I imagine a girl on the checkout not finding it strange that he’s bought red paint and white spirit. Because the only way of getting out gloss paint is with white spirit and, yes, there is a large quantity, but there’s a queue building behind him now and her break’s in a minute.
Did Jen go to a friend’s house to wash her hair? Not knowing that gloss can be impossible to wash out. Did she then go to a hairdresser or did a friend or Ivo snip snip snip the evidence?
Did she scrub at her coat before taking it to a dry cleaner’s? They would have tutted and shaken their head and told her they couldn’t promise it would come out.
Why didn’t she come to me?
You’re turning into a street, three away from ours. Mr Hyman’s road.
I didn’t know you’d listened to me when I said we often passed Mr Hyman on the way to school.
You’re pulling over, not bothering to park.
You slam the driver’s door so hard the car rocks.
I think that to survive loving Jenny, this terrible compassion, you need to feel counterbalancing rage.
From the car, I watch you as you ring doorbell after doorbell asking which number Silas Hyman lives at. The pain is getting worse the longer we are away from the hospital. I try to visualise it, as I did during childbirth, turning it into crashing waves and dancing lights. I’d thought it was bodies that feel pain, but maybe skin and flesh and bones are protecting something exquisitely tender inside.
I join you as you press Mr Hyman’s doorbell, keeping your thumb hard down on it.
His wife answers the door. I recognise her and remember she’s called Natalia. I met her at the school ‘soirée’ two years ago (you refused to go to anything called a ‘soirée-for-God’s-sake’). She’d looked like something out of a Tolstoy novel then and I’d wondered if she’d changed her name from Natalie to something more appropriately exotic. But Natalia’s striking beauty has become subtly coarsened since then; something – anxiety? tiredness? – slackening the skin on her face, causing her green cat-eyes to lose their perfectly outlined shape; foreshadowing her ageing, when her feline beauty will be covered over without trace.
Looking at her face, imagining it in the future, because I don’t want to look at yours. You’re no longer a man people would warm to.
‘Where’s your husband?’ you ask.
Natalia looks at you; feline features stiffening, sensing threat.
‘You are…?’
‘Michael Covey. Jenny Covey’s father.’
Adam whips off a plastic helmet with a flourish as he pretends to be a Roman gladiator as played by Russell Crowe.
‘My name is Maximus Decimus…’
‘Meridius,’ prompts Jenny.
‘Maximus Decimus Meridius. Commander of the armies of the north. General of the-’
‘Blah, blah.’
‘Armies aren’t blah blah.’
‘It’s the next bit that’s good.’
‘OK, OK. I am Maximus Decimus Meridius. Skip armies bit. Father to
‘It gives me shivers,’ Jenny says. ‘Every time.’
Adam, holding his helmet, nods solemnly in agreement. You are trying desperately not to laugh and I daren’t catch your eye.
We haven’t let him watch the film yet. Much too violent. But Jen’s taught him all the punch lines.
Yes, I know, your situation is nothing like Maximus Decimus Meridius’, because your child and wife are still alive.
‘My husband isn’t here,’ Natalia says with a slight emphasis on the word ‘my’; a stressing of loyalty.
‘Where is he?’ you ask.
‘A building site.’
He’s lied to her. I feel a flash of anxiety for Jenny and Adam. But Sarah is with Jenny, Mum is with Adam. Neither of them would desert their posts.
‘Where is the building site?’ you ask.
‘I don’t know. It’s different every day. Unskilled labourers don’t have the luxury of regular work.’ She sounds upset for him.
‘I read about your wife and daughter,’ she continues. I wait for her to offer sympathy but she doesn’t.
Instead she turns her back on you, leaving the door open behind her, and walks away. I follow her into the hotly oppressive house. There are three small children, looking grubby and out of control; two of them fighting.
Their house is almost identical to ours, just a few streets away, but a door blocks off the entrance to the first floor. It’s a flat, not a house. I’ve never really thought of the financial discrepancy between the teachers and parents at Sidley House before.
She goes into the small kitchen. The school calendar is hanging on the wall, with three children’s photos for July. On 11 July is ‘Sports Day’ in large type, ‘Adam Covey is 8’ in small type.
The date is ringed in red.
Adam had been so pleased that Mr Hyman had sent him a birthday card.
I remember Sarah talking to DI Baker.
‘Anyone with a calendar would know it was Adam’s birthday on sports day. Including the arsonist. He planned for the blame to fall on him.’
Natalia picks up a copy of the Richmond Post. She comes back to you, holding the paper. Her fingers are over the picture of Jenny.
‘Is this why you’re here?’ she asks. ‘Because of this fucking load of crap?’
I’m shocked that she uses language like this in front of her children. I know, absurd. If a paper had said that about you I’d be swearing too.
‘It’s lies,’ she says. ‘All of it.’
‘The alibi you gave him,’ you say to her. ‘What was it?’
‘How about I tell you what I know,’ she says. ‘Then I will answer your questions.’
You are wrong-footed, I can see that. You are Maximus Decimus Meridius looking for vengeance with Mr Hyman. You’re not sure what to do with a BBC-style debate presented to you, with the option of having your say in a minute.
‘Silas is the most gentle man you could meet,’ she says, taking advantage of your hesitation. ‘To be honest, it annoys me sometimes that he’s so gentle. Our boys could do with a little discipline. But he won’t. Doesn’t even raise his voice to them. So the idea that he could set light to a school, well, it’s just ridiculous.’
‘At prize-giving?’ you say. ‘He was hardly “gentle” then. I saw him myself.’
‘He wanted to tell everyone it wasn’t his fault,’ Natalia replies. ‘Can you blame him for that? For wanting his chance to tell the truth? You didn’t give him one before firing him, did you?’
I feel her hostility now; crouching behind her words.
‘He dressed up for it,’ she continues. ‘Put on a tie and a jacket, so he’d look smart, so that people might listen. But it’s not surprising he went to the pub first, is it? Had a few drinks to find the courage. He’s passionate. And he even gets a little drunk sometimes, but he’d never destroy something, set fire to something, let alone risk hurting anyone.’
Her northern accent at the school soirée had been barely noticeable, but now it’s pronounced. Did she disguise it before, or is she deliberately accentuating it now, to show how different she is from you – a Sidley House parent?
‘It doesn’t tell you in here that he only went into teaching to give himself time to write a book. All those holidays and half-terms teachers get – and in private schools they’re longer – that’s why he went into teaching, so he’d have time to write.’