ST AUGIE’S SNITCH
ST AUGIE’S SNITCH CIARAN GREIG
“Two’s company, but three’s a crowd.” - Unknown
On Fridays, Hillary bleached the children’s art smocks. There were sixty of them in total, and she drowned them in a huge vat of warm water and sodium hypochlorite solution on the grass behind her classroom. It was probably a little much, she knew, but she liked the smocks to gleam. And nothing made her happier than walking in on a Monday morning to rows and rows of spotless white smocks dried stiff as Cruskits. That sight was better than being on drugs. Not that Hillary would know.
You see, Hillary took pride in not being a
typical primary school art teacher. If you stepped into her classroom, you wouldn’t find beaded bracelets on her wrists or paint-stained Bunnings fold-out tables, or even a hint of rainbow adorning her walls. You wouldn’t even find a stray sequin languishing on the linoleum. When she first started working at St Augustine’s Primary, she had her father help her install Perspex shelving units to tower high over the back wall of her classroom, filled with all manner of materials and organised according to frequency of use. Her favourite one of these Perspex containers was the one labelled in neat black letters, “CLEANING SUPPLIES”. Turpentine and methylated spirits smelt
like home. There was nothing that calmed Hillary more than knowing she could dissolve stains on anything just with the right combination of chemicals.
They were coming towards the sticky end of
the school year when it happened. Those weeks when November seems to stretch on forever and temperatures soar. Those weeks when the kids turn into messy, unfocused puddles in the classroom and spend most of their lunchtimes seeking the shade of the blooming jacarandas. Hillary trudged across the quadrangle at precisely 7.04 am and delicately dabbed at her upper lip with a tissue from her pocket. As she dug through her handbag for the keys to her classroom, her eyes caught a strange sight through the window. Paint. Spilt on the floor. Whole bottles of it. Splashed everywhere. A window at the back of the classroom had been smashed open by the assailant.
It was clear to Hillary, once she was inside
the classroom, that someone had been looking for
