Afterwards

Because in protecting Jenny you’re showing your belief that the real criminal is still out there and a threat. And the criminal isn’t an eight-year-old boy. It’s a bodily demonstration that DI Baker is wrong and Adam is innocent.

I know you want to be with him; that you feel torn in two. I’ve felt it countless times in minor ways over the years. With just Jenny it had been so simple, but with two children the seamless narrative of our lives became disjointed. ‘For goodness sakes,’ Nanny Voice snaps at me. ‘This is hardly helping Jenny with her homework against taking Adam to cubs; having a water-sports holiday for Jenny against a Welsh-castles one for Adam.’ But I think it’s the same thing, translated onto a huge scale.

And this need to be with both of them feels like a physical tearing.

‘Look after him,’ you say to Sarah.

As she leaves, I go after her, desperate to tell her that I saw the attacker.

Before Adam was accused, the police were on the case and I was sure they’d find him. But now the police have abandoned us and this piece of information is crucial and is turning corrosive the longer it stays, untold, inside me.

In the goldfish-bowl atrium, Sarah’s on her BlackBerry while Jenny and I wait for Addie.

The young PC, who was previously guarding Jenny, comes in through the main doors. Mum and Adam are just behind him.

Sarah gives Adam a kiss, and gently pushes his fringe out of his eyes. I should have trimmed it on Sunday as I’d meant to, but we’d watched the history channel together instead.

He looks thin and pale and bemused.

Sarah turns to Mum; her voice is quiet. ‘Has he said anything yet?’ she asks.

‘Nothing. I’ve tried, but he still can’t. Not a word since it happened.’

Addie didn’t speak to you on the phone last night; nor when he came to my bedside. But can he really not speak at all? Like me, you don’t know about this. You haven’t even seen him yet because, unbelievably, the fire was only yesterday afternoon.

‘Does he know what this is about?’ Sarah asks Mum.

‘Yes. Can you stop it? Please.’

Sarah turns to the young PC.

‘Give me five minutes.’ Speaking as his boss, not a member of Adam’s family.

Jenny and I follow her.

‘Why isn’t Dad here?’ Jenny asks. ‘He should be with Addie.’

‘He wants to be with you.’

‘But I don’t need him.’

I think she looks scared but is determined to hide it.

‘Dad knows that Addie will have Aunty Sarah with him,’ I say to her, surprised that I find this reassuring.

‘Yes.’

We follow Sarah back into the oppressively hot office. DI Baker is sitting on a plastic chair that’s too small for him. Sarah stands far back as if she finds him physically repellent.

‘This interview is pointless,’ she says. ‘Adam can’t talk.’

‘Or won’t,’ asks DI Baker.

‘He is suffering post-traumatic stress. Sufferers can become mute and-’

‘He has a diagnosis for that?’ interrupts DI Baker.

‘I’m sure we could get one,’ Sarah responds. She must see the undisguised scepticism on DI Baker’s face.

‘I spent six months on secondment to a charity which works with torture victims. Trauma can-’

‘I hardly think this is a comparable situation.’

‘I’ve talked to many parents who were at the school,’ Sarah says.

‘You’ve no business-’

‘As Adam and Jenny’s aunt, and Grace’s sister-in-law, in that capacity. God, I’ve had half the school on the phone asking how they are.

‘Adam saw his mother running into the burning school, screaming for his sister. And he waited. Watching the burning building. Lots of parents tried to get him away, but he wouldn’t leave. Then he saw firefighters bringing his mum and sister out. Both of them were unconscious. He thought they were dead. I think that qualifies as trauma, don’t you? And you can’t put him through an interview. You just can’t.’

‘Where’s your brother?’

‘With Jenny. As there’s no longer a police guard.’

DI Baker looks irritated. He knows the point you’re making. ‘Are they here?’

Sarah’s hostile silence annoys him.

‘If you are willing to cooperate in this you can stay with him, but if-’

She cuts off his threat. ‘He’s outside.’

Sarah goes into the corridor.

‘You need to come with us now, Ads,’ she says to him. ‘I want you to know that apart from my idiot boss, none of us think you did this. Not for one minute.’

The PC looks astonished by her. She turns to my mother, who is shaking.

‘Why don’t you go and see Grace for a little while? I’ll take care of him.’

Maybe she’s afraid of my mother not holding it together.

She gives Mum a quick unexpected hug, then accompanies Adam into the office.

‘Sit down, Adam,’ DI Baker said. ‘I need to ask you some questions, alright?’

Adam is silent.

‘I asked if that was alright, Adam. If you find it hard to speak, then you can nod.’

Adam is totally still.

‘I’d like to talk to you about the fire.’

The word ‘fire’ makes Addie crumple into himself.

I put my arms around him but he can’t feel my touch. And then Sarah pulls him onto her knee. Small for eight, he’s still able to sit on knees. She clasps her hands in front of her, encircling him.

‘Let’s start with yesterday morning,’ DI Baker says. ‘It was your birthday, wasn’t it?’

Maybe this is his attempt to put Adam at his ease.

‘Sorry, Ads,’ Sarah says. ‘Useless aunt. I always forget, don’t I?’

I used to think it was because she couldn’t be bothered with our children.

‘I always open my presents at breakfast,’ DI Baker says to Adam. ‘Did you do that?’

I’d piled up his presents in the middle of the kitchen table, trying to make them look as many as possible; ours done up with a blue satin bow, to make it look extra presentlike. Inside, a ‘play-space enclosure’ for his guinea pigs. ‘Looks like the bloody Hilton,’ you’d said on Tuesday evening as I’d wrapped it up. ‘Alton Towers for guinea pigs,’ I’d corrected.

I’d got him a card with an ‘I am 8!’ badge so he could wear it to school, because it’s important that everyone knows it’s your birthday. It was a rocket card, even though he’s not into space, but by the time you get to eight, the age cards have almost petered out and there’s virtually no choice.

The smell of coffee and toast and pain au chocolat in the oven because it’s a birthday.

Adam came down the stairs hurriedly, two at a time. He did almost a comic-book double-take when he saw the presents. ‘All for me? Really?’

Calling up to Jenny and you that the birthday boy was here and knowing he liked being called that and thinking that next year he probably wouldn’t.

Jenny came downstairs, far earlier than usual, and – amazingly – dressed already. She hugged Adam and gave him her present.

‘Aren’t teaching assistants meant to be smartly dressed?’ I said. ‘Professional looking?’

She was wearing her short, gauzy skirt and skimpy top.

‘It’ll be fine, Mum, really. Besides, my outfit goes with the shoes.’

She stuck out her suntanned bare legs and the jewels in her sandals glinted in the morning summer sunshine.

‘I just think you should be a little more…’