Calum’s eyes met hers and they were cold, like the tundra, and flat like – no, not like a tundra, like a shark’s eyes, she decided. She knelt beside her daughter and hugged her.
‘Are you all right? What happened?’
‘I’ll tell you at home,’ said Calum in measured tones. In a way that said, we will not have this conversation here now.
‘But I need to know.’
‘No, we’ll talk about it at home,’ he said. ‘I know everything, Ms Turner told it all to me. We’ll sort it out there.’
Clary had put her arms around her mother, clutched a little tighter.
‘Of course,’ she said.
Clary wanted to go with her mother, but Calum insisted she went with him. And somehow Savannah found her voice.
‘No,’ she said, smiling, aware that she was safe, that teachers were all around.
‘I need to know what happened, darling,’ she said. She pecked him on the cheek. ‘You are so good for coming so quickly, I’ll bring her home.’
‘I’m coming home too,’ he said.
‘Great, well, you know what’s happened, I’ll find out now and then we can all have a lovely cup of tea at home.’
She put Clary into the car, did up her seatbelt like she was a child again. And they headed off.
‘Tell me what happened, darling,’ she said.
‘I got upset and I think I screamed. I don’t know. The girls were playing that chasing game, you know, the new one? And it was loud and I was tired; I just sat down and I didn’t mean to scream, just somebody ran up behind me and tapped me. And then my teacher came out and she got Ms Turner and then the nurse.’
‘Did you scream for long?’
‘No, no, I didn’t. And someone said I did, but I didn’t, I didn’t do anything wrong.’
‘Of course you didn’t do anything wrong,’ said Savannah. ‘Don’t be silly. Now, we’ll go home and we’ll have – let’s see – hot chocolate?’
‘Yes, Mum, but Dad—’
‘Oh, Dad might have some hot chocolate too,’ said Savannah.
‘He’ll be cross.’
‘No, he won’t,’ lied Savannah. Cross? He was going to be incandescent. The dirty laundry of their family had been washed in public and Calum would not be able to bear that. Because what he hated above all other things was people seeing anything wrong with them. Calum liked it best when nobody saw any side of him that he didn’t personally choose.
Savannah turned on the radio to her daughter’s favourite channel and turned it up a little bit.
‘We don’t have to talk about today,’ she said, ‘but we can, if we want.’
‘It’s that,’ began Clary and then she stopped.
Savannah waited.
‘It’s that there was shouting and it was scary.’
Savannah understood. Fighting, shouting, they would evoke a response in Clary, a sensitive child who’d grown up listening to shouting. Knew that shouting meant something bad. Who knew she was unsafe on some subliminal level when it started.
‘That must have been frightening,’ Savannah said. ‘Where was Daniel?’
‘Daniel wasn’t in,’ said Clary. ‘He’s got a cold. Martina told me I was a cry baby because I was scared. She laughed and kept laughing.’
