Afterwards

‘She seemed competent to me,’ Sarah says.

‘We have a policy of retirement at sixty for all support staff.’

‘But you waited seven years to enforce it.’

‘I was being kind. But the school is not a charity.’

‘No, it’s a business, isn’t it?’

Sally Healey doesn’t reply.

‘Is Annette Jenks an improvement?’ Sarah asks, seemingly without irony.

‘The governors and I made an error of judgment when we hired Annette Jenks.’

‘The governors hire staff?’

‘They sit on the interview panel, yes.’

‘I noticed how meticulous all your fire precautions were,’ Sarah says, again abruptly switching tack. Maybe it’s deliberate, to unsettle the other person into spilling out more than they want.

‘As I told your colleague, safety of the children is my number-one priority.’

‘So you fulfilled all the legal requirements?’

‘More than the legal requirements.’

She wipes her sweaty face with her hand. ‘But with old buildings it’s impossible to prevent a fire spreading. We’ve all learnt that to our cost. And how can anyone plan for an individual’s act of destruction? When that person starts the fire in the worst possible place in the school with virtually no staff on hand to contain it? How can we possibly plan for that?’

‘When did this start?’ Sarah asks, unmoved. ‘This “more than” fulfilling of the legal requirements?’

‘We had a governors’ meeting just before half-term. At the end of May. One of the points on the agenda was to examine and update our fire safety. We all agreed it and I took charge of implementation.’

‘This meeting was after the prize-giving?’

‘Yes. But it’s not connected. Like all schools, we regularly look at ways to update and improve our safety systems.’

‘Just six weeks later there’s a catastrophic fire. It looks as if you expected it?’

‘We planned for it. Yes. We have to plan for terrible scenarios. We plan for what to do with the children if London comes under a terrorist attack or there’s a dirty bomb; we plan for a madman coming in with a gun and getting through our security. We plan for these things. We have to. But for God’s sake it doesn’t mean that we thought something would actually happen.’

‘There’s one thing I find a little surprising,’ Sarah says, again unmoved by her speech. ‘You made sure all the fire precautions were in place – correct signage and fire extinguishers and no combustible artworks hung in the corridors. You have all these sensible precautions?’

‘Yes.’

‘So why do you let children bring matches into the school?’

For a moment Mrs Healey doesn’t reply. Then she stands, trying to brush the dust off her skirt, but her hands are too sweaty and the dust leaves dark marks on the fine linen.

‘It’s just on a birthday. And the matches are handed directly over to the class teacher for safekeeping.’

‘Which they keep in a cupboard?’

‘Yes. Clearly on sports day a teacher should make some provision…’ She scowls at the dirty marks on her skirt. ‘Unfortunately, human errors do occur. His teacher should have made sure the matches were safely stored.’

I doubted Miss Madden was aware of this responsibility.

‘Presumably, the building is insured?’ Sarah asks.

‘Of course.’

‘And the insurance company will want to know that all the fire precautions have been met before they’ll pay out?’

‘I have already spoken to the insurers about the matches and fortunately it doesn’t invalidate our claim. It was one member of staff’s error of judgment, a human error. All our systems were in place. Besides, you’re telling me now that it wasn’t Adam Covey who started the fire. So presumably the matches are no longer significant.’

‘You said earlier that the stricter fire regulations were decided at a governors’ meeting?’

‘Yes.’

‘Do the governors have a financial stake in the school?’

‘Yes, they own it.’

‘So the governors are also the shareholders?’

‘Yes.’

‘Unelected?’

‘Yes. It’s a completely different system to a state school. Or one with a charitable foundation.’

‘Do you have any shares?’

‘I was given a shareholding when I took the job of head teacher. A perk of starting with a new school. But my shareholding is relatively small. Only five per cent.’

‘In a business worth, presumably, several million, that is a sizeable amount.’

‘What are you insinuating? My God, people were hurt. Terribly hurt.’

‘But even so, you must be relieved that the insurance money can’t be contested because of your impeccable fire precautions.’

‘Yes, I am relieved, but only in as much as I can continue to run a school of excellence. A school that nurtures and educates children to the highest possible standard and instils a sense of self-worth alongside academic achievement.’

She sounds impassioned and I remember her as the ardent educationalist she’d been when Jenny joined the school. She gestures around the Portakabin.

‘This is clearly a temporary and unsatisfactory solution, but during the summer holidays I will find alternative accommodation and be ready to start on September the eighth for our new academic year. What was burnt down was a building, not a school. The teachers, the children, the ethos, the parents are what make a school and we will simply relocate and pick up from where we left off as best we can. And we will do it.’

‘Can I have the names of the governors?’

I see suspicion hardening Sally Healey’s face. ‘I already gave them to the police.’

It wasn’t in her transcript. Perhaps it had been during a phone call, someone tying up a few loose ends. The ice thins beneath Sarah but she affects not to notice.

‘Of course. I’ll confer with my colleagues,’ Sarah says.

‘And I’ve already been asked all about the shareholders as governors.’

‘Yes,’ Sarah says, going to the door. ‘Thank you for your time.’

She leaves the Portakabin.

Sally Healey watches her as she walks away; the ice creaking under her.

On the edge of the playing field, next to Sarah’s Polo, Mrs Healey’s black sports car gleams like a giant, lacquered cockroach. The woman I’d met all those years ago when Jenny started at Sidley House bicycled to school. ‘Can’t mess up the planet for the children, can we?’ she’d said with a bicycle clip around her trousers.

With only sixty children then, the school had been such a nurturing place. When Adam joined, nine years later, I hadn’t wanted to see the change. But Jenny had seen the school as a business. And you’d annually fumed about the ever-increasing fees and vowed that the children would go to a secondary school that wasn’t privately owned and which had a board of independent governors to complain to. At Sidley House we didn’t even know the governors’ names. Even if we had, as investors they were hardly likely to take the parents’ side and vote themselves a smaller profit.

As I see the ugly, boastful sports car I know my image of the school is as outdated as Sally Healey with a bicycle clip. That nurturing school solidified into rigid staff hierarchies and rules, concerned with the uniform rather than the child inside it, as the pupils turned into a living business prospectus.

I turn away from the polished sports car and all that it signals. The azalea bushes edging the playing field have wilted in the heat, their once-bright blossom lying brown on the ground.

I know that there’s a memory globe of that afternoon and inside I am still hugging Adam, his ‘I am 8!’ badge