Thank you for the reviews.

Like I said yesterday, trying to finish a chapter before I post. Hence why these chapters are being posted so late. But I have managed to write a whole chapter today which is something that I don't think I've done in a while.

Now I did think the best way to go about this chapter was to split it into four. And get everyone who was going to be at the meeting's POV... Hence why you get the POV that you do...

Chapter Sixteen
Wednesday 16th December

Rachel was a bag of nerves.

And usually, when she was as nervous as she was, she could maintain a calm exterior. So that no one else knew how nervous she was.

Not that morning.

That morning her hands shook so much she struggled to get the buttons of her shirt done up. And her nails tapping against the side of her mug caused worried looks from Philip and ended with Eddie pulling the mug out of her hands to hold them and tell her everything would be okay.

Not that she could see how things could be okay.

She feared what the day would bring.

She feared that this would be what would ruin her. That this would be how she would find herself jobless.

Because no one would want to hire her. Not being 22 weeks pregnant and due just before Easter. She wouldn't get a job before Easter. And then she would be straight on maternity leave. And that was only, really, if their daughter was past her due date.

Eddie would be in the same position as her, struggling to find a job. They would both be unemployed for, at the very least, three months. Both of them might not get a job until September. Nine months would be a long time to be off work for. Even with their daughter's birth in the middle of it all.

She did try to console herself with the idea.

Maybe it would be nice to have that five months of just focusing on them and their little one. Maybe it would give Eddie the time that he needed to be completely comfortable with their daughter. She didn't want to lose him. Not again.

Hence why she wanted it to go their way.

Because then Eddie could break up his day.

He didn't have to be around their daughter all the time. He could go and work and take his mind off whatever was happening at home if he wanted to.

Eddie didn't need the stress of it all.

Because she needed him by her side to help her through it.

He was the experienced one. Even if his experience included the worst kind of tragedy.

She needed his guidance and in return, she would give him her unwavering support.

But Rachel knew that the moment had come when she looked up to see Eddie in the doorway of her office, looking sombre. She knew that the next hour or so would determine everything and the feeling that she was going to lose everything just wouldn't leave her.

This is what the last few months had been leading to.

Everything rested on this meeting.

And Rachel wished that she could guess how it would go.

Max was on a high.

After this day, after this meeting, everyone would start seeing things from his point of view. Everyone would see the way that he could transform Waterloo Road into a school like John Fosters.

The lack of will and ambition to change things annoyed him to no end.

The school was only performing at a quarter of what it could do.

He could get it to reach its potential. He could get it to be the school that it should be. He could get it rising up the league tables so quickly that others wouldn't be able to believe it was the same school.

There would be many people that wouldn't like the ideas that he had but he wasn't there to be liked. He was there to get results.

Ideally, he would have liked to have done it alongside Rachel. He wasn't stupid enough not to acknowledge that she was a very popular and well-liked headteacher amongst the pupils. They did show her a lot of respect. Not that Max felt like it was well placed.

The problem with Rachel, in Max's eyes, is that she couldn't see the bigger picture. The small things were okay as a starting point but bearing in mind she had been in charge of the school for two years now, she hadn't really done that much. In fact, she had done equally more harm to the school than she had done any good. Her past and the fire with that builder guy who turned out to be a fraud or something like that. People with loose morals seemed to attract others with loose morals and it was clear that was what had happened there.

Rachel had to go for the school to progress further.

The only good thing about that meant that Eddie would go as well. He said that he wasn't Rachel's lap dog but Max knew that he was. Eddie would do anything that Rachel asked, and Max had found it fun to try and wind him up. He was sure that Eddie wanted to punch the hell out of him but something had kept him back. Maybe Eddie wasn't as stupid as he looked. Because Max would have happily had Eddie suspended, pending him losing his teaching qualification, if he had punched him. Retraining at whatever age he was with a baby on the way would probably be the last thing that he would want to do.

But that didn't matter anyway.

Because this meeting was going to go his way.

Too much had gone wrong at Waterloo Road and right at the other schools to be able to point the finger at Rachel and say that she was the problem. Waterloo Road was always going to be the bigger challenge but Max felt like that was irrelevant.

His plan would work.

He had put in the groundwork to make it work.

And Kim had said that she would support him no matter what. He just hoped that she could see the bigger picture and he would reward her for it. He just hoped that she wouldn't back out once she realised what had been going on.

If anything, that was Rachel's fault as well.

He hadn't wanted to manipulate Kim like he had done but Rachel hadn't backed down. He just needed things to be his way and that was one way of doing it.

Max smiled widely as he met the LEA representative and the board of governors. Here was his chance to make his impression on them.

And by the end, he would have what he wanted.

Eddie had been dreading this.

And it didn't help that he was meant to be the positive, supportive one out of him and Rachel.

Mainly because he was not positive at all about how this meeting could or would go.

If he was being honest, then he wanted Kim to wake up pretty quickly and either change or pick a side. Hopefully Rachel's.

He thought that Kim would have joined them to meet the governors and the LEA representative but even they were a little late to it. Maybe that was just because they didn't want it to happen.

Eddie did wonder when it was all going to start once they had sat down. The blaming. The insinuation that most of the problems were down to Rachel.

But it seemed to happen from the beginning without him realising what was happening.

Eddie knew that he wasn't stupid. But he did understand that he might be one of the ones in the room who wasn't naturally academically smart. He had to work very hard to get to where he was. And he wondered whether Max knew that when he used flowery words that went over his head. And Eddie was grateful when someone else asked what Max meant. In layman's terms.

"Well, I think even Rachel will agree with me that things aren't working out as expected," Max said.

"Things have definitely improved to how they were in September." Rachel said.

"Only really because the John Foster students have lowered their own expectations of themselves to align themselves to the Waterloo Road students."

"I don't think that is the case," Eddie said as he passed around the report Rachel had asked him to do.

It was strange how much they trusted each other. Or maybe that was how it was meant to be.

That Rachel could give him a task and he could do it without any input from her or her needing to see it beforehand. He had offered it to her. But she had said that it was his report and he should present it.

And so he did.

And it wasn't a completely biased report. It did highlight a couple of incidents that showed their students in a bad light. Notably the girl gang situation and the Amy and Bolton incident.

There were no digs at anyone in particular.

There was nothing in there to insinuate that Rachel had done things right and Max had done things wrong (he had Jo check it as a third party who had been kept out of the big events).

It was a well-balanced report on the behaviour of the students.

"This is all well and good," Max said, holding up the report before he let it drop onto the table. "But I think it proves my point. The bar at Waterloo Road has been set far too low for too long. And nobody sees that as a problem. The grades…"

"Grades aren't everything." Rachel said, interrupting him.

"They are."

"They aren't," Kim said. "Max, these kids aren't all A* pupils. They aren't going to be. One grade E at GCSE is what Jack and Andrew focused on when Andrew first arrived. The grades have risen in the last couple of years. Not to your standards but they have. And they leave Waterloo Road with more than just a bit of paper and a pat on the back."

Eddie couldn't stop himself from turning to Rachel to see the look on her face. He definitely felt better about things. At least Kim would defend the school.

"But the standards should still be there," Max said.

"And with even a hint of research, you would know that Waterloo Road is more than a school. It's a family." Kim said as she pushed back her chair to get something from under the table. "And like families, we do fight from time to time. We disagree. But, also like families, we are deadly loyal." She placed a folder down on the table and Eddie watched Max's eyes go wide. "If I'm honest Max, I don't know if you are ready to test it. Just to put a couple of things into perspective for you, Jack was liked. But I know you haven't seen the worst of Waterloo Road. Yet. And I can promise you. They will give you hell."

Kim's morning had been busy.

There had been a number of things that she had to do before the meeting and not a lot of time to do them in.

Although she felt like most of her problems were solved with a quick text to Tom and then a quick meeting with him before school started. And it broke her heart that Rachel really thought that she would end up jobless by the end of the day. To ask Tom what she had done, Kim knew that she had given up slightly.

But Kim knew that everything that she was doing now meant that she was making things up to Rachel. And she had to make things up to her.

Getting Max's car keys off him was pretty easy and she was glad that the folder was still where she had left it the night before. Getting it into the meeting room was easy enough but she had to stay with it, just in case Max saw it.

She noted when both Rachel and Eddie thought that she was on their side and, if she was being honest, she could hear the way that Max was talking about the school. If they had asked her 24 hours ago, she would have said that he was just passionate about making Waterloo Road a good school. Now she could see between the well-crafted words that he had chosen. And they had been chosen for a reason. They were meant to confuse people.

Kim was meant to hold out for a little longer but it was angering her that he was being as blatant as he was being. She had to defend the school and Rachel and that was what she had done. And, by the end of the meeting, it had been Max who had to follow the LEA representative.

She let the dust settle for a bit, only giving over the file to the governors who would have to go through it to see what action would need to be taken.

But she knew that the first person she had to go and explain something to was Rachel. And with the pieces of paper that she felt like she needed, Kim made her way to Rachel's office. And she wasn't surprised to find that Max's name had already disappeared from her door.

Kim was embarrassed. She couldn't see how she couldn't be embarrassed by everything that had happened. Because she had ignored so much, even when she was told what was happening.

"I am so sorry, Rachel," Kim said when she had Rachel's attention. "I realise that might mean rather little at the moment but I do mean it. It must have been so frustrating to… tell me what was going on and for me not to listen to it."

"What is done is done now, Kim."

"I know."

"And I never wanted to not like him."

"I know."

"But when it mattered, Kim, you were there."

"But you were terrified that you were going to lose your job. I spoke with Tom. You… thought he was going to win and you almost were going to let him. I don't know what would have happened had I not gone through that file last night. If I hadn't had my eyes open last night. He was asking me this morning if he still had my support. I lied to him but… I did, sort of, believe what he wanted to do with the school. I just hadn't worked out how far it would have gone."

"It doesn't matter now."

"Doesn't it?"

Rachel shook her head. "I am under no illusion that he probably manipulated things, meaning that you saw one side and I saw another. He was never going to work with me, Kim. I don't know why. I have never been able to work out why he had such a vendetta against me. But I think I can say that it is over now. And we can start working on the school in the way that we had hoped that we could have done from the beginning."

Kim found herself nodding before she held out the papers in her hands. "I thought these would be of interest to you. I've added my own little notes to Max's notes. This is what I saw yesterday that opened my eyes to it all."

She wondered whether Rachel had already started to put the whole thing behind her when she hesitated to take the papers out of Kim's hand. Kim didn't blame Rachel if she did want it to be over. It had probably been a long four months for her.

But Kim knew that she had to give them to her just so Rachel could close the chapter. To find the answers to the questions that she had. Maybe the governors and the LEA would talk to Rachel once they had decided everything about Max.

But Kim knew that this was the best that she could do for the moment.

And she hoped that this meant that her friendship with Rachel would start to build again.