Rosamund Lupton - Afterwards

‘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.