“You don’t need to apologise, Gabe. Neither of us do.”
* * *
I heldher in my arms several hours later, full from the tapas we’d eaten, satiated from the sex we’d had. Slow lazy sex that worked on full bellies and without the urge to rush like we’d needed before.
“I got the call at two in the morning.”
It took me a few seconds to realise where our conversation had jumped to.
“My head teacher had never phoned me at that time. No boss had. In fact, apart from when I’d been out and we’d lost a friend, no one has ever called me at that time, especially on a school-night.”
“Who called her?”
“The police. They’d seen photos of my pupil, Calen, and recognized the uniform he had on, so somehow they’d gotten Sandie’s number.”
“And she phoned you?” I didn’t understand how that worked, waking someone in the night to give almost the worst possible news.
“The press were there already. I would’ve heard it on the news in the morning. Or a journalist would’ve found out that I was his teacher and contacted me.” She buried into my chest, her legs meshed with mine.
“How did you feel?”
“Nothing. It was complete shock, I guess. The words didn’t register. I found out later that the family’s dog had been barking incessantly and a neighbour had gone round to see if something was the matter. When she went through the garden she saw the mother dead at the kitchen table.” Her voice lacked emotion, the facts given almost coldly.
I understood, I got why she needed to do it, to keep what happened at arm’s length. It was a way of coping, surviving.
“What happened to the children?”
“They were asleep. He smothered them while they were in bed after he’d killed their mother. Then he went back to the children and used an axe to deface their bodies. The mother had called time on their marriage a couple of months before – that I knew about as she’d come in to school to tell me what had happened in case Calen got upset during the day. From what I heard afterwards, her husband wanted to get back together, but she didn’t. He accused her of having an affair, according to her friends.” She moved back and looked up at me. “I have the facts. But there are gaps. No one will ever know what actually happened in that house that night. But I’ve spent the last few months thinking about my meeting with them for Calen’s parents’ evening and gone through to see if there was anything I should’ve picked up on. What did I miss?”
“You didn’t miss anything.” They weren’t the words she needed to hear, but it was the truth. “And you know that. I think the same about the road that night and the other driver.”
“But we can’t control everything. That was what my therapist got me to say almost as a mantra.”
I kissed her. “What was your pupil like?”
“He was bright. Obsessed with trucks and cars like most small boys and he was really coming on with his reading and phonics. His baby sister got on his nerves when she cried but he was always pleased to see her when his mum brought her at the end of the day. He played well with the others and didn’t have a special friend, which was easier. He’d only started at the school in the September as the family had moved and was still finding his feet a little and settling in.
“Calen was happy,” she laughed quietly, remembering. “His tooth fell out one morning at snack time. It was a front tooth and it’d been wobbly for ages. He’d been desperate for it to come out. I remember him holding it up and telling me really excitedly that the tooth fairy was going to come that night. I wrapped it up safely and at the end of the day he remembered to ask me for it. Then he started crying. He was upset because his baby sister wouldn’t get a visit from the tooth fairy - that summed him up. He wanted everyone to be happy; if one of his classmates was sad, he was the one trying to cheer them up.
“I put him on my knee and gave him a hug - you’re not really supposed to do that, bu he was an upset child. He hugged me back and said he was going to leave something for his sister so she’d think she had a visit too.”
Her fingers laced through mine. “You knew him well.”
“The same as I knew all of the kids in my class. He didn’t stand out, except for being a nice, happy, kind child. There were never any concerns about his dad. After everything happened we were all grilled about the parents and the father – was there a concern that was never recorded, were our safeguarding procedures robust enough? All of those questions were asked and it got to me, because it was as if I should’ve seen something, but there wasn’t anything that ever even gave me a niggle. I just hope he didn’t wake up that night.
I felt the same about Ryan.
“You have to accept you don’t know. Or maybe choose what you want to believe. Given how deeply my nephews sleep, there’s a good chance he didn’t wake up.”
“I know. And he was a good sleeper. His mum told me about that one morning when she dropped him off.” She carried on describing the rest of her class, the impact it had on them and the others in the school.
I listened and held her, knowing that there were no words that would make it better or even begin to heal the wound that had been dug into her. If he weren’t dead already, I’d want to kill the child’s father myself, for what he’d done and how he’d left Anya.
“Do you think you’ll be able to be happy if you go back to teaching there?”
She laughed, the sound not full or happy, but dark. “I’ve been thinking about it. Up until last week that was exactly what I was going to do, I wasn’t going to let him take away the place where I loved to work, but now I’m not sure whether that’s the right motivation to have.” She took my hand and pressed it against her breast. I felt her nipple harden and her legs shifted. I could get used to this three times a day thing we had going on and that was a concern.
“Probably not. Were you going to stay there for much longer?” I knew teachers changed schools fairly frequently.
