I see the terrible hurt on your face.
It’s the first time you’ve seen Adam since the fire.
Silas turns and walks away.
Mum takes Adam’s hand in hers. ‘Come on, sweetheart, time to go home.’ She leads him away.
‘Go after him!’ I say to you. ‘You’ve got to tell him you know he didn’t start the fire.’
Silas Hyman said that straight away. ‘I know you wouldn’t do that, Sir Covey.’
But you turn away.
You think that he must know you think he’s innocent. I hope to God that he does.
You return to Jenny’s bedside. Sarah doesn’t know what has just happened in the corridor.
‘Can you stay here?’ you ask.
Something in your voice sounds a warning and she doesn’t automatically agree.
‘Why?’
‘Hyman told his wife he was on a building site,’ you say. ‘But all the time the bastard was right here, with Adam.’
‘Is Addie OK?’
‘Yeah.’
You hesitate a moment, but don’t confide in Sarah about Addie pushing you away.
‘I need to find out who Hyman got to lie about Adam,’ you say. ‘I need to do that for him.’
But what Addie needs from you is to be with him. For you to make a testudo for him. It makes me so sad you don’t know this.
‘Finding out who this witness is – and the arsonist – should be my job,’ Sarah says. ‘I’m a police officer; it’s what I do.’
‘I thought Baker had made you take compassionate leave?’
‘He has.’ She pauses a moment. ‘OK, we know there were only two members of staff, apart from Jenny, who weren’t at sports day – a reception teacher and a secretary. We need to speak to both of them, but especially the secretary because it’s her job to buzz people in and out of the school.’
‘I’ll go now,’ you say, standing up.
She puts a hand on your arm.
‘He’s my son.’
‘Exactly. And what if she recognises you? Do you think that’ll help if she is involved in this?’
You are silenced and frustrated by her logic.
‘The most useful thing for you to do is to stay here and guard Jenny,’ she continues, and I’m not sure if she really thinks Jen needs guarding with so many medical staff around, or if she sees you as a loose cannon and wants to tether you at Jenny’s bedside.
‘Here’s how it’s going to work,’ she says, using one of your expressions – or perhaps it was hers first, which you adopted as you grew up. ‘I will share everything with you, brief you, update you on everything.’
I don’t think you believe her. You’ve had years of her only giving you small pieces of information, no more than was allowed to the press, and only hints at the bigger and more dramatic picture. Such a rule-abiding police officer; such a frustrating older sister.
‘You think the arsonist is Silas Hyman, with an accomplice who lied about Adam, and we’ll come back to him, but we also have to look at the hate-mailer.’
She waits for you to argue. Like me, she heard your categorical denial of the hate-mailer being responsible to DI Baker and maybe, like me, guessed it was because if it was him you’d feel it was your fault.
But you don’t contradict her. For Addie’s sake you want the truth so will keep an open mind; your love for Adam so much fiercer than your terror of being to blame.
‘The hate-mailer has a track record for aggression in the form of malicious mail,’ Sarah goes on. ‘And a motive for arson, which was to hurt Jenny for some reason.’
And he attacked her with red paint, I silently add. Just a few weeks ago.
‘Because hate mail is a crime under the Malicious Communications Act,’ Sarah goes on, ‘it can be fully investigated by the police.’
‘They didn’t get far last time,’ you say.
‘DI Baker’s asked for a much wider investigation.’
‘You think he’ll still do that?’
‘My colleagues won’t give him a choice. They’ll want to do something to help our family, whether they believe Adam guilty or not. There’ll be a lot more welly in the investigation than last time: looking at CCTV footage; wider DNA testing. The works.’
‘And Hyman?’
‘With the arson investigation closed, there’s no reason for the police to investigate him further.’
‘But you will?’
She hesitates a moment.
‘Every interview I do now is illegal,’ she says. ‘So we have to weigh up very carefully what we want to achieve because I’ll be treading on thin ice and it will give way; it’s just a question of how much I can find out before it does.’
‘You’re saying you won’t talk to him?’
‘No. I’m saying I need to be well informed before I do. Before I talk to anyone – including Silas Hyman – I need to read the witness statements and interviews taken straight after the fire. We need to be armed with as much information as possible before going after any suspects.’
I’m stunned by how many rules Sarah will be breaking.
‘Silas Hyman was Addie’s form teacher, wasn’t he?’ Sarah asks. ‘Aren’t they very close?’
‘Adam wouldn’t set fire to anything, however much he loves someone,’ you say.
I hear the word ‘loves’ crying out.
I remember the terrible hurt on your face as he pushed you away from Silas Hyman and only now see that you’re jealous.
That’s why you thought he had an unnatural hold over Addie; why you loathed him, even before the fire. No wonder you resented working bloody hard to pay the fees so that another man could be with your son all day. No wonder you weren’t upset when he was fired.
But I didn’t see it.
I’m so sorry.
‘Did you come into contact with Silas Hyman before the prize-giving?’ Sarah asks. ‘Is there anything else that makes you so hostile towards him?’
‘Isn’t what I told you enough?’
She doesn’t reply.
And I’d do anything to be able to tell Sarah that the man Silas Hyman pretends to be is a fraud. That the man Adam loves, if he does love him, doesn’t exist.
I again think of him as a Janus – not only two-faced like that god but also, like him, the beginning and the ending. Because if Silas Hyman started this horror then he’ll also be there at its conclusion.
The clicking of high heels, an incongruous sound in ICU. I turn to see Dr Bailstrom in her red shoes – maybe she wears them as a warning device for patients and their relatives.
A meeting with my doctors has been arranged in an hour’s time.
16
Your familiar long stride has become short steps, as if you’re in unknown, hostile territory.
But when you near my bed you hurry towards me.
You reach my bed and sit down next to me, but you don’t speak.
You don’t speak.
I hurry towards you – talk to me!
‘Grace, my darling,’ you say as I reach you; as if you know when I am really there. Or is it just a coincidence?
You could run a florist’s shop from my bedside table. Only one vaseful is ugly – odourless, thornless, last-minute-shop-bought roses. ‘To Mrs Covey, with all best wishes, from Mr Hyman.’
But you don’t see the flowers, looking only at me.
‘There’s still no news on Jenny’s heart,’ you say. I think I’m the only person you’ve confided in about her lifespan of three weeks. ‘But they’ll find one for her. I know they will.’
‘Lifespan.’ Jesus. How could I use that word? It makes her sound like a tadpole or a mayfly. A punnet of ripen-at-home peaches. Children don’t have a bloody lifespan.
Thinking panicky loud thoughts, loud as I can, to try and drown out the ticking that has started again – faint but audible; a ghastly unstoppable rhythm.
‘Sarah said she’d told you about Addie,’ you say.
I remember Sarah at my bedside.