COMING BACK TO HAUNT YOU

Tom was getting too old for this. He was sometimes overcome by a sense of bewilderment, had to sit down and catch his breath for a moment.

So much had changed since he'd come to Waterloo Road; he'd started off as an attractive (he thought so, anyway) young graduate, teaching Jane Eyre and Of Mice and Men, dreaming of making a difference to children's lives. Now he was the headteacher – not so attractive, not so young – ruling a school so utterly different to the one he'd once known that it scared him.

Grantly had died last year, and Maggie not long after him. Josh was in charge of his own business, earning bucketfuls, first child on the way. Tom imagined holding his granddaughter to his chest, sniffing her hair.

"Mr Clarkson?"

"Sorry. Yeah," he said, shuffling his papers in front of him as Michael had always done when he wanted to pretend he knew what he was talking about. He was too old for sucking up to the governors, too. "Look, when Mr Byrne left, the school went downhill a little bit. I'm willing to admit that; it was a big change for everyone."

The head governor, a man with a shock of white hair (Tom had managed to hold onto his natural brown, so far), nodded.

"Things are looking up now. We've got consistency for everyone – Sian's here to support me," he looked towards her at the far end of the table, and she smiled, "And there's a staffroom full of people passionate about their jobs, about helping the kids who come here. Of course there's going to be the odd problem, but we can iron it out."

"Mr Clarkson, we're here to discuss the severe burning of a teacher's face with acid," Mr White Hair said sharply, "I'm not sure how you intend to iron that one out."

"It was a freak accident. The kid had just lost his mother, I'm sure we can all see how that could–"

"We don't blame the kid, as you call him. I think it's the teachers we're concerned about. Why was he allowed to go back into lessons in that state? Why exactly did he end up in possession of a chemical that could do such a thing to someone?"

"We know there are some problems with our safety policy," Sian said softly. Tom was thankful to her; personally, he wanted to punch the guy. He'd grown to hate rhetorical questions. "And we're working very hard to make sure that nothing as terrible as this ever happens again. We learn from our mistakes."

"Mrs Diamond," he turned to her. She'd married again a few years back; lovely guy, a librarian actually. No kids, though. Tom didn't think Sian would ever have children; she had enough at school to care for. Waterloo Road meant everything to Sian, and it meant everything to Tom, too.

"Yes?"

"You're a science teacher, aren't you? Perhaps you can shed some light on how this was–"

The man trailed off at a knock on the door, his nose turned sharply upwards, as though he was incredulous at being interrupted.

A girl poked her head around the frame, her dark fringe falling down over her eyes as she searched the faces around the boardroom table for her headmaster. "Sir, could I talk to you for a minute?"

He was too old for this. "Take a step back outside, Maria, and read the sign on the door."

She looked bemused, like she wasn't entirely sure whether he was joking or giving her an order. If looks could kill, Maria would have half a dozen bullets to the chest, judging by the looks the governors were shooting her.

"Do you think it could wait?" Sian asked, "Mr Clarkson is quite busy."

"I was told to get him," she shrugged a shoulder slightly, "There's someone here to see him. I think it's really important."

"Okay," he collected together the sheets of paper he'd been fiddling with (most of them were actually blank, but as Michael had always said, the governors didn't need to know that) and stood up, "Sorry, ladies and gentlemen. I'll come back as soon as I can."

XxXxX

He didn't know what he'd expected, but it hadn't been this. A woman with mid-length chocolate hair was sitting in the waiting room leading to his office, hunched over in the chair as though it would have pained her to sit up. Maria hovered anxiously behind him.

"Thank you, Maria," he said. He could hear how much his voice trembled. "You can go back to your lesson."

The woman raised her head when she heard him. He sat down next to her and looked deep into her eyes, blue like the underside of a jay's wing, leaking tears. She held out a parcel to him with shaking fingers.

"I haven't seen you in a while."

"Sorry, for dragging you away from your meeting."

"Rescuing me, more like," he said, taking the parcel. His hands shook too. God, they were a right pair. "Thank you."

He wasn't sure what he should say. You look well wasn't appropriate, considering the tears, the dark smears under her eyes. Her distress made his heart pound against his ribs, just like that, all those years apart insignificant now that she was here beside him again.

"Are you married, now?"

"No," he said. She'd put a lot of Sellotape on this paper.

"How's Josh?"

"Good. He came back home for Christmas last year. His wife's expecting a little girl now; they're going to call her Rose."

"That's a pretty name."

Not as pretty as Nicki.

He finally opened the parcel, and found a little Russian doll laid in his lap, painted in reds and oranges and golds, a beautiful, exquisite thing. She took it from him, opened the first layer, revealed a slightly smaller doll sitting snugly inside.

The tears caught in his eyes. He took it back from her and didn't open another layer, just because he thought it might be like an onion; the closer to the middle you got, the more it hurt.

"I thought you might like it," she said, eventually.

"It's beautiful. Thank you."

"Sorry, you don't have a tissue, do you?"

He dug a hand into his pocket and straightened out the tissue he found there. She wiped her eyes silently, with the same gentle fingers she'd always had, her cheekbones juddering as she moved. He wanted to reach out and take her into his arms.

"What's happened, Nicki? Why are you back here?" he asked. Once he'd allowed one question to slip out, more tumbled like waves through his lips, unstoppable. "You were settled in Russia, weren't you? You're married, you've got a daughter, you're–"

"No," she said.

He shook his head. No. That was what she'd said to him all those years ago, when he'd said "Marry me, Nicki". She'd told him that it wouldn't be fair on Josh, that their infatuation with each other wouldn't last, that she had too much baggage ever to make him happy.

She'd left two weeks later, leaving only a photograph of them playing with a kite on the beach on his desk. So much of her there beside him, and the next moment she'd run away to Russia, married a rich man, been pregnant, had all the snow and dolls and whisky she could ever have dreamt of.

He'd ripped up the photo, thrown it into the bin. He still had it at home somewhere, one corner missing, covered in browned Sellotape where he'd tried to stick the pieces back together. You could mend the photo, but you couldn't mend their relationship. He'd thought he'd never see her again.

"I'm so sorry," she whispered. Her tears fell too fast for the tissue.

"Do you want a coffee or something?"

She smiled. It was almost worse than her crying, to Tom. She sat up a little straighter in the chair. "I did it for you, Tom; I left for you. You have to understand that."

Then why are you back? Some of the hatred he'd felt towards her when he'd dived out of his car at the airport and watched her plane become a dot in the distance hit him again. Fucking coward. Why would you do this to me? All I've ever done is love you. Is that a crime?

"I didn't marry him for the money. Dimitri, I mean. I married him because I wanted to feel like I had a family, because I wanted to try and find a way to fill the gap inside of me."

I could have done that.

"He divorced me, last year. He took everything I had."

"What about the kid?"

More tears danced down her cheeks. He wanted to turn off all the lights in the world, so that he was blind to her sadness. "There never was a kid. When I sent you that postcard, Tom, I was a couple of months pregnant, and I was so happy. It didn't matter how I'd– how I'd got her, it–"

"He raped you?"

"It doesn't matter. She died, when she was still inside of me. That was about the time that our relationship died, too."

Tom shook his head, "Oh, Nicki."

"I've never stopped thinking about you. Sometimes, after he'd– after he'd done what he did, I used to go to the phone box and sit there with my address book on my knee, and it was open on the 'C' page, where your name was, but I knew your number off by heart anyway. And I just couldn't do it, I couldn't call you."

"If I'd known–"

"That was the thing. You didn't know, and I was too scared to tell you. I thought you would have moved on, and each time it got harder and harder, because I kept seeing you married, with more children, I didn't know. I thought it wasn't fair to call you when it was my fault that you'd had to let me go."

"It wasn't your fault."

"It was, Tom," she whispered. He didn't think she'd be the only one crying, soon. "I stopped dialling your number, after a while. I didn't even want to hear your voicemail message, because– all I wanted was to come back to you, to turn back time and say yes. That's all I've wanted ever since I landed in Russia and threw up in a gutter covered in snow, with nobody to hold my hair back from my face."

He remembered the meeting. The sharp glares of the governors. He could imagine the way Sian would be trying to console them, offering them tea and biscuits, promising that whatever it was that was holding her boss up, she was sure it'd be important, and that they'd have his full attention soon. All lies, really. Nothing had ever had his full attention since Nicki had got on that plane, because always, always, at the back of his mind had been her face, her eyes, the softness of her lips.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have come, I just–"

"Of course you should have come," he said.

His legs felt like lead as he stood up, both numb and strong at once. She was here again now, they could make this right. He could make up all of those years of abuse, what that man had done to her; it might be too late for them to have a family, but it wasn't too late for them to love each other. It was never too late for that.

"Tom, is there anywhere we could–" she broke off, sniffed. All he wanted to do was hold her. "Could talk? Properly. There's quite a lot to say, and I just– I'm so sorry, for everything."

He took her arm silently and led her down the corridor, back towards the meeting room. The sign on the door only made him smile now. The meeting didn't seem important; obviously, the acid attack was dreadful, it was horrific to think that one human being could damage another in such a way, and it was his job to do something about it. But not today. The governors would just have to understand that.

And God, it would be so much easier to do something about it with Nicki by his side, too. Maybe she'd even come back, teach Of Mice and Men again, in her soft accent, make even the hardest of the lads cry when she put on her Lennie accent just before he died.

"I'm scared, Tom," she whispered as he reached out for the door handle, "I've always been so scared."

"There's no reason to be scared any more."

"Nicki," Sian exclaimed as they entered the room together, arms still locked together, "How are you? Hey, are you–"

"She's alright, Sian. It's a long story. But there's quite a lot I need to sort out, so I'm afraid, ladies and gentlemen," he gestured to the room, to Mr White Hair, who was scowling so hard it looked like his teeth might set permanently in a gritted position, "That we'll have to postpone this meeting until another day. I'm terribly sorry for the inconvenience, but I'm sure you'll all understand that some things can't wait."

"Like sorting out acid attacks?"

Nicki's arms tensed in Tom's, "Acid attacks?"

"Equally, a long story," he said.

"This school is going downhill, Clarkson," Mr White Hair said, "Maybe you should be expecting an official visit from the authorities soon. Our priority is the children, and if you don't share that priority, then–"

"Geoffrey," Sian said smoothly, "We all understand the severity of the acid attack, and we really want something to happen about it to make this school a safer place, but this is really important. I'll ask Tom's PA to reschedule the meeting for Monday."

Tom was glad Sian actually knew Mr White Hair's name. "Yes. We'll definitely sort something out then."

"What's this?" Mr White Hair raised his eyebrows at Nicki as he kicked back his chair and stood up, "Girlfriend? Now turned ex-girlfriend? Or the past coming back to haunt you, perhaps?"

Tom looked at Nicki. How could someone still be so damn beautiful when they had tears streaming down their cheeks? Many things surprised him about her. He suspected they always would. "Something like that. Although I'm not sure 'haunt' is the right word."

"I'll show you out, Geoffrey," Sian said. She squeezed Nicki's hand as she passed. They waited until the door closed behind the governors, most of whom were muttering complaints.

"Acid attack?" Nicki asked again.

"Mm. This is what happens when you're not around to look after Waterloo Road, you see."

"Or to look after you." She sat down at the conference table and took a sip from an abandoned mug. "God, that's sweet. Who puts sugar in their coffee nowadays? I should never have left, Tom. So much could have happened, if I'd stayed, we could have been–"

"Don't."

"What?"

"We still can be. And anyway, if you'd not gone to Russia, you'd never have brought me back one of those dolls. I've always wanted one for my desk," he smiled, "Where do you want to go?"

"I haven't had a bacon sandwich since I left."

"Bloody hell. How have you survived?" Once the words were out of his mouth, they sounded wrong. She'd survived, just about, but her baby hadn't. Nicki would have been such a good mother. Josh adored her.

She just smiled and shook her head, "Maybe it's time we changed that. Bacon sandwiches and hot chocolate. That'd be nice."

"And I'd be paying, no doubt?"

"Well, roubles won't be much good here."

"No," he said, "They wouldn't."

He didn't think this was the past coming back to haunt him, exactly. More like coming back to let him repair his mistakes, and repair his mistakes he would, but first he'd take Nicki out for a bacon sandwich. It was always easier to think when you had some food inside of you.

There were still tears running down her cheeks; he thought there might be tears on his cheeks too now, but he couldn't be sure. He took her in his arms and kissed her hair and smelt the apple conditioner.

XxXxX