‘He doesn’t need to go to the police station to be interviewed. We can do it here. So that his father can be present. You too, if you want. But I do need to interview him. You know that, Sarah.’
‘What I know is that a totally innocent and vulnerable child has been set up.’
‘I have asked a police constable to bring Adam and his grandmother to the hospital. They should be here in half an hour. I suggest we reconvene then.’
Baker leaves the room and I hurry after him.
‘You don’t know Adam,’ I say to him. ‘Haven’t met him. So it’s not your fault that you don’t understand why he couldn’t have done this. He’s good, you see. Not in a goody-goody way but a moral way.’
‘Mum, please, he can’t hear you,’ Jenny says.
‘He likes reading Arthurian legends,’ I continue. ‘His favourite is “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight”. And that’s what he wants to be. Not a pop star or a footballer or whatever it is other boys want to be, but a knight like Sir Gawain, and he’s trying to find a modern equivalent. And you might think that quaint or funny, but it’s not for him; it’s a moral code that he wants to live by.’
‘Even if he could hear you,’ Jenny says, ‘I don’t think he knows about Gawain.’
She’s right, this man wouldn’t have a clue.
‘He also likes history programmes,’ I continue. ‘And asks not only why people are wicked and do wicked things, but why people allow themselves to be led by such people. He thinks about these things.’
How can you make someone understand a boy like Adam?
DI Baker seems to be hurrying now, speeding his pace; I keep up.
‘You probably think that all mothers say these things about their sons, but they don’t. Really. They boast about how fantastic their boy is at sport and doing outdoorsy things and being fearless – breaking an arm as he was determined to climb it! That kind of thing. Not being good and kind. Not being like Adam.
‘You might think it’s me boasting now, but it isn’t. Because we don’t live in an age of chivalry, do we? We don’t live in a time when Adam’s virtues are valuable.
‘And all I really want is for him to be happy. Just happy. And if it would make him happy I’d swap his kindness for being in the football team in a blink and trade decency for popular. But he doesn’t have the choice and so I don’t either. Because that’s how he is.
‘And even though it makes him unhappy and I want him to have less lonely characteristics, I am so proud of him.’
‘He’s afraid of fire,’ Jenny says to DI Baker, joining me. ‘He won’t even hold a sparkler,’ she continues to his back. ‘He got burnt by a spark from the fire when he was a toddler, and ever since he’s been afraid.’
If she could make herself heard she’d give DI Baker logical reasons for why Adam couldn’t have started the fire.
And she’s right. He is afraid of fire. I remember, again, him flinching from Donald’s lighter.
DI Baker reaches the exit of the hospital and I yell at him.
‘Don’t do this to him! Please! Don’t do this to him!’
And for a moment he feels my presence. For a second I am a draught on his back, a tingling in his scalp, something touching his thoughts. A mother. A guardian angel. A ghost.
12
You’re at Jenny’s bedside. There’s no longer a police officer as it’s ‘no longer deemed necessary’.
You deem it necessary.
Sarah arrives. ‘Ads is on his way,’ she says.
‘I can’t leave Jenny on her own, now that Baker’s taken away her protection.’
‘There’s lots of medical staff here, Mike. Far more than the burns unit.’
Doesn’t she think there’s a real risk?
‘Tell Baker why I can’t leave Jen.’
‘I think he’ll get it.’
Because in protecting Jenny you’re showing your belief that the real criminal is still out there and a threat. And the criminal isn’t an eight-year-old boy. It’s a bodily demonstration that DI Baker is wrong and Adam is innocent.
I know you want to be with him; that you feel torn in two. I’ve felt it countless times in minor ways over the years. With just Jenny it had been so simple, but with two children the seamless narrative of our lives became disjointed. ‘For goodness sakes,’ Nanny Voice snaps at me. ‘This is hardly helping Jenny with her homework against taking Adam to cubs; having a water-sports holiday for Jenny against a Welsh-castles one for Adam.’ But I think it’s the same thing, translated onto a huge scale.
And this need to be with both of them feels like a physical tearing.
‘Look after him,’ you say to Sarah.
As she leaves, I go after her, desperate to tell her that I saw the attacker.
Before Adam was accused, the police were on the case and I was sure they’d find him. But now the police have abandoned us and this piece of information is crucial and is turning corrosive the longer it stays, untold, inside me.
In the goldfish-bowl atrium, Sarah’s on her BlackBerry while Jenny and I wait for Addie.
The young PC, who was previously guarding Jenny, comes in through the main doors. Mum and Adam are just behind him.
Sarah gives Adam a kiss, and gently pushes his fringe out of his eyes. I should have trimmed it on Sunday as I’d meant to, but we’d watched the history channel together instead.
He looks thin and pale and bemused.
Sarah turns to Mum; her voice is quiet. ‘Has he said anything yet?’ she asks.
‘Nothing. I’ve tried, but he still can’t. Not a word since it happened.’
Addie didn’t speak to you on the phone last night; nor when he came to my bedside. But can he really not speak at all? Like me, you don’t know about this. You haven’t even seen him yet because, unbelievably, the fire was only yesterday afternoon.
‘Does he know what this is about?’ Sarah asks Mum.
‘Yes. Can you stop it? Please.’
Sarah turns to the young PC.
‘Give me five minutes.’ Speaking as his boss, not a member of Adam’s family.
Jenny and I follow her.
‘Why isn’t Dad here?’ Jenny asks. ‘He should be with Addie.’
‘He wants to be with you.’
‘But I don’t need him.’
I think she looks scared but is determined to hide it.
‘Dad knows that Addie will have Aunty Sarah with him,’ I say to her, surprised that I find this reassuring.
‘Yes.’
We follow Sarah back into the oppressively hot office. DI Baker is sitting on a plastic chair that’s too small for him. Sarah stands far back as if she finds him physically repellent.
‘This interview is pointless,’ she says. ‘Adam can’t talk.’
‘Or won’t,’ asks DI Baker.
‘He is suffering post-traumatic stress. Sufferers can become mute and-’
‘He has a diagnosis for that?’ interrupts DI Baker.
‘I’m sure we could get one,’ Sarah responds. She must see the undisguised scepticism on DI Baker’s face.
‘I spent six months on secondment to a charity which works with torture victims. Trauma can-’
‘I hardly think this is a comparable situation.’
‘I’ve talked to many parents who were at the school,’ Sarah says.
‘You’ve no business-’
‘As Adam and Jenny’s aunt, and Grace’s sister-in-law, in that capacity. God, I’ve had half the school on the phone asking how they are.
‘Adam saw his mother running into the burning school, screaming for his sister. And he waited. Watching the burning building. Lots of parents tried to get him away, but he wouldn’t leave. Then he saw firefighters bringing his mum and sister out. Both of them were unconscious. He thought they were dead. I think that qualifies as trauma, don’t you? And you can’t put him through an interview. You just can’t.’