope and Glory .”
    Very funny , I think darkly.
    The girl’s calling me after that old song because I told the teacher that I preferred to be called Glory rather than Gloria when he added me to the register this morning.
    “Jess!” Mr Carmichael snaps, catching the girl at it. “Save your songs for the playground, please! Ah, in fact it’s lunchtime now. You may all be excused.”
    With whoops and screeches of chairs, my classmates clatter lids open, taking lunches out of their desks, then hurry outside. I’m in no rush to join them, to sit on my own in some corner or be bothered by that Jess girl and the boys from the farm.
    So I play for time, hiding behind the lid of my desk, pretending I’m looking for something. Though all that’s in there is the ham sandwich Miss Saunders made me for lunch. (I doubt I’ll ever be able to think of her as “Auntie Sylvia”.)
    “You worked very nicely this morning, Glory,” Mr Carmichael’s voice booms at me all of a sudden. I take the brown paper bag with my sandwich in it and close the desk lid.
    “Thank you, sir,” I say shyly.
    “I’m sure you’ll settle in well,” he continues, “though I know it can be hard to find your feet when you’re new.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    Behind Mr Carmichael’s mostly bald head, I see that the clock hands are pointing to twelve. Rich will be making his way out of school any minute.
    “There are a lot of your sort here,” he says matter-of-factly.
    Does Mr Carmichael mean evacuees, I wonder?
    “But there is one girl I would recommend you steer away from, though,” he carries on, gazing at me over his half-moon spectacles, “and that’s Jess Brennan. She can be very troublesome. And together with Lawrence Wills and Archie Jenkins…”
    My teacher drifts off, tutting to himself, and thinking of some incident or other that’s aggravated him.
    “I suppose the girl can’t help it, coming from her background,” he picks up where he left off. “But let’s just say I think she would be a highly unsuitable friend for a nicely behaved girl like yourself. And I don’t think she’s the type of child of whom a lady of Miss Saunders’ standing would approve.”
    “Yes, Mr Carmichael,” I murmur.
    My cheeks are flushing as I speak. I have no intention of being friends with that Jess girl, but I don’t like the way he said “coming from her background”. He’s one of those people who look down their noses at anyone who comes from London, isn’t he? My old classmates who came back after the Phoney War said there were plenty like that in the countryside. And for all I know, Mr Carmichael may have his eye on me, just waiting for me to put a foot wrong…
    “Anyway,” says Mr Carmichael, slapping his palms on his lap, as if he’s about to change the subject, “are you, erm, settling in well with Miss Saunders?”
    My teacher’s voice has that funny note of doubt and surprise in it that I heard from the shopkeeper on Saturday, when I went to fetch the sugar.
    “Yes, thank you, sir.”
    “Very respectable woman, Miss Saunders. Though she does rather keep herself to herself.”
    “Yes, sir.”
    I don’t say any more than that, even though I have the feeling that Mr Carmichael would love to find out what goes on behind the closed front door of the village’s most private resident.
    “Miss Saunders was a fine primary school teacher, you know,” he carries on, settling himself on the corner of his table. “A real loss to the profession when she had to give it up. But with her mother being ill and her father long dead, I suppose she had no choice. It’s just a pity that the only time we see her is at church, and she was always so very busy and rushing straight home afterwards to her mother … and now she’s busy with you chaps, of course.”
    It’s interesting hearing a little more about Miss Saunders. But to be