Rosamund Lupton - Afterwards

‘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.