The Monday morning came too quickly, and I groaned as I opened my eyes and realised I had to get up and out. Stella lay in bed yawning whilst I dashed into the loo and then the shower. I dressed and dried my hair, putting it up in a ponytail. I was casually dressed, in pink jeans and Tour of Britain tee shirt.

After a very quick breakfast, I picked up my handbag, laptop and notes, loaded them into my VW and after wishing Stella good luck, set off for Gloucestershire and Hartpury.

The course was due to start at ten, but I was there by nine and setting up quarter of an hour later. I had someone photocopying handouts for me, while I quickly ran through the slides and PowerPoint stuff I’d prepared. I hoped it wasn’t going to be too high powered for them–much of it was aimed at undergrads not extra mural classes.

I sat sipping my coffee, I’d brought a flask with me, as my students began to assemble in the class room. Some of them knew each other, presumably from other courses. There was a bit of a buzz because they were expecting someone else who obviously wasn’t here, instead there was a strange young woman–viz., me.

At two minutes to ten, Dr French walked in and the class quietened. “Good morning ladies and gentlemen, I’m afraid your regular teacher is unavailable through misfortune, however, we have been tremendously lucky to have the services of Miss Cathy Watts, who used to teach at Portsmouth University and is one of the foremost mammal experts in the country. She is very involved with the United Kingdom mammal survey, which she helped to set up and is a national authority on dormice–of which, she assures me, you’re going to hear plenty. She’s undertaking a survey of some sites in this area and around the Forest of Dean for Natural England and Bristol University. She is a very experienced field biologist and long time bird watcher, and we are very lucky to get her at such short notice. I shall therefore leave you in her capable hands.” He finished, there was a round of applause and they all looked expectantly at me.

“I was just starting to enjoy that, except it felt as if my life was passing before me.” This got a slight titter from my class. I was an unknown quantity and with that introduction, possibly a frightening one. “Thank you Dr French. Important announcements, we stop for coffee at eleven, fifteen minutes max, then back here. Lunch is at one till one forty five, I know that’s shorter than usual, but I want to get us back and started because we’re doing field work for the last hour of the afternoon, plus two days of it on Thursday and Friday.”

The group before me, all twenty of them gasped and one or two smiled. “This afternoon, we’re going to be looking at the ecology of disturbed ground, tomorrow that of motorway verges, Wednesday, woodland edges and then Thursday and Friday we’re off on organised trips.”

I had certainly got their attention. “To me ecology and fieldwork go together. It’s all very well drawing up plans of computer simulations about climate change if you’ve gone out and done the work first. If you’ve walked your sites and found your evidence. So often, we get scare stories in the media because someone from the Daily Mail has misinterpreted a scientific paper or some scientist has been slack with their work and not done it properly, which is why we’re mostly peer reviewed. Who remembers about twenty years ago, there was a scare that English oaks would be extinct in ten years because of a gall wasp which interacted with the American turkey oak?”

One or two older students raised their hands. I nodded to acknowledge them. “So is the English oak extinct?” There were answers of ‘no’. “No of course it isn’t, it was bad science, not based upon enough observation or experimentation before results were extrapolated upwards. Nature has a nasty habit of doing the unexpected.”

“I’m sure you’ve all seen this anyway, so I thought I’d get it out of the way. Never, ever work with animals and children. If you do, this is likely to happen.” I played the youtube clip of Spike jumping down my blouse. It was followed by lots of laughter.

“Is that you?” asked someone in the front row.

“I’m afraid so. She reacted to the flash of the camera, it spooked her and she went for a safe place to hide. She also weed while she was down there.” That got more laughs.

“Right, you can see I don’t take myself too seriously; however, I do take my science very seriously. All of what I’ll teach you is verified elsewhere–see the handouts, or I shall say so. If it’s a theory of mine, I shall say so and so on.”

When I announced coffee time, they all shot off to the cafeteria except one, a middle aged woman. “Miss Watts…”

“Cathy, please.”

“Thank you, Cathy, is it you who is going to marry Lord Cameron?”

“Yes, is that a problem?”

“No, of course not. But you also pulled a baby out of a burning car last year.”

“Did I, I can’t remember.”

“Yes, you did and you appeared on television about another personal issue, didn’t you?”

“Yes, I changed sex.” I blushed and wondered where this was going.

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to put it about to the others, although I don’t know if the others may recall it from the dormouse clip.”

“Too bad if they do, I don’t regret it nor am I ashamed of it.”

“No, you shouldn’t be. You’re a fine looking woman and very natural in your chosen role. None of us would guess from seeing you.”

“Thanks, is there something else?”

“Yes, it was my grandchild you saved from that car fire. I just wanted to say, thank you, I’m pleased to meet you.”

“Thank you, small world, eh?”

“Very.”

“Come on, let’s get a cuppa before it’s too late.” I escorted her to the cafeteria and we talked more generally as we got there. There was a queue so we hadn’t lost any time.

The rest of the day went very well. They seemed to enjoy my presentations, oohing and aahing over my dormouse pictures. The short fieldwork we did in the college grounds went down very well and they asked intelligent questions.

We overran by half an hour and no one was in a hurry to leave, when I finally remembered Stella and her meeting with Des, I wrapped things up quickly. As we finished, several of the class came up and thanked me for an interesting day. I assured them the next would be even better.

Dot, the lady whose grandchild I’d saved, came up to me at the end and said, “You realise you’ve got a fan club now, they all think you’re wonderful.”

I blushed, “Me, wonderful? Oh dear, they may be disillusioned by the end of the week.”

“You’re the best teacher I’ve met so far, the chap you replaced, he’d have bored us to tears by now, we’d have all gone as soon as we could; not stayed longer and risked the rush hour traffic. Keep it up please.”

“I’ll try. On Wednesday, I’m intending to bring Spike–my dormouse, along, so you can see what they look like and how they eat hazel nuts. Don’t tell the others.”

“You have a tame dormouse?”

“She isn’t tame, she delights in embarrassing me in front of audiences. She’s a wicked, wild animal with a dreadful sense of timing.”

I glanced at my watch, “Goodness, I’ve got to dash, I need to get back to Bristol.”

I sat in the heavy traffic all the way down the M5 to Bristol. A journey which should have taken less than an hour took me two. I was exasperated beyond measure. When I drove into my driveway and parked, I felt exhausted. Stella’s car was still there, so she hadn’t gone off to Des’ house.

I walked into the house, there was an air of sadness there which wasn’t present earlier. I shook my head, it had to be my imagination. I looked around the house but couldn’t find Stella anywhere. I went upstairs and came back down searching every room. Finally, I saw her curled up on the sofa in the lounge, an empty wine bottle lying on its side on the occasional table, along with an empty glass.

It didn’t take a rocket scientist to suspect things had not gone well for her and that she had sought oblivion through a bottle of my red wine. I suspected also, that cooking for her would be a waste of time. I went out and brought in a bucket for her, just in case. I took away the empty glass and bottle and sat waiting for her to wake up, nursing my cup of tea.

For over an hour she didn’t stir, oblivious to my presence. I got on with some survey work on my laptop, before my eyes began to hurt and I felt very tired. I yawned and then sneezed, loudly.

She opened her eyes and stared at me for a moment before she seemed to recognise me. “Cathy?”

“It is, sister o mine. What’s happened?”

“It’s awful, it’s absolutely dreadful.” She immediately burst into tears. I put down the laptop and went to hug her.

“What’s happened?” I asked holding her sobbing body.

“It’s Des,” she sobbed.

I thought, yes the bastard, wait until I see him, I’ll give him a piece of my mind. “What about Des?”

“He’s dead.”