The Fallout (20 page)

“I told the security guards,” Sasha said. “They wanted me to wait until the police arrived but I just wanted to come home. They took a statement, though, and they said they're going to look at security footage, so maybe they'll catch someone.”

Hannah glanced over at Josh to see what he was making of it all. Their eyes met, and he gave a slight, almost imperceptible, shake of the head.

“I think I'd better take you home, Sasha,” he said gently, disengaging himself from Lily.

“But I don't want to go home. I'm scared.”

“You must go home, for September's sake,” said Hannah. “Today can't have been easy for her, either.”

“Let's not get into that again, please,” Sasha begged. “The school overreacted. You know what they're like.”

Hannah dug her nails into her palm and forced herself to take a deep breath.

“I'm taking you home, Sasha,” Josh repeated, and this time there was no hint of a question.

“Hans?” Sasha appealed directly to Hannah now. “You've got to help me. I feel like I'm going crazy. Someone pushed me on that escalator. I swear it. Please believe me.”

Hannah dropped her gaze.

“Sasha. I'm sorry, but I'm really tired. It's been an emotional day. Why don't you go home and be with September. I'll call you when I've had a bit of time to think about things. Maybe after we've been away.”

“Away?”

“We're going to visit my mum for a couple of days. At the end of next week, probably. Tell her about the baby.”

Sasha stared at her as if she'd been physically slapped.

“Why are you doing this?” she said. “Why are you cutting me out? Is it because I'm not a family anymore? Am I no use to you now that I'm not part of a cozy couple?”

“Let's go, Sasha.” Josh put a hand under Sasha's elbow and maneuvered her out through the door, picking up her coat as they went.

Hannah listened as Sasha's sobs outside the window grew fainter and then died away altogether.

Then she listened to the silence.

Eloise, age fifteen

Daddy's funeral is the first time I've seen Maman in nearly two years. I can't believe I ever used to think her beautiful. Her skin is yellow and seems to have shriveled up, wrapping itself around her bones like old cling film. One of Juliette's dogs got ill last summer and its eyes were covered over in a disgusting kind of milky stuff and that's what Maman's are like, too. Like she's staring out through a film of muck. Auntie Valerie and Uncle Michel are with her, supporting her between them as if she was made of glass. Fiona and Hugh, Juliette's mum and dad, dropped me off at the church. They've been so nice to me—looking after me over the holidays and telling me to treat their house like my own home. Of course you can never really feel at home in someone else's family. But it's good of them to say it. Sometimes I wonder what they would say if they found out what I'm really like—if they reached a hand deep inside me, inside Eloise, and scooped out a handful of Lucie instead.

Maman comes over and kisses me on both cheeks. Her lips feel dry, like toast. Juliette's older sister is on a raw-food diet and puts all her food in a dehumidifier to take out the water. I think Maman has been dehumidified, all her moisture sucked out. The service is long and dull. I wonder if Eloise will be mentioned but the vicar only talks vaguely about “family tragedies.”

Afterward we go back to the house. I haven't been here in so long I've forgotten how it feels, even though it used to be home. Home is where the heart is, hey, Maman? Daddy used to come to school to see me, or sometimes to Juliette's home. Twice we went away just the two of us—once to Paris, once to Barcelona. Daddy didn't like talking about feelings. He once told me that's why they're called feelings, because you feel them, not because you speak them or hear them or see them. I think I know what he meant. He told me that what happened to Eloise sent something askew in Maman's brain. Well, not just that, but that was the thing that sent her over the edge. The straw that broke the camel's back! He said she loved me really but we both knew he was lying.

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 like 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.

Chapter 21

The head teacher had assured him he had everyone's support, but still as he walked around 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. “No smoke without fire,” as his mother had often said. Most days he brought sandwiches to school, hastily prepared affairs soggy with mayo, and spent lunchtimes at his desk in his classroom as he was doing now, pretending to mark books, but often just staring out 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 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 the allegation.

It had been 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 promotion, and for a wild moment he'd thought maybe they'd changed their minds and might offer him the position. But when the Head's personal assistant 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.” They 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 behavior”—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 another—but even just the sketchy outline was enough to make him feel he might be sick, right there on his superior's orderly desk.

Afterward everyone had privately rallied around him. It was well known that Kelly Kavanagh would say anything for attention. She'd made many accusations against staff. There was that teaching assistant and the allegation of a slap to 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 stress 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 of her, so she had clear motivation. He knew that was why the decision had been made not to suspend him while the investigation 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. Josh had been intending to tell Hannah about the allegation and the investigation for ages, but the time was never right. She seemed so 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 the rest. 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 more problems.

Weirdly, the only person he'd 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 to charge. Josh still couldn't quite work out how it had happened, but Sienna was 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 judgment 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 some 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 undergoing some sort of crisis. Pat was so reassuringly uncomplicated.

“I'm laying 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 part 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 gotten very messy very quickly. We're kind of caught in the middle, even Lily.”

He had a brief flash of Lily's arm, teeth marks stamped into the flesh like branding on a piece of steak.

“Ouch,” said Pat, who by now had come in 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 hard to extricate ourselves. We just wish...”

His sentence was interrupted by the sound of his own ringtone. He'd switched his phone on at the beginning of lunch break, just in case Hannah tried to call him. She'd been so down last night, hardly able to raise her head when he'd come back from taking Sasha home—a horribly awkward journey that ended in him practically pushing an all but hysterical Sasha into Katia's arms at the door.

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, he found a belligerent Dan.

“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 contacted 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 anymore. I need you and Hannah to prepare 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 said, 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 saying what?”

“What do you think? That Sasha is unfit to be in charge of a young child. The same stuff you said in that email where you told me about the happy pills. I'm asking you to 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?”

Josh couldn't imagine Hannah out of control, although he wasn't about to say that to Dan. His stomach felt tight and uncomfortable, and he wished he'd checked who was calling before answering.

“We can't put anything in writing...mate,” he said, the moniker sounding contrived and false—which it was. “We told you right at the start that we wouldn't take sides.”

“Yes, but that was before. 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, mate. Thanks a fucking 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 attendance.

“You trying to hatch that, sir?” asked Jake Schofield.

Josh swallowed the knotted mass that was stuck in his throat and got on with the afternoon.

* * *

When he got home, Hannah was finally in the mood for talking. She was sitting at the table sorting through Lily's school bag, a Friday ritual. Amazing the amount of stuff one small girl could accumulate over the course of a week at school—drawings on scrap paper with printing on the back, collages made from dried pasta covered with glitter and glue, notes from preschool staff about upcoming events. While she sifted through, Hannah quizzed him about what he thought of Sasha's bizarre 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.”

“And how do you explain that mark on her leg?”

“That could be anything, Hannah. Maybe she really did trip on the escalator and decided to concoct a story around it. Maybe she really is bonkers enough to think we'll believe Dan is following her around Brent Cross.”

Hannah sighed. She was looking through a pile of papers with Lily's scribbles on them, and was smoothing out a picture she'd drawn of what looked like a house, although it could just as easily have been a car.

“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?” He peered 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 it was as if all the color leached out of her face at once as he watched. Josh went over to stand next to her, and then something visceral inside him came gushing to the surface.

The paper was like all the others, but in place of the normal childish drawings, 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. 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 asked.

“Oh, nothing really.” And in truth, what
did
it say?

Hannah had been in favor of calling 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 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 could even be argued that it might have been meant for someone else, or might have been brought in by mistake by whoever had donated the scrap paper to the school. Josh was sure there wasn't much the police would be able to do.

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

Josh felt a tidal wave of inadequacy sweep over him at his inability to keep his daughter safe. His wife was walking around like a ghost, and now his daughter was exposed to God knows 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 when he'd asked for a formal statement for his lawyer, revealing that Sasha had made a similar request just a few days before.

“But we have to stay neutral. We can't get drawn in,” she insisted.

“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 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, keeping this baby? Maybe it's a bad time.”

“Don't say that. This is the most positive thing to happen in our lives for a while. It's a new beginning. 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 Kelly Kavanagh and the like? Just thinking about her and her allegation brought a sick taste back into his mouth. He ought to tell Hannah. He knew that the secrets he was keeping were a part of the barrier 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.

Now Kelly Kavanagh was in his head, he couldn't get her out. She was a heavyset girl of fifteen. One of those—there were a few every year—who'd developed months, even years, ahead of her peers, and had spent the first years of secondary school sitting in assembly looking like a freakish adult in a sea of children, her back rounded, arms permanently wrapped around her burgeoning chest. There'd been older siblings before her, three or four as far as he could remember. All with that same slack-jawed stare. It was ludicrous, what she was suggesting he did in the thirty-second gap between the end of one class and the beginning of the next, while he kept her behind to explain that she would fail her course if she didn't hand in her rewrite. That he would put his hand...there...with people passing the classroom and the door ajar...