ABSTRACT
Yvonne Perkins, the deputy head in charge of the daily running of the school, looked at the absence sheet for the day and sighed. Laura Beckett was away again. Yvonne checked over the staff absence records for the past term. Yes, a pattern of absence was beginning to emerge. ‘Either Laura was particularly prone to a gastric flu virus,’ she thought, ‘or we have a problem on our hands. I'd better have a word with her HOD, maybe he knows something that I don't’.
