“That does sound super fun, darling,” said Poppy softly when we made it to the car. “You know, you’re frightfully lucky. I wish I’d had a teacher like that when I was at school.”
“Miss Summerfield says that Miss Clara is really special. She says that she’s never met a teacher who is so good with kids whose brains work differently.” As Ozzie climbed into the car and I pulled the seatbelt over to plug it in, his smile dropped a little. “She looks really worried aboutMiss Clara. And last week, when she was telling us that Miss Clara had an accident, her face got all red, and her voice got all wobbly like mine does when I’m about to cry.”
“An accident?” I said with a frown. “I thought she was ill.”
Ozzie shrugged. “Miss Summerfield said it was an accident. She said Miss Clara was hurt really bad but they made her all better in the hospital.”
“The hospital?” I said in shock. Nobody had mentioned hospitals to me. Ozzie frowned at me.
“Yes, Daddy, of course,” he said as if I myself was a bit dim, “that’s where people go if they get hurt really bad. I had to go there when I broke my arm after I climbed that tree with Margot, ’member?”
“Right, yeah, okay,” I muttered, my hand going to the back of my neck to squeeze the muscles there before I slammed the door shut and rounded the car to get to the driver’s side.
“You alright?” Poppy muttered from the passenger seat, and I realised I’d been staring through the windscreen for God knows how long without actually starting the car. I shook my head to clear it.
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I said, starting the engine and trying to focus as I pulled out into traffic. “It’s just they never mentioned an accident or hospital.”
Poppy shrugged. “Maybe they didn’t know when they talked to you?”
I felt my expression darken as I gripped the steering wheel harder.
“They knew,” I said in a tight voice. “I have a feeling they know a lot more than they’re letting on. I just don’t know why they would try to hide it from me.”
Chapter 7
Not people who are safe
Clara
“Jesus Christ,what happened to your face?” Martin said when he walked into the staff room. Molton Prep’s PE teacher was not known for his tact. My hand fluttered up to the still swollen cheek and left eye unconsciously and I felt myself flush.
“Bloody hell, Martin,” snapped Lily. “Bull in a china shop as usual. Let Clara eat her lunch.”
Martin shrugged. “What? I’m supposed to ignore the fact Clara looks like she’s gone a couple of rounds with Muhammad Ali? I’m not supposed to ask what the fuck happened?”
I cleared my throat. “I fell down some stairs.”
I’d decided that thewalked into a doorortripped over my own feetexcuse wasn’t going to cut it this time. I simply had too many visible bruises. Oh, and there was the small issue of my broken wrist.
Martin crossed his arms over his broad chest, and his eyes narrowed. “Hmm, whatever you say, love.”
He was clearly not convinced but knew he wasn’t going to get any more out of me, so he walked off to the fridge. Lily leaned over to squeeze my hand. She knew that I lived in a ground-floor flat. She knewwaytoo much, to be honest.
I felt a twinge of unease as I smiled at her. It wasn’t really safe for her to be close to me. I was naturally shy, but I also kept my distance from people for a reason. The same reason I didn’t use my real last name at school. But Lily had been one of the only people to relentlessly pursue a friendship with me until she eventually wore me down. After a year of us working together now, I’d thoroughly and completely let her in. It felt so good to have someone on my side that I just couldn’t resist. And Lily was my extrovert. She stood up for me, helped me fit in with the other teachers, stopped me looking like a mateless weirdo.
At my last school, I’d barely spoken to anyone other than the kids. Lily had changed that here. The drawback was curiosity, like from Martin this morning. When I glanced over at him, I noticed he was still looking at me with a troubled expression. If a man like Martin had suspicions, he was not going to stay silent. But he didn’t understand. He didn’t know that there was nothing he or anyone else could do.
Lily understood that now. So did Mrs Clayton.
“Do you think you should have let some of the swelling go down a bit?” whispered Lily, eyeing Martin nervously.
I shrugged. “The bruising will still take ages to fade, and I have to wear this brace for at least another three weeks. I can’t be off work for that long.” The break hadn’t been that bad. It was only a hairline fracture and was stable enough to be supported by a wrist brace.
“Okay, hun,” Lily said softly, her voice breaking a little before she got herself together again. I felt bad. Lily haddone way too much crying over me in the last week. At first, when she came to pick me up from the hospital, she’d been enraged and started back on at me about going to the police.
“Surely there’s something we can do to get those bastards?” she’d cried.
But it wasn’t long until that rage faded to bleak acceptance. That’s when the crying started. Unfortunately, there really wasn’t any other choice. Snitching about this was not an option. I’d known practically from birth what happens to snitches. There weren’t many rules in my family’s world, but that was one of them.Snitches get stitcheswas one of their favourite sayings. I reached up to my temple to feel the threads of the stitches there. Okay, so sometimes you got stitches even if they didn’t think you were a snitch. I didn’t want to find out how bad the repercussions could be then. I doubted I would survive it.
