"Do not ask him about 'Woo'," Tom warned, just as Frank was about to step into the office for his "heart-to-heart".
Frank looked at him for a moment, confused, before sending away his team to check out the abandoned hospital. With a barely suppressed sigh, Frank allowed himself to be ushered into the office.
He sat on the chair, fiddling his thumbs uncomfortably. Mr Flatley and Mrs King was talking to each other, trying but failing to keep their voices low.
"Mr Flatley, this is a waste of time. Frank could not have written the letter..."
"Mrs King, this is about having a heart-to-heart with all members of the school community," Mr Flatley said firmly. He then turned to Frank, "Now, Frank, here's your chance to talk to us about anything."
"Well, Mr F, there is something," Frank began, then paused to make sure he wouldn't be blowing his cover over this ridiculous heart to heart. "There's this girl I went out with a long time, and I was going to ask her out again, but now I've kind of been denied access."
"Ahh, relationship issues," Mr Flatley said, tapping the side of his nose. "I know art you need. The art of 'Woo'".
Frank frowned. So this was what Tom was on about. But before Frank could protest, Mr Flatley said, "Well, I cannot help you much if I know nothing of this mysterious woman. Tell us about her first."
Mrs King groaned, and resorted to reading through the names on her clipboard, completely oblivious to the rest of the conversation.
"Well, where so I start?" Frank began to think about Stella, and had to concentrate thrice as hard as usual to maintain his accent and caretaker persona. "She's incredibly talented and really good at her job, but she takes on too much responsibility and blames everything on herself."
"A perfectionist. I see." Mr Flatley appeared to be taking notes. Frank made a mental note to get those notes destroyed at first opportunity.
"She seems strict on the outside," Frank continued. "But she just really cares for the people around her and doesn't want anyone to get hurt."
"Let me guess," Mr Flatley said eagerly. "When people get hurt, she blames it on herself."
Frank nodded, slightly perturbed by Mr Flatley's accurate guess. "She's great in emergency situations. She never panics and always stays calm even under a lot of pressure. She's always had a great sense of right and wrong, at least as far as I could tell. She writes beautiful letters. When she's upset about something, she shuts out the rest of the world and buries herself in work. There's been quite a few tragic losses in her life, you see. Sometimes I used to be able to comfort her."
Mr Flatley continued to scribble down notes. Frank would really have to destroy them later. Currently, his concentration was divided between thinking about Stella and maintaining his cover. For some reason, the latter was harder than ever, even though normally he would slip into his caretaker persona without a second thought.
"She always puts others before herself," Frank continued. "If she has to, she'll be working late even if she's exhausted and hasn't eaten since breakfast. She deals with a lot of PR issues at work and she's incredibly patient."
Hopefully Stella was sounding like a senior PR manager in some large corporate firm. A firm that definitely was not in charge of national security.
"I suppose you see her like a superhero sometimes?" Mr Flatley prompted. "You imagine her saving the world every other day?"
"I don't need to imagine, Mr F," Frank answered, then caught himself when he saw confusion etched across Mr Flatley's face. "That is, she saves my world every other day. She's a star."
Frank let his eyes go dreamy as he stared at the ceiling. Hopefully it would help with maintaining his cover and give him a chance to catch up with his thoughts. This was ridiculous. Stella was locked up in a secure MI9 prison and she was still the most distracting topic that Frank could come up with.
"Well, Frank, it looks like you need a dose of 'Woo'. One more question: what do you mean by having been denied access to this 'star' of yours?" Mr Flatley seemed rather excited at the prospect of giving another lecture on his new martial art.
"It's complicated," Frank said slowly, searching for a way to avoid mentioning that Stella had been arrested for betraying the country. "It's like...a long distance relationship, or it would be if I'd managed to ask her out. We've sort of resorted to writing letters."
"I see," said Mr Flatley. "Well, let me teach you about the art of 'Woo'. You see, it's all about - "
A storm of teenagers chose that moment to invade the office, effectively cutting off Mr Flatley's sentence. Frank breathed a sigh of relief.
"Mr Flatley!" said Preston. "There are people here! They're checking for apostrophe misuse! They've confiscated our school books!"
"Does that mean we don't have to work no more?" Roland asked.
As the headmaster and deputy headmistress struggled to deal with the excited, angry and befuddled students, Frank slipped away quietly, unnoticed. He'd catch up on the situation with Mandy, then once it had all blown over, he'd find a moment alone to read Stella's letters again.