All Chapters of The Lesson Plan : Chapter 31 - Chapter 40

54 Chapters

Arthur

Clara’s POVWe drove to Norwich on a Sunday.Gabriel picked me up at eight with coffee and no umbrella again and I handed him his without comment. The drive was an hour and forty minutes through flat countryside.Gabriel drove, I had the directions.Neither of us talked much for the first forty minutes.Then he said, “What do you think he has?”“I don’t know,” I replied.“Guess,” I looked at the flat countryside moving past. “Something about your grandfather, something that changes the shape of why Blackwood was built.”“Eleanor told us why it was built,” he said.“Eleanor told us her version,” I said. “The version she was part of.” I held my coffee. “There were four trustees, she has accounted for one of them, herself. Robert is dead, your grandfather is dead.” I paused. “Arthur Pemberton is ninety-one and has been trying to reach you for three months and used the phrase the part of the story nobody else has.” I looked at him. “That’s not a man who wants to reminisce, that’s a man w

Marcus

Clara’s POVMarcus Webb lived in a flat in Clerkenwell.We took the lift to the fourth floor and Gabriel knocked and Marcus answered.He looked at us both.Then he stepped back.We went in.The flat was not what I’d built from the Blackwood version of Marcus Webb. That Marcus had been all performance and positioned ease. This flat was organised, books on actual shelves in actual order. A desk by the window with three screens and a coffee cup.He made coffee without asking.We sat at his kitchen table.He put three cups down.Looked at Gabriel.“My mother called me yesterday,” he said.“She’s been going through some of the board documents,” Marcus said. “The ones from the original trust. Pre-Aldridge.” He held Gabriel’s gaze. “She found something, a financial arrangement, anonymous donor. Running since 1987.” He looked at his cup. “She didn’t know what it was at first, she pulled the trust records to trace it.” He paused. “The donor on the original arrangement is listed as E.A. Vane.”

Back To Room 14

Clara’s POV We drove up on Thursday morning.Four hours from Cambridge. New England sky was something else, wide and indifferent and very honest about the season.I watched it through the window and thought about the first time I’d driven this road.Eight months ago, both hands white-knuckled on the wheel. The Mercer file on the passenger seat, eyes forward. The absolute intention of a fresh start that had turned out to be the most complicated beginning of my life.“What are you thinking?” Gabriel said.“The first drive,” “I know, I can tell.”“How?” I said.“Your hands,” he said. “They’re different.”I looked at my hands in my lap.They were loose, easy.“They were white-knuckled,” I said. “The first time.”“I know, I saw you park.”I turned to look at him.“You saw me arrive?” I said.“I was in the east wing,” he said. “Third floor, I’d been in the archive room.”“I saw your car come in, I saw you sit in it for a moment before you got out. You pressed your forehead against the st

December

Clara’s POV December arrived. The colleges looked different in December, more themselves somehow, like the architecture had been waiting all year for the cold to make it legible.I liked it.That surprised me slightly, I’d expected to find Cambridge winters difficult, New England winters difficult and Boston winters actively hostile and the Blackwood winter had been the specific cold of a building that was beautiful and draughty in equal measure. But Cambridge in December felt inhabited. The sixth form college had its last week before Christmas break.Theo argued about the ending of The Great Gatsby on the penultimate day with the specific furious investment of someone who had decided the question mattered and wasn’t going to let it go until it was resolved. I let him argue for twenty minutes before I said, “Fitzgerald didn’t give you resolution because resolution would have been a lie, the green light stays green because some things are supposed to stay out of reach.”Theo looked

Catherine

Clara’s POV She chose Cambridge.Not Norwich where Arthur was or New England where Blackwood was. Cambridge, which told me she’d been paying attention to where we were and had decided to come to us rather than ask us to come to her.That told me something.Arthur had passed the message on a Thursday by Saturday Catherine Marsh had written back directly, a short email, my address obtained through Arthur, that was the most carefully constructed short email I’d read since Aldridge’s voluntary disclosure filing. Ms. Sterling, I’d like to meet you and Gabriel in Cambridge if that’s agreeable. I can come any week that works for you, I don’t need much time, an hour, perhaps. There are things I should have said to you a long time ago and I’ve been working out the right way to say them. I think the right way is in person. - Catherine Marsh.I’d read it twice and then forwarded it to Gabriel.He’d replied in four minutes: When.We settled on the second Wednesday of December. The coffee place

Christmas

Clara’s POV I hadn’t planned to stay in Cambridge for Christmas.My original intention formed in September when I’d accepted the position had been to go back to Boston. My mother, the specific ritual of her kitchen and her questions and the particular warmth of someone who loved you without fully understanding you which was its own kind of love and deserved its own kind of showing up for.I’d booked the flight in October.I cancelled it in December, because my mother had called the week after Catherine’s visit and asked how Cambridge was and I’d said good, and she’d heard something in the way I said it that made her quiet for a moment before she said, “You sound like yourself.”I’d held the phone.“I am,” “Stay then,” she said. “Come at Easter, come in the summer, but stay where you sound like yourself.”I’d sat at my kitchen table after the call and looked at the flight confirmation on my laptop.Cancelled it.Booked a call with my mother for Christmas morning instead.Then I’d cal

The Morning Of Christmas

Clara’s POV I called my mother at 8:00, because I needed to ask her something before ten o’clock and I needed to ask it without Gabriel in the room, and I needed the answer before I walked through whatever door was waiting at that address.She answered on the second ring.“Happy Christmas, love,” she said. “Happy Christmas mum, I need to ask you something.”“Ask,” “Dad,” I said. “Before he died, did he have connections to Cambridge? To anyone here?”Shey went quiet..“Mum,” I said.“He studied, before Bristol, before me.” A pause. “He had a year at Cambridge. He didn’t talk about it much, he said it wasn’t the right fit, that he left after a year.” “Why are you asking?”“Someone texted me last night, Said they knew him.”“Who?” “I don’t know yet,” I said. “I’m going to find out in two hours.”“Clara…”“I won’t go alone,” I said. “Gabriel’s coming.”“Your father,” she said slowly. “He left Cambridge in 1988, I met him in Bristol in 1990. He never talked about the Cambridge year,

January

Clara’s POV January arrivedI went back to the sixth form college on the fifth.Theo had spent Christmas in Edinburgh with his father’s family and had opinions about it that he delivered in the first five minutes of the first lesson before I’d taken my coat off.“Edinburgh in January,” he said, “is what happens when a city decides to be honest about itself.”“That’s not necessarily a criticism,”“It wasn’t, I liked it.”I looked at him.“Good, Write about it. Five hundred words, what honesty looks like in a place.”He looked at me.“That’s not on the syllabus,” he said.“No, It’s better than the syllabus, do it anyway.”He did it.Left it on my desk at the end of the day, five hundred and forty words about Edinburgh in January and the specific relief of a city that didn’t pretend the cold wasn’t cold and the dark wasn’t dark and the beauty wasn’t made more beautiful by both of those things.It was very good.I read it twice and wrote at the bottom in red: This is what you can do when

Geoffrey

Clara’s POVJames called at 9:15.I was at Gabriel’s, we’d agreed the night before without discussing it, that wherever the call came I should be there when it did. Gabriel had his seminar reading open on his desk and I had marking on my lap and neither of us was doing either of those things. We were doing the specific activity of waiting without performing waiting which mostly looked like sitting in a room being quietly alert.His phone rang.He answered immediately, and placed it on speaker.“James,” “Good morning, I found the Mercer connection.”Gabriel looked at me.“Tell us,” Gabriel said.“Geoffrey Carr,” James said. “Graduated Cambridge 1986. One year before Blackwood’s founding, he was involved in the founding process despite being a recent graduate your grandfather brought him in specifically because he had contacts in the American education system. He’d done a year at Harvard on an exchange programme, he knew people.”“He was the American connection,” Gabriel said.“Yes, He

The Third Twist

Clara’s POV We called Catherine at seven.She answered almost immediately.“Clara,” “Catherine,” I said. “I need to tell you something about Geoffrey Carr.”She went quiet on the other line. “You know him,” “Yes, He reviewed my framework at Mercer. He was on the inquiry panel.”“Did you know he was a founding trustee of Blackwood?” A longer silence.“No, I didn’t know that.”“He was the fourth trustee,” I said. “The youngest, he facilitated the New England location in 1987. He’s been peripherally connected to Blackwood’s governance ever since.” I paused. “And he’s been aligned with the faction that opposed Aldridge’s leadership for twelve years.”Catherine was quiet.“James Aldridge Robert Vane’s friend, the journalist believes Carr shaped the inquiry outcome at Mercer deliberately,” “Not to convict me, to create a specific kind of record, a vulnerable teacher with a documented incident. The kind that could be placed and used.”The line was very still.“Catherine,” I said. “I nee

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