The History Room (11 page)

I tried to remember whether I’d ever used a laptop in a classroom to access my mail. If I’d left my email open or saved my password it might have been possible for someone to gain
access to my account. The only other school computer I used was the old desktop in the staffroom: a huge old machine that my father kept promising to replace. Usually I just used it to access a
timetable or a term calendar. But just in case, I was going to check.

The staffroom was full of people gulping down final shots of caffeine before afternoon lessons. A shaft of sunlight broke through the casement, illuminating dust motes and exposing the lines on
the faces of those drinking up coffee and marking exercise books. Only Emily’s young face could stand up to the brightness, the beam of light illuminating smooth skin like marble. She sat
apart from the others, flicking through the pages of a magazine. Once again I noticed how, for all her youthful features, her expression had a watchfulness to it unusual for a gap-year student
whose prime concern should surely be saving their small earnings for a night out in Oxford and hoping they’d have enough left at the end of the school year to go travelling in Thailand. She
looked as though she was on guard.

The bell rang. With sighs and stretches people moved towards the door. Emily put down her magazine and watched them, her expression still blank.

‘Don’t forget the rehearsal this afternoon,’ called Jenny Hall, head of drama. ‘I’m relying on you to help, Meredith.’

‘I’ll be there.’ I wondered how Emily was getting on with the repair to the doll’s costume. Perhaps it could make an appearance in the play. I shuddered. Then I
remembered what Tracey had said and what I’d seen for myself on the Delicious Confections website. The dolls were expensive: hundreds of pounds. Would a teenager have that much money or the
credit card necessary to make the purchase? But I thought about the new and expensive hockey sticks and squash rackets, electronic gadgets and laptops that returned with the pupils at the beginning
of term. A reborn doll would present no financial challenge to many of these kids.

Emily followed Jenny out of the staffroom. ‘Do you still want me to come and start measuring up for costumes?’ she asked.

‘Please,’ Jenny replied, as the door closed behind them. Good. Emily was throwing herself into school life. Perhaps involvement would make her seem less awkward.

Deidre was struggling with the computer, glancing at her watch. ‘Blast, I’m late already . . . Where did I see those French verb worksheets?’ She sighed. Finally she found the
fourth-year work she was looking for and managed to print it off. ‘Sorry, Meredith.’ She stood up to reach for the sheets on the printer. ‘I know I’m slow.’ She peered
at them over her spectacles. ‘Damn, I’m two short.’ She scowled at the screen and stabbed at the keyboard. The printer emitted a couple of chuntering moans. ‘Come on, come
on.’ She tapped the mouse again. The printer spewed out two more sheets, each rattle suggesting that its tired old heart was about to give up. ‘Your laptop broken?’

‘Forgot to save something onto the memory stick.’ I gave what I hope was a casual smile and prayed she’d move off.

‘Better dash.’ She gathered up her bag and glasses case. ‘I’ve got 1B. They’re little devils if I’m not in the classroom before them.’

I only had about two minutes before my own second-year class would be waiting for me in the classroom. And if I wasn’t there promptly, they too would be up to mischief.

I started typing in the Delicious Confections website address to see whether the Internet browser would predict it. It didn’t. I checked the Internet history and found no references to the
website. I typed in the address of my webmail account. The box for my password was empty. Nobody had used my account on this computer.

Mumbling a farewell to those teachers remaining in the staffroom I all but ran into the corridor. On the way I almost knocked over Olivia Fenton and Emily, each carrying a net of balls towards
the netball courts. Emily looked startled when she saw me. I must have looked like a madwoman, rushing along at a speed forbidden to the pupils themselves. Olivia pulled down the sleeves of her
saggy games sweatshirt. ‘So we’ll both be doing the play together,’ Emily said. ‘Good.’

Olivia mumbled something in reply. I wanted to stop, to exchange a few words with the girls, but I dared not leave my class unattended a moment longer.

Back in my own office again after my lessons I studied the sheet my father had passed me. It would be easy enough to set up a page like this using a word-processing or publishing program and
make it look like the printout from a real email. I clicked on my email button to find a template I could compare with the printout. A row of neat folders opened up. One of them was simply entitled
‘Hugh’. I felt a temptation I hadn’t given in to for some months. I’d saved all the messages that Hugh had ever sent me from the time we were just boyfriend and girlfriend,
through the run-up to our marriage, and up to the time he’d gone off to Afghanistan. Emails from him from then on had become much rarer but there were still a few, sent when he’d
returned to one of the large bases where there were computers and Internet connections.
Can’t wait to see you . . . Counting the hours . . .
I remembered some of them by heart.

I could feel the pulse beating in my neck. I could delete the messages, remove them from my life so I couldn’t keep coming back to torment myself. But I couldn’t do this. I longed to
send him an email myself now, right this minute. I could button up my pride. I’d phrase it carefully so it didn’t sound needy. A silly anecdote about the dog or something funny that a
pupil had said or done in the classroom. Or perhaps a humorous slant on the discovery of the reborn doll. Those kind of stories used to go down well with Hugh. We’d spent evenings in the
kitchen when he was on leave with him pressing me for my school stories. I tried to tell myself that those times were gone for good. It didn’t work. I needed to know how he was, how he was
getting on with the new leg. His mother had told me they’d had to alter the socket on the prosthesis as the stump was now less swollen.

‘Your trouble is that you don’t like to give up on anything or anyone,’ my sister had told me after they’d scraped me off the courtyard back in the summer.
‘I’m not sure if it’s just stubbornness or a neurotic kink in your genes.’ She hadn’t sounded judgemental, merely sad for me. ‘Sometimes it’s a sign of
strength, Meredith, just to let go, accept you have no control over people. Look at you. You’re a wreck.’

‘You sound just like a self-help book,’ I’d snapped at her, clutching a handkerchief to the bleeding cut on my forehead. ‘He’s my husband. He’s badly injured.
I can’t let go.’ I’d made rabbits’ ears round the last two words.

I started to draft an email to Hugh.
Great excitements here, we’ve had a ‘fake’ stabbed baby found in a cupboard. Macabre or what? We’re all playing Miss Marple. And
would you believe I’m being framed for the ‘murdered’ baby? The White Oak’s still doing decent food and I’ve been down there a few times with some of the teachers . .
.
The words seemed forced, over-cheerful. I could read the exclamation marks even if I hadn’t inserted them.
How is rehab going? I hope the leg is feeling less . . .
Alien?
Strange? Agonizing? My finger still hovered over the
Send
button. I looked at my watch. Time to go back over. I saved the message in
Drafts
.

An afternoon of teaching and then I was going to the rehearsal for
The Crucible
. It was almost a relief to have the decision taken from me. I’d simply ring Delicious Confections and
ask them if they’d delivered the doll and who had paid for it. They’d probably be reluctant to give much away, citing data protection.

I dashed back to the main school for my afternoon lessons. When the bell went at four I made my way across the gardens to the gym, built at the same time as the boarding houses on the site of an
old farm building. My father had chosen the architect with care and had made many suggestions himself. Although he’d always preferred paint to any other medium, he had an eye for structure
and space. As I often did, I admired the building’s clean lines. They’d used plenty of glass and wood in the construction, as well as local Oxford brick and Cotswold stone, and the
effect was graceful; the structure blending into the trees around it and reflecting the pearlescent late-afternoon light. Even the teenage boys racing towards it for basketball practice or PE
sometimes seemed to lift their heads briefly to admire the building’s soaring beams. I remembered the strain that the building programme had placed on my father. He’d managed most of
the project himself. Perhaps that was why he’d responded with such anger to my defacement of the mural.

I hadn’t been to a full rehearsal before. When I opened the gym door a crowd of students from across the school was talking and laughing. A tall handsome sixth-former leaned against the
gym wall, watching proceedings with a cool gaze.

‘He’s going to be John Proctor,’ I heard two girls whisper. ‘The hero. He gets hanged at the end.’ The awe in their tones was palpable. The sixth-former gave a
brief grin, remembered that signs of enthusiasm were only for kids, and immediately resettled his features back into non-committal coolness. The girls nudged one another.

My knowledge of
The Crucible
was hazy – I’d read the play during the summer holidays when Jenny Hall had first asked me to help, but had never taught it in class. I’d
rented a DVD of a recent film version and had watched some of it. John Proctor, fighting for truth and justice, seemed well cast.

Olivia Fenton hovered at the back of the hall by herself, clutching a script. She’d be too young for a major role, only a second-year. Good that she was taking part, though. Drama could be
just the thing for shy teenagers, allowing them to be someone else for precious hours at a time.

Jenny Hall clapped her hands. ‘Stop talking now, please, everyone. And listen. We haven’t got much time.’

The gym door opened and Emily came in, carrying a sewing basket. She gave me a brief nod and went to stand beside Olivia, listening intently to Jenny as she explained what would be expected of
the cast and backstage members over the weeks to come.

‘Christmas concerts and other activities will inevitably interrupt us, so I want this play to be almost ready by the first week after half-term. Many of you had your parts before the
summer holidays and you should know most of your lines. Those of you who have joined us since September have promised to throw themselves into learning their parts. The performances will be in the
second week of December. There’s a lot to get through in not much time.’ She described the schedule in more detail and my mind drifted.

‘You look as though you’re thinking deep thoughts.’

I hadn’t heard Emily glide across the floor towards me and I jumped. ‘Just daydreaming. End of a long day.’

Her expression was unreadable. ‘Did you find out anything more about the reborn doll, Meredith?’

‘Not really.’ Not quite the truth, but there was no way I was being lured into the subject of the forged order in my name, not with a group of teenagers standing round us. I wondered
whether she knew about the forgery and hoped she wouldn’t ask me anything else.

‘The teachers here really care about the kids, don’t they?’ She was watching the group around Jenny.

‘I hope so.’

‘There does seem to be a culture of staff supporting other staff too.’ She sounded curiously flat as she issued this praise, as though she were reading from a job specification or
human resources website.

‘That’s what Dad has always worked for, yes.’

‘And yet sometimes there must be cases where your father has to let people go.’

I looked at her in surprise. ‘It doesn’t happen very often.’ Was she worried that she’d fail to live up to some imagined standard for a gappy?

‘It must be awful to be sacked from a job at somewhere like Letchford. You’d feel so humiliated.’ She sat down on the bench beside me and opened the basket to extract a tape
measure.

‘I suppose you would.’ I tried to remember any teachers who’d been asked to leave and couldn’t think of any. Dad and his heads of department generally chose well. Emily
closed the sewing basket. On the top the initials
N.E.C.
were embroidered. Perhaps it had belonged to her mother. I was about to ask her if things were going well for her when one of the
girls dropped a mobile phone on the ground. ‘Sorry.’ She gave an apologetic grin.

‘Please put phones in bags at rehearsals. And turn them off.’ Jenny looked up from her notes, frowning. ‘We’ll read through the first scenes. If you’re in the first
act you need to stay. Otherwise go over to Emily to be measured for your costumes.’ They shuffled into position.

‘Tell us about your characters,’ Jenny said to those standing by the stage. ‘Sum them up in a few sentences before we start reading. Let’s start with . . .’ –
she turned to Olivia first – ‘Mary Warren. Who is she?’

‘She’s a servant girl, working for the main protagonist. She’s treated as a bit of a silly little girl who’s even told what time to go to bed.’ Olivia raised her
head, seeming to gain confidence as she spoke. ‘They push her around a bit. She’s made to appear weak. But I think she’s misunderstood.’

‘She gets me executed in the end.’ The sixth-former playing John Proctor crossed his arms. ‘Because she loses her nerve.’

‘She’s a victim of the male-dominated society of Salem in the seventeenth century,’ Olivia went on, paying him no attention. ‘Why should she do anything to help them save
themselves? She owes them nothing.’ She stuck her chin out. I cheered her silently.

‘You’ve all been doing some research,’ Jenny said. ‘Well done, Olivia.’

‘It’s interesting. I liked reading about it.’ She flushed.

‘Women had their place back then,’ put in the sixth-form boy. Another boy nudged him and laughed.

‘I suppose you think they should still just be slapped around.’ Olivia sounded more assertive than I could ever have imagined.