Afterwards

DI Baker stops his phone call and glances at the Richmond Post.

‘One peculiar thing,’ he says to Sarah, ‘is how quickly the press were on the scene of the fire. Before the fire engines even. We’ll need to know who told them, or how they found out. In case that’s relevant.’

You are infuriated by his anodyne off-the-point remark.

‘It’s not only the article,’ you say, but DI Baker’s radio interrupts. He answers it but you continue.

‘I saw him acting violently a few weeks after he was fired. It was at the school prize-giving. He gatecrashed it and made threats. Violent threats.’

8

‘Do you think I’ll win a prize, Mum?’ Adam said. ‘For anything?’

It was the morning of the prize-giving. Adam, still seven then, was eating Coco Pops and watching Tom and Jerry.

Mr Hyman had been fired three and a half weeks before and already he hated going to school, so I was trying to compensate. You were away filming and I’d allowed myself to spoil him a little. Your man-to-man talk could come later. My excitement about your homecoming was cloaked by anxiety for him.

‘You should win a prize,’ I said to him, fairly certain that he wouldn’t. ‘But if you don’t, you mustn’t be disappointed. Remember what Mrs Healey said at assembly? Everyone will get a prize in the end, even if it’s not your turn this year.’

‘That’s such bollocks,’ Jenny said, still in her dressing-gown although we were meant to leave in ten minutes. ‘I mean, think about the maths,’ she continued. ‘Number of children, number of prizes, number of prize-givings. It doesn’t compute, does it?’

‘And the same people always win them,’ Adam said.

‘I’m sure that’s not-’

Adam interrupted me, hotly frustrated. ‘It is true.’

‘He’s right,’ Jenny said. ‘I know they say every child is equally valued, blah blah blah, but it’s rubbish.’

‘Jen, you’re not helping.’

‘She is, actually,’ Adam said.

‘The school has to get a few of its pupils into a top secondary school like Westminster for boys or St Paul’s Girls,’ Jenny continued, pouring out cereal. ‘Otherwise new parents aren’t going to truck up with their four-year-olds next year. So it’s the brightest kids that get the prizes, so it’ll help them get into the top secondary schools.’

‘Antony’s already won it for best in the class,’ Adam said, miserably. ‘And for Maths and for leadership.’

‘He’s eight. Who’s he meant to be leading, exactly?’ Jenny asked with derision, making Adam smile. Thank you, Jen.

‘It was Rowena White when I was at school,’ Jenny continued. ‘She cleaned up.’ She stood up, her movements languid. ‘Is it still at St Swithun’s church?’ she asked.

‘Yup.’

‘Nightmare. I always got stuck behind a pillar. Why can’t they use that perfectly good modern church right next to the school?’

Adam saw the clock and panicked. ‘We’re going to be late!’ He raced to get his bookbag, his fear of being late temporarily outweighing his fear of school.

‘I’ll be super-quick,’ Jenny said. ‘I’ll eat my Shreddies in the car, if Mum can drive a little more smoothly than last time.’ She paused as she left the room. ‘Oh, and you know all those silver cups and shields? They make the school seem older and more established than it really is. So the current parents are kept happy too.’

‘I think you’re being a little cynical,’ I said.

‘I’ve worked there, remember,’ Jenny said. ‘So I know to be cynical. It’s a business. And prize-giving is a part of that.’

‘You were only there for three weeks. And there’s a prize for improvement,’ I said a little lamely.

Adam glanced up from fastening his bookbag. His look identical to Jenny’s. ‘That doesn’t mean anything, Mum. Everyone knows that.’

‘But you’d like to win it anyway?’ Jenny asked him.

He nodded, a little embarrassed. ‘But I won’t. I never win anything.’

She smiled at him. ‘Me neither.’

Eight minutes later, we were in the car. Adam is the only person Jenny will hurry for.

We were going to arrive at school early, as we did every morning. I know you think we shouldn’t buy into his anxiety but arriving five minutes earlier than necessary is something you have to factor in when you’re looking after him. It just is.

‘How long till you’re working at school again?’ Adam asked Jenny as we neared Sidley House.

He’d been so proud of her being a teaching assistant there last summer, even though she wasn’t in his class.

‘After A levels,’ Jenny replied. ‘So just a couple more months.’

‘That’s really soon,’ I said, panicked by the proximity of A levels. ‘You must get that revision timetable sorted out this evening.’

‘I’m going to Daphne’s.’

‘But Dad’s coming home,’ Adam said.

‘He’ll be at the prize-giving evening with you, won’t he?’ Jenny replied.

‘S’pose so,’ Adam agreed, not fully trusting that you’ll turn up. That’s not a criticism; he worries about anyone actually turning up.

‘You should cancel,’ I said to Jenny. ‘At least do the timetable this evening, even if not any actual revision.’

‘Mum…’

She was putting on mascara in the sun-visor mirror.

‘Working hard now means you’ll have so many more choices in the future.’

‘I’d rather live my life now than revise for a future one, alright?’

No, I thought, it’s not alright. And if only she could put the mental agility used in that rejoinder into her A-level work.

We walked the last bit, as we always do, along the oak-lined driveway. Adam was gripping my hand.

‘OK, Ads?’

Tears were starting, and he was trying not to let them out.

‘Does he really have to go?’ Jenny asked. I was thinking the same. But Adam stoically let go of my hand and went to the gate. He pressed the buzzer on the gate and the secretary let him in.

You’d been away filming since the day after Mr Hyman was fired, so you hadn’t been there to see the consequences. In our brief, badly-connected phone calls you’d been more worried about Jenny, checking up that no more hate mail had arrived – which it hadn’t, thank God – but it didn’t leave much space for Adam. And I hadn’t told you; perhaps fearful of igniting a flashpoint between us. So you still didn’t know that for Adam it was almost like a grief. Not only had he lost a teacher he adored, but the adult world had proved itself cruel and unjust and nothing like the stories he read. Beast Quest books and Harry Potter and Arthurian legends and Percy Jackson – his whole literary culture up to this point – didn’t end like this. He was prepared for unhappy endings, but not unjust ones. His teacher was sacked. For something he didn’t do.

And school was already mutating back into the hostile place it had been before Mr Hyman was his teacher.

At quarter to six, after a ‘lightning-quick supper, Ads!’ and a change into clean uniform, we arrived early at the prize-giving with his shoes polished and his blazer brushed so he wouldn’t get into trouble. I was in faded jeans with a genuine rip as a protest, which he liked. ‘Cool, Mum!’ There’s a subversive streak lurking in Adam somewhere.