Afterwards

worse.’

You lean towards Jenny, your face close to hers, and then you kiss the air above her as if it will float down on top of her.

And in that kiss I know why you’re adamant that it can’t be the hate-mailer.

Because if it is the hate-mailer, you haven’t protected Jenny. You haven’t stopped him from doing this. And that would mean it’s your fault. You’d be responsible for her eyes and mouth needing to be sluiced, for her blistered face; for her limbs wrapped up in God-knows-what; for her decimated airways.

For her possible death.

A burden you can’t pick up.

‘It’s not your fault,’ I say, going to you, putting my arms around you. ‘Really, my darling, whoever did this, it’s not your fault.’

I understand now why you haven’t just been suspicious of Mr Hyman but grabbed onto him, certain that it’s him. Anyone but the hate-mailer.

And maybe you are right.

I remember again Maisie saying, ‘That man should never have been allowed near our children,’ and seeing that she hated him. Maisie, who always thinks the best of everyone and is kind to a fault.

Maisie must have seen something bad in him too.

‘You’ve always been naive,’ Nanny Voice says.

Perhaps I’ve just been blind.

9

As we wait at Jenny’s bedside for DI Baker, I think back to the rest of that prize-giving/homecoming evening. I don’t think there’ll be anything useful but I need to escape from here back into the sanctuary of our old life; memory as respite care.

Jenny was on the downstairs computer with Facebook open. She’d had her long hair cut while you were away and it no longer shielded her face when she leant forward.

‘Rowena’s revising this evening,’ I said as I passed her.

‘I thought her place at Oxford was a cert,’ Jenny replied, not hearing my subtext of criticism.

‘She still wants to get the best A-level grades she can. They are really important for your CV as well as university.’

‘Well, bully for her, Mum,’ she said. ‘Night,’ she called, as you went upstairs.

‘Night, sweet prince,’ you called back, as you have done since she was about five. Only now it’s you who was going to bed before her.

I joined you in our room.

‘It would be nice if she knew where that quotation came from. She’s got her English A level in about seven weeks and she doesn’t have a clue.’

‘I thought her set text was Othello.’

‘That’s not the point. She should know her tragedies.’

You started laughing.

‘I just want her to do well. So at least she has a shot at university.’

‘Yes, I know,’ you said affectionately. You kissed me. And the sum of our marriage was bigger than our differences.

Our argument about Adam was still there, as present as his warm sleeping body in the bedroom next to ours; just as my anxiety about Jenny hovered somewhere in the house, as she played on her social networking site rather than open a book. But I was just so pleased you were home.

You told me about your trip and I told you about small details while you’d been away, omitting Mr Hyman and Adam, which had pretty much dominated, but wanting this time with you for myself.

A little later on, while you went to have ‘a hot shower that isn’t from a bucket’, the latent anxiety stalking the house tracked me down. I thought about Rowena. At Sidley House, she had been top of every subject, in almost every team, star of the assemblies, and now she was off to Oxford to read Science while our daughter would be lucky to pass a single A level.

My anxiety fanned outwards into jealousy. I knew from Maisie how much Donald adored his family. I was sure that if it had been Rowena bravely standing up in the church, Donald would have supported her and been proud. The perfect family.

I took off my make-up, which I’d put on so carefully earlier. Your face has got more famous over the years, but mine has just got older, and I’m always conscious of this when you’ve been away and we re-meet each other.

I remembered Maisie’s peculiar remark about her appearance. Perhaps it was because I was looking in the mirror. Or maybe it was because I was searching for a flaw in the perfect family. Anyhow, for whatever reason, I remembered again her ‘bulimic hog’ comment and it burrowed away until it connected with other apparently innocuous incidents – the way she checked herself in our hall mirror on the way out, and then hurriedly looked away. ‘God, what a crone,’ she’d say. ‘Beyond Botox! ’ The bruise on her cheek from a ‘trip against the garden shed – that’s the problem with two left feet!’ The cracked wrist: ‘Went dashing out on the icy pavement, in court shoes. My own silly fault. Just went flying, what a twit!’

One by one none of these incidents had seemed worrying, but put together at my dressing-table mirror they became a dense murky network of something sinister.

But I made myself stop. I’d been looking for flaws but my imagination had conjured up something so much worse. Because surely it was imaginary.

So, enough, I said to myself, sternly. Ugly jealousy makes for ugly imagery. Enough.

I’d hoped thinking back would be a little respite, but it hasn’t worked out that way. Because that uncomfortable memory about Maisie is still with me now, as if my mind won’t let me fold it flat and put it away. And it’s pulling at another – the memory I couldn’t retrieve earlier, the one that frayed before when I’d tried to hold it.

It’s Maisie leaving the sports-day playing field, but then stopping to check her face in her handbag mirror. A gesture that I’ve come unknowingly to associate with her. The gesture that made me realise how unconfident she is now compared with the flamboyant mothers’-race Maisie in her not giving a hoot! days.

Such a small thing; not the important memory I’d hoped for. So I wonder why it won’t leave me.

DI Baker arrives, and flinches when he sees Jenny. Is that why you wanted him to come here? To make him realise?

If so, you were right. I want Baker to know what this is about too.

‘I hope you will be reassured to know,’ he says in his bland, irritating voice, ‘that Mr Hyman’s alibi has been checked by one of my officers. He couldn’t have been at the school at the time the fire started.’

A red flush of anger creeps down your neck.

‘Who gave him the alibi?’

‘It would be inappropriate for me to tell you that. I will assign a family liaison officer to keep you informed of any new information.’

‘I don’t want an FLO,’ you say, and I notice he doesn’t like you using police lingo. ‘I just want to know when you’ve arrested Hyman.’

DI Baker pauses a moment and turns his back on Jenny.

‘We will be pursuing the hate-mail enquiry urgently,’ he says. ‘And treating the arson as the attempted murder of your daughter.’

Sarah puts her hand on your arm, but you shrug her off.

‘I have a meeting to go to,’ you say.

You murmur something to Jenny, too quietly for anyone but her to hear, then leave the room.