‘She’ll be free in about fifteen minutes if you’d like to call back,’ the school secretary told her. A meeting, face to face, was probably a better way of dealing with the matter, but Harriet didn’t want to take any more time off work unnecessarily. Nor did she want to take the easy way out by telling her parents what had been going on and offloading the problem onto them. When the culprits had been dealt with, then she’d tell them. Or maybe she wouldn’t. Just now her parents seemed distant and unreachable. Particularly her father. On Saturday he announced at breakfast that he was spending the day with an old work colleague who was going through a rough patch and needed taking out of himself. Harriet found it hard to believe that in his current frame of mind her father would be good for taking anyone out of themselves. But he must have done some good because he didn’t come home until gone midnight. When fifteen minutes had passed, Harriet hit the redial button on her mobile.
