Ann Cleeves - The Sleeping and the Dead

He had taught them Latin for O level. At the time Hannah had thought of him as middle-aged, verging on the elderly, but he could hardly have been more than thirty. Now that she had fixed him in her memory she thought his appearance had hardly changed over the years. She remembered those lessons as restful occasions. A quiet sunny classroom. Mr Spence’s voice a drone in the background as they plodded through Virgil and Caesar’s Civil Wars . And he had been involved in the school play. That was what the flash of memory had been about.

‘But you couldn’t stand him,’ Hannah said.

Sally had never liked drama and had hated the Latin lessons. She’d never got to grips with the grammar. Spence had been quietly but menacingly sarcastic.

She grinned. ‘He couldn’t stand me either. He hated teaching. I mean, he didn’t mind fiddling round with the theatre club but standing in front of a class all day was a nightmare. Food’s always been his real passion. You wouldn’t recognize him in the kitchen. When his mum died she left him a house and a bit of money. It gave him enough to set up this place. It’s been an exciting project for us both.’

Rosie had been watching the conversation with interest. Perhaps she was wondering what it would be like to get involved with a teacher much older than her. A bit close to home.

‘Why did you call him spooky?’ It wasn’t a tactful contribution, but again Sally didn’t take offence.

‘It was his way of appearing beside you without warning. Apparently out of thin air. When you least needed it. Like when you’d just lit a fag behind the changing rooms. Or you were planning to mitch off early before his lesson.’ She grinned again at Rosie. ‘Not that your mother ever did anything like that. Hannah Meek was the biggest swat in the school.’

Hannah didn’t say that she remembered things rather differently. They’d called Roger spooky because of the way he looked at them. At the hems of their skirts which were still very short at the time, at the shirts bursting at the buttons over newly formed chests. There were stories that he’d been caught staring through the gym window at third-form gymnasts, at the girls in their knickers and airtex vests doing straddle jumps on the box and cartwheels on the beam.

Sally didn’t go with them to the school for the reunion. She said she’d meet them there. She had to nip back to town. It was work. The editor was away and there was a press conference she needed to cover. Again Hannah felt she was making her work sound grander than it was.

Still, she was pleased to go in on her own, with only Rosie to keep her company. Sally would have rushed round introducing her to everyone, and she wanted a moment of anonymity. She wanted to stand just inside the door and look for Michael. She had dreamt that he would be there. If she was honest with herself, that was what the trip had been all about from the start. Michael was what had kept her away from the town for all those years and now it was Michael who had brought her back. When Roger dropped them off at the school – it seemed that he was too busy to attend the party – the futility of the venture hit her. She was embarrassed that she had allowed her fantasy to develop this far.

Michael Grey had come to the school when Hannah was in the lower sixth. He was a year older than the rest of them but for some reason had been placed in their year. She remembered having been given a number of reasons for that – he had been living abroad, had been ill, there had been a family problem. Still she didn’t know which, if any, of them had been true. Certainly he hadn’t been asked to retake the year because he was thick. He was quick and conscientious and the teachers loved him. He was doing art, English and biology, but art was his thing. He noticed the way things and people looked. She remembered the big, battered portfolio he used to cart around, the way he always had a smear of paint on his face.

So she collected her name badge, stood just inside the door and looked around. He wasn’t in the room. She saw that immediately. Even after nearly thirty years she would have recognized him. She didn’t think that was self-delusion. She would have stood there longer, but Rosie gave her a shove in the back.

‘Go on then,’ she said. ‘Do the business.’

It turned out to be easier than Hannah had expected. Sally still hadn’t arrived but Hannah was greeted by people who knew her, who were pleasant enough to say that she’d hardly changed. The name badges were in sufficiently large print to allow the possibility that this was a kind fiction, that they remembered the face only after reading her name, but soon she felt less nervous.

This hall was newly built when she was at school. Previously the dining hall had been used for everything. For the first time the students had somewhere for assembly and drama that didn’t smell of school dinners. She recalled her first speech day there. Some sixth-form boys always ran a book on the length of the headmaster’s lecture. Parents were invited and when Hannah won a prize for English her mother had turned up. Her husband had just died and people were still talking about it so it was a brave thing for her to do, but she was the only woman to be wearing a hat and Hannah wished that she’d stayed away.

The new hall was where school plays were performed. In Hannah’s final year, Michael was Macbeth. He looked like a Viking warrior with his long white hair and papier-mâché armour. Jenny Graves was Lady Macbeth. People said she was very good, but Hannah had been prompting and too busy following every line to notice individual performances. What she did remember was the knife, because she’d helped with props too. She didn’t know where Mr Westcott had found it, but it was seriously sharp. One of the first years was messing around and cut herself. Hannah thought that nowadays, when everyone was so conscious of health and safety, it wouldn’t be allowed.

Once she’d persuaded herself that of course it would have been impossible for Michael to be there, Hannah even started to enjoy herself. At first the music was far too loud for sensible conversation but someone persuaded the disc jockey to turn it down. She could catch up on news of people who had once been close friends. No one mentioned her father. She supposed, even in a town as small as this, that had been forgotten long ago.

She was talking to Paul Lord when Sally arrived. Hannah saw her from the corner of her eye, but continued the conversation. In school Paul had been something of a figure of fun – a spotty scientist, too conventional for his age, more conventional even than her. He had become rather handsome. Certainly he was married. He mentioned a wife and child. It seemed he had his own business and was doing rather well.

‘What happened to that blond lad you used to knock around with?’ he said suddenly. ‘Did he go away to art school in the end, or did he settle for university?’

Hannah said calmly that she had no idea. Then Sally interrupted them quite rudely, taking Hannah’s arm and dragging her away. Something had excited her. She could hardly contain herself. But she kept her face serious.

‘There’s something you have to know.’

‘What is it?’

She turned everything into a drama. Hannah was expecting a piece of local gossip. Someone had run away with someone else’s wife. She should know not to mention it in front of the people involved.

‘The body in the lake,’ Sally said.

Hannah must have looked at her stupidly. It wasn’t at all what she was expecting.

‘You had heard that they’d found a body in the lake?’

Hannah remembered a snatch of a radio report. ‘Yes. It came to light because the water level’s so low.’

‘That was what the press conference was about. The police have got a positive ID at last. Dental records or something. It’s too horrible to think about.’ She shivered theatrically. ‘It’s Michael Grey. He’d been down there for nearly thirty years.’