‘Are you ready?’ she smiled.
The uneasy feeling intensified and I felt my hands grow clammy as I asked, ‘Ready for . . . ? Is Miss Otaru in there?’
‘She’ll be with the other teachers. They tend to sit on the stage.’
‘Right,’ I whispered.
Something definitely wasn’t right but everything had moved so quickly and if it was true that Amy was inside she could surely sort this mess out. Oh God, I didn’t want to make things worse. The whole point of coming here was to fix everything, not make her hate me more.
The receptionist was staring at me, her magenta pink lips puckered. ‘Well, go on then. And lots of luck!’ she added brightly.
Luck? Why would I need . . .
Holding open the double doors she beckoned for me to move inside. The million teenagers peered round, straining to see who was disrupting their morning. Up ahead on a stage lined with chairs sat various staff members. I frantically scanned the room for Amy’s face. When I did land upon it, I could see even from this distance the total confusion that drew her eyebrows together. She rose from her chair and then sat back down again. We must have been more than 100 yards away from each other and all the million teenagers had started to whisper. Holy actual shit, what had I walked in on?
I wanted to turn and run back through the double doors, thrust my laminated badge at the receptionist and clatter back down the path outside and into London where one million teenagers weren’t looking at me.
A middle-aged woman with shoulder-length brown hair approached me. ‘Jacinda, a pleasure, I’m Mrs McDonald, the head teacher here. I’ll show you to the stage.’
To my horror I was being led down the side of the room of millions of teenagers towards the stage, where an empty lectern stood in the middle. Amy was watching me, her mouth opening and shutting. I gave her a grimace and a small smile, torn between abject fear and pleasure at seeing her.
‘Does the technician need to help you set up?’
‘I made a memory stick,’ I whispered.
‘Lovely. Well, Mike here can sort that out for you. We have the projector all ready.’
Mike had joined us. Mike was dressed entirely in black, which matched his black beard. The head teacher stood, waiting for me to hand over the memory stick.
Realising what was on it, I refused to hand it over to Mike. Mike gave up asking me for it and stomped back to a booth at the back of the room.
‘Er, right, well, I’ll introduce you now and we’ll get started,’ Mrs McDonald said, smiling warmly at me as if she wasn’t sending me to my death.
‘Could I just have a word with Miss Otaru?’ I asked in a quiet undertone.
‘Plenty of time to catch up in the staffroom afterwards,’ Mrs McDonald said briskly. And with no further warning she steered me up on to the stage and we headed for the lectern, two million eyes following us.
Silence fell. ‘Good morning, everyone. Thank you for your patience this morning. We are delighted to welcome Jacinda Brown from the Duke of Edinburgh scheme to talk us through some of the benefits of this excellent venture. Let’s give Ms Brown a warm welcome to our assembly.’ She stepped backwards and started clapping and it seemed the whole room shook with the noise as everyone else joined in.
The Duke of Edinburgh Award.
Right.
Oh God.
I hadn’t been brought to see Amy, I had been brought to speak to the million people. About something I knew very little about. Vague memories of dried food in soggy campsites and afternoons in care homes swam in my head.
I stared at the empty lectern in front of me, willing notes to appear. Then I stared at the ceiling, willing for it to fall and crush us all. Or just all the millions of children and other adults. And not in a horrible fatal way, just enough to get me out of talking to them. I stared then at the audience, the crowds of faces, some chewing gum, some whispering, some glancing down and around, some glazed and staring into the distance. Gah.
A member of staff coughed loudly behind me and I felt the rustle of fidgeting people as the silence yawned on.
Right! Duke of Edinburgh! I could do this. I would get it over with quickly and then talk to Amy. And if I did it well, we would laugh about it and it could be really bonding for us. An icebreaker!
I swallowed, my mouth impossibly dry. Shouldn’t they give their speakers water? Feedback for Mrs McDonald. Right. Think of it as a courtroom, these are your jurors. Smile! I felt my face move but from the reaction of the pupils in the front row I wasn’t sure the smile shouted an easy confidence. Some of them flinched.
I cleared my throat. ‘The Duke of Edinburgh Award, or D of E as I knew it. Ha!’ The microphone squealed as I barked with false laughter. ‘It’s really, really good.’
The faces stared at me, someone’s mobile buzzed.
‘You can do things like expeditions and things where you go camping and walk and have to follow maps . . . and stuff.’
This wasn’t going well. I could feel the staff squirming on either side of me. I made the mistake of glancing round at Mrs McDonald, who rearranged her perplexed face into one of polite encouragement.
‘I actually went on one of these expeditions with A— with Miss Otaru here,’ I said in a louder voice, one arm sweeping round theatrically to where Amy was sitting. She shifted in her seat as the faces all angled to stare at her. ‘Yes, we went to Dartmoor and our rucksacks were very heavy.’ Christ, what was I doing, preparing for French GCSE? ‘It was fun. We carried rucksacks. We walked far.’
‘Also,’ I was getting desperate, could feel sweat beading my forehead, ‘you can choose to do charity work and I worked in a care home helping the elderly. I met one gentleman who loved crosswords and I still remember him telling me, Lot— Jacinda, he would say, when a cryptic clue says scrambled it often means it’s an anagram, so, you know, I got stuff out of it too. And sport!’ I shouted at them. The microphone squealed again. ‘I think, I know, you get credit for sport and things so it’s really worthwhile.’ I was really wracking my brains now. ‘And you get a medal at the end . . . which is nice.’
Oh God, Lottie, oh God. Shut up. I am pretty sure that boy in the second row is openly laughing at you. There is definite smirking.
What more could I say? Was that enough? Could I leave it there? They had the rough idea, surely?
A woman and the receptionist were peering through the glass windows in the double doors. Oh God, I think the real Jacinda Brown had shown up. She had brown hair secured back in a tight ponytail. She looked far more likely to be taking groups of teenagers up mountain ranges in Wales than I did. The receptionist looked very put out. Even from this distance I could see her narrowed eyes, magenta pink lips screwed up in displeasure. I needed to wrap this up and fast.
‘So I think, as you have heard, there are just lots of benefits really to, um, doing the, um, D of E so I think, you know, you . . . totally should.’ I petered out and took a step back from the lectern to indicate my inspirational talk had come to an end.
The headmistress had got to her feet, a small frown puckering her forehead before she found her composure. ‘Well thank you for that presentation,’ she said, ‘I think we should all consider signing up for the course and let’s give Ms Brown a hearty round of applause for coming to talk to us this morning.’