The School Gates by Nicola May

it,’ Mo said in motherly fashion as the waiting room started to fill up.
    ‘I’m not going anywhere near Rosco’s. Let him bloody miss me!’ Ffion said adamantly.
    ‘No, we can go to Fishers and get a posh sandwich. Dr Delish has also asked me to go and buy some decent Christmas decorations, so we can do that too.’
    ‘Ladies, this is a workplace, not a social club,’ Lynn’s voice barked from her office.
    ‘Bitch,’ Ffion breathed to Mo, adding in a murmur while looking at the office: ‘And a very Happy Christmas to you, too, you miserable old cow!’

– Chapter Ten –
    The Featherstone Primary School Christmas production was the highlight of the autumn term.
    Joan ran madly around the dedicated dressing-up classroom with pins hanging out of her mouth. She sewed and clipped, fussed and soothed as she did so. When Mr Chambers popped in to see how she was getting on, he grinned secretly to himself, noticing that the children were drawn to Joan like The Pied Piper of Denbury – which they were going to be acting out later.
    Within an hour, and with the help of Preachy Knickers – little villagers, pipers, farmers, animals and angels emerged beautifully made up and dressed, all ready for their moment.
    Alana had dropped Eliska off an hour ago. She suddenly awoke with a start to realise that she was still sitting in the car outside the school gates. Despite it now being dark, she was still wearing her sunglasses, and a smidge of dry white dribble sat on her chin. She was mortified that anyone might have seen her in this state. She still felt absolutely terrible. Not only physically because of all the alcohol she had consumed the night before, but she was also in great distress that Stephen now knew for sure that Eliska was his daughter.
    He had made no effort to contact her, which hurt her greatly – and when she had tried to call him that morning to arrange to meet to talk things through logically, his phone had been switched off.
    To top all of this she could barely remember what had been said at Rosco’s with the young Italian, let alone what she had done. But every so often she got a flashback of pictures of choc ices and writhing nakedness – and groaned to herself.
    She was a forty-two-year-old woman who was acting like a twenty-year-old slut! She cringed again, thinking of kind Dana, who on seeing what a drunken mess she was in, had whisked Eliska straight back to stay at her house. What on earth would she think of her?
    Shivering, Alana removed her sunglasses to reveal bloodshot eyes. Reaching into her make-up bag, she did the best touch-up job she could muster.
    That was it: she had to stop drinking, it was the root of all evil!
    She combed her hair and opened her car door, nearly knocking Inga off of the path as she did so.
    ‘Alana,’ the pretty Pole said civilly.
    ‘Hi, Inga. All OK with you?’
    Inga was shocked, firstly at how friendly her ex-boss was and secondly, how rough she looked.
    ‘Yes, thank you. I work for Gordon fulltime now.’ Gordon was scurrying up behind her, tweaking and preening his brown locks as he did so.
    ‘She’s a treasure,’ Gordon uttered, then clocking Alana’s haggard face under the streetlamp: ‘Good night, was it?’ And without waiting for an answer he grabbed Inga’s hand and scampered up the school path.
    Alana wearily made her way through the gates and up to the school, where she spotted Dana, who was buying raffle tickets in the entrance to the main hall.
    ‘I am so very sorry,’ she began, but Dana put her hand up to stop her and looked Alana straight in her bloodshot eyes.
    ‘We all make mistakes, Alana,’ she said kindly. ‘And I don’t think you’ll be making the same one again, will you?’
    Alana shook her still-pounding head and shuffled to find a seat towards the back of the hall. She looked around her at the chattering mums, dads, grannies and grandads and suddenly felt very lonely. How nice it would be to have somebody who cared, sat