I see her at six in a pink and orange flowery swimming costume, diving underwater before popping up with a beaming wave, our little fish! And I am watching her, my eye beams a rope around her, because I will jump in – splash! – and rescue her the moment she’s in difficulty. And then she’s twelve years old, self-conscious in a modest navy sports swimsuit, checking everything’s in place as she swims; and then a metallic silver bikini over a perfect teenage body that makes everyone stare at her and she feels their gazes like sunshine on her skin, enjoying her beauty.
But she’s still the little girl in the pink and orange flowery swimming costume to me and I still have my invisible rope around her waist.
‘You can have my heart,’ I say.
She looks at me a moment and smiles and I see in her smile that I’m forgiven.
‘Oh for heaven’s sakes,’ she says.
‘If no one else’s turns up.’
‘“Turns up”?’
She’s teasing me.
‘We’re the same tissue type,’ I say.
I’d thought us both the wrong tissue type before; our bone marrow equally useless to help my father survive Kahler’s disease.
‘It’s really kind,’ she says. ‘That’s a huge understatement. But there are a few snags in the plan. You’re alive, for a start. And even if Dad and Aunt Sarah let them, which they won’t, they’re not going to stop giving you food and water for ages.’
‘Then I’ll just have to find a way of doing it myself.’
‘How, exactly?’
All these smiles! Now, of all times! I was wrong earlier, she hasn’t taken in the reality of how desperate the situation is at all. I used to wish that she took life ‘a little more seriously’.
‘Walking out of an A-level paper isn’t funny.’
‘It’s not that I’m laughing at.’
‘So what is it?’
‘No one ever tells you when you’re doing all that course work and revision and timed essays and study skills that it’s an option.’
‘But it isn’t an option.’
‘It is, because I just took it.’
And she found it funny, as if she’d been released from prison rather than slammed the door shut on her future.
I had despaired of this trait she has of hiding behind humour rather than facing the truth. Now, I’m glad.
But her question about how I actually intend to commit suicide is fair enough. I can’t open my eyelids or move a single finger so how can I organise an overdose or jump under a train? (A selfish option, I’ve always thought – those poor drivers.) Ironically, you need to be reasonably fit to commit suicide.
Sarah walks past us and you are with her, for the first time leaving your post.
‘They’ll get her a heart in time,’ you say. ‘She will live.’
But your words are harder to hear now. Your vigorous hope weakening by the time it gets to me.
I try to grip onto it again, searching for a handhold.
‘Of course she will, Mikey,’ Sarah says.
Sarah’s voice adds to yours, a doubling of belief, and my grip is firm again. Somehow, she will get better. She has to. ‘Of course she will.’
You return to the ward and Sarah walks on towards the exit of the hospital.
‘You go with Aunt Sarah,’ Jenny says. ‘I’ll wait here, in case Donald White comes back.’
‘I’ll stay with you.’
‘But you said we need to know everything, in case we’re the ones who have to put it all together.’
She wants me to go with Sarah.
She wants to be on her own.
I used to hate that – the closed bedroom door, the little walk away from me when she was on her mobile. I still hate that. I don’t want her to want to be on her own.
‘We have to let her make her own mistakes,’ you said, a few weeks ago. ‘Spread her wings. It’s natural for her to do that.’
‘Bubonic plague is “natural”,’ I snapped back. ‘Doesn’t mean it’s good for you.’
You put your arm around me. ‘You have to let go, Gracie.’
But I can’t let go of my rope around her. Not yet. I’ve been spooling it out as her legs got longer and her figure curvier and stares lingered, but I’ll keep on holding it until she can safely swim out of her depth, without drowning, from the shore of childhood to that of adulthood.
Until then I won’t let go.
I walk with Sarah along the gravel path to the car park but the stones are no longer needle-sharp and the harsh midday sun doesn’t scald me yet, as if I’m building up some kind of protective covering for myself.
Sarah stays bang on the speed limits, sticking to one small law as she drives to break large ones.
My nanny voice tells me that my swimming image is ‘totally out of date!’ Jenny has told me to ‘cut my rope; she’s grown up! She doesn’t want it any more!’
I retort that underneath she still needs me as much as ever, especially now. All teenagers have to make an escape attempt from childhood, just to keep face to themselves, but I think that most, like Jen, hope to be caught before they’ve gone too far.
‘She didn’t come to you about the red paint, did she?’ my nanny voice says, rapping me harshly over the knuckles with a hard-edged fact. ‘She didn’t turn to you then; didn’t need you then.’
Maybe I was out all day.
It was the tenth of May. You know that date.
It was Adam’s class trip and although I’d cleared my diary for it, I hadn’t been allowed to go.
‘You’ve already been on three trips this year, Mrs Covey, better give another mother a chance.’ Like there were mothers queuing up with compasses in their Prada handbags to go orienteering in the pouring rain, rather than mean Miss Madden not wanting me around. (I glared at her when she shouted at them at the V &A.)
So I stayed at home and worried about Adam not finding due north and being partnerless. Not worrying about Jenny. Because we thought the hate mail had stopped.
I was at home all day.
Jenny came back that evening, later than she’d said, her long hair cut into a bob. She’d seemed anxious and I thought it was about her new haircut. I’d tried to reassure her that it suited her.
Even for Jen, she spent an absurdly long time on the phone and although I didn’t hear what she was saying (her door was closed), her tone sounded fraught.
If she’d come to me, I’d have washed her hair, got the paint out for her somehow and she wouldn’t have had to have it cut.
I’d have taken her coat to that really good but expensive dry-cleaner’s in Richmond that can get almost anything out.
If she’d come to me, I’d have reported the attack to the police and maybe she wouldn’t be in hospital now.
She still needs my rope around her, even if she doesn’t realise it.
‘What is it with this drowning thing?’ Nanny Voice demands. ‘Adam and his armbands, Jenny and the rope?’ Well, maybe it’s because swimming is the only thing in careful modern life you allow your children to do, on a regular Saturday basis, which is potentially life-threatening. Psychoanalysts put sexual content into water imagery; mothers imagine danger.
And then I imagine them safe.
Snared in thoughts about Jenny and arguments with myself, I’m shocked to see we’re driving up to the school. I’m afraid of seeing the site of the fire; nauseous with anxiety.
Sarah turns off along the small road towards the playing field and parks next to it.
There are three Portakabins on the playing field now. They make it look so different from sports day and I’m relieved. I don’t want to remember. But as we leave the car I see the painted white lines are still here, reflecting in the harsh overhead sun; I hurriedly look away.
I can smell grass; the heated air shot through with the scent of it, and I am being pulled back inside Wednesday afternoon, with teachers’ whistles glinting in the sun and little legs pounding the ground and Adam hurrying towards me, beaming.
Can you get a summer snow-globe instead of a winter one with green grass and flowering azalea bushes and blue sky? Because I’m here; inside it. If you shake it, perhaps it fills with black smoke, not swirling snowflakes.
Sarah knocks on a Portakabin door and the sound jolts me out of the memory snow-globe.
Mrs Healey answers the door. Her normally foundationed face is flushed; her linen skirt creased and covered in dust.
‘Detective Sergeant McBride,’ Sarah says, holding out her hand – disguising by default that she is related to us. I never understood why she didn’t keep her maiden name, but I think now it’s because she wants a public self – responsible, grown-up Detective Sergeant McBride, married to sensible stolid Roger – to keep teenage Sarah Covey safely hidden inside.
We go into the stifling Portakabin. Stale particles of Mrs Healey’s perfume, Chanel 19, float like scum in the hotly humid air.
‘On Monday we are getting ten more Portakabins plus toilet facilities,’ Mrs Healey says, her voice quick with uncharacteristic nervous energy. ‘The council have given us a temporary emergency licence. The children will need to bring packed lunches but I’m sure parents will understand that. Fortunately we use cloud computing so we’ve got a back-up of everything on the internet – contact details, lesson planning, children’s reports.’
‘That’s very organised.’
Sarah sounds politely interested, but I wonder if there’s a tougher reason for her observation.
‘One of the fathers is the CEO of a computing giant; he did it for us last term. Parents like to do things to help. It’s a godsend now. I’ve already been able to print out address labels for every family. They’ll all have a letter tomorrow morning outlining what’s happening and giving reassurances.’
A printer whirs, spitting out more letters. On the floor is a pile of addressed envelopes.
‘Wouldn’t it be easier just to email the parents?’ Sarah asks.
‘It looks better to send out a proper letter on decent paper. It’s a demonstration that we are on top of what’s happened. Will this take long? I have a huge amount to do, as you can see, and I have already spoken to the police.’
‘We can talk and you can carry on, if you like,’ Sarah says, as if benignly. But I remember washing up Sunday lunch with her once and her saying that she wished she could do the washing-up with a suspect – she’d wash, he’d dry – and he’d be far more likely to talk and tell the truth while occupied with a task. At the time I’d worried what she wanted out of me.
‘You were told Adam Covey was accused of starting the fire?’ Sarah says.
‘Yes. My decision not to press charges, or take it any further, has the full backing of the governors. From what I understand it was a prank that went wrong and poor Adam has been punished more than enough already. He must feel desperately guilty.’
‘Do you know him well?’
‘No. I’d recognise him, of course. But I don’t really know him. Head teachers are more like chief executives than teachers nowadays so, sadly, I don’t get to know very many of my pupils.’
When Jenny was at Sidley House, Mrs Healey’s door was always open with children wandering in and out of her office; she taught each class once a week herself to keep in touch. But Adam barely saw her.
‘You don’t think it odd that an eight-year-old – just eight – could commit arson?’ Sarah asks.
‘Apparently it happens relatively frequently. From my time as a teacher, with children this age, I am not surprised. It’s horrifying what children are capable of.’
I think of Robert Fleming.
‘Adam isn’t that kind of child,’ Sarah says.
‘He didn’t do it?’ asks Mrs Healey.
‘You seem concerned.’
‘Alright, yes. I am. I need this to be over with. Sorted out. So that we can all move on. For his sake though, I’m glad, of course. So is that why you’re here?’
‘I have some questions. I’m sorry if you have to go over old ground.’
Mrs Healey nods an acknowledgement. She’s folding the letters now and putting them into the envelopes; her paper folds neatly sharp.
‘Where were you when the fire started?’ Sarah asks.
‘I was at sports day, running the sack race for our year-two children. As soon as I knew what was happening, I made sure that the children I was in charge of were delegated to a form teacher, then made my way as quickly as I could to the school. By the time I arrived all the reception children had been safely evacuated.’
‘And Jennifer Covey?’
She folds a piece of paper hurriedly; no neat ridged lines.
‘She hadn’t followed our procedure. She had signed herself out of the school but not signed herself back in. There was no way anyone could have known she was still in the building.’
‘Did you see the register in which she signed herself out?’
‘No.’
‘So how did you know that she had?’
‘Our school secretary, Annette Jenks, told me.’
‘And you believed her?’
‘I am not a policewoman but a head teacher. I tend to trust what people tell me.’
Her moment of antagonism is met with Sarah’s.
‘Why didn’t you tell us about Silas Hyman at the prize-giving?’
Mrs Healey looks thrown by this abrupt change of subject. Or is it Silas Hyman’s name?
‘Why didn’t you tell the police that Silas Hyman had threatened revenge on the school?’
‘Because he didn’t mean it.’
‘A school burns down, two people are left critically injured and a man has threatened revenge but-’
‘I know that he didn’t mean it.’
‘Have you any evidence for that?’
She’s silent. One of her fingers has a paper cut and each white Conqueror Weave envelope has a thin line of red.
‘Did a parent phone you after the prize-giving?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did they ask you to inform the police and get a restraining order or injunction against him to make sure he couldn’t come near the school again?’
‘You mean, Maisie White?’
‘Just answer the question.’
‘Yes.’
‘So why didn’t you do as she asked?’
‘Because her husband phoned me an hour later and said his wife was overwrought and that there was no need to contact the police. Like me, and the rest of the staff and parents, he knew Silas was all hot air and bluster, that he didn’t mean any of it.’
Why had Donald countermanded Maisie? Why would he protect Silas Hyman?
‘So you didn’t even report it?’
‘No.’
‘You weren’t worried, at all?’
‘Yes. I was. But not about Silas doing something violent. I’d spent months, months, building up a good reputation for Sidley House after the playground fiasco and I thought that in five minutes of drunken idiocy he could have destroyed it. But apart from Mrs White, nobody took him seriously. He’d made an idiotic spectacle of himself, that was all.’
‘Can you tell me about that “playground fiasco”?’
‘A child was seriously injured when he fell from the fire escape. He broke both his legs. We were lucky it wasn’t worse. Silas Hyman was meant to be supervising the playground but he wasn’t.’
‘So you fired him?’
‘I didn’t have any alternative.’
‘Did you fire him before or after the article about the incident in the Richmond Post?’
‘Clearly the article increased the pressure from parents.’ She pauses a moment as if pained by the memory. ‘I had to fire him three days later. Without the article he could have stayed in post till the end of that term.’
‘Do you have a system of warnings?’
‘I’d already given him one warning when he called a child “wicked”. Naturally, the parents complained. His language and attitude towards the child were unacceptable.’
I think of Robert Fleming’s callous cruelty.
‘Do you know how the Richmond Post found out about the playground incident?’
‘No.’
‘Was it from someone at the school?’
‘I really don’t know who told the press.’
‘Did Silas have any enemies at the school?’
‘None that I know of, no.’
‘What effect did this playground accident have on the school?’
‘It was very hard for a while. I don’t deny that. Parents put their children into our care and one of them was badly injured. I understood their anger and upset about that. I could completely understand why a few parents wanted to withdraw their children. I spoke to all the parents, class by class at special meetings. If parents were still anxious I met with them individually and gave personal reassurances and guarantees that it would never happen again. And we weathered the storm, no parents took their children away – not a single one. On sports day there were two hundred and seventy nine children in school. There is just one place free in a year-three class because a family relocated to Canada at the end of last term.’
I know she’s telling the truth. At sports day every class each had twenty children, the maximum Sidley House allows.
‘What is your own opinion of Silas Hyman?’ Sarah asks.
‘A brilliant teacher. Gifted. The best I’ve come across in my career. But too unorthodox for a private school.’
‘And as a man?’
‘I didn’t get to know him socially.’
‘Was he having a relationship with anyone at the school?’
She hesitates a moment. ‘Not that I know of.’
A careful answer.
‘Was there any gossip?’
‘I don’t listen to gossip. I try and discourage it by example.’
‘Can you tell me what the code was on the gate on Wednesday?’
‘Seven-seven-two-three,’ she replies. I think she looks wary of Sarah now. ‘I told another officer that already.’
‘I wanted to confirm it for myself,’ Sarah says coolly, and for the moment Mrs Healey is pacified. But surely she’ll suspect something as this illegal interview continues. That ice Sarah told you about seems perilously thin.
‘Why did you get rid of Elizabeth Fisher?’
Sally Healey looks startled and tries to hide it. She is silent as Sarah looks at her and the sound of the printer is loud in the Portakabin, spewing another letter out onto the dusty floor.
‘Mrs Healey?’