Seb hangs back from all of them, freezing even though they wouldn’t be able to see him from the doorstep.
While she’s waiting for the kettle to boil, Rosie silently hands Seb her phone. It’s open on the front page of a local newspaper website which reads:
Head teacher Sebastian Kent: how yesterday’s villain became today’s victim.
Rosie touches Seb’s arm briefly before she takes a mug upstairs for Eva, who is once again waiting on hold with her insurance company. Alone in the kitchen, Seb scrolls down to the comments section of the article. The comments reflect the headline, how quickly the tide of public opinion can change. Where once there was only vitriol, now some comments seem genuinely sympathetic:
‘That poor, poor family.’
While others are still completely delusionaclass="underline"
‘A nurse friend said he was so badly burnt saving Rosie – he’s going to be permanently disfigured!’
There are still many that laugh:
‘Ha ha! He got what was coming to him!’
And:
‘How do you feel now your precious family are the vulnerable ones, sir?’
Seb types the truth:
‘Helpless …’
But then he hears his kids laughing in the den they’ve built in Heath’s bedroom and he deletes the word and goes upstairs to hide with them.
Eva spends all Saturday either on the phone or in bed. Seb sits with her, and the kids bring her home-made cards and snuggle into bed with her, but for most of the day she keeps her face towards the window and when she needs to be alone she says, ‘I think I’ll have a little sleep now.’
She doesn’t sleep, she cries. Sometimes Seb cries with her and sometimes, knowing she wants to be alone, he just listens to her crying behind the door. The saddest tears he’s ever known.
During the afternoon Rosie takes the kids to a beach an hour’s drive from Waverly; they’re less likely to bump into any one they know there. When they get back, cheeks pink and smelling like new air, the opposite of smoke, Rosie tells Seb the kids want to go back to Eva’s, that they want to see for themselves what the fire has left.
‘Do you think we should?’ Rosie asks, taking a biscuit from a tin delivered by someone Seb didn’t recognize.
Seb wants to say no. He pictures his children picking over the crunchy charcoal, like children from a war zone. Imagines Heath rummaging through the mess for any sign of his favourite football cards, the ones he kept at Granny’s. Or Greer just standing bleakly, alone in the desolation.
He turns to Rosie and nods. ‘If that’s what they want. It might help them get their heads around it.’
Rosie sighs.
‘OK,’ she says, ‘OK. I think you’re right. I’ll take them.’
He reaches for her good hand then and she lets him hold it. Somehow she seems to know that Seb wants to fall to his knees in front of her, that he wants to tell her over and over how sorry he is. Sorry for all this mess, all this destruction, and sorry for not loving her better. Because he does: love her, so very much. She knows he wants to say these things, but she shakes her head at him. ‘No, Seb. Now is not the time.’
She gently lets go of his hand before going to tell the kids to put their wellies on and walking them over to Eva’s.
While they’re gone, Seb finds Rosie’s iPad. He felt strangely compelled to see pictures of what is left, after the fire, to see what his kids are going to see. But as he turns it on something else automatically fills the screen.
Students’ petition to keep Mr Kent as head teacher at Waverly Community.
The words wobble in front of Seb as he reads.
We, the students of Waverly Community, are writing this petition to voice our complete support of Mr Kent. We know many parents and other adults think they know what is best for us. But none of them have asked us or bothered to listen to what we think. So, we’re telling them here.
Mr Kent did something wrong. There’s no getting away from that and we’re not pretending it didn’t happen. But that doesn’t mean he is all bad. We want to learn from someone who is willing to admit they get things wrong. We want to learn from someone who is willing to try and gain back the trust our parents keep saying he’s broken. We’re told that it’s OK to make mistakes, that everyone does from time to time. Well, now it’s time to prove it.
It’s our school, our education, and it should be our choice. We want Mr Kent to stay!
It’s been signed 120 times. The first signature is Blake’s and the last is Rosie’s.
Rosie and the kids come back about an hour later, wide-eyed and quiet, their hair flecked with ash. Heath leaves a small, sad tray of blackened things they rescued outside on the doorstep along with their wellies, soles stained black. The kids watch a film while Rosie tells Seb that the homes next to Eva’s have also been badly damaged by smoke and water from the hoses. That the people who live there have been moved into hotels. She tells him that she spoke with Detective Sergeant Sarah Wilcox who said they haven’t found any camera evidence of who might be responsible or any other clues. She intimated that she thought they were probably local, that they seemed to know which residential roads to stick to in order to avoid cameras. No witnesses have come forward.
‘It’s strange,’ Rosie says, ‘I thought I’d be angrier, like, want to find them more, but …’ She shrugs.
Seb gets it – it isn’t about retribution. All he wants is for his family to be safe. What he doesn’t tell Rosie is that Sarah Wilcox and her colleagues are looking in the wrong places because the person who did this isn’t out there, walking the streets. He might not have lit the fuse but still, the person responsible is right here. In front of Rosie, inside him. Inescapable.
Rosie and Seb put Heath and Greer to bed together and as soon as the younger two are asleep they go to Sylvie and sit side by side on her bed.
‘You’re OK again, aren’t you?’ Sylvie asks. Seb looks at Rosie, who glances briefly back at him. She’s confused too. ‘You guys, I mean.’
Seb sits on the edge of his daughter’s bed and feels a tug, deep, towards the old ways, a desire to tell Sylvie that of course they’re fine. But he looks at his girl and sees for the first time that she’s not OK.
Seb experiments with the truth again. ‘We’re getting there, Sylv. I think we’re getting there.’
Sylvie nods seriously before smiling, satisfied, as she snuggles down in bed, and both Rosie and Seb kiss her forehead again and tell her they love her. Sylvie’s asleep before they’ve even tiptoed out of her room.
Seb follows Rosie downstairs and finds Eva, in one of Rosie’s nightshirts, stirring something in a pan on the stove.
‘Oh good, they’re asleep,’ she says when she sees them, before turning back to the pan. Still stirring, she asks, ‘Now, have you got any cinnamon?’
‘Eva,’ Rosie says, ‘we’ve had so much food brought over, you shouldn’t be …’
Eva shakes her head. ‘I needed to do something. And besides, I really fancy a dhal.’
They eat together quietly. Eva was right: the dhal is perfect. Seb can practically feel the spicy goodness of it warming his cells. When they’ve finished, Rosie stacks their bowls by the sink and sits back at the table.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Seb starts, quietly, but his voice clots in his throat so he clears it and tries again. ‘I’ve been thinking, Ro. I’m worried something else might happen, that it’s not safe here …’
‘You think we should go away somewhere?’
Seb nods.
‘Where? Where could we go?’
Seb looks away.
‘Center Parcs?’ Rosie asks, sarcastic, the thought of a holiday now totally absurd, before adding, ‘We’re staying here, Seb. The kids want to be here. I think they want, need, things to be as normal as possible, to go to school …’