Prologue

      Three little words with the power to take her straight back to her childhood.

      Termination of employment.

      Lucy Jacobs stared at the words which were shouting out so much more. Failure. Not good enough. You don’t belong here. And she was suddenly that small, abandoned child in the playground again. Unwanted. Unloved. Alone.

      Swallowing down the sharp tang of bile, she blinked to clear her vision. Smoothed out the piece of paper with trembling fingers that didn’t seem to belong to her. Nothing seemed to belong to her, everything was disjointed, unreal. Even the weak, distant voice that she vaguely recognised as her own.

      ‘No.’ Taking a deep breath, she shook her head to dismiss the image. She wasn’t a scared child. She was a grown woman now. ‘This is a mistake.’ Slowly the world came back into focus, even though her stomach still felt empty. Hollow. ‘This has got to be a mistake. You’re kidding me?’ Her words echoed into the uncomfortable stillness of the room.

      The man opposite gave the slightest shake of his head, as though it was a silly question.

      She’d never liked this room, or more to the point she’d never liked him.

      Nobody got sacked on a school inset day. Did they?

      She blinked hard, trying to ignore the way her eyes smarted and transferred her gaze to the carefully regimented line of pens, before forcing herself to look back up at him. David Lawson. The headmaster of Starbaston Primary School.

      Not looking at him would be admitting defeat.

      He looked back at her through cold reptilian eyes and still didn’t say a word.

      ‘But I’ve just finished my new classroom display!’ It was a stupid thing to say, but the only logical thought that was penetrating her fuzzy brain. ‘Ready for tomorrow.’ Tomorrow, the first day of term.

      He finally shifted in his seat, his lips thinned and he stared at her disapprovingly. Then sighed. ‘You always do plan well ahead, don’t you?’

      He said it as though it was a failing. Lucy felt her back straighten and her eyes narrowed, forcing the tears back where they belonged.

      The fingers of dread that had been curling themselves into a hard lump in her chest were replaced with indignation. How dare he! The display was a triumph.

      Last year’s fluffy lambs and cute rabbits had led to a cotton wool and glue fiasco she never wanted to repeat. How was she supposed to know that a six year old would come up with the idea of dipping the rabbit tails into the green paint pot intended for spring grass and stick the resultant giant bogey up his nose, and every other boy in the class would copy him? No doubt when she was old and grey the smarty pants would be a great leader, probably of some union that would bring the government to its knees, or more frighteningly he could become prime minister.

      She’d learned from her mistake, and this year she’d been clever. With the help of Sarah, her never tiring classroom assistant, she’d cut a flower out for every single child and gone for the theme of April showers and May flowers. They had spent most of the day stapling the petals up on the boards, awaiting the children’s smiley self-portraits to be added in the centre over the next couple of weeks.

      It had been hard work. It had been a total waste of time.

      She stared at the headmaster, wishing she could wiggle her nose and make him disappear. He peered back over his glasses at her, and steepled his fingers, in much the same way he did when he was faced with a Year 6 girl who thought school rules about make-up (or more precisely the lack of it) couldn’t possibly apply to the top class, or Mrs Ogden who’d said if her Storm wanted to have white hair and pierced ears what did it have to do with him?

      The head didn’t understand X-Men, he didn’t understand the society he was living in, or the staff who worked so hard to give the children a chance to live a better life. He understood balance sheets, not feelings and aspirations.

      ‘As you know,’ he paused, politician style, circled his thumbs – which right now she had a childish urge to grab hold of and bend back – ‘we did request offers for voluntary redundancy earlier in the year, but nobody,’ the thumbs stopped moving, and he studied her as though she was at fault, ‘came forward, and so unfortunately…’

      ‘But you can’t… I mean, why me?’ She crossed her arms and frowned. ‘I need this job, I’ve just bought new curtains.’ Gorgeous, shimmery, floaty new curtains. And it was more than curtains: she’d bought a whole house. A house that had stretched her to the financial limit, but given her the greatest feeling of satisfaction (apart from getting all of Year 2 to sit on their bottoms and listen at the same time) ever. Ever.

      ‘The Ofsted inspector labelled my lesson outstanding.’ She made a valuable contribution, she worked hard.

      This just couldn’t be happening.

      ‘You can’t sack me.’

      He tutted. Actually tutted, and looked affronted. ‘We,’ that flaming ‘we’ again, as though it meant he wasn’t responsible, ‘aren’t sacking you, Lucy.’ He paused again, politician style. ‘You are being offered an excellent redundancy package.’

      ‘Well that’s different then.’ He nodded, missing the sarcasm. ‘So offered means I can turn it down?’ She wanted to launch herself across his tidy