Dead Romantic Read Online Free Page B

she’s not well.’
    â€˜Oh. No. That won’t be a problem. She understands, you know, the pressures of work.’
    â€˜Good.’ The principal favoured his tutor with an earnest smile. ‘I do hope you’re enjoying it here, finding the job OK, that sort of thing.’
    â€˜I’m enjoying it a lot. Only thing is, I don’t feel really stretched at the moment. There doesn’t seem to be that much work to do.’
    â€˜Time of year. Seasonal business, this. Come the summer, you just won’t know how to fit all the sessions in.’
    â€˜Oh, good.’ Bernard gave a little smile, as he worked round to his subject. ‘Rest of the staff fairly slack too, are they?’
    Julian spread out his hands. ‘Not a lot around for anyone at the moment. Graham’s got some Nips on the go downstairs. . . Madeleine’s got her usual A-level English casualties, one potential Oxford candidate. . . That’s about it. It’ll pick up.’
    â€˜Oh yes. I wasn’t worried,’ Then, trying to sound casual, he asked, ‘Is Madeleine in today?’
    Julian didn’t seem to notice anything unusual about the question. ‘Think so.’ He glanced at a schedule on his desk. ‘Yes, she’s got one of her pimply youths at eleven. She’s good, you know, Madeleine. Gets results.’
    Bernard nodded, smiling, and moved towards the door. Then, with strange formality, he said, ‘Let’s hope I can do the same.’
    â€˜Yes. Let’s hope so.’
    Julian flashed a grin at his departing tutor. When Bernard had gone, the grin spread. Seemed ideal, the new man. A bit naive, obviously, but in the past Julian had found that that was a good thing. The ones who had to go were those who were too assertive, who tried to tell him how to run the place. But someone like Bernard Hopkins, undemanding, biddable, he was the sort who could be a good long-term prospect. Like Madeleine.
    Julian reached for the phone. There was a young housewife in Hove who, with her children suddenly off her hands, had decided she wanted to improve herself and take a couple of A-levels. She had said she was stuck at home most of the day. He wondered if she might be free for a tutorial early that afternoon, before the children came back from school. He needed to sort something out. It was not only the business side of his life that would remain quiet until the summer influx of foreign students.
    He got through and immediately recognised her voice. Deepening his own, he murmured, ‘Darling. Hello. I find I’m thinking about you more than a married man should.’
    Julian Garrett was not married. But he had found in the past that, when he was bringing a little romance into the lives of married women, claiming a wife of his own could prove a useful alibi, explain broken assignations and protect his privacy.
    Madeleine Severn had met her pupil as she walked along the road towards the school. She recognised his tall, gangling outline ahead of her, and quickened her pace to catch up. ‘Paul!’ she called out.
    Paul Grigson was so deep in a dream compounded of his guilt, of his sense of failure and of Madeleine Severn, that he did not at first respond when one third of it called out to him, and she had to tap him on the shoulder before she could engage his attention. ‘Paul,’ she repeated, more intimately.
    He turned to face her, now so close to him, and his mouth dropped open at the sudden manifestation. He had, she noticed, a little crop of white spots on his inexpertly shaven chin. His nose seemed bigger than ever, and his black hair, which his mother insisted should be cut in conventional style, had been brushed up in an ineffectual attempt to achieve something more modern. He wore, as if he hated to be seen in it, a black school mackintosh, beneath which black jeans, which were tight (but not tight enough to satisfy current fashion) tapered down to white