A Silver Lining by Christine Murray

second, and had to sacrifice an extra forty minutes in bed into the bargain. She’d given it up after a week. Some people just had the knack of looking consistently stylish. It was a gift.
    Today Frankie was wearing a denim skirt with a pair of purple leggings tucked into worn black biker boots, a tight purple t-shirt with a baggy oversized black leather jacket on over it.
    Frankie took a deep pull on her cigarette. ‘So? Have you settled in to a life of domestic bliss yet?’
    ‘I only moved in last night!’
    Frankie turned around in her seat to face Rose. ‘It was all a bit quick though, wasn’t it? He asks you to move in with him and you do so a week later?’
    ‘Well, there was no sense in waiting, was there?’ said Rose reasonably. ‘Emmett had already moved out.’
    ‘So, that was the romantic New Year’s Eve proposition was it? Move in with me quick, I need someone to help pay the bills! And to think some people say that romance is dead,’ said Frankie, decidedly unimpressed.
    ‘Ah, shut up! You’d want to be nice to me’, Rose said as her and Frankie got out of her car. ‘Or you’ll lose your smoking haven. And have to smoke out there with the cool kids.’ Rose gestured towards the school gates with her head where a group of students were having a quick cigarette before classes started.
    ‘Oh, I was only joking. And you wouldn’t do that to me. I’m not nearly streetwise enough for them. They’d probably steal my cigarette case…and my cigarettes.’
    ‘Quite possibly,’ Rose agreed. ‘Come on, I need a caffeine kick before I tackle third year English.’
    The St. Jude’s staff room, like the rest of the school, was dated and functional. It was painted in a sickly peach colour that had blistered and was starting to peel off the walls. The communal seating area was full of uncomfortable chairs, but despite this they were all occupied by the time the girls arrived. Every teacher had their hands wrapped around a steaming mug of coffee.
    ‘Why is everyone drinking the coffee?’ asked Frankie.
    ‘Because it’s so fecking cold,’ said Emily as she walked over to them. ‘The heating was turned off over the holidays.’
    The air inside the building was almost colder than it was outside, and now that Rose thought about it, it was hard to discern what whether the cloud in front of Emily’s face was steam from her coffee or her breath freezing on the air.
    Roger, the school principal, had given in to staff pressure at the end of the last school year and bought a coffee machine. Unfortunately, also due to staff pressure, it had broken down a mere three weeks after its arrival. It now sat gathering dust in the corner of the room, and members of staff had to rely on instant powder that Breda the tea lady stored in a large catering tin with the label ripped off. It was always horrible, and Frankie and Rose had whiled away many afternoons trying to work out what exactly Breda had added to it to give it that special aftertaste.
    Roger Clarke, the school principal stood up and cleared his throat. Oh God , thought Rose, not another start of start of term pep talk .
    Roger Clarke saw himself as a man of the people. Brimming with joie de vivre, he was always laughing and clapping his staff hard on the back in an effort to show camaraderie. He was nice enough, but his penchant for management speak, team-building and awful jokes made Rose tried to avoid him as much as possible. Mind you, she supposed, you’d probably need a strange sense of humour to be principal of this school.
    ‘Ladies, and gentlemen,’ he began grandly. ‘We find ourselves once again at the start of a new school term. I hope that you all had an excellent Christmas. As you are all aware, the Department of Education has cut our budgets yet again, meaning that in these recessionary times we will all have to find ways to provide the great education that has become the hallmark of St. Jude’s Community School, but on a tighter