‘It’s hard, you know,’ Rowena says. ‘Not being pretty. I mean, at school the popular girls are the ones with the pretty faces and long hair who are good at music and English and Art. Not the clever girls with bad skin. Not me. A cliché really, isn’t it, for a clever girl to be ugly? And then you go home and it’s the same.’
‘You’re going to Oxford, aren’t you?’ Sarah asks.
‘To read Natural Sciences. She doesn’t tell people that bit. Pretends I’m off to May balls and parties and handsome undergraduates, not a Science lab and an all-girls’ college.
‘You know that Shakespeare sonnet, about love not being love which alters not when it alteration finds? I think it’s about a mother with her child growing up. But not mine.’
But all I can think is how proud Maisie is of Rowena’s reading: ‘Even Shakespeare, when she’s doing Science A levels. My little bookworm!’
Her pride in Rowena. Her love for her. How can these not be real? Her true colours. Because they are what make Maisie who she is.
‘I thought she’d be pleased about Silas,’ Rowena says, and I hear grief in her voice. ‘I mean, he’s handsome, isn’t he? I thought it was like proving to her that I could be like a pretty girl too.’
‘But he’s married for crying out loud,’ I say to her. ‘And he’s thirty. Of course your mother didn’t want him to be your boyfriend; of course she wanted something better for you.’
‘She went to see him,’ Rowena continues, her voice halting. ‘It was Valentine’s Day and he’d sent me a card. She went to his house. Told him he had to stop our relationship.’
The hate mail from Natalia stopped the day after Valentine’s Day. Maisie’s talk with Silas worked.
And I’d do the same for Jenny. If she was sixteen and was with Silas Hyman, I’d do the same. Because this is nothing like Jenny’s relationship with Ivo, nothing like it at all.
‘I loved him,’ Rowena says quietly. ‘I still do. I thought he’d fight for me. But he didn’t.
‘And then Mum got him fired. She phoned the newspaper, not thinking what would happen to the school, just wanting to get him out; punish him too. And she told me she sent him candles, eight blue ones, like the ones on Addie’s cake. She said she wanted him to know that if he ever started anything again with me, she’d make his life hell. That she has that power.’
The Maisie I’ve known for thirteen years is warm and vibrant and ran in the mums’ race every year and always came last by a mile and didn’t give a hoot! I’ve also learnt that she is fragile and vulnerable and bruised. Both these Maisies have been assimilated into my picture of her.
But not this.
A nurse knocks and comes in. It’s Belinda, the nice smiley nurse.
‘There’s a ward round and the doctors need to take a look at her. It’ll take about twenty minutes.’
Sarah stands up. ‘Of course.’
It’s cooler up here in my ward, the open windows and white linoleum at least visually lowering the temperature. A porter is wheeling a trolley, with my comatose body on it, back towards the bed. My scan must be finished.
You are waiting.
Dr Bailstrom’s shoes click across the linoleum towards you, black today but Louboutins, the red flashing on the underside like a warning.
She tells you that their scan shows I have no cognitive function. No brain activity beyond the basics of swallowing, gagging and breathing.
I wasn’t out on a grassy tennis court, warm under my toes, running for a ball, racket outstretched, and thwacking it over the net. I was with Sarah as she spoke to Rowena.
I have never been near my body when they’ve done their scans.
No wonder they think I’m not there.
You ask to be alone with me.
You take my hand in yours.
You say you understand.
And I am amazed by you.
You pull the curtain around my bed.
You lay your head down next to me, so that our faces are close, my hair falling across your cheek. United by almost twenty years of loving each other and seventeen years of loving our child.
The essence of our marriage is distilled in this moment.
Jenny is standing in the doorway.
‘Jen, come in.’
But she shakes her head. ‘I didn’t know,’ she says and leaves.
And I didn’t know either; that our tough-as-old-boots-strong married love contains this delicate intensity at its heart.
I think about speaking to each other every day for nineteen years. Nineteen years times three hundred and sixty five days times however many conversations per day – how many words does that make between us?
An uncountable number.
My hair is still falling across your cheek but I move away from you.
It will help you, my darling, if you think I’m not here. It will make this easier. And I want to make this easier for you.
I leave the room.
Outside the office on the ground floor, everyone is gathering for another interview with Rowena. The social worker is already in there and now people start filing into the office. The corridor has got hotter, faces are sweating. DI Baker’s shirt is untucked and his hands leave clammy marks around the file he’s holding.
I’m thinking of you.
Of when you’ll realise I’m no longer there with you.
Only Penny and Sarah now remain out in the corridor.
‘There’s something you should know,’ Penny says, not meeting Sarah’s eye. ‘You probably should have been told before.’
‘Yes?’
‘Maisie White was the witness who said she saw Adam coming out of the Art room, holding matches.’
I have never known her.
34
‘I never thought Maisie White was involved in the fire directly,’ Penny tells Sarah. She’s keeping everyone waiting in the office, but she has to tell Sarah; owes her this.
‘She seemed genuinely distressed by what had happened to Jenny and Grace,’ Penny continues. ‘And was reluctant to tell me it was Adam. I thought I was having to force it out of her.’
‘If I’d known-’ Sarah begins.
‘Yes. I’m sorry. Since we found out about the fraud – you found out – we’ve been questioning the validity of her witness statement, but have been working under the assumption that she was protecting her husband. In retrospect she was playing us. I’m sorry.’
‘I told Maisie that a witness had seen Adam,’ Sarah says. ‘And she was surprised. I thought it meant she had no idea.’
‘A good actress?’ suggests Penny.
Sarah thinks a moment then shakes her head. ‘It’s because I’m a police officer. She thought I would already know it was her who was the witness. She’d have assumed I’d been told. It was my ignorance that surprised her.’
No wonder Maisie had initially seemed so nervous of Sarah that evening in the cafeteria.
Penny goes into the office.
There are so many people in here, making Rowena seem smaller. She is staring at the shiny carpet-tiles, not looking up.
‘You told one of my officers earlier that your mother knew you were going to go bankrupt?’ Baker says.
‘Yes.’
‘Why did your mother say she saw Adam coming out of the Art room?’ Penny asks, and DI Baker looks irritated.
‘She wanted a child to be blamed,’ Rowena says quietly. ‘So that no one would suspect fraud. It was just chance that it was Adam’s birthday that day.’
‘Sports day?’
‘Yes. She didn’t want anyone hurt.’
‘And there’d be no staff to put it out?’
Rowena is silent.
‘So who actually started the fire?’
Rowena is silent.
‘Was it you?’ Mohsin asks. ‘Did your mother ask you to do that?’
She doesn’t reply.