Cause and Effect (Oct 2016)
(Words 1339 / 4.5 mins)
The lockers stand like sentinels, they are indistinguishable, no degree of variation will be tolerated in this state of the art health club. The changing rooms are not a place that Rachel likes to dwell, she grabs her blue sports rucksack from a locker and dashes out of the door. She’ll be late for work, as she often is, but not to worry, as long as she’s there before her students! She has to have her morning workout, and in the winter months it’s the gym that provides this cathartic start to her day. She goes through her workout with ease, relishing the stretches as her muscles awaken, wringing out the strains of her working days. She watches others, how they punish themselves, exhaustion and stress glowing from them before the sun has even risen.
The walk to work is sometimes brightened by Becs and today serendipity brings the two together. Becs, a school nurse, is one of many in a long standing friendship group. Today the friends paths cross where the bridleway meets the main road and after a brief embrace they set off on their usual route to work.
“I’ve got it Becs! It arrived in the post yesterday.” Rachel nudged her friend as they walked side by side, glancing across to gage Becs’ reaction. She displayed utter relief,
“Thank goodness, I could not concentrate yesterday. I just kept thinking it would get lost in the post, wondering where it would end up and who might get their hands on it. Can you imagine?”
“I know, don’t you think I was the same? I was teaching Ethics to Year 11 yesterday and I just kept thinking about our parcel and hoping with every positive vibe in my body that it would be on the doormat when I got home, in time for tonight” Rachel said, straightening her arms and clenching her fists into her body with taut excitement.
“Should we have a look at it now?” asked Becs
“I haven’t got time Becs, I really need to get into school and get set up for the day. I’ll catch you later, but don’t worry, I’ll keep my rucksack safe today! Blimey, Simon would kill me if I lost the ‘Best Christmas Present’ he ever bought me! What is with these men and their practical presents?”. The girls shared a parting smile and left each other.
Five minutes later and Rachel was at school. Her classroom was an unfortunate portakabin. It was as tatty around the edges as an old exercise book and bore the same graffitti and scholarly stains. The upside was that she was slightly out in the field and had beautiful views of the Cleveland Hills, beyond which she could picture the sea. Her subject of Religious Studies and Philosophy had been hijacked by more recent trends for Mindfulness and ‘Life Strategies’. The classroom setting gives her students a peaceful haven, a place to slow down and reflect. They seem to need this time more than ever now, the students’ pace of life was always racing ahead of them as social media played their lives out for them and they ran to catch up. Rachel dropped her rucksack onto her chair and was about to shrug off her coat but something stopped her. Her bag, it wasn’t right, it had a completely different ‘feel’ to it.
She didn’t dare look. Her bag should have her planner in it, the parcel and a small bag of damp gym clothes in the front section and various bits of hand bag paraphernalia. It shouldn’t be this light. How had she walked all the way here and not noticed until now? She’d been in a rush, met Becs, it was cold, they’d walked quickly, hands in pockets and now she stopped and….and what now? She would have to look, her hands had gone clammy, they slipped on the black plastic clasps. Now she could see it wasn’t her bag, she felt desolate to the core. Rachel compelled herself into her positive thinking, despite her physical reaction, telling herself: “The parcel is there, it is my bag, it will be alright.”
They’d made the photo book for Ruth for her 30th birthday. A few glasses of wine and a few shared photos between friends and the girls had created it in an evening. Loads of pictures of them all on holiday, nights out, at parties celebrating other life events. If the book fell into the hands of the students, the teachers in the photos, caught off guard, wine in one hand, ‘smoke’ in the other, relaxed, being human, the consequences would be indescribable. None of them were on Facebook as a precept of privacy. They wanted their lives to be their own and had taken every measure to achieve this.
Rachel opened the bag, she wasn’t expecting to find her things, but she wasn’t expecting to find what she did either. She was brought out of her stupor by the sound of her students climbing the steps to her classroom. She had a lesson to teach on the parables and no planner, she could wing it, if she could pull herself together now.
How Rachel taught her lesson through her shock she didn’t know, she dismissed the class for break and ran to Dawn at reception.
“Dawn, I’m so sorry to interrupt but could you just pull up my ‘In Case of Emergency’ numbers? I’ve misplaced my phone.”
“Of course I can, here, this is Simon’s”
“No!” exclaimed Rachel. “Thank you, I need Rebecca Manning, is it there?”
“Yes, just there, look, I’ll write it down for you. You look a bit shaken love, would you like me to do anything for you?”
Rachel strived to compose herself “No, but thank you. I just need to ring Becs, I’m fine, everything’s fine, really, thank you.”
Rachel turned and raced back to her office, dialing Becs’ number with shaking hands, the number inputted wrongly, she tried again, she must speak to Becs. The phone rang.
“Becs, Oh my goodness, Becs, can you talk?”
“Slow down Rach, God, what’s happened?”
Where should she start? Picking up the wrong bag? The photo book missing? Or what she has found in return? She started at the end, she needed Becs to focus first on the principal predicament.
Rachel took a deep breath, steadied herself and told her.
“I’ll be with you in 5 honey, meet me at reception.”
Ten minutes later the friends were back in Rachel’s office. Rachel had confessed to not having been as careful with her rucksack as she had promised and now they were sitting with the pretender between them.
“Becs, open it. Please, just open it.”
Becs undid the black clasps, loosened the drawstring and looked in the bag. Inside was a book, some clothes and a mobile. Assuming it was the phone that was of interest rather than someone else’s dress, Becs pulled it out, triggering the screen saver. She sat and stared at what was in her hand “But, that’s Simon. Rach? That’s Simon! This isn’t your phone, who is he with? What’s going on Rach, what is going on?”
Rachel hesitated, then “I recognise her, I’m sure I do, I’ve seen her in the gym. Well, she must have been there this morning. That’s definitely my Simon, the way he’s got his arm around her waist. It’s him, he’s with someone else Becs, he bought us the same blue rucksack, what else? Oh God.”
Becs sat back, her steadying hand on Rachel’s “Ok, I think we should find out who she is, I know we’re sworn off social media but I can look at Steve’s and find her, she’s got to be a friend of someone we know. Any idea what she might be called?” We’ll find out what is going on, then maybe you need to talk to Simon?”
Rachel was shaking. She had lost her preserved reality and was about to slip into a completely unknown and exposed virtual world.
