Saturday 5 September
‘Rosie said Lara pushed her in deliberately,’ said Imogen, her face set hard as she passed the dish of fondant potatoes across the table to James. As head teacher of the primary school, he should know about these sorts of incidents. OK, so it hadn’t happened in school hours, but he needed to be aware of who he had just accepted into Ripton Primary.
‘What a little cow,’ said Erin. She refused the potatoes as they came around. Imogen knew the carbs and butter wouldn’t be to her best friend’s taste.
It was the first dinner party Imogen had thrown since she’d moved into the tiny rental several months ago. It had taken a while for her to face the idea. There was no grand kitchen any more, no twelve-seater dining table in a beautiful dusky blue dining room. Not a dungeon at all, thought Imogen angrily. There was no large patio to serve pre-dinner drinks in the late evening sunshine. She’d lost it all, brought down by crippling debt on her restaurant. It had been so promising at the start. A fanfare opening at the end of 2019, glowing reviews from her dear friend Nigel – but also fromJay Rayner too – and every other national restaurant critic. It had cost a small fortune to set up, but she’d managed to borrow against the house, which already had a substantial mortgage on it, but all the signs were there for a successful restaurant business. And it had been a success for the first five months and then Covid had come along and everything had stopped. There had been a death-like silence every time she’d gone into her beautiful, empty restaurant and nearly cried at the terrible waste of opportunity, and the money she could virtually see flushing at a continuous rate down the bone-dry sinks. It had become untenable in the end, and the debts were too big for Dylan’s teacher salary. She’d been stubborn, had refused to sell her precious house that she’d spent years doing up exactly how she’d wanted it. God, she’d even had a feature article in a national home decorating magazine. How proud she’d been to see her home on show, see the photo of herself at her Lacanche range cooker. No, there was no way she could have sold. She would have been a laughing stock. Instead, the decision had been taken out of her hands and the bank took it all. It had broken her heart.
‘Is Rosie all right?’ asked James.
‘Still traumatized,’ said Imogen.
‘I’m not surprised,’ said Erin. ‘That kid tried to drown her.’
‘We don’t know it was like that,’ said Dylan.
Imogen shot her eyes up at her husband. They’d been disagreeing on a lot lately and sometimes she felt as if he said black to her white just because he could. Surely he was going to side with his own daughter on this?
‘Lara pushed Rosie in,’ said Erin. ‘Then while no one was looking, she held her head under, right where there was a tangle of underwater reeds. If that instructor hadn’t pulled her out, then...’
Imogen shuddered.
Dylan stopped eating, his knife and fork held in mid-air. ‘Thank God for him,’ he said. ‘But what I mean is, Rosie has had a terrible experience but we haven’t got to the bottom of what exactly happened. Remember, Lara had a different version of the story.’
‘Now hold on a second...’ started Imogen.
Dylan looked at her. ‘I didn’t see it. Did you?’
She hadn’t, but it aggrieved her that he should be airing this...notionthat their daughter might not be telling the truth in front of their friends.
‘I believe her,’ she said firmly.
‘You should set out some sort of punishment,’ said Erin, looking at James. ‘Strip her of her Head of School status, for starters.’
‘He can’t do that,’ said Carol, spooning potatoes onto her plate as they came to her. ‘This incident didn’t even happen at school.
‘My wife is correct,’ said James.
‘She shouldn’t even be Head of School,’ said Erin. ‘She’s only just started there. And anyway, who’s going to take any notice of her after she’s done this?’
‘It was a democratic vote,’ said Carol firmly. ‘Fair’s fair.’
Imogen hid her irritation. It was nothing to do with Carol. She seemed to think that because she was marriedto the head teacher and her daughter, Lorna, was Chair of the PTA she could wade in with her opinion. Well, it was unwanted.
‘So what is Lara’s side of the story?’ asked Carol.
‘She said Rosie had fallen in herself,’ said Imogen. ‘And swore blind she hadn’t held her head down.’
‘Lied through her teeth, in other words,’ said Erin. ‘She’s a menace.’
‘This wouldn’t get by in a court of law,’ said Marcus drily, as he waved a hand around the table. Erin’s husband was a criminal barrister who worked on extremely high-profile cases in London and thought local village ‘spats’ mildly amusing.
‘It’s a character assassination,’ he continued, ‘and this Lara kid’s got no defence counsel.’
‘What, are you offering?’ said Erin sharply.
‘Hang on a moment, hasn’t Rosie got form?’ said Marcus, seemingly remembering something.
Erin nudged his arm – an instruction to shut up.
