“I—”
She glanced at him, her voice suddenly hard. “Don’t tell me. Because you’re his best friend. Lads sticking together, right? Some stupid fucking boy code?”
His face was a picture of misery. “Clara, listen to me. . . .”
She waved his words away. “Does everyone know?” She thought of Luke’s large circle of friends—people they socialized with together, met up with at the pub, invited round for dinner—and her humiliation deepened. “All of you, all his mates?”
“No! God, I don’t know. He felt awful about it. He didn’t know what to do—he was in absolute bits. . . .”
It was then she remembered something. “That’s what you meant about him going away to clear his head,” she said, and the flicker in Mac’s eyes confirmed it.
“At first I thought maybe he was with her. But I called her and he wasn’t. Then I thought that maybe he did go away somewhere to try to sort himself out, get his head straight, but . . . I don’t think so. It doesn’t add up—not telling work, his parents, me, not taking any of his stuff . . . and the thing with Sadie ended ages ago.”
From outside on the street, Clara heard the jingling crash of crates of beers being delivered to the bar on the corner. They sat and listened to it, a sound she associated with summer, with sitting outside pubs on sunlit pavements with Luke, with being happy.
“Clara? Are you okay? I’m sorry. I’m so fucking sorry.”
She looked at his anxious face and suddenly felt so tired she could barely stand. She sank back onto the sofa. “Just go, Mac,” she said quietly. “Just go the fuck home now, will you?”
SEVEN
CAMBRIDGESHIRE, 1988
There was a local woman, a childminder named Kathy Philips, who occasionally took care of Hannah for me when I needed a break. She was, in hindsight, a bit slack; her home was haphazard, as she had four children of her own, plus at least one other mindee whenever I dropped Hannah off. But she was a kind, no-nonsense sort, and most important, she was willing—by then Hannah’s reputation had spread throughout our village; there weren’t a lot of people willing to look after her. I was desperate, I’ll admit.
I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised that Hannah did what she did. She had told me that morning she didn’t want to go: “They’re stupid and boring and their house smells of wee,” was I think how she put it. So this, I expect, was her way of punishing me.
I’ll never forget the fury in Kathy’s voice when she called. “Come and pick your daughter up right now,” she spat, before slamming the phone back down. As I drove over there, I mentally ran through the possibilities. Attacked one of the other kids? Stolen something? But no, it was far worse than either of those things. Kathy was waiting for me at her door when I pulled up, and the expression on her face made my blood run cold. “She set fire to my son’s bedroom,” she told me through gritted teeth.
There was no coming back from that. There was no sweeping that under the carpet—no pretending she’d grow out of it, that it was merely some dreadful phase. Hannah had taken some matches from Kathy’s handbag, sneaked upstairs, and made a pile of Callum’s books, then set fire to them. Kathy, luckily, had smelled the smoke before it had spread too far—but not before Hannah had burned a large brown hole in the carpet. I hate to think what would have happened if it had been allowed to take hold.
“Callum was being annoying,” Hannah said, shrugging, when I asked her why she’d done it. By this time she was seven years old.
It was a small village. She had already bullied half the school by then and Kathy wasn’t the type to keep anything to herself. Soon everyone would know. Long ago, in my naive, pre-children days when I used to dream about my future family, I believed I would make friends with all the other local mothers. Our kids would play happily together in one another’s gardens; lasting friendships would be formed. Of course back then, I believed we’d still be living in our old village, the one I myself had grown up in. But it wasn’t to be. Still, I’d hoped very much to be a part of this new community. It was to be a fresh start for us all. Yet here we were: my child was a pariah. She had no friends, was never invited anywhere to play. The other school mums would meet up regularly but never include me. And now this. I didn’t know how I’d be able to face going out in public again.
—
The next day, after dropping Hannah off at school, I drove to Peterborough library. I headed to the psychology section and began to search. I scarcely knew what I was looking for until I found it, and when finally I did, I barely noticed my tears as they fell.
When Doug got home from work that night, I was sitting on the sofa waiting for him. He’d got back late the night before, so we hadn’t had a chance to talk properly about what Hannah had done, and he looked at me warily as he came in.
“I just want you to listen to me, okay?” I said.
When he nodded and sat down next to me, I handed him the wedge of photocopies I’d made that afternoon. He glanced at me, brow furrowed, before flicking through them. I held my breath.
Finally he looked up, his eyes wide. “‘Personality Disorders in Childhood’?” he said. “‘Early Warning Signs of Sociopathy’? Are you serious?”
I leaned toward him. “Doug, it’s time we faced facts. We can’t continue like this. Hannah set fire to Callum’s room; she hurt my eye so badly I had to
