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teeth. ‘Much worse.’
    ‘Is that possible? I thought your motto was “Think of the worst thing possible and multiply it by ten”.’
    ‘Obviously I didn’t think things could be worse than even I could possibly imagine them,’ I replied, reflecting on how, since Aggi, it had become my personal philosophy to look on the dark, half-empty, who’s-nicked-my-silver-lining side of Life.
    ‘It’s horrible,’ I said, noticing that the photo of Aggi had fallen down. ‘A total nightmare. I can’t coast or take it easy for a second, otherwise they’ll skin me alive. I can’t show any weakness. The kids, they can smell weakness from a mile off. Once they catch a whiff it sends them wild. They’re like a pack of hyenas pouncing on a wounded antelope. Sarah, another newly-qualified teacher, broke down in tears in front of a class on Thursday.’ I fiddled with the Blu-tac on Aggi’s photo and put it back up. ‘I give her another week before she’s looking at other career options.’
    Alice laughed.
    ‘It’s not funny, you know.’
    ‘No, of course it’s not funny.’
    It wasn’t the least bit amusing because I’d had some bitter experiences of my own during the past week. On Monday three year-eleven boys had walked out of my class; Wednesday I’d returned to the staff room to discover that one of the little gits had spat a huge ‘greenie’ on the back of my jacket; and Thursday I’d left my bottom year-eleven set’s English books back at the flat.
    ‘It can be like that,’ said Alice adopting a tone of voice reminiscent of a reassuring rub on the small of the back.
    I wasn’t comforted. I wasn’t happy. I was fed up. And Alice would never understand this. She had a ‘career’, whereas I had a ‘job’ and that was the difference between us. ‘Careers’ are about personal challenges, whereas ‘jobs’ are about survival. Granted, Alice’s chosen occupation might have been stressful at times, but her targets were realistic and she had the grand resources of a multi-national at her disposal. As a teacher, I had to deal with ludicrously ambitious targets, zero resources, school inspections and sociopaths who thought spitting on a teacher’s back was right up there with Monty Python’s parrot sketch.
    ‘How do you do it?’ I wondered aloud.
    ‘How do I do what?’
    ‘You know,’ I said, searching for the right word. ‘That . . . work stuff. How do you cope with it all?’
    ‘Experience, Will, experience,’ said Alice warmly. ‘I don’t want to seem patronising but come on, Will, you put a lot of this pressure on yourself by expecting results too fast. I’ve been working four years now, but this is the first job you’ve ever had.’
    Alice, to be frank, was being more than a bit of a cheeky cow, as she was well aware that I’d spent an entire summer working in the Royal Oak. I knew what hard work was: I’d shifted barrels of beer, brought up huge crates of mixers from the cellar and worked twelve-hour shifts, all of which I reminded her.
    ‘It wasn’t the whole summer,’ said Alice, sniggering. ‘It was four weeks, and you got sacked for continually being late, if I remember correctly.’
    She was right, not just about my employment history but about my attitude to work. I wanted everything to be perfect straight away, because the thought of it taking time and patience to learn how to control these animals made me feel sick.
    During the course of this part of the conversation I’d become aware that something about Aggi’s picture didn’t look right. It was only as Alice told me some gossip about a mutual acquaintance who had been caught shoplifting, that I realised the photo was sloping a little to the right. I took it down to readjust it but creased it in the process. This was my favourite picture of her – taken before she’d had her bob; her long ringlets of auburn hair, which at times overwhelmed the delicate features of her face, were tied back leaving her beautiful green