Rachel Dean runs fast. She runs with her legs burning, her heart pounding, and her lungs screaming. She runs as if her life depends on it.
It’s become something of a habit, getting out early on a weekend, before Ellie stirs and the rest of the school has risen. It’s her release. Her way of clearing her head after a bad night, of silencing her brain, of coming back into her body and reducing herself to muscle, sinew and bone. It’s been her way of reclaiming the weekends, giving them new shape, since Ben left and she and Ellie relocated to the staff cottage.
This early on a Sunday, there’s a rare stillness across the campus, the residential students tucked in dormitories, their pastoral problems stowed safely with them, for the time being at least. Morning worship will eventually drive them from their warm beds, but for now, the grounds are hers alone. She passes the grand, ivy-clad buildings, the assembly hall, the English department and the state-of-the-art science block, all locked and quiet, before detouring down a path lined with neat box hedging to where the art department nestles into the cleft of the hills, a sleek low building with a sedum roof and huge glass windows angled towards the trees. Here she loops back to join the long gravel drive, crunching towards the wrought-iron gates leading out onto the lane.
The urge to move is stronger than usual, and not just because of the bottle of red wine she’d opened last night while cooking dinner, for one. There’d been no one to share it with, no one to warn her not to overindulge, and Rachel had found herself topping up her glass, telling herself that the wine would help her sleep. It had, until she’d woken in the small hours, her dry tongue heavy in her mouth as she’d moved her hand across the mattress, reaching for Ben, her fingers grazing the sheet, finding the cold empty space where her husband once lay.
The shape of her life had returned to her then. Her ex-husband sleeping across the valley in another woman’s bed, and their daughter, Ellie, spending her second weekend with him, as agreed in their polite but decidedly tense separation negotiations. No doubt he’d rolled out the red carpet, playing happy families with Chrissie in that way it was so much easier to do as a part-time parent, without any of the daily grind to negotiate. She tries not to be bitter. It’s good for Ellie. A weekend with her father is probably just what she needs. God knows, she’s struggled to get through to the girl. Ellie’s latest stunt had landed her with a three-day suspension from school. If she isn’t careful, she’ll lose her scholarship and any chance of a place at the London art college she’s hoping to attend next year.
Gritting her teeth, Rachel increases her pace. She fixes her gaze on the tall gates at the end of the drive, but as she nears the exit and the former hunting lodge hunkered low next to the stone pillars, she pulls up short. The school’s entrance is no longer a picture of immaculate splendour. Splattered across the gravel is a mess of orange pumpkin rind, pulp and seeds, while a dozen or so eggs now decorate the front of the Lodge, yellow yolks dried in an impressionistic smear over the porch and windows, several more dotted across the school’s welcome sign. Rachel stands with her hands on her hips, breathing heavily as she surveys the damage.
It’s obviously a mindless Halloween prank, though whoever’s decided to decorate their head teacher’s residence with such a brazen display must’ve been feeling brave – or reckless. Rachel glances up and sees the curtains at the Lodge are drawn, a light on inside. Perhaps the Crowes have already spotted the mess. No doubt it would be Malcolm, Margaret’s long-suffering husband, who’d be out later to clear it all up. Such a shame. It only took a few kids to ruin it for everyone.
A dark silhouette passes an upstairs window, then returns, a tall figure, pencil-thin, backlit from within. Malcolm. She lifts her hand to wave, a little embarrassed to have been caught peering up at their home, but he doesn’t appear to be looking down at her. His head is lifted, she realises, his gaze fixed on the wooded hills rising in the distance.
Rachel takes the opportunity to duck away, dodging the mess strewn across the drive as she leaves through the gates and follows the lane to the start of a trail winding up into the woods. The sun is higher now, chasing the darkest shadows from the hills. She finds her rhythm weaving up through the trees, losing herself in the thud of her feet, the crunch of the copper leaves and the white clouds of her breath, only breaking focus when a figure looms out of the trees, stepping onto the path in front of her.
Rachel gives a startled cry, one hand flying to her chest. ‘You frightened me,’ she says, the words exhaled between breaths.
‘Sorry, ma’am.’ The man is broad-shouldered, dressed head to toe in a dark uniform, with a shock of blond hair. There’s a roll of something blue and white in his hands. Police tape.
She bends over, hands on knees. ‘Are you closing the trail?’
The officer nods and stretches the tape across the path, winding it around a nearby tree trunk and back again. ‘’Fraid so. No access to the folly until further notice.’
‘That’s a shame.’ She glances up the trail, unable to see anything obviously different behind him. Her usual route is a challenging hill climb, taking her a mile or so to the top of the escarpment, past the folly, then dropping down through the other side of the woods to the nearby town of Thorncombe, before circling back along the lane to the school. ‘What happened?’ she asks. ‘I hope no one’s hurt?’
The officer glances around, then leans a little closer. ‘I shouldn’t say, but it looks as though a Halloween party got out of hand last night.’
Rachel frowns. ‘I’m Head of Student Welfare at Folly View College. None of our kids were involved, I hope?’ She thinks about the excited buzz that had filled the corridors as Halloween had loomed closer, the mess at the school’s entrance that morning.
‘I’m sorry, ma’am. I wouldn’t be able to say, even if I did know. Which I don’t,’ he adds quickly. ‘My orders are to stop anyone heading up to the folly.’
Rachel feels a prickle of unease. Boarders weren’t supposed to leave the school grounds without permission, but she wasn’t naïve. She knew their residential students found ways to bend the rules, especially at weekends. It would be a nightmare for the faculty if any of their kids were found to have been involved in something illegal off campus. She wipes the sweat from her brow with a sleeve. ‘Well, I hope you won’t be out here too long.’ She glances about. ‘It’s rather gloomy, isn’t it?’
‘It’s the quiet I don’t like,’ the officer admits, gazing up at the trees. ‘Not sure you’d get me partying out here after dark.’
‘No,’ agrees Rachel. ‘But then where else do the local kids have to hang out?’
‘Shame that skate park didn’t get the green light.’
‘I have a seventeen-year-old who would agree with you on that.’
She waves goodbye and retraces her steps back down the trail, catkins and twigs cracking beneath her trainers, breaking the quiet. It’s unnerving to think of something amiss so close to the school, happening right here in the woods. At least Ellie had been safely at Ben’s. She finds herself suddenly grateful for their arrangement. At least that’s one less thing to worry about.
Thoughts of Ellie and Ben and their weekend together fill her mind until her feet hit the tarmac at the bottom of the woods and she slides her phone from her pocket. She types a brief message. Hope you’re having a great time with Dad. Love you x
It’s too early for a reply. Ellie will be fast asleep.
Leave it, she tells herself. Don’t go there. But her fingers seem to have a mind of their own, swiping to another thread. Hey. Hear there’s been some trouble in the woods. Anything the school should know about? She reads it back, pleased with its perfunctory tone and presses send. Then, almost immediately, before she can stop herself, she types another line. Hope you and Ellie had fun last night. x.
She hits send again, then stares at her screen. Oh god. That kiss. She definitely shouldn’t have put a kiss. Ben’s probably lying in bed right now next to Chrissie reading the messages out loud, the two of them rolling their eyes, laughing at her needy early morning texts. Almost as if she didn’t have a life of her own.
She shoves her phone back into her pocket. For god’s sake. She’s a grown-ass woman. Time to start acting like one. Turning back towards the school, she can feel the sweat already cooling on her skin. All adrenalin and enthusiasm for the run has left her now; it’s just her tired body loping back to an empty cottage and her regret trailing her like a small, lost dog.