The Good Girl by Fiona Neill

Brazilian isn’t for Christmas. It’s for life. You have to go back every four weeks,’ said Rachel.
    ‘Let’s eat,’ said Wolf. He stood up and herded everyone into the kitchen. Ailsa obediently followed. She stared at the feast prepared by the Fairports, grateful for the distraction. At the centre of the table was a chicken cooked in a lemon and honey sauce, rice with onion, lentils and pistachio nuts, aubergine with pomegranate
seeds and a saffron-infused yogurt sauce, Loveday explained. There was roast pork belly with a pink relish identified as plum and rhubarb, and a salad and chickpeas and sweet potatoes. As she picked up a plate, it dawned on Ailsa with absolute clarity: Matt must be Rachel’s younger man.
    Ailsa felt a sudden rage towards Rachel. Could she not see that starting a relationship with one of Ailsa’s teachers might be awkward for her? Matt hadn’t even finished his probation period. If other members of staff found out it would look completely unprofessional. They would watch her to see if she treated him more leniently or more harshly. Either way her authority would be undermined, especially after only one term on the job.
    She unthinkingly spooned plum and rhubarb relish onto her plate until a sizeable mound had formed. Ailsa liked to compartmentalize her life. To keep her different worlds separate. Rachel knew this. She even teased her that she would make a good man. Rachel knew how much was riding on this clean break from the past. And yet she had come sniffing around Ailsa’s territory like a dog on heat and pissed all over her new beginning.
    She put her plate on the table and began unloading the plum and rhubarb relish back onto the dish. Matt had betrayed nothing. His deceit bothered her too. She tried to remember her last encounter with him. They had discussed the possibility of additional funding for the after-school Biology Club to buy sixty finger pinprick tests. His enthusiasm and energy had reminded
her of when she first started out in the classroom and she had quickly agreed to all his requests. There was nothing to indicate that he was sleeping with her sister. Or about to sleep with her. Or that he even knew Rachel.
    Ailsa was generally disapproving of relationships at work but now she wished he could have got involved with the art teacher. At least she was the same age. Because of course the absurd age gap was another source of embarrassment. The question wasn’t what Rachel was doing with him, it was what he was doing with her. Why would a twenty-seven-year-old man go out with a thirty-nine-year-old woman? Although of course Rachel looked good for her age. Not just good. Great, as Harry had recently observed after Rachel had spent a three-month fallow period between jobs going to the gym every day. Using her free time for self-improvement rather than helping out with Adam. Ailsa glanced down at her plate and realized that she had now transplanted all of the relish back onto it.
    ‘Are you OK?’ she saw Harry mouth from the other side of the table.
    ‘Fine,’ she said abruptly. She needed to separate the strands. Keep how she felt about Rachel away from how she felt about Harry. She forced herself to focus on Harry’s trifle, which Wolf was now holding aloft as though examining an ancient relic. Beside the feast prepared by the Fairports, it looked absurd. An inadequate afterthought transported through time from the darkest period in British cuisine. It would have been better to
have arrived empty-handed or made an ironic Angel Delight. She felt a sudden urge to laugh hysterically. The Fairports, however, professed delight. Wolf said he’d never seen a trifle before and examined the layers of pear, sponge and custard through the crystal bowl.
    ‘Beautiful,’ said Wolf. ‘I love the marbling effect and the way different layers of sediment have formed.’
    ‘It was the least I could do,’ said Harry, whose foray into family cooking was so recent that he considered an