Afterwards

‘Mr Hyman taught in the other classroom on that floor. You’d hear his class laughing. And there was music too. He was always playing them something. I worked it out in the end. It was Mozart for Maths and jazz for getting changed for sport because it speeded them up. I once heard him telling off Robert Fleming but he didn’t shout at him. He didn’t need to shut the classroom door like some of the teachers in case parents overheard. And he had special names for them all. His whole focus in the school seemed to be the children. Not getting ahead in his career, or making sure there was impressive work up on the walls for parents to see. Just the children, inspiring them and making them happy. So you can see why he had me fooled, can’t you? I mean, I think he fooled all of us.’

Sarah joins her with two new cups of tea. In all the time I’ve known her, Sarah has never drunk tea, only coffee, and it has to be real not instant. Maybe her police persona drinks tea because despite telling Maisie she was talking to her as a member of our family, it’s the professional Sarah I’m watching.

‘When did you realise you’d been fooled?’ Sarah asks.

Maisie takes the tea and fusses with a little pink packet of fake sugar before she answers.

‘At the school prize-giving. We give a prize, you see, every year. For Science. Rowena’s going to read Science at Oxford, St Hilda’s. Sorry. I mean, that’s why we were there.’ She pauses for a moment, as if thinking back. ‘He barged in, looking so angry, and then he swore at the headmistress. Threatened all of us.

‘But no one else took it seriously. I mean, they just found him embarrassing rather than threatening.’

‘But you took him seriously?’

‘Yes.’

At the prize-giving Donald was sitting pressed up next to her. Maisie knows first-hand that threats of violence can translate into the real thing. Or perhaps Donald doesn’t give a warning first.

‘Did you tell anyone your anxieties about him?’ Sarah asks.

‘Yes. I phoned Sally Healey, the head teacher, later that evening and told her she should get the police to make sure he wasn’t allowed near the school again. A restraining order, I think it’s called? I’m not sure. Something that meant he wasn’t allowed near the children.’

‘Did she?’

Maisie shook her head and I saw the upset on her face.

‘You said he gets young people to love him,’ Sarah continues. ‘And exploits their feelings?’

But Maisie seems to have clammed up now, lost in her own thoughts.

‘Maisie?’ Sarah asks, but still Maisie is silent.

Sarah waits patiently, giving Maisie time.

‘Grace told me that Addie adored him,’ Maisie says eventually. ‘But I didn’t realise how much till the prize- giving.’

‘What happened?’

‘Has no one told you?’

‘No.’

You hadn’t said anything to Sarah and I wasn’t close enough to her to risk this touchy subject.

‘Addie stood up and defended Silas Hyman,’ Maisie says. ‘Told everyone that he shouldn’t have been fired.’

‘That was brave,’ Sarah says.

I should have risked telling her.

‘But it’s wrong to make someone adore you,’ Maisie says, emotion shaking her voice. ‘When they’re so much younger and can’t properly think for themselves. That’s exploitation. Wicked. And you can make them do what you want.’

Her anger is both startling and touching. I know what she’s suggesting and so does Sarah. But no one could have made Addie light a fire.

I don’t blame Maisie for thinking Adam easily manipulated. He’s always been shy with adults, even Maisie. And after the prize-giving he’d looked so cowed, flinching from Donald’s lighter.

‘I should get back to my daughter,’ Maisie says. ‘I told her I wouldn’t be long.’

‘Of course,’ Sarah says, standing up. ‘One of my colleagues spoke to a firefighter at the scene. He told me of her bravery.’

‘Yes.’

‘I’d like to speak to her, if that would be alright? Just to get it all straight for myself.’

‘She’s upset at the moment,’ Maisie says, looking fearful. ‘In a bit of a state. I mean, that’s understandable, isn’t it, after everything that’s happened. So would you mind waiting?’

Is she afraid Rowena will tell Sarah about Donald?

‘Not at all,’ Sarah replies. ‘And you’ve been very kind to spare some of your time. I’ll pop by tomorrow. See if she’s feeling up to talking to me then.’

‘I haven’t told her yet,’ Maisie says. ‘How badly hurt they both are.’

‘I understand.’

Maisie leaves and Sarah scrupulously writes up notes in the owl-covered notebook.

‘So get her to give a new statement right now,’ you say vehemently.

Sarah has joined you at Jenny’s bedside.

‘Tell Baker that someone else knew that he was violent,’ you continue. ‘Christ, if Maisie thinks that about him, other people will too.’

‘At the moment there’s no point,’ Sarah says patiently. ‘Not unless and until his alibi is broken. And I also need to pursue other avenues at the same time.’

She makes you go for a sleep, while she takes your place at Jenny’s bedside.

And I return to the garden where Jenny is waiting.

It’s different out here in the cool of the evening. Someone has watered the flowers and filled the bird bath. If you look straight up, past the perpendicular walls on all sides, studded with glass windows, you can see the sky, that shot-silk dark blue that you get late on a summer’s evening with stars punched through the fabric.

We don’t feel any pain out here and I think it’s because, although we’re outside, the garden is in the middle of the hospital and those perpendicular walls that rise up all around us offer us protection.

My senses are so much more receptive now – I can smell the subtlest, smallest thing, as if lacking a body has left my senses exposed and quivering.

Me, who couldn’t even smell when the toast was burning – Grace, for heaven’s sake, it’s charcoal!

Now the air feels softly weighted with the heavy summer perfumes of jasmine and roses and honeysuckle; strata of scents layered in the air like the coloured stripes in Adam’s sand jar.

And there’s another perfume. Sweeter than the others, it’s igniting an emotion I shouldn’t be feeling, not now – a twanging of nervousness and an expansive unlimited excitement. Time ahead of me is opening up, unbounded; a river through Grantchester then onwards away from clocks at ten to three towards London and beyond; to ever more possibilities.

It’s stocks. The smell of night stocks and I am in Newnham garden, late on a warm summer evening, near to Part Ones, my mind filled with paintings and books and ideas. I’m with you. And the night-time stocks are releasing their fragrance like confetti over my love for you and my anxiety about exams and my excitement for the future.

Memories are usually like a DVD playing, not connected to the room you’re in while you remember.

But I’m actually there, Mike. My feelings pungently real.

Love punches me in the solar plexus.

Then it’s over and I’m back in this boxed piece of summer.

The loss feels cold and colourless.

But there’s no time for self-indulgence. There is something significant about what’s just happened, something I can use to help my children. But the thought is slipping away and I have to grab it by its coat-tails before it’s gone.

It was Jenny hearing the fire alarm going off at the school. ‘It was like I was back in the school, really back there.’

I turn to her.