Google. Of course.
* * *
Two minutes later, I am standing at Jez and Suzy’s door, ringing the bell. No answer. Jez must still be in Muswell Hill with the twins.
I twiddle the spare keys to their house in my hand, wondering what to do. Suzy’s mobile is going straight to voice mail, which means she must be in the ice rink with it turned off.
Would she mind? It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve let myself in to borrow the computer if I’ve needed to book a ticket to Dad’s or something. It would be the first time I’ve done it without asking first, though.
Hmm.
I stare at the front door. It was Suzy who told me to chase Debs up with the police, after all.
OK. Grimacing with uneasiness, I slot the key in the lock and pop my head round to check there is no one inside.
So they’re both out. I’m sure in the circumstances they wouldn’t mind.
Still tiptoeing, I pad up the two flights of stairs to Jez’s study, open the door, and walk across the carpet to the computer. It smells of him. The faint fragrance of something expensive that he uses when he shaves. Goose bumps break out all over my body. I push back into the worn leather, allowing myself just for a second to imagine that the soft leather encasing my body is him.
The computer is on. Gingerly, I reach out and type “Deborah Ribwell, teacher,” into Google.
It takes me a minute to realize what I’m looking at. It’s a news story repeated by all the national newspapers in various forms.
February this year, it says. Four months ago.
My eyes drop to the headline:
HACKNEY TEACHER GUILTY OF COMMON ASSAULT
And there. There is Debs’s name. In the online archives of a local newspaper.
18 February
A Hackney schoolteacher today pleaded guilty to a charge of common assault against a minor at Hackney Magistrates’ Court.
My mouth drops open.
Deborah Ribwell, an English teacher at Queenstock Academy, admitted to striking a 15-year-old student, known as Child D, twice in the face in Victoria Park on December 10 last year. Sentencing was suspended in order for Mrs. Ribwell’s solicitor to present a plea of mitigation. The case continues . . .
A door bangs outside, making me jump. I stand up and look out the attic window to see Debs slamming her next-door neighbor’s gate.
She marches out onto the pavement, across the road and up to my front door.
“What the . . . ?” I whisper.
“Callie!” she shrieks, banging on my door. “Callie!” She bangs over and over, pushing the doorbell three or four times.
I sink back from the window so she can’t see me, and keep watching. When no one answers, she turns back to the gate with this wild look on her face.
“AAAAAAAARGH!” she screams, banging the gate behind her, and marches off up Churchill Road.
Oh my God. Suzy was right—she’s crazy.
Is that why Rae fell in the road? What if Debs lost her temper at Rae—for running down the street without her on the way home from after-school?
And hit her?
* * *
Horrified, I return to the computer to read the rest of the news reports only to see a small instant message has popped into the middle of the screen.
Where did that come from?
Curious, I read it.
“U there . . . ???” it says.
I look around, awkwardly, as if the writer can see me. Whoever sent it must know that Jez’s computer has gone online. There is no signature on it but then I see the messaging address on top of the note. “SassySasha,” it says.
I wait but nothing happens.
A note for Jez. From SassySasha.
Wondering if he is here.
Trying to ignore the uneasy feeling it gives me, I scroll down to read the next report from the newspaper. I am just hitting the link when my phone rings. I answer it without looking, assuming it is Suzy.
“Hey?” I say, answering. “Where were you? I couldn’t get through. Listen, you won’t believe this but . . .”
“Callie?” The voice is familiar, but I can’t place it.
“Yes?”
“It’s Caroline here, Hannah’s mummy.”
“Oh—hi,” I say, surprised. “Is everything OK?”
“Sorry, Callie. Not really. I’m afraid Henry is, well, acting up a little. He pushed another little boy over on the ice. Quite hard. I’m afraid I just don’t have time to deal with it. I’ve tried Suzy but her phone’s off. Is Rae well enough for you to come and pick him up?”
“Sorry, Caroline, what did you say about Rae?”
“Has Suzy dropped her off with you?”
“No.” I stand up and look out the window again to see if they’ve just arrived, but nothing. Suzy’s car is not on the road, either. “Sorry, why would she? Sorry, Caroline, I don’t understand.”
“Oh. That’s odd. Suzy took Rae straight home when she dropped Henry off. She said Rae was unwell. I’m sorry, I just assumed she was bringing her back to you.”
Frantically, I check my watch. They’ve been gone half an hour. Where are they?
“Caroline, what sort of unwell? Was she breathing funny?” I bark.
“No, no. Callie, really, I thought she looked fine, actually. I was a bit confused why Suzy was taking her home, to be honest. Listen, don’t worry about it. I’ll keep Henry here till I hear from . . .”
But I am not listening anymore. I am running down the stairs.
The rain was coming down heavily. As Debs reached the palace, she wiped her glasses, only for them to steam up again the second she replaced them on her nose.
Panting, she began her search. Everywhere she could think of, she looked: in the car park outside the ice rink, the grass areas beside it and along the walkway in front of the palace. She even went into the ice rink and peered through the tall glass doors, but there was no sign of Rae’s mousy blond curls in the whirl of children circling the rink. She ran to the back of the palace next, and scouted around the playground, which was emptying rapidly of parents and children, disappearing in a flurry of wellies and wet coats as the downpour persevered.
“Where are they?” Debs muttered.
She completed one circuit of the duck pond, but the only movement there was rain smashing into it, throwing muddy water back up in the air. Then the skateboard park with its slick, silent ramps. Nothing.
Everywhere was empty. The palace was like that. One minute teeming with life; the next, a rolling empty park, dotted with shadowy corners and menacing gaps between bushes, and blind bends and hills with who knew what over the ridge, all of it uncomfortably far from the eyes of passersby. Debs’s wet cardigan felt vacuum-packed to her limbs, as did her trousers. Her bob was plastered round her face. The rain had found its way inside her lace-up shoes, rendering her socks damp and uncomfortable.
Where were Rae and that woman?
She turned and shrieked as a bull terrier bounded toward her with a lolloping bounce. Its owner, a man in a waterproof hood with a sullen face, called it away without apology.
Damn her nerves. She was fed up with being intimidated.
“Rae!” she began to shout weakly, as if this would help.
She climbed back up to the palace again, and looked out across London and over the steep drop of parkland in front of the palace. Surely they would not be down there? In this rain there would be nothing to do. No park, no shelter. Just trees and paths through the woods.
Woods.
She shuddered. She hadn’t been in any woods since the day that dreadful Poplar girl from Year Ten and her disgusting boyfriend had cornered her in Victoria Park, as she took a walk on Saturday morning to clear her head. Shouting abuse and laughing, and waving those photos that she couldn’t bear to look at. Repulsive images of something that had been so timid and careful and precious, yet had been turned by this disturbed young girl and her leering boyfriend into something so public and repulsive and horrific, that Allen was on the verge of moving into the spare bedroom to avoid Debs ever having to
contemplate doing it again. Why he would even want to try again—why he had even stayed with her after that humiliating nightmare—was anyone’s guess.
Debs’s heart beat fast. Oh, she was so tired of this. Of being frightened. Of living her life depending on the behavior of others. Why had Mum not given her any backbone?
This afternoon the American woman had played pornography loudly through her wall. And Debs had let her. She had let her turn up the volume and torture her with disturbing panting and groaning sounds that made Debs sit on the edge of the bed, holding her ears.
She looked out across London. Enough, Debs, she thought. It is time to stand up for yourself.
Pulling out her mobile, she sat down on a bench and dialed Allen at his cricket match. Expecting it to be turned off, she was surprised to hear his voice answer.
“It’s me, love,” she said in the most confident voice she could muster. “Now listen, please. I know it’s been a difficult few months for you since everything happened, but I’m afraid you are wrong about me imagining things. The woman next door has confirmed it. I have proof. And now she’s taken the little girl and I am pretty sure she is frightening her. I’m up at Alexandra Palace right now looking for her.”
She heard his sigh.
“Allen. Why did you stay with me? You know, after what happened.”
It was a question she had never dared to ask him. They had fumbled their way from that first meeting in a restaurant holding copies of the
Guardian
, Debs so nervous she had nearly been sick in a plant pot, to marriage without much being said directly at all.
“I’m up next to bat, love, when the rain stops,” he murmured.
“I mean it, Allen. Tell me now. Was it better than just being lonely?”
“No.”
“Well, what?”
“Oh, Debs, please, love . . .”
“Urgh,” she said under her breath, stamping her foot a little. She shook her head from side to side, making her glasses shift on her nose. “Allen. Love. I’m sorry, but if you and I are going to make this marriage work, then you are going to have to talk to me. Because . . . because, I’m sorry, love, but I’ve, I’ve . . .” Her tone began to rise. “I’ve just had enough. I’ve had ENOUGH. I’m scared stiff of you, if you want the truth. I tiptoe round you all the time, just waiting for you to tell me it was a mistake. And I can’t take it anymore. If you don’t like what I am, Allen, then, well, maybe you should tell me and we’ll be done with it. I can’t live this way, feeling judged every day for my silliness and the way I wash socks and notice things, and for what my sister did . . .”
“Don’t say that,” she heard him murmur. “Don’t say that.”
“But you do! And do you know what, maybe you’re right. Maybe I’m just a bad bet, Allen. Just like Mum said Dad was. I’m a bad bet. You should never have got involved. No one should be involved with me. And I think the only reason you are still with me is that by the time you realized that I was a bad bet, you were too polite to get out of it. Because that’s the type of person you are, Allen, isn’t it? Someone who looks after other people. Damaged people. And that’s what I am—damaged.”
She heard him take a long breath.
“No.”
“What?” she sniffed. “Don’t lie.”
“No. Debs, I married you because of the opposite.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did. I married you because . . . well, the way I saw you working so hard with those kids when so many people gave up on them. And the way your sister is so difficult with you, but somehow you always forgive her. And because of the way you love your books, even though there are so many I have nowhere to put my cricket trophies.”
She couldn’t help it. A smile played at her lips.
“I admire that, love. How much you know about them and how passionate you are about them. And it annoys me that you won’t take up my offer and take a year off to do your MA in English, because I know you’ve always wanted to do it. It’s not something I could ever do, but I’d love to see you do it. And you’re not bad at crosswords, either. Maybe not as good as me, but . . .”
To her surprise, she suddenly chortled at his unexpected joke.
“Debs. You mustn’t worry, love. It’s going to be OK.”
“Is it, Allen? It’s just, I am so tired.” She sighed.
“I know you are.”
“No, Allen. You don’t. I am just so tired of being bullied by people who do not take the time to try to be even a little bit kind. I feel that I want to stand up to them, whatever it takes. I want things to go back to how they were, between us. Do you remember? It took us both so long to find each other and then, and then that girl . . . What right did she have to . . . ?”
“Yes, love.”
“OK, Allen. The thing is, I need you to believe me. That’s how we make this work. I need you to believe me. So I am asking you this once. Will you please leave now and come up to Ally Pally and help me?”
He paused. “This is what you want?”
“Yes. It really is. In fact, Allen, I think it might well save me.”
“OK.”
“Thank you, Allen. I’m sorry if it causes a problem with your match.”
“It’s only cricket, love.”
There was a pause as they both smiled at his accidental joke. She put the phone down, trying not to cheer. She had done it.
Now, to find that woman.
Debs walked down the stone steps that dropped into parkland, forcing herself to leave her fear behind as she disappeared from sight of the road into the trees that led to the wildlife area. She was going to find that little girl and make sure she was OK, if it was the last thing she did—even if Allen had to get her committed afterward.
The rain landed on the car windshield like the water bombs Henry threw in the garden. Hundreds of gentle water bombs. You didn’t get rain like this in Colorado. There it came in great, elemental waves that soaked the plains and then hung between the mountains in curtains of heavy mist. It beat you with no mercy, washing the land with a parade of drumming rain that would, from time to time, blast up into the clouds and twirl violently into a black tornado that you could see for miles. No, the rain at home was wild, alive. It wasn’t this polite British rain. You couldn’t fight it off with a little plastic umbrella.