The Broken (26 page)

I sit at a table with Maman and Auntie Valerie and Uncle Michel and she asks me about my school and my life and which subjects I like, and every now and then she breaks off to talk in French with the others and it’s so RUDE my blood BOILS (see, Maman, how good I’ve become at those clichéd British sayings you always loved?). She tells me I look well, but she doesn’t quite look at me while she says it. Instead her eyes slide off my face as if it’s made from ice.

I look at her, though. Her face is so thin it makes her blue eyes look huge, the irises round like water balloons. I imagine taking a pin and popping them.

21

The head had assured him he had everyone’s support, but still as he walked about the school, Josh felt as if he was being judged. He’d stopped going into the staff room, imagining what the other teachers and admin staff might be thinking.
Mud sticks
, as his mother had often said. Most days now, he brought sandwiches to school, hastily prepared affairs soggy with mayo, and spent lunchtime at his desk in his form room as he was doing now, pretending to plan lessons but often just staring out of the window.

After his initial euphoria about the new baby, he now found himself beset by doubt. If Hannah had to take time off, the financial pressure would fall completely on him. Was he up to it? And what if the disciplinary hearing went against him? His insides turned to liquid as they always did when he thought about what had happened.

It was weeks now since he’d been called out of one of his classes and ushered in to see the head. The only other time he’d been summoned like this was to be told he hadn’t got the Head of Department promotion, and for a wild moment he’d thought maybe the head was going to say he’d made a mistake and Josh really was the best candidate for the job. But when the head’s PA wouldn’t meet his eyes, he knew it was bad news.

‘I’m sorry to tell you there’s been an allegation made against you, Josh.’ The head hadn’t bothered with small talk. ‘A very serious allegation.’

The head wasn’t allowed to give him the details of the allegation, only to say it involved ‘inappropriate behaviour’. Only later would he find out through the school grapevine that one of his Year Eleven pupils, Kelly Kavanagh, had accused him of ‘touching’ her while they were alone in the classroom between the end of one class and the start of the next. But even just the sketchy details the head was able to provide were enough to make him feel he might be sick, right there on the head’s orderly desk.

Afterwards everyone had privately rallied around him. It was well known that Kelly Kavanagh would say anything for attention; she had form on making accusations against staff. There was that teaching assistant and the allegation of a slap around the face, the other staff members reminded him. Kelly had later withdrawn her allegation, but by then the teaching assistant had been so traumatized she’d had to go on long-term sick leave, and had never returned. Josh had had a recent run-in with Kelly over a test where he knew she’d copied her answers from the person in front, so she had clear motivation. He knew that was why the decision had been made not to suspend him while the investigation into the allegation was underway, although the head had warned him never to put himself in a position where he was on his own in a classroom with a pupil. But still, there was always that faint chance, wasn’t there, that he wouldn’t be believed? Since the Jimmy Savile scandal, everyone was scared of missing something, scared of being the one who failed to listen.

Josh had been intending to tell Hannah about the allegation and the investigation for ages, but it had never been the right time. It seemed at the moment that she was perpetually disappointed in him. He longed to bring her some good news, something to make her proud of him the way she used to be, not more shit to heap on top of all the other shit that was going on. And now that she was pregnant, coming clean seemed more impossible still. He was supposed to be the provider, and yet all he was providing was yet more problems.

Weirdly, the only person he’d really confided in was Sienna. He hadn’t intended to at all. He’d called Dan about football one evening, and Sienna had answered. Dan was at the gym and had left his phone on charge. Josh still couldn’t quite work out how it had happened, but Sienna had been so easy to talk to, and suddenly he’d been telling her about what was going on – opening up to her in a way he wasn’t able to do with his own wife. She had a way of listening without passing judgement as Hannah would have done, or trying to minimize what he was going through as Dan might have attempted.

‘Hello, stranger.’

Pat Hennessey’s ginger hair seemed more orange than ever today. Funny how other days it could seem almost blond. Unlike Hannah’s, which was always red.

Josh was relieved to see him. It seemed like years since he’d talked to someone who wasn’t having some sort of crisis. Pat was so reassuringly uncomplicated.

‘I’m lying low, as you can see,’ he admitted.

‘Not because of that thing with Kelly Kavanagh, surely? You know none of us believes a word of it.’

Josh nodded. ‘Thanks. I do know that, but it’s still good to hear. It’s just my own stupid paranoia. I hate this bit of the job. Plus we’ve got this situation going on at home where a couple we’re very good friends with have split up and it’s all got very messy very quickly and we’re kind of caught in the middle, even Lily.’

He had a brief vision of Lily’s arm, teethmarks stamped into the flesh like branding on a piece of steak.

‘Ouch,’ said Pat, who had by now come into the room and was leaning against a table at the front of the classroom. ‘That’s tough. The same thing happened when one of my sisters got divorced from the guy who’d been her childhood sweetheart. We’d all known him for years – he was like another brother to us. When they first split up we were all so sure we could stay friends with him, but you know, you can’t reason with love, and you especially can’t reason with love gone wrong.’

Josh sighed. ‘The problem is, we’re so involved now, it’s proving really hard to extricate ourselves. We just wish—’

His sentence was interrupted by the sound of his own ringtone. He’d switched his phone on for once at the beginning of the lunch break, just in case Hannah had been trying to call him. She’d been so down last night, hardly able to raise her head up when he’d come back through the door after taking Sasha home. Now that had been an awkward journey. Sasha had been hysterical, sobbing about how no one believed her and she had no one and she didn’t understand why everyone had deserted her. He’d been so relieved when Katia came to the door of the house, he’d practically thrust Sasha at her and scuttled straight back to the car, calling something over his shoulder about needing to get back. When he’d arrived back home, desperate to talk over the bizarre events of the day, he’d found Hannah droop-headed and uncommunicative.

He snatched up his phone without looking at the caller display, mouthing ‘Sorry’ to Pat as he did so. But instead of Hannah’s voice, it was Dan, in a belligerent mood.

‘Right, Josh. This has gone too far now. First September and Lily have that set-to.’ Josh winced. ‘And now Sasha’s fucking bitch of a solicitor has got on to my solicitor to say
her client
has been assaulted and is considering pressing charges. Against
me
! She has totally lost it now, and I can’t stand by and see September suffer any more. I need you and Hannah to make a written statement for my lawyer.’

‘What?’ Josh glanced up and was startled to meet Pat Hennessey’s eyes. He hadn’t realized the other man was still in the room. He put his hand over his phone and angled it away from his mouth. ‘Sorry, Pat,’ he whispered. ‘This is going to take a while.’

The other man blushed, turning the skin around his freckles pink. ‘No problem,’ he mouthed, heading for the door with a brief wave.

Josh felt a tug of guilt. He liked Pat, but it seemed as if he was constantly turning him away. He turned back to the phone. ‘What do you mean, written statement? Written statement saying what?’

‘What do you think? That Sasha is unfit to be in charge of a young child. Just the stuff you already said in that email where you told me about the happy pills. I’m not asking you to lie, just tell the truth about what’s been going on. I need written evidence so that I can start looking after September properly. Come on, you know it’s the right thing to do. How would you feel if it was Hannah out of control and Lily at risk?’

But Josh couldn’t imagine Hannah out of control, although he couldn’t say that to Dan. His stomach felt tight and uncomfortable. He wished he’d checked who was calling before taking the call.

‘We can’t put anything in writing,’ he said, and his added
mate
sounded contrived and false – which it was. ‘We told you right at the start that we wouldn’t take sides.’

‘Yes, but that was before. Look, Josh, you have to help me. I’d do it for you in a heartbeat.’

The tightness in his stomach worsened. There was something in Dan’s voice he didn’t like, a kind of wildness or desperation he hadn’t heard before.

‘I can’t, Dan. You’re putting me in an impossible position. I want to help you, but I just can’t.’

There was a silence then. The kind of loaded silence that makes you dig your fingers into the palms of your hands and pray for it to be over.

‘Thanks, Josh. Thanks a lot.’

‘Look, I’m sorry.’

‘Yeah, sure. We’re all fucking sorry.’

After the phone clicked off, Josh sat with it in his hand, until the Year Tens started trickling in for afternoon registration.

‘You trying to hatch that, Sir?’ asked Jake Eldridge.

Josh swallowed hard and got on with the afternoon.

When Josh got home, Hannah was finally in the mood to talk. She was sitting at the table sorting through Lily’s school bag, which she did every Friday. Amazing the amount of stuff one small girl could accumulate over the course of a week – drawings on rough paper with printed writing on the back, collages made from dried pasta covered with glitter and glue, notes from the nursery staff about the upcoming inset day. While she sifted through, Hannah quizzed him about what he thought of Sasha’s bizarre claims yesterday. Josh was surprised to find he’d almost forgotten about the whole escalator story.

‘It’s typical Sasha,’ he said. ‘She couldn’t deal with the fact that someone else was in the limelight for once, that it wasn’t all about her. Think about it: not only are you pregnant and she didn’t even know about it, but your daughter had just been badly hurt. She was looking for attention.’

‘And how do you explain that mark on her leg?’

‘That could be anything. Or maybe she really did trip on the escalator and decided to concoct this whole story around it. Maybe she really is crazy enough to think we’ll believe that Dan is following her around Brent Cross, trying to bump her off.’

Hannah sighed. She was looking through a pile of rough paper with scribbles on she’d taken from Lily’s bag, and started smoothing out a picture Lily had drawn of a house, complete with chimney and smoke and a neat front path. ‘Well, what do we do? If she really is cracking up, shouldn’t we talk to someone about it? Mrs Mackenzie, maybe?’

Josh shook his head. ‘We don’t get involved, remember? Neutral? . . . Hannah?’ Now he was staring at her with concern. ‘What’s up? Darling?’

But Hannah didn’t answer him. She was staring down at the piece of paper in front of her, one from the stack she’d removed from Lily’s bag, and all the colour seemed to leach out of her face as he watched. Josh went over to stand next to her and followed her gaze.

In place of the normal childish drawings on the other sheets of rough paper, there was a message scrawled across the page in capital letters in angry red felt pen.

YOU ARE NOT IMMUNE

Long after Hannah had gone to bed, Josh remained in the living room looking at the note on his lap. They’d asked Lily if she knew how it had got there, but she didn’t understand what they were talking about. ‘What’s it say?’ she’d wanted to know. ‘Oh, nothing really.’ And in truth, what
did
it say?

Hannah had wanted to call the police. The fact that someone had put a note in their daughter’s backpack felt grotesque. If they could get to Lily’s backpack while she was supposedly safe at school, didn’t it stand to reason that they could get to her, too?

And yet, really, what did the note say? It wasn’t threatening. It didn’t mention anyone by name. It might even have been meant for someone else, or have been brought in by mistake by whoever had donated the rough paper to school. Josh was sure the police wouldn’t be able to do much.

Hannah said she’d go into school first thing on Monday to quiz the staff about how the note could have got into Lily’s bag. The trouble was that as the grand sorting-out of the bag was only done weekly, there was no way of knowing what day it had been put in there.

Josh felt a tidal wave of inadequacy sweep over him at his failure to keep his family safe. His wife was walking around like a ghost, and now his daughter was exposed to God knew what potential danger. What was wrong with him that he couldn’t provide the security they both needed?

Hannah had been unnerved when he told her about the conversation with Dan about writing a formal statement for his lawyer, and said that Sasha had asked her a similar favour just a few days before. ‘But we have to keep neutral. We can’t get drawn in.’

‘Don’t worry, that’s what I told him.’

But still she’d seemed anxious, and when he’d tried to put his arms around her to comfort her, she’d jumped up almost immediately. Later, while they were watching a mindless Friday-night chat show, she’d asked him, ‘Are we doing the right thing by keeping this baby? Maybe it’s not the right time.’

‘Don’t say that. This is the most positive thing to happen in our lives for ages. It’s a fresh start. This is about us, and Lily. Our family.’

But now he found the weight of responsibility hanging on him very heavily indeed. How could he protect this new life if he couldn’t even protect himself from the likes of Kelly Kavanagh? Just thinking about her and her allegation brought a sick taste to his mouth. He ought to tell Hannah. He knew that the secret he was keeping was a part of the barrier that was building between them. But he couldn’t find the words. He’d wait until the investigation was over and he’d been formally cleared, and then he’d let her know.