Song at Twilight by Teresa Waugh

Neither she nor Victor could see that all was not lost, that Laurel was surely just going through a phase, and nor did they think it in the least little bit funny when two of her girlfriends called to see her on Saturday, both of whom had taken the same drastic measure.
    For me it was a dreary week-end. The outing I had been planning with Eric for the Saturday had to be cancelled, which did not really matter except that I felt I was letting him down, and I was certainly achieving nothing with Victor and Patricia.
    When I eventually came home, free at last from Patricia's hysterical moaning and from Victor's idiotic despair, I telephoned Eric only to find that he was out. I rang again a few hours later and still there was no reply.
    It is ridiculous that I should in any way depend on Eric – and far be it from me to suppose that I do – but there is something slightly annoying about a person being out whom one rather expects to be not only in, but urgently awaiting one's call.
    Eric has been away for three days now and I do vaguely wonder where he can have gone. 

 
    Chapter 6
     
    April 12th
    With Eric not here to interrupt me, I have all the time in the world to get on with my writing.
    *
    It was with a remarkable feeling of inadequacy, as if I were setting out on some unknown, perilous trail, ill-equipped for what might lie ahead, that I approached the classroom where Timothy and some twenty-five others were awaiting their first French lesson that term. In some indefinable way the balance of power between Timothy and myself had shifted, leaving me insecure and uncertain how to behave next. No one, least of all a member of the teaching profession, likes to find himself in this position.
    I could not, of course, discuss my nephew, nor the holidays, nor anything else pertaining to life outside school, in the classroom. I had to behave as though nothing untoward had occurred and try to teach the class with my habitual authority.
    That class seemed to last for an eternity and I did not, I know, teach it with anything like my habitual authority. I kept forgetting what we were doing, I made elementary blunders and whenever a child put a question to me, I had to ask him or her to repeat it as I seemed to have the greatest difficulty in comprehending the simplest enquiry. I avoided catching Timothy's eye and was at the same time hurt by the certainty that he, too, was avoiding catching mine. I longed for the class to come to an end, and yet I dreaded it lest I had not managed to speak to Timothy before the bell rang. If I were to speak, I wondered if I would dare to suggest that he come round for tea.
    When the bell did eventually ring, the children all gathered up their books with the usual banging and clattering and, like an untidy bunch of unkempt puppies, they pushed and shoved their way out of the room.
    I sat for a while at my desk, carefully replacing the lid of my fountain pen, neatly piling my books, folding my spectacles and putting them away in their case.
    Timothy left the room with the others, without so much as a backward glance.
    The next day I taught Timothy's class again. And the next. And by Saturday, which was the fourth day, I still had not managed to have a private word with him. I was angry not so much with him as with myself. It seemed quite ridiculous to me that a middle-aged school teacher should find herself in such a ludicrous position vis à vis a pupil of some fourteen or fifteen years.
    I could no longer sleep at night and lay awake for hours wondering exactly why it was that Timothy had not been to see me and why it was that he had so obviously avoided me.
    And what about Leo?
    I went over and over and over the question of Leo until the whole episode had assumed gigantic proportions in my imagination. It seemed as if, all at once, everyone was turning against me. Even my own kith and kin. I almost felt as though I had no friends. Certainly those in whom I had always trusted would probably think me