The River Thames looked lovely on this warm, sunny afternoon, Emma Morley thought. It was a work day, but Emma wasn't at school. Teaching had finished for the term but there was a very important staff meeting happening at the school. Emma was needed there, but she didn't really care about that. She had phoned the headteacher's secretary that morning and told her that she was ill and had to stay in bed. The woman clearly hadn't believed her. Emma didn't care about that either.
Emma wasn't really ill at all. In face,she was feeling good. And she had been to a meeting - a meeting with a publisher. At last Emma was feeling confident about something she had written - a novel for readers. It was about a group of children at East London school. The children were appearing in a school production of Oliver! And the story was told by one of the actors - a girl called Julie Criscoll. Julie was a rude, angry, teenage girl with a good heart. The book was funny and touching. Emma had included silly drawings and handwritten pages in her text, so parts of it looked like a schoolgirl's diary. She knew that what she hed written was really good. And now, other people thought it was good too. Perhaps soon, she was going to be a published author.
Emma wanted to write and she wanted even more to stop teaching. She thought every day about resingning. Her job at the school had been very difficult for the last year. Phil Godalming had been angry because she no longer wanted to sleep with him. He'd tried to make her life difficult all year. And now she knew that she could write well, Emma wanted to spend her life writing.