Afterwards

‘Who?’

‘The old secretary at the school.’

‘No,’ you say impatiently. You catch your sister’s expression. ‘I think Grace organised some flowers for her. Her husband was dying. She’d been there since the school started.’

‘Actually, her husband left her,’ Sarah says.

I leave with Sarah. I still haven’t seen Jenny, and I wish I knew where on earth she’s got to. And the feeling of being irritated is comforting because it’s so familiar – we’re again the Push-me- Pull-you Doctor Dolittle creation that a mother and teenage daughter make; her pushing me away and me pulling her back.

As I get to the atrium with Sarah, I catch a glimpse of Jen outside, screened by a knot of smokers. It is definitely her. I hurry out. She’s flinching as the gravel cuts into her soft feet; the sun scaldingly hot.

I’m worried that she’s waiting for Ivo to come back from the police station.

She sees me.

‘I need to remember,’ she says. ‘I know you told me not to, without you, but I need to know the reason I went back into the school. For Addie. There’s gravel by the kitchen exit. And the sound of it – the feel – I thought would help.’ She pauses a moment, upset. ‘But it hasn’t done any good. So far anyway.’

I’m relieved that she hasn’t remembered anything on her own – thank God cigarette smoke smells nothing like a fire. I’m relieved too that she’s not waiting for Ivo.

A smoker strikes a match, cupping it in his hands to light his cigarette. The smoke from a match is flimsy, weaker than candle smoke and unable to push open a memory door.

Then Sarah walks past us on her way to the car park. The sound of her footsteps crunching gravel and the sun overhead joins with the faintest of smoke trails from the match.

‘The fire alarm was going off,’ Jenny says. She pauses a moment as the memory comes into focus. How many times has she done this? Waited for someone to strike a match and for someone to crunch the gravel?

‘I thought it was a mistake,’ she continues. ‘Or a practice and Annette wouldn’t have a clue what to do. I thought it would be mean to leave her on her own, so I put the water bottles down on the gravel and I went back in. And then I smelt smoke. And I knew it wasn’t a practice.’

She stops, frustrated.

‘That’s it. That’s where I get to.’ She’s upset and in pain. ‘I’d thought I went in because I saw something, you know, something wrong. A person doing something. The arsonist. But it was just to make sure Annette was OK. Nothing else. Christ.’

I put my arm around her to comfort her.

But why, if she went in just to help Annette, wasn’t she able to leave again? Annette had time to phone the Richmond Post and a television station and put on lipstick and still get out with no problem.

If there really is a deleted text, then maybe it wasn’t to get her into the school – her kindness towards Annette did that – but to keep her there. And maybe it was the reason she was at the top of the school. Because she was two floors above Annette’s office when I found her.

She’s shaking, her face knotted in pain. She hasn’t built up any tolerance to this.

‘Go inside, sweetheart,’ I urge her, and she does as I ask.

She hasn’t said anything about Ivo, and I don’t press her on it.

I catch up with Sarah by her car.

Twenty minutes later we’re again outside Elizabeth Fisher’s exhaust-stained house; Sarah’s Polo half straddling the narrow pavement. In the harsh sunshine an oil spill on the road reflects black, deformed rainbows.

Elizabeth looks pleased to see Sarah. She leads her hospitably into her tiny sitting room.

‘I heard the parents at Sidley House sent you flowers when you left?’ Sarah says.

‘Delphiniums and some freesia bulbs; with a lovely letter. Mrs White and Mrs Covey organised it.’

‘They thought your husband was dying.’

Elizabeth turns away and she looks ashamed. ‘Somehow they got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘Didn’t you put them straight?’

‘How could I? After those beautiful flowers and their kind letter. How could I say that my husband had left me and that I’d been fired for being too old?’

The pollution from the road has seeped into the room, exhaust fumes heavy in the hot air. Sarah gets out Elizabeth Fisher’s contract.

‘I have a query I want you to help me with,’ Sarah says. ‘Your job description has a chunk about new admissions – sending out prospectuses and welcome packs, sorting out the forms?’

I remember that Elizabeth had also told Sarah this on her last visit.

‘Yes. It was quite an onerous task.’

‘Your successor, Annette Jenks, doesn’t have admissions as part of her job description.’

I remembered Annette Jenks’s transcript. At the time, I’d only noticed that she wasn’t the school nurse.

‘No, well, I suppose the new girl wouldn’t have to do admissions, or at least-’ She breaks off.

She looks suddenly older and frailer.

‘After the accident in the playground,’ Sarah says, ‘were there fewer new admissions?’

Elizabeth nods, her voice is quiet.

‘The admissions didn’t fall off straight away. It was after the Richmond Post published that article about the accident. I just didn’t put it together. Why the hell didn’t I put it together?’

‘Could you just tell me what happened?’ Sarah asks.

‘New parents stopped phoning us. Before that I’d get two to three phone calls a week from prospective parents. Some of the mums had only just given birth. One family even tried to reserve a place when the mother was still pregnant.

‘But after they printed that nonsense about Silas we didn’t have any new enquiries. Why choose Sidley House when there are two other private schools in the area with good results and no children almost being killed in the playground?’

‘How many new children were coming to Sidley House in September?’

‘At the time I was booted out, we were down to six in the two reception classes for the next academic year. Most of the parents phoned to cancel. They wanted their deposit back. The rest didn’t even call us, too rich or too rude to bother.’

When Adam went to Sidley House, both reception classes were full with another fifteen children on a waiting list if a place became vacant.

‘Who knew about this?’ Sarah asks.

‘Sally Healey. And the governors, I imagine. But she didn’t want to worry the other staff; said she’d be able to sort it all out.’

Elizabeth’s posture is hunched now.

‘Thank you. You’ve been very helpful.’

‘I believed her. When she said she could sort it all out. She’d done it with the existing parents, got them all to stay. I believed her…’

She falters for a moment and tries to regain her composure.

‘She didn’t want anyone to find out,’ she says. ‘That’s why she fired me, isn’t it?’

I get in the car with Sarah. Almost immediately the in-car phone rings.

‘Sarah?’

Mohsin’s voice sounds different. And he almost never calls her Sarah, always ‘darling’ or ‘baby’.

‘I was about to call you,’ she says and she’s buzzing. ‘I just saw the old secretary. The one Annette Jenks replaced.’

‘You mustn’t-’

‘I know. Shouldn’t have done that. But listen. Annette Jenks didn’t have admissions as part of her job, but it was a big part of Elizabeth Fisher’s job description. That’s the reason Sally Healey got rid of Elizabeth and why she deliberately hired someone as brainless as Annette-’

‘Sarah, please. Listen to me. Baker’s had Sally Healey checking up on you. He’s talking about disciplinary procedures.’