Adam.
Rowena was comforting him as I ran into the building, not pausing to even speak to him. Was it Adam’s misery that prompted her?
‘I didn’t realise she was even missing,’ Maisie says. ‘When the fire engines got to the school there were so many people – parents and teachers and children and press people – and I thought she was there, among the crowd. I just assumed…’
‘I think she was trying to make her father proud, again,’ Jenny says.
‘And then a fireman brought her out and she was unconscious,’ Maisie continues. ‘When I told Donald-’
She breaks off, distressed. Then, with effort and emotion, continues. ‘You shouldn’t condemn someone, should you? If you love them, if they’re your family, you have to try and see the good. I mean, that’s what love is in some ways, isn’t it? Believing in someone’s goodness.’
‘Does she really believe that?’ Jenny asks.
‘Yes, I think she does.’
‘Jesus.’
Maisie holds my hand more tightly.
‘It’s funny, in one afternoon you know what you’re made of. And you also discover what your child’s made of. And you can feel such shame and such pride at the same time.’
But it’s her father, not her mother, who Rowena wants to be proud of her. It was for him she went into the burning school. And it was in vain.
I remember the ugly hatred in Donald’s voice. ‘Quite the little heroine, aren’t you?’ Her cry of pain as he grabbed hold of her burnt hands.
18
Sarah arrives at my bedside, looking as briskly efficient as ever and I am grateful for her competence; what good would a dinghy-on-a-duckpond person be to us now?
Maisie is sitting silently next to me, as if spent; her fingers shivering.
‘Hello, Grace, me again,’ Sarah says. ‘It’s like Piccadilly Circus in here this evening.’
‘You think she can hear too?’ Maisie says.
‘Absolutely. I’m Sarah. Grace’s sister-in-law.’
I think I see anxiety on Maisie’s face. My fault. I’ve made Sarah out to be a dragon in the past.
‘Maisie White. A friend.’
‘So are you Rowena White’s mother?’ Sarah asks, a savvy police officer instantly recognising names.
‘Yes.’
‘There’s a canteen open somewhere. Would you like to get a cup of tea with me? Or at least something that passes for tea?’
She isn’t giving Maisie much option.
I hope to God she’ll get Maisie to tell her about the domestic abuse so Sarah will add Donald to her list of suspects. But in our years of friendship Maisie’s never even hinted at it. Or maybe she did and I wasn’t savvy enough – or sensitive enough – to hear her.
As they leave, Sarah spots Jenny’s mobile phone.
‘It’s Jen-Jen’s,’ Maisie says. ‘A teacher found it outside the school. Knew she’d like it back.’
Maybe she calls her ‘Jen-Jen’ to show Sarah how close she is to the family, maybe to show her right to be here, and I’m touched by that; a sign of the old, more assertive Maisie.
Sarah picks up the phone and Jenny is on tenterhooks. But Sarah puts it in her pocket.
‘I’ll be in the garden,’ Jenny says, her frustration and upset clear. ‘And it’s Jenny now. And I should have my phone, not Aunt Sarah.’
For some reason I’m glad of her adolescent strop; her indignant energy.
I follow Sarah and Maisie towards the cafeteria. Do you think anyone’ll discover Sarah’s turning their relatives’ rooms and cafeterias into interview rooms?
The Palms Café is empty and the striplights turned off, but the door’s open and the hot-drinks machine is working. Sarah gets styrofoam cups of something masquerading as tea and they sit together at a Formica table.
The only light now is from the corridor, making this institutional room shadowy and strange.
‘I’m trying to find out a little more about what happened,’ Sarah says.
‘Grace told me that you’re a policewoman.’
Once, Sarah would have brusquely corrected her, ‘police officer’.
‘Right now, I’m just Grace’s sister-in-law and Jenny’s aunt. Would you mind telling me what you remember about yesterday afternoon?’
‘Of course. But I’m not sure I can help much. I mean, I already told the police.’
‘As I said, I’m just talking to you as family.’
‘I’d come to pick Rowena up from school. Well, I should say work, because she’s a teaching assistant, not a pupil now. I was really chuffed when she asked me to give her a lift home. I hadn’t seen much of her lately, you see. You know what teenage girls are like.’ She trails off. ‘Sorry, this isn’t important, sorry.’
Sarah smiles at her, encouraging her to continue.
‘I thought she’d be out on the playing field helping with sports day. But Gracie told me she’d gone into the school with Addie, to get his cake. A trench cake that they’d made together-’ She breaks off, putting her knuckle into her mouth to bite away a sob. ‘I just can’t think about it, not properly, about Addie, with his mum so… I just can’t…’
‘That’s alright. Take your time.’
Maisie stirs her tea, as if the flimsy plastic spoon gives her something to grip onto; determined to continue.
‘I went to find her. When I got to the school I popped to the loo, the grown-up one. I’d just gone in, when I heard a noise, really loud, like an air-raid siren or something. Nothing like the fire alarms we had at school so it took me a few moments to realise what it was.
‘I hurried out, worried about Rowena. Then I saw her coming out of the secretary’s office.’
As she stirs, tea slops out of her cup onto the Formica table.
‘Through the office window I saw Adam was safely outside by the statue. I thought everything was OK. But I didn’t know about Jenny. Didn’t even call for her. I didn’t know to do that.’
‘Which floor is the secretary’s office?’ Sarah asks.
‘The upper ground. Just next to the main door. I told Rowena to look after Addie and I went to help the reception children. Mrs Healey thinks they’re too young to be at sports day, you see. Sorry. What I mean is, I knew that they’d be in the school.’
Sarah mops up Maisie’s spilt tea with her napkin, and this simple act of kindness seems to relax Maisie. Dragons don’t mop up your spilt tea.
‘And then?’ Sarah asks.
‘I went down to the lower ground floor where their classroom is. It wasn’t so smoky down there and they have their own exit with a ramp leading back up to the area outside the school. Tilly – Miss Rogers – was getting all the children out. I helped her calm them down. I know them all, you see. I read with them once a week so I could help reassure them.’
Her voice is suddenly warm and I know she’s thinking of those four-year-old children; their outline still fuzzy somehow, as if you’ll touch their aura before you can touch the quietness of their silky hair or peachy-soft faces. Beautiful baby creatures still. I used to think she still read with them, after Rowena had grown up, because she missed her own daughter being a tiny girl. But maybe, for one afternoon a week, she was trying to go back to a time before the abuse; to when she and Rowena were happy; a time when she really didn’t give a hoot!
‘Did you see anyone other than Rowena and Adam and the reception teacher?’
‘No. Well, not in the school, if that’s what you mean? But about five minutes later the new secretary came outside. There was a lot of smoke by then but she was smiling, like she was enjoying it, or at least she was not at all upset and she had lipstick on. Sorry. Silly.’
‘It was five minutes after the alarm that she came out? You’re sure?’
‘No, I mean, I can’t be totally sure. Never very good at timings. But we’d got the children out and lined them up, counted them at least five times. She brought Tilly the register to officially check they were all accounted for, but we knew they were.