Afterwards

21

Annette Jenks’s name and occupation – school secretary – is on the cover sheet, with her contact details. Annette was with Rowena when the alarm went off; she couldn’t have started it. But she was in charge of who came in.

‘This is illegal, right?’ Jen asks.

I nod.

As Sarah turns the page to read the transcript, a woman in a cleaner’s uniform comes up. ‘You eating?’

Sarah goes to buy a sandwich as rent for her table, taking the statement with her, and we wait. The cleaner sprays the table next door with some kind of pungent fluid, wiping the Formica clean.

‘Did you get to know Annette Jenks?’ I ask Jenny.

‘My soulmate?’

You’ve never met Annette so you don’t have an image in your head of an overly made-up twenty-two-year-old with talon-nails who looks as if she’s about to go clubbing at eight twenty in the morning.

‘I try to avoid her,’ Jen continues. ‘But she often collars me. Always has some big drama-queen number going on.’

I look at her to go on.

‘Oh, you know, has a friend of a friend who’s been murdered or has married a Mormon with seven wives already or got the bridesmaid pregnant at his own wedding. I’m not sure if that was the Mormon. And there’s always some starring role for her.’

Does she relish what’s happened to us, stirring it into her bland life like pepper sauce?

‘Remember that guy in the States who pretended his child was in the runaway hot-air balloon?’ Jenny says. ‘If Annette had a child she’d put him in it.’

I smile but feel uneasy.

‘She used to try and grease up to me because of Dad,’ Jenny continues. ‘She’s desperate to get on telly. She’d entered all these auditions for reality TV shows.’

‘Do you think she and Silas could be in a relationship?’ I ask.

She gives me one of her withering looks.

‘She’s very, well, alluring,’ I say. Her on-display cleavage was something of a standing joke amongst us buttoned-up mothers. ‘And you said yourself that he was unhappy in his marriage.’

‘Even if he was having an affair, I expect he’d want at least a scattering of brain cells. Anyway he’d left before she started working there.’

‘Yes, but-’

I stop as Sarah returns with her sandwich. She turns over the cover page. At the top is a key: PP stands for Detective Sergeant Penny Pierson. I think of the sharp-featured young woman I’d just seen at the police station. AJ stands for Annette Jenks.

The time of the statement is 6.00 p.m. on Wednesday.

‘They didn’t hang about before interviewing people,’ Jenny says. ‘But why talk to Annette so quickly?’

‘Probably because she lets people into the school.’

I also want to know who she let in on Wednesday afternoon.

And whether she’s telling the truth about Jenny signing herself out.

We read the document with Sarah.

PP: Can you outline for me your duties at the school?

AJ: Yes, I’m the secretary, so I sort out the mail, take phone calls, that kind of thing. Couriers leave things in my office, I sign for them, you know, the usual. I also get the registers and send out the letters for Mrs Healey. And I buzz people in through the gate, though in the mornings a teacher sometimes stands by the gate, kind of a welcoming thing, and it means I don’t need to do it, which is lucky because it’s in the mornings that parents come in here asking for all sorts of things, like I don’t have enough to do.

PP: Anything else?

[AJ shakes head.]

Elizabeth Fisher had been the school nurse as well as the secretary. Why didn’t Annette Jenks have that role too? If she had, Jenny wouldn’t have been up in that sick-room. She wouldn’t have been hurt.

Yes, it would have been Annette. Yes, I would rather it had been her than Jenny. Anyone other than Jenny, apart from Adam. Motherhood isn’t soft and cosy and sweet, it’s selfish ferocity; red in tooth and claw.

PP: I’d like to ask you about who you let in earlier today.

AJ: You think it was deliberate? I mean, like arson? It’s a bit weird, isn’t it? To suddenly get a fire, like, out of nowhere? I mean, yeah, it’s hot. But it’s not hot like Australia, is it? I mean, we don’t get bush fires, stuff like that. Not in a building.

‘I told you,’ Jenny says, seeing my expression. ‘I bet she loved this, being interviewed by the police.’ The drama queen finally gets her stage.

PP: If we could return to who you let in?

AJ: Just the usual. I mean, no one I didn’t know.

PP: I’ll ask you for a list a little later. This afternoon, during sports day, who did you let in?

AJ: There were a couple of children who needed to use the toilets and Mrs Banks, the year-two teacher, was with them. We have to call people Mr and Mrs at school. It’s very stuck up. But they weren’t here long. There were a couple more teachers who’d forgotten something or other. Not for long either. Then there was Adam Covey and Rowena White, and then her mum. She’s always very polite, Mrs White, waves a thank-you at the camera so I see it on the screen. Hardly anyone does that.

PP: Anybody else?

AJ: No.

PP: You’re sure?

AJ: Yeah.

PP: You said you have a screen.

AJ: Yeah, it’s linked up to a camera on the gate so I can see who it is before pressing the buzzer.

PP: Do you always look at it before pushing the buzzer?

AJ: Yeah, not much point having it if I don’t, is there?

PP: But it must be tempting when you’re busy just to push the button and let them in.

AJ: Course I look at the bloody screen. Sorry. It’s stress. I mean it’s just so tragic, isn’t it? What’s happened. Tragic.

‘That’s bollocks,’ Jen says. ‘I’ve seen her press the buzzer and not look at the screen. She’s done it while she’s talked to me, for Christ’s sakes. Doesn’t she get how important this is?’

It’s what Rowena had said too, in a milder way.

I look again at the word ‘tragic’. It’s as if Annette had thought about it for a while and found the appropriately dramatic label.

PP: What about earlier in the day?

AJ: You mean like somebody came and hid?

PP: Could you please answer the question?

AJ: No, just the usual. People who are a part of the school. One or two suppliers, bringing things in.

PP: Do you know these suppliers?

AJ: Yeah, a caterer and a cleaning guy. They go round to the side entrance into the school, the building, I mean. Everyone has to come in through the main gate.

PP: Do you think it’s possible that someone could have got in?

AJ: Dunno. But if they did, it wasn’t me who let them in.

PP: I’d now like to talk about the immediate events around the time of the fire. Where were you when the fire alarm sounded?

AJ: In the office. As per usual.

PP: On your own?

AJ: No. Rowena White was with me. She’d come into the office to get the medals for sports day.