“As if I’d answer a call from you. Or read any bloody message.”
“Sorry?” Alex called.
“Do you think this is some kind of joke?”
“Peggy, what are you talking about?” Alex rose and made to walk towards her.
“Don’t you dare!” she screeched, taking a step back. Her face a mask of fear and loathing.
Alex stopped and furred her eyebrows. “Peggy, what is wrong?”
“Did you think you could just walk back in here? After what you did to me?”
“What I…? Peggy, I know I missed a few classes, I’m sorry. But I was in the hospital…”
“Lying bitch,” Peggy seethed.
Alex felt the blood almost drain from her face. “Excuse me?”
Peggy didn’t answer. Two uniformed Police officers had appeared behind her and one had spoken instead. “Can you come with us please, ma’am?”
Alex looked at all three faces opposite her, one by one. “What is this…”
“They’ll drag you out if they have to,” Peggy snapped.
Alex felt numb. This had to be a mistake. A sick joke. But the faces told her this was real. Alex felt a wave of pressure, as if her legs were weighted down. Peggy gave a loud scoff and marched into the room, deliberately keeping to the side of the room and out of arm’s reach of Alex. Peggy made her way over to the desk, picked up Alex’s purse and threw it to her feet.
“Why are you doing this?” Alex croaked.
“I gave you every chance, yet you squandered them all and then you attacked me, and you ask why?”
“Attacked you?”
“Get her out of here!” Peggy screamed.
Alex felt the presence of the two officers behind her. “Come with us please, ma’am.”
Alex tried to call out to Peggy as she marched from the room. To plead with her for answers, but it was no use. Within minutes she found herself in the back of a police car, being driven away from the school. Her class. Her students. Her life.
The car ride to the station wasn’t long, or perhaps it was just Alex’s warped sense of time, being everything else seemed so wrong. So disjointed and out of sync. She was escorted to an interview room and told to wait. The officers seemed polite enough, but when the door closed on her and she was left alone, it was as if reality hit. The last twenty minutes replayed in her mind. Peggy, a good friend, had seen to her arrest. But was it even an arrest? She still had no idea what she had done. But it didn’t stop her head from feeling heavy; it didn’t stop her shoulders from sagging. And it didn’t stop her tears, holding her head in her hands.
Angry, frustrated, confused. And alone.
*
“You sure about this?” Karen asked, glancing at the A4 envelope in Solomon’s hand. She had driven him for his last day. Or the day he would resign anyway. Solomon took her hand and kissed it. He glanced back at his daughter in the back seat, giving him a small smile.
“You’d be happy to have daddy home more, baby?”
Abbey nodded with a toothy grin. He glanced back at Karen and shrugged. “How can anyone say no to that face?”
“Have you thought about what you want to do?”
“Sun, surf, and maybe s…e…x?” he laughed.
She smiled but replied evenly. “I’m serious.”
“I don’t know. The right thing, I guess. Whatever that is.”
He kissed Karen and waved goodbye to Abbey before stepping out of the car and heading inside.
Solomon fingered his resignation letter, checking it inside the envelope to make sure he had everything. He moved into the staff only portion of the station, and towards his superintendent’s office, only then did he do a double take at the monitor to interview room one. A woman alone, crying. He shook his head and moved away, but only a few steps. He closed his eyes and took a breath. Why did he have to look? Just keep walking. Just keep walking. “Beck, who is taking that interview?” he said, pointing towards the screen.
Beck leaned back to check which he was referring to. “Um…not sure, I think they were going to get someone.”
Solomon recognised her. Even though the screen wasn’t hi-def, and her face was scrunched from sobbing, after the time he spent investigating her, he would know Alex Hensley anywhere. It’s not your problem. It’s not your problem. “I’ll do it.”
“But I thought you said-”
Solomon held up a hand containing his letter. “Can I just get her file please?”
“Sol, you can’t just take over a case.”
“I’m not. How long as she been in there?
“About twenty minutes.”
“You said she doesn’t have anyone looking after her right?”
“Well, no…”
“Well she does now.”
Solomon took the files that Beck handed him and walked back through the office to room one, taking a bottle of water out of the fridge as he went.
“Miss Hensley,” he said, taking the seat opposite her and moving the bottle closer.
“Hi,” she replied, wiping the wetness off her cheeks, trying to clear her throat, sniffling, before she focused on him and recognition obviously hit her. “Oh…hi. I know you, right?”
“Well, I’d think so. I came to your unit…”
“With the USB. I remember.”
“You seem rather relieved at that?”
“I’ve been having trouble with my memory lately. Or so I’m told.”
“So you’re told?”
“I was in hospital for a while. The last week or so is hazy. I remember…bits I guess. And then I woke up in the ward.”
Solomon nodded. “I saw you there.”
“You did?”
“Yes, I was visiting Abigail.”
“Your…wife?”
Solomon leaned his head to the side, studying her. “My daughter. You don’t remember her? She is a student at your school. Younger than the students you currently teach. Orange red hair…?”
“I may have
