Afterwards

It’s been an age since I was here, preferring to send in my monthly page by email. As we go in, I’m embarrassed that Sarah will discover that I’m not loved here as she is at her police station. Frankly, I’m probably no more valued than the out-of-date yucca plant in the corner of what passes for reception.

Sarah must have phoned ahead because Tara arrives almost immediately, pink cheeks glowing. Sarah looks less than thrilled to see her.

‘I spoke to one of your colleagues,’ Sarah says curtly. ‘Geoff Bagshot.’

‘Yes, I recognised the name, Detective Sergeant McBride,’ she says. ‘You chucked me out of the hospital.’

I remember Sarah’s uniform-and-truncheon voice as she virtually pushed Tara away from you. But Tara only knows her as a police officer; not as a member of our family.

‘Geoff’s left it for me to handle.’

I see Sarah stiffen at Tara’s ‘handling’ of her.

‘There’s an office we can use this way,’ Tara says, her stride quick and determined; she’s always enjoyed a spat.

‘When I met you, you said you were friends with Grace?’ Sarah says.

‘I was trying to gain access to her ward, so I stretched the truth a little. It’s what you have to do sometimes in journalism. Clearly I don’t have much in common with a thirty-nine-year-old mother of two.’

‘Nor she with you. Clearly.’

Thank you, Sarah.

Tara escorts her into Geoff’s office; she must have turfed him out. It looks like the set for a film about journalists – old mugs with the dregs of cold coffee in them and illegal ashtrays brimming with butts. I’ve only been here once or twice a year, and it’s been mineral water, no smoking and a digestive biscuit if you’re lucky. Maybe Tara’s taken over decor.

‘What time did you arrive at Sidley House School on the day of the fire?’ Sarah asks, wasting no time on preliminaries.

‘Three fifteen p.m. I already told your buddy.’

‘That was extremely fast?’

‘What is this? Interviews in duplicate?’ She’s enjoying herself.

‘Who told you?’ Sarah asks.

Tara is silent.

‘You arrive barely fifteen minutes after a fire started which has left two people critically ill and I need to know who told you.’

‘I can’t reveal my source.’

‘Your tip-off was hardly from Deep Throat. And this,’ she says, gesturing around the crummy office, ‘isn’t exactly the Washington Post.’

She must have heard me joking to Jenny about Tara; remembered it. Unlike me, she’s said it to her face.

‘Can we do a deal?’ Tara asks.

‘Excuse me?’

‘I’ll tell you in return for information that you will only give to my paper.’

Sarah is silent.

‘You don’t think the kid did it any more?’ Tara says. ‘You can’t do or you wouldn’t still be investigating.’

Sarah says nothing, which Tara takes as an affirmative. She glows with satisfaction. The cat that got the cream with a side order of pilchards.

‘So are you going to investigate Silas Hyman properly this time?’ she says.

Again, Sarah says nothing.

‘I need something back if I’m going to play ball here,’ Tara continues.

‘Adam Covey isn’t responsible for the fire,’ Sarah says. ‘And in a few minutes we’ll discuss Silas Hyman.’

Tara almost purrs with self-satisfaction.

‘It was Annette Jenks,’ she says. ‘The secretary at the school, who phoned us. At a minute or so past three. She had to shout above the sound of the fire alarm.’

‘Why did she call your paper?’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. We did a photo and article a few weeks back when the school raised money for a charity. You know the whole giant-cheque-and-smug-rich-kids-holding-it routine? Sidley House were keen to get publicity for it and we obliged. She’d have our number from that.’

‘Did she phone any other papers?’

‘I don’t know. But she did phone a TV station. Their reporters and cameramen arrived about half an hour after us.’

I remember again the TV news playing while you were hurrying through the hospital to find Jenny.

‘She wanted us to take her picture,’ Tara continues. ‘I think Dave, our photographer, took a few to keep her quiet. But once the TV mob arrived she was all over them.’

I remember Maisie talking to Sarah in the shadowy cafeteria. ‘… There was a lot of smoke by then but she was smiling, like she was enjoying it, or at least she was not at all upset and she had lipstick on.’

The idea of someone getting a kick out of this – an ego-driven high – is horrible. But is it anything more than that? Could her need to take centre stage be extreme enough to create the stage; making reality TV so that she could be in it? I remember Jenny talking about the hot-air balloon: ‘If Annette had a child she’d put him in it.’

‘Going back to Silas Hyman,’ Sarah says. ‘You published a story about him a few months ago. After the incident in the playground.’

‘Yes.’

‘How did you find out about that?’

‘An anonymous text message was sent to the landline here. It was read out by one of those weird electronic voices.’

‘Do you know who it was?’

‘Like I just said, anonymous.’

‘Yes. But do you know who it was?’

Irritation hardens Tara’s face.

‘No. Couldn’t trace it. It was from a payphone. But it wasn’t Annette Jenks, if that’s what you’re thinking, because she wasn’t working there then. It was still that old cow of a secretary. Took me ten minutes before she’d let me speak to the head to confirm the story.’

‘So you published your article. Front page.’

Tara tosses her silky hair as an answer.

‘You had quotes from outraged parents. Did you tell parents about the incident, or did they come to you?’

‘I really don’t remember.’

‘I am sure you do.’

‘Alright, I phoned around a few families; got a couple of quotes in response to what I told them. So what do the police have on him then?’

‘Nothing.’

Tara looks at Sarah, coldly furious. She turns off her iPhone, which has been covertly recording this; not wanting her humiliation on record.

‘You said you’d do a trade,’ she says, petulantly. Her parents really should have made her play Monopoly and lose once in a while.

‘No,’ Sarah says coolly. ‘That’s what you inferred.’

As we walk to the car, I glance back at the Richmond Post offices and, in a fit of self-indulgence, think of my dreams being filed away in an ugly grey filing cabinet.

Because following Sarah, seeing her talent and commitment, has made me see that any promise I once had hasn’t been kept. She’s made me remember what I so hoped for – longed for – once for myself. It wasn’t to review art and books, but to be the artist or the writer. It was absurd to think I could bash out Anna Karenina or a Hockney between school drop-off and pick-up while still fitting in a trip to Sainsbury’s. Although people do. And a mediocre book or painting would be fine. Just something; to