‘Good for her.’
Sarah and Mohsin’s heads are bent close together; old confidantes. We go to join them.
‘It looks like domestic abuse to both mum and daughter,’ Sarah is saying.
‘We’ve got nothing on him,’ Mohsin says. ‘One speeding ticket, issued last year, sum total.’
‘According to the head teacher’s transcript, Rowena White was going to be the school nurse on sports day,’ Sarah says. ‘They only changed their mind and swapped to Jenny last Thursday.’
‘You think he was trying to hurt his daughter?’ Mohsin asks, clearly thinking along the same lines as Jenny had earlier.
‘It’s possible,’ Sarah replies. ‘Maybe he believed Rowena was still the school nurse. Maybe no one told him about the substitution. Can you find Maisie and Rowena White’s medical notes at other hospitals? See if there was anything we’ve missed?’
He nods.
‘What about the investors at Sidley House?’ she asks.
‘There are a couple of small fry. Venture capitalists who invested in a number of similar projects; legit business people. Another investor, the largest one, is the Whitehall Park Road Trust Company.’
‘Do you know who that’s owned by?’
He shakes his head. ‘It could be one case of nasty domestic violence,’ he says, carefully. ‘And another case of malicious mail. And another of arson. All three completely separate.’
‘There’s a connection. I’m sure there is.’
‘Go into any institution – including a school – and you’d probably find an instance of domestic violence. And another of bullying, not to the malicious-mail level like Jenny had, but you’d find something cruel going on in the classroom or staffroom or cyber-bullying.’
‘And Jenny being attacked?’
Mohsin turns fractionally away.
‘You still don’t believe it?’ Sarah asks.
Mohsin is silent. Sarah studies him.
‘So what do you think?’
‘I think I need to set your mind at rest.’
‘Well, that’s more than anyone else is doing, so thank you.’
They are not used to this awkwardness.
He takes her hand, gives it a squeeze.
‘Poor Tim’s grieving for you.’
‘It wasn’t -’ She hesitates. ‘Appropriate, any more. I should get back to Mike.’
Almost before they’ve gone the cleaner sprays the table with something pungent.
Can you be homesick for a table? Because I’m overwhelmed with yearning for our old wooden table in the kitchen at home, with Adam’s knight figures at one end, yesterday’s newspaper at the other, someone’s jacket or jumper draped over a chair. I know, I used to get irritated by ‘the mess!’ and demand people ‘tidy up after themselves!’ Now I long for a messy life, not one devastated and transferred to an overly organised world of slick shiny surfaces.
I see that Jenny’s eyes are closed, that she’s very still.
The cleaning fluid is still pungent on the Formica table.
‘I went into the school kitchen,’ she says. ‘They’d cleaned it all up. And it was steamy because the dishwashers had been running.’
In here there’s steam from newly washed cups and saucers being placed on a rack by the coffee machine.
‘I was feeling kind of excited,’ Jenny continues, ‘about going outside.’
I’m monitoring this closely, I won’t let her get too far along the memory corridor; won’t let her go through the last set of doors – or anywhere near them.
‘I got two bottles of water out of the kitchen,’ Jenny continues. ‘The really big heavy bottles with the carry handles? It was my job to bring out extra water at the end of sports day in case they didn’t have enough. The plastic handles are too narrow and they dig into my hands. I take them up those narrow steps, you know, the exit by the kitchen?’
Then she stops and shakes her head.
‘That’s it. I was going out of the school, definitely out. But I don’t know what happened then.’
‘The water bottles were outside at the side of the school, on that gravelly bit by the kitchen exit,’ I say, remembering that Rowena had used one to soak her towel before going in.
‘But why did I go back inside again?’ Jenny asks.
‘Maybe to help?’
‘But the reception children all got out fine, didn’t they? And Tilly? Everyone got out.’
I don’t know what to say.
‘Maybe that’s when I lost my phone,’ she says. ‘When I bent to put the water down. It was in that little pocket at the top of my red skirt. It’s fallen out before.’
‘Yes.’
‘You should go and see what Aunt Sarah’s up to,’ she says. ‘I’ll stay here if that’s OK. It’s the only place that’s halfway normal.’
‘You won’t try to remember any more, will you?’
‘Mum…’
‘Not without me. Please.’
‘OK.’
I leave Jenny in the cafeteria and go to ICU.
Ivo is standing in the corridor. Just seeing his narrow back-view and trendy haircut brings vivid memories of Jenny, a whole dimension of her that has been left behind since the fire – the exuberant, energetic teenager with joie de vivre and passionate good humour; Jenny walking on air. And a kind of helplessness as she fell in love, so trusting of Ivo to catch her.
He hasn’t gone to her bedside but neither has he run away.
I go closer. His face is white as he looks at her through the glass wall; tremors are coursing through his body and I see a boy lying on a pavement being beaten and kicked and punched.
I feel overwhelming pity for him.
Sarah is with him.
‘I spoke to her on Wednesday,’ he says. ‘And she sounded just like usual. Happy. And then we texted each other. The last one, from me, she must have got at just after three, her time.’
He turns away from looking at Jenny. ‘Will you tell me what’s happening?’
‘She’s very badly injured. Her heart failed yesterday. She needs a transplant to stay alive. Without one, she’ll only live for a few more weeks.’
Sarah’s words kick him over and over again.
‘I’m sorry,’ Sarah says.
I think he’ll ask if she’ll be disfigured; if Sarah will tell him that we don’t know yet. He’s silent.
‘It was arson,’ she says. ‘We don’t know if someone deliberately targeted Jenny. Possibly it’s connected to the malicious mail. Do you know anything?’
‘No. She hadn’t got any idea who it was.’
His voice is quiet and shaken.
I see you leaving Jenny’s bedside and coming out into the corridor, but they haven’t yet seen you.
‘Someone threw red paint at her,’ Ivo says. ‘She phoned me. Said she’d had to get a friend to cut her hair. The paint wouldn’t come out. She was crying.’
Sarah jumps on this. ‘Did she see who it was?’
‘No. It was from behind.’
‘Any description at all?’
‘No.’
‘When was this, Ivo?’
‘About eight weeks ago.’
‘Do you know where it happened?’
‘In Hammersmith shopping arcade, just by Primark. She thought he must have run into a shop or a side exit to the street straight afterwards. She said a woman was screaming because she thought it was blood on her.’
I see you grappling with the information, no corner of your mind free to store anything else, but it’s forcing its way inside.
‘I should have made her go to the police,’ Ivo says. ‘If I had-’
‘I’m the police, Ivo,’ Sarah says. ‘No, look at me. Please. She should have felt that she could come to me. I’m her aunt and I love her. But she didn’t. And that’s my responsibility. Not yours.’
‘She said her parents would be so upset if they found out. She didn’t want to worry them. Maybe that was true for you too.’
‘Yes. I’d like you to give a statement at the police station to a colleague of mine. I’ll get a car to pick you up and drop you back again so it should be as quick as possible.’