Sarah is waiting in the cafeteria, fingers tapping as yours do when you are impatient. She has her owl notebook out and has been reading through it. I sense increased energy in her exhausted face. She stops tapping as she sees Mohsin and Penny arrive.
‘Natalia Hyman’s been charged under the malicious communications act and for assault,’ Penny says. ‘She’s admitted to all the incidents of hate mail and to the paint attack.’
Her sharp features are softened with satisfaction at a job well done.
‘Silas Hyman had nothing to do with his wife’s malicious hate-mail campaign,’ she continues. ‘He didn’t even know it was happening.’
‘And the tampering with Jenny’s oxygen?’ Sarah asks.
‘Natalia swears blind it wasn’t her,’ Penny says. ‘And I believe her. She’s our hate-mailer, but I really don’t think she’s the saboteur.’
‘And Donald White?’ Sarah asks Mohsin.
‘His alibi checks out,’ Mohsin replies. ‘He was on a BMI flight at three on Wednesday, halfway between Gatwick and Aberdeen. But we still think you were right about the arson for fraud. He must have had an accomplice.’
‘His smart lawyer is trying to spring him,’ Penny says. ‘But Baker’s not having it, not yet anyway.’
‘Or the arsonist was Silas Hyman,’ Sarah says.
Mohsin and Penny are taken aback.
‘I think my brother might have been right from the beginning,’ Sarah continues.
I want her to stop, right now. I don’t have the emotional capacity or the mental energy for this. We have it sorted out. Done and dusted. Donald White burnt the school down to get the insurance money. Possibly Jenny saw something that incriminated him, which is why he may be the person who tried to kill her. Natalia Hyman was getting misplaced revenge on Jenny. Maybe, just a possibility, it was Natalia who attacked her in the hospital. That’s it. These two people make sense of it all. Not a nice neat parcel of facts, but an ugly, vile dossier of the foulness in people. But known. Done.
‘Don’t you want the truth?’ Nanny Voice snaps at me. ‘Don’t you want Adam unequivocally cleared and Jenny safe? Isn’t that what you want?’
Of course it is, I’m sorry.
‘But we’ve found out about the fraud,’ Mohsin says to Sarah. ‘Rather, you found out.’
Is he also frustrated and tired by this now?
‘I found a motive, yes,’ Sarah says. ‘But I now think the arsonist could equally well be Silas Hyman.’
‘Taking revenge on the school?’ Mohsin asks.
‘Yes.’
‘I never bought that Silas Hyman could be the arsonist,’ Penny says sharply. ‘Even first time around.’
‘I think we were too quick to dismiss him,’ Sarah says.
‘But what about his wife giving him an alibi?’ Mohsin asks. ‘She clearly loathes him, so she’d hardly lie for him, would she?’
‘If he gets sent down, she’ll be a single mother with three children and no income,’ Sarah says. ‘It’s in her own interests to lie for him. In any case, I think she still has feelings for him, in her own weird and perverted way.’
I agree, because sitting next to Natalia in the car, beneath her spat-out furious words, her passionate viciousness, I glimpsed something fragile and wounded. ‘He was fucking her, but he was making love to me.’
‘Give me ten minutes?’ Sarah asks and before they can reply she leaves, holding her owl notebook. Mohsin looks perplexed, Penny irritated.
‘I’ll call the station,’ Penny says, annoyed. She leaves. Mohsin goes to the counter to get another cup of tea.
Alone, I think about Jenny. ‘I’m too old for fairy stories, Mum.’
I remember you reading to her every night: your big hands, the knuckles with dark hair, rough and masculine, around a sparkly covered book. Her favourites were the old ones, the ones that begin ‘Once upon a time’ and so, as convention dictates, must end ‘happily ever after’.
But that happily ever after was hard won. Those beautiful princesses and girls with pure white skin and defenceless children were pitted against vicious cruelty. A witch keeps children caged, fattening them up to eat; a stepmother abandons children in a forest to die; another demands a woodcutter kills her beautiful stepdaughter and brings her the heart for supper.
Inside the sparkly covers was a world of good against evil; snow-white innocence against dark violence.
But despite the wickedness, the children and the wronged beautiful girls and the blameless princesses won through. They survived – always – into a happy-ever-after ending.
And I believe in fairy stories now, did I tell you that? Because I’ve gone through the looking glass; stepped through the back of the wardrobe. The young girl will get her prince, the children will be reunited with their loving father, and Jen will live.
She will live.
Mohsin finishes his cup of tea as Sarah comes back into the cafeteria, Penny just behind her. And I must think about dark wickedness again – the who and the why of our story. Unlike those fairy tales, the narrative isn’t neatly linear but looping back on itself to Silas Hyman.
‘OK, let’s run with your idea of Silas Hyman as arsonist then,’ Penny says to Sarah, with a note of derision in her voice. ‘Let’s say he did want to torch the place. Even if he knew the code on the gate – let’s actually get him inside – how would he have walked through the school up to the second floor, unnoticed?’
‘I’ve thought about that,’ Sarah responds calmly. ‘Although most of the staff were at sports day, there were still three members of staff in the building and it would have been risky.’
‘Exactly. So-’
‘So he had an accomplice. Someone who made sure the coast was clear for him.’
Penny looks even more annoyed and impatient. I hope her children are intelligent and fast or homework time will be a nightmare in her house.
‘What if it was Rowena White who was helping him?’ Sarah asks. ‘What if she kept lookout? Possibly made sure the secretary was distracted while he got in?’
‘And why on earth would she do that?’ Penny asks.
‘Because I think that Silas Hyman was having an affair with someone at the school. A teaching assistant. But it wasn’t Jenny. It was Rowena.’
I am startled. Rowena?
‘That’s absurd,’ Penny says. ‘I understand why you don’t want your niece to have been having an affair with him. But Natalia Hyman was clear it was Jenny. She saw them together.’
‘Saw her husband flirting with Jen, yes,’ Sarah says. ‘But he flirted with every female at the school. Elizabeth Fisher called him a cockerel in the hen-house. I think he flirted with Rowena White too. That it went further.’
They’ve reached Mohsin now, who’s listening intently.
‘What about the head teacher and the leash thing?’ Penny asks. ‘Sally Healey knew it was Jennifer.’
‘She just said it was a teaching assistant,’ Sarah replies. ‘It was Natalia who drew her own conclusions from that. And if you put the two girls side by side it’s easy to see why you’d pick Jenny.’
‘OK, I need to get brutal here,’ Penny says. ‘Jennifer – long legs, long blonde hair, beautiful face. Jenny, I buy.’
She sees Sarah react on ‘beautiful face’, and Mohsin glaring at her.
‘Sorry. But why ugly, dumpy Rowena White when he has Natalia at home?’
‘Because Natalia is the kind of woman who shoves shit through letterboxes?’ hazards Mohsin.
‘And Rowena’s extremely intelligent,’ Sarah says. ‘Reading Science at Oxford. Maybe he’s attracted to that. Or maybe he knew he could seduce her because she’s vulnerable. Or she’s seventeen and that’s beauty enough. I don’t know his reason.’
‘Because there isn’t one,’ Penny says.
‘There’s more,’ Sarah said, rummaging in her bag. ‘I’ve got my notes here from when I spoke to Maisie White.’
Penny watches her, alarmed.
‘Who the fuck didn’t you speak to? Does DI Baker know about this?’
You arrive, interrupting.
‘Is Jenny on her own?’ Sarah asks, her anxiety clear. Because if it’s Silas Hyman, as she thinks, he’s out there somewhere and a threat.
‘Ivo’s with her,’ you say. ‘And a whole load of doctors. About Rowena White. After we spoke I remembered something.’
Penny and Mohsin both look awkward with you here. Penny even blushes a little. It’s affecting to be physically close to someone who is emotionally stripped raw.
‘When I spoke to Silas Hyman’s wife,’ you say, ‘she accused me of getting her husband sacked. Of “wanting him out”.’
I remember Natalia following you to the car; her hostility like a strong cheap perfume around her.
‘I thought she meant me as a parent,’ you continue. ‘Just a generic parent at the school. But I think she meant me personally. She thought I’d got him fired – presumably because she thought he was having an affair with my daughter.’
Sarah nods and I see the allegiance between the two of you.
‘She got the wrong girl so she blamed the wrong father,’ you say.
Penny is silent. Presumably it’s not good police practice to argue with a father whose daughter is in ICU; nor cast aspersions about said daughter’s morals to her distraught dad. And now I realise why you’re here; why instead of waiting for Sarah to come to you, you’ve interrupted this meeting with her colleagues.
You’d said the idea of Jenny and Silas Hyman having a relationship was ‘bloody ridiculous’. You don’t want lies being told about Jenny, something you’d see as a slur on her – an affair with a married older man.
When you leave, there’s a pause before anyone speaks again.
‘I think Mike’s right about that interpretation,’ Sarah says. ‘And it makes sense if the red-paint attack was to punish Jenny for getting Silas the sack. It would explain the escalation of violence. She just got the wrong girl.’
‘You said you spoke to Maisie White…?’ Mohsin asks.
‘Yes.’
She opens her owl notebook. As she does so, I remember the shadowy empty cafeteria and Sarah writing up her notes, the moment that Maisie had left to join Rowena.
‘I spoke to Maisie White on Thursday July the twelfth, the day after the fire, at nine p.m.’
Sarah concentrates on her notebook, but must be aware of Penny’s disapproval.
‘She told me, “It’s wrong to make someone adore you, when they’re so much younger and can’t think for themselves.” I thought she was talking about Adam. But I think now that she was referring to her teenage daughter.
‘She said that Silas got people to love him because no one realised he was a sham. She said that he “exploited” people, and emphasised that word.’
Penny is silent now; like Mohsin, listening intently.
‘I asked her when she’d changed her mind about Silas Hyman. From my notes she didn’t answer immediately.’
I remember Maisie fussing with a little pink packet of fake sugar, not answering for a while.
‘She then said it was at the prize-giving,’ continues Sarah. ‘But I think it was before then – when she found out about Silas and her daughter.’
I remember Maisie’s pale face at the prize-giving. How unlike her it was to hate someone. I remember her saying, ‘That man should never have been allowed near our children.’
Silas Hyman wasn’t at the school when Rowena was a pupil there. But he was there last summer when Rowena was a sixteen-year-old teaching assistant. Why didn’t I realise she meant Rowena? And why hadn’t she told me – and later Sarah – the truth?
I think it’s probably because, like you, she thinks it’s a slur on her daughter. She thinks Silas has already exploited Rowena and she doesn’t want to damage her any further by making it public. Even to a friend.
And she’s used to keeping secrets.
‘When I spoke to Rowena the next day,’ Sarah says, ‘she told me that Silas was violent.’
‘You have your notes on that interview too?’ Mohsin asks.
Is he teasing her? No. It is standard procedure to write contemporaneous notes.
She nods and gives him the notebook.
I’ve never really understood the police’s obsession with procedure and note-taking and bureaucratic attention to detail; which Sarah has always excelled at. Now I do.
‘The good angel and the devil thing, that’s interesting,’ Mohsin says as he reads.
‘If she’d helped him with the arson attack,’ Penny says, ‘it would explain why she ran back in. Maybe she hadn’t realised that people would get hurt.’
‘Let’s talk to her,’ Mohsin says, getting up.
‘I’ll call the station,’ Penny says. ‘Get them to find Silas Hyman urgently.’
I follow Mohsin and Sarah, thinking about Ivo standing guard at Jenny’s bedside while you came to talk to Sarah and her colleagues. I’m glad you trust him enough to let him stand guard in your place; glad that you’re not as prejudiced against him as I was.
We arrive at the burns unit and I look through the glass wall into Rowena’s side-room. As I said before, she doesn’t look plain or ugly to me any more – how can anyone with an undamaged face ever look even plain to me now – but I do understand Penny’s harsh honesty about her.
But she was beautiful as a little girl. Like a fairy child, with her enormous eyes and elfin face and silky honey-blonde hair. Remember that bronze statue that Mrs Healey commissioned to mark the first year at Sidley House? We weren’t meant to know which child it had been modelled on, but we all guessed it was Rowena. But at six her tiny white perfect teeth had been replaced by uneven gappy ones that looked too big and discoloured next to the remaining pearly milk teeth. Her eyes seemed to shrink as her face grew and her shiny fair hair turned dull matt brown. You think it’s odd that I noticed these things? At school you watch children grow and change, and you can’t help but notice. I felt for her. It must have been so hard to have been so gloriously pretty and then to lose that. She’d cried at the dentist’s, Maisie told me, demanding her old teeth back, as if she knew, even while it was happening, that she was losing her little-girl beauty. I used to wonder if that was what made her so competitive; as if she was trying to prove herself in other ways.
Jenny did the opposite: our gawky duckling growing into a beautiful teenager, while Rowena suffered the adolescent blight of acne. Growing up must have been fraught for Rowena, even without her father’s physical abuse. I doubt she’s had many romantic bids from boys her own age.
Did all of this – feeling plain, ugly even, and being cruelly treated by her father – did this make her vulnerable to a man like Silas Hyman?
Sarah and Mohsin go into her room.
‘Hello, Rowena,’ Mohsin says. ‘I’d like to ask you a few more questions.’
Rowena nods, but she’s looking at Sarah.
‘As you’re under eighteen,’ Mohsin says, ‘you should have an adult with you to-’
‘Can Jenny’s aunt stay with me?’
‘Yes, if that’s what you’d like.’
Mohsin looks at Sarah and some kind of communication passes between them.
Sarah sits in the chair next to Rowena’s bed.
‘Last time we spoke,’ she says, ‘you said that Silas Hyman was very good-looking?’
Rowena turns away from Sarah, embarrassed.
‘You said you used to watch him…?’
Rowena looks so acutely self-conscious that I feel uncomfortable too.
‘Did you find him attractive?’ Sarah asks, kindly.
Rowena is silent.
‘Rowena?’
‘I had a crush on him from the moment I saw him.’
She turns away so that she can’t see Mohsin, as if she doesn’t like him being there, and he steps further back towards the door.
‘I knew he’d never look at someone like me,’ she continues to Sarah. ‘Men like him never do. You know, the handsome ones.’
She stops talking. Sarah doesn’t butt into the silence, waiting for Rowena. ‘If I could swap being clever for pretty,’ Rowena says quietly, ‘I’d do it.’
‘You also told me you thought he could be violent.’
It’s as if Sarah has slapped her.
‘I shouldn’t have said that,’ she says. ‘It wasn’t right to say that.’
‘Maybe it was honest?’
‘No. It was stupid. I really don’t see him that way at all. I mean, I just guessed that he could be. But we all could be, couldn’t we? I mean, anyone has the capacity for it, don’t they?’
‘Why did you have a crush on him if you thought he might be violent?’
Rowena doesn’t reply.
‘Was he ever violent to you?’ Mohsin asks.
‘No! He never touched me. I mean, not in that way. Not in a bad way.’
‘But he did touch you,’ Sarah says.
Rowena nods.
‘Were you having a relationship with Silas?’ Mohsin asks.
Rowena looks at Sarah, seemingly torn.
‘I’m a police officer asking you a question,’ Mohsin continues. ‘And you have to tell me the truth. Doesn’t matter what promises you’ve made.’
‘Yes,’ Rowena says.
‘But you said he didn’t look at you?’ Sarah asks gently.
‘He didn’t. I mean, not to start with. It was Jenny he wanted. He was besotted with her; flirted with her all the time. She didn’t flirt back, got a little irritated I think. But I was always there. And finally he noticed me.’
‘How did that make you feel?’ Sarah asks.
‘Unbelievably lucky.’
For a moment she looks happy and proud.
‘Going back, Rowena,’ Sarah says. ‘You said he’d never touched you in a bad way?’
She nods.
‘Has he ever hurt you? Maybe accidentally? Or…?’
Rowena turns away.
‘Rowena?’
She doesn’t reply.
‘You said to me that someone can have the angel and the devil inside them?’ Sarah says, coaxing. ‘And that your job is to get rid of the devil?’
Rowena turns to face her.
‘It sounds medieval, I know. You could put it a different way, go twenty-first century and talk about multiple personalities, but the cure’s the same, I think. Just love. Loving someone can cast out the devil or make a person mentally well again. If you love them enough.’
‘Has Silas been to visit you here?’ Mohsin asks.
‘No. It’s over between us. A while ago, actually. But even if we were still together, well, he wouldn’t want Mum to see him with me.’
‘Your mum doesn’t like him?’ Sarah asks.
‘No. She wanted me to break it off.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yes. I mean, I didn’t want to upset Mum so much. I don’t think he understood though.’
‘Was it your parents who told the Richmond Post about Silas, after the playground accident?’ Mohsin asks.
‘It was just Mum. Daddy said it wasn’t fair to try and get someone the sack. Not for personal reasons. Said it wasn’t right. But Mummy hates Silas. So she phoned the paper.’
Good for Maisie. Vestiges of the friend I used to know remain intact when it counts. She might not have left Donald but she stood up for her daughter with Silas.
I’m not sure if she knew that her phone call would lead to the bankruptcy of her family. But I think even if she did, she would still have gone ahead.
‘How old were you last summer, when it started?’ Sarah asks.
‘Sixteen. But my birthday’s in August, so I was almost seventeen.’
‘You must have missed him, after you had to break it off?’
Rowena nods, upset.
‘Did he try and get in touch with you again?’
She nods, tears spilling now.
‘Did he ever ask you to do something for him? Something that you knew was wrong?’
‘No, of course not. I mean, Silas wouldn’t do something like that to me. He’s always been kind to me.’
She’s a terrible liar.
A nurse comes in. ‘I need to change her dressings and give her her antibiotics.’
Mohsin stands up. ‘We’ll see you a little later, Rowena, OK?’
Mohsin and Sarah leave.
‘So it’s textbook – abused child goes for abusive partner?’ Mohsin asks.
‘Could stick it up on PowerPoint at the next domestic violence seminar,’ Sarah replies. ‘Some experts think it’s because the abused girl hopes that she can make the abusive partner love her and be kind to her. And that will somehow make amends for her father. She’ll be making her father love her by proxy.’
‘Sounds like bullshit to me,’ Mohsin says. ‘I’ll call the station and get someone down here with the recording equipment. We’ll do it all by Baker’s bloody book.’
Sarah nods.
‘Do you think Silas Hyman asked her to start the fire?’ Mohsin asks.
‘I don’t know. It’s possible but I think it’s more likely that she enabled him to do it. She’s clearly vulnerable to him and I think he’d exploit that. But the same is true of her father. I think both Silas Hyman and Donald White would exploit Rowena for their own ends.’
Penny is hurrying down the corridor towards them.
‘Donald White has been released without charge,’ she says. She sees Sarah’s expression. ‘He has an alibi and a good lawyer. There was nothing we could do to legitimately keep him any longer.’
‘Do you know where he’s gone?’ Sarah asks.
‘No.’
‘And Silas Hyman?’
‘We’re looking at the building sites. Nothing yet.’
So both Donald White and Silas Hyman could be here in the hospital.
I follow Sarah along a glassed-in walkway towards ICU. As I look down to the parched, too-hot garden beneath, I can see Jenny’s blonde head and, beside her, Ivo. From above I watch him move closer towards her. She bends her body towards his.