Andrea was left staring at the closed door. What the hell was that? She’d always felt sort of proud of her relationship with Callie, she made her feel like the cool aunt. Even at high school, where it would have been perfectly reasonable for Callie to ignore her out of embarrassment at being related to one of the teachers. She’d often told Andrea that she was one of the coolest teachers at school. One of the teachers that most students were happy to have. They like the way you talk to them, Callie had said. And the way you actually listen. Not all teachers do that, some of them think you have nothing worthwhile to say. Why would that suddenly change now? Did she have a new group of friends who thought it was uncool for her to be friendly with her aunt? Although if that was the case, why would she seem so angry with her? None of her friends were around right now to witness the interaction.

Andrea waited for a moment and then headed into the library. She scanned the room. As she suspected, there were no study groups. And Callie was gone. She must have walked straight through the library and out the side entrance.

Andrea was definitely going to have to try to chat with Callie again another time. See if she could get her to tell her what was wrong, find out if Andrea had done something to upset her.

At least Tony’s talk with the class had gone really well today. She’d expected him to simply tell them a bit about who he was, how he’d become a writer, that sort of thing, and then they could ask questions. Instead he’d come in really well prepared with discussion points that sparked all sorts of interesting debates and intelligent conversation among the class. He had them talking about Roland Barthes’ theory of the Death of the Author, debating books versus movies, and he’d taught them about intertextuality. The kids were completely engaged, and while you could tell they didn’t all want to show it, they were also impressed by Tony’s success.

Tony himself had also seemed pleasantly surprised with how well it had all gone. ‘Maybe I should do more of these talks,’ he’d said as he was leaving and then he’d pulled her in close for a deep kiss on the lips, which was more than a little awkward in front of her students. Several of them had whooped and whistled, others had groaned in disgust or made charming vomiting noises. When she’d broken away from him, embarrassed, he’d laughed like he knew exactly what he was doing. ‘Sorry, Mrs Robinson,’ he’d whispered, waggling his eyebrows at her. ‘Oh, ha ha,’ she’d replied.