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I spent half of last night in the garage sat on a boxed dinner set given to us as a wedding gift that we’ve never opened, two cans of lager at my feet, one in my hand, and Rumpole’s blanket on my lap. So by the time I’m clocking on for shift the next day, I’m already bracing for a long one. My head’s fuzzy from more than just the drink, and the stitches are giving me murder, itching like crazy, so that all I want to do is tear the bloody things out.
When I stop for a break, I call the hospital while parked across the road from them and check when the stitches are supposed to come out. They tell me they won’t, they’ll just dissolve. I ask how long it takes, and the nurse says if they’re itching that’s a good sign. I hang up with my unuttered response sitting on my tongue, and suffer the rest of the day, stopping in a Superdrug to pick up some cold cream, which works great for the first thirty seconds, and thereafter only if constantly reapplied. But later, when I’m putting the cuffs on a bearded forty-eight-year-old HGV driver for multiple offences, including breaching the terms of his parole and driving without a valid licence, he tells me there’s a smell about me that reminds him of a youngster who used to drop into the cab of his truck in Calais back when he was pressing tarmac cross-continent for Eddie Stobart. After that, I throw the cream in the bin outside the train station and head back to HQ early to tie up the paperwork before end of shift. There’s something I need to do as soon as I’m done here, and I’ve delayed it long enough.
*
The car park’s almost empty at this time of the evening, most of the students already gone. I pull up beside the Mustang, where I get a good view of a thin scratch all the way from the rear wheel arch along the bottom of the panels to the front one. Shame he hasn’t got that patched up.
I go in through the side entrance and follow the signs to lecture theatre number four, the one I was told on the phone when I called ahead to avoid a wasted trip. The corridors are empty and the soles of my shoes peel over the polished linoleum which reflects the light from the windows up at the ceiling. Somewhere down the hall an instrument is being played, deep and throaty. Strings; cello or something similar. I imagine Anna here, walking where I walk, her head full of hopes and aspirations and this the place she’d thought would be the start of it all.
Pausing outside room four, I see a figure through the glass panel of the door, hunched over his desk. He’s marking papers, who passes, who fails. Still making those choices, though with one less student in his class, maybe his best student. Still teaching the same things term after term, still collecting his salary, still a pillar of the college, still breathing.
The door is heavy and squeals on its hinges when I push it open. Dr Adrian Lee Simons, former US citizen and family man, lifts his head from his task, the smile he had planned barely faltering. I’m not the person he was expecting.
‘Hi, can I help you?’ he says, pen in hand.
I cross the room, looking around. ‘Yeah, I think you can.’
‘Are you lost? Who is it you’re looking for?’
It’s not how I picture a lecture theatre. Not one of those bleacher-style setups, where the benches and desks are layered in ascending levels so that everyone gets a good view of the lecturer holding centre stage down at the front. This is just one large room with rows of tables and chairs, like a children’s classroom.
‘Sorry, sir, only I’m due to have a meeting in here shortly?’ Simons says, a question not a statement, though one he won’t be expecting me to have the answer to.
‘West?’ I ask, stopping by the window where I see our cars from here, side by side.
‘Pardon me?’
I glance back over my shoulder. ‘The accent. I’m not great with dialect, but I’d take a stab you’re from out west.’
Simons is wary, but if nothing else, all-American polite. ‘That’s correct. Yes, sir. Seattle.’
‘Nice. How did you end up here?’
I pick up a chair from the nearest desk and bring it over to sit across from him. He puts down his pen, glancing towards the door and the clock on the wall.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m expecting someone.’
I hold out my hands. ‘And here I am.’
‘No, I’m... Sorry, who are you again?’
His dark eyes sink under thick eyebrows, and I can see how the girls would go crazy for him – fresh-faced but with a shadow of stubble, light tan on his neck that suggests he still spends summers and special occasions across the waters with his family. I also see his mind ticking over. He’s an intelligent man. And I don’t trust him already.
Leaning forward, I clasp my hands on his desk. ‘I’m a friend of Anna’s.’
‘Anna?’
‘Yeah, you remember Anna? Anna Johnson. She was a student in your class.’
He holds my gaze but there’s caution there, something he doesn’t want me to see and is doing well to hide, considering.
‘Of course I remember Anna,’ he says, low and guarded. For a moment he looks a lot less of the man he proclaims to be – the Mustang and the accent and the laid-back confidence all paling under the weight of what he’s done.
‘I’m expecting her father any minute,’ he adds.
‘Yeah, no, sorry about that. I’m afraid he won’t be coming.’
Simons leans back in his chair slow enough that it creaks beneath him. ‘So do you mind telling me just who you are?’
‘I already did that. More importantly, Adrian, who are you? Or more specifically, what kind of man are you?’
A hardness comes over his eyes that I imagine few people see. He’s weighing up his options, how fast he can get to that door if he needs to, what his wife packed in his lunch box he could use for protection. A fork from his salad. Gouge my eye out with the spoon from his yogurt.
‘What the fuck is this about?’ he says, a speck of saliva launching from his lips and landing on some poor kid’s paper. He’s on edge. He’s not used to confrontation. Why would he be? Cowards never are.
‘Oh Adrian, such a shame, I’m disappointed. I didn’t have you down as a potty mouth. Good family man like you.’
He’s up from his seat, chair legs scraping over the floor. I do the same, and now we both know where we’re at.
‘Do I need to call security?’
I peer around the room. ‘What with? Is there a button under that desk? Batphone? I hate to tell you this, my friend, but I didn’t see any security on the way in. And Cliff, your usual man, clocked off about half an hour ago. He’s already home in front of the TV by now.’
Simons takes a step back, but I hold up my hands.
‘Easy, tiger. I just want to have a chat with you. That’s all.’
‘About what?’
‘Come on, Adrian. You know what.’
The muscles along his jaw clench while he eyes me long enough to come to a decision, the outcome of which is to gather up the work on his desk.
‘I’m sorry,’ he says, picking up his case from the floor and opening it to throw in the papers. ‘I really don’t know what this is about and I need to get home.’
‘Course you do. I can appreciate that, I have a family too. I won’t keep you long.’
‘So if you don’t mind, this conversation is over.’ He clicks the case shut and pulls it from the desk.
I let him get halfway across the room before I say, ‘So does Ellen know about you and Anna, Brad?’
He spins around, tension pulling up his shoulders, something else flooding his throat and cheeks with blood.
‘What are you talking about? Who the hell is Brad?’
There’s a genuine confusion about him that just for a fleeting second has me wondering if I’ve got this entire thing wrong. But I hold firm, remember who I’m dealing with. Simons won’t give everything up easily, he has too much to lose for that.
‘Oh, you didn’t realize that’s what she called you?’ I perch on the end of his desk and force a smile. ‘In her contacts, anyway. To protect herself, I suppose, in case anyone got hold of her phone. Or, god forbid, to protect you. I mean, if that ever got out, that you and she were...’
I intend to say something crude but the words won’t make it out, not with Anna’s face in my mind, and besides there’s no need, I’ve already pressed the right buttons. He strides across the room towards me.
‘Who the hell do you think you are? How dare you?’
‘No, how dare you, Adrian?’ I get up from the desk, and I’ve got a good few inches on him. ‘That’s what I really want to know. How did you dare screw a student, in the process screwing up her life, and still find you can sleep next to your wife at night?’
His case hits the floor at our feet, breaking open and papers scattering. Hands grip my t-shirt, and with more strength than I would’ve given him credit for, he pushes me off balance and against the desk. I let him. He’s breathing hard and something dark burns in his eyes, but he’s not ready to throw a punch yet.
‘I mean, do you even feel guilty, Adrian? Does it keep you up at night? And how many others have there been?’
‘I have never touched a student. Never.’
I laugh. ‘Come on, we both know that’s not true.’
He shakes his head, mouth tangled in disgust, fists curling in my t-shirt. ‘You have no idea what you’re talking about.’
‘No? How about, I think I screwed up last time and I’m really sorry. I miss you... Or even, Usual place. But we’ll have to be quick—’
The punch is hard enough to knock me to the floor and daze me for a second. Mostly because I didn’t think he’d really do it. But I scramble to my feet as the numbness in my cheek recedes and nerve endings flare into life. I hold my hand to my face, move my jaw around.
‘Not bad for someone who looks like a geography teacher.’
‘Get out of here,’ he says, deflated, as if that one punch took it out of him. He’s rattled. Not only about what I’ve said, but about what he’s just done. And on college time, college property. He backs off, crouches to the floor to scoop his papers back into the case. He looks like a man who knows he’s about to lose everything.
‘You know, Adrian, I’d think more of you if you were man enough to tell the truth. That’s the least you can do for Anna, isn’t it, given where she ended up because of you?’
He jumps to his feet, and when he comes for me this time I’m ready to retaliate, but he stops himself, fingers curling into his palms.
‘You want the truth? Really? Whoever the hell you are.’
‘A friend of Anna’s—’
‘Yeah, yeah, friend of Anna’s, so you say. Well then, as her friend, you know about her, right? You know what she was like. That she had a problem with attachment. That when she wanted something, she became obsessive about it. You know that she didn’t take no for an answer. That she mistook kindness for something else and that she could be manipulative. She could work her way around you until your back was against the wall and you didn’t know what the right thing to do was any more—’
‘So you jumped in there and thought what the heck.’
‘No! I never touched her.’
I laugh and shake my head. ‘I’ve known pricks like you my entire life.’
‘No, you haven’t,’ he says, backing up to put space between us, his rage cooling after his outburst, but me clinging to mine or else let him destroy the Anna I’d got to know in that short time I spent with her.
‘Clearly you haven’t, Friend of Anna,’ he adds, picking up his bag from the floor.
I run my hand over my mouth and wince at the pain that pierces through my cheek and up to my skull. This is not the way it was meant to go. I was meant to get his apology, his remorse, something. Something that would make what happened to Anna that night not be for nothing.
Simons gets to his feet, straightening his shirt and brushing a hand through his hair.
‘Don’t you ever come round here, to where I work, and spout about things you know nothing about again. Or I’ll have you arrested for harassment.’
He thrusts his bag under his arm and turns to leave. I’m clawing for something to say that’ll pull the momentum back my way enough to get him to talk, but my mind’s failing me. I’m losing sight of Anna, losing sight of what I’m supposed to be doing here, and if he walks out now he’s won, I leave with nothing.
But before he gets to the door he stops, dips his head like he’s thinking something over, and I think maybe this is it. I was right. And this is where the guilt gets too much and he confesses. When he turns, in his face I see a man who’s aged ten years in the last ten minutes.
‘Anna had my number because all students have my number. It makes them feel they’re not alone in this journey they’re on. That I’m not just barking at them from the front of the room. That I care about how they do and I want to help them through it, I want them to do well, give themselves the best start. Not just Anna, all of them. They’re adults, I trust them to act like adults. Maybe that’s naïve of me, I dunno. I guess it must be, ‘cause Anna misused that trust. She always wanted more, taking advantage of extra one-on-one time, texting me at all hours, turning up outside my home before assignments were due to ask for help—’
‘I miss you. That’s what she said, Adrian. I have the evidence of those messages. I mean, come on, what student tells a lecturer they miss them?’
He sighs, dropping his chin to his chest and stepping back enough to lean against the door behind him.
‘I’d swopped her classes. I had to, I was afraid of how far she would go. I didn’t want her to get in trouble with the college or with her parents so I never said anything, but I knew I couldn’t go on teaching her, it wasn’t healthy. Not for her, and certainly not for me. She was upset about that. If you knew Anna like you claim to, then you’ll know that when she was upset it took her a long time to get over things. She refused to let my decision lie, kept hounding me to give her another chance, said she realised she had made me uncomfortable and would back off. She said she just wanted to be in my class, couldn’t pass the course without me. If you wanna know the absolute truth, she drove me insane. That’s what Anna does... Did.’
‘And that night? When she came to see you?’
He clutches the bag to his chest with both arms like a life raft. ‘I was annoyed that she’d come to the house again. I told her I’d call the police if she didn’t leave. So, yeah, I guess if you’re looking for someone to blame for her death? If that’s what this is all about? Go ahead, blame me. ‘Cause I knew she was high that night. I could smell it on her and see it in her eyes, they were all over the place. She was all over the place. And I still let her go. I let her go because I couldn’t deal with her any more, I wanted her gone, away from me, away from my home and my family. So yes, Friend of Anna’s, yes, that keeps me up at night, if you must know. But I never touched her. I wouldn’t. I love my family. I have a beautiful wife—’ He chokes and covers it with a cough. ‘Two beautiful, intelligent girls. And that’s all I care about.’
I watch him leave, looking at the closed door long after he’s gone. There’s a heaviness on the side of my face where he landed the punch, but other than that, nothing. It’s like I’ve been completing a puzzle by forcing the pieces into all the wrong places, when what I should have done is stopped to look at the picture first. Because if everything that came out of Adrian Simons’ mouth in the last few minutes was correct, and he never wanted Anna, and he never cheated on his wife or lied to his family, then he’s a far better man than I am.
