Chapter 66

The next day, Amanda signed out and left work a full hour early. Headed for the bus stop, her eyes were stinging with humiliation and disbelief.

On her way out she’d had to endure people staring at her, whispering together and then studying the ceiling or the floor intently whenever she walked past.

She had shown some prospective parents around the facilities first thing and they had signed up their twin daughters there and then, which was a result that even brought a smile to Carol’s face.

Amanda had managed finally to get the outdoor activity space reorganised, and instead of sitting in a quiet corner at morning break to read like she usually did, she joined the others and listened to some of the girls talking about a new bar in town they were going to, agreeing to join them for a drink later in the week.

But on her afternoon break, she popped upstairs to the small kitchen to find a tight huddle of people, including Sarah, and Pete Tooley, the maintenance man, talking in low voices over in the corner.

‘What’s wrong?’ She craned over their heads to see what all the fuss was about.

Faces registered panic as she approached and the group fell apart, several people exiting the room in record time.

‘I was just coming down to show you,’ stammered Sarah, slapping down an A4 sheet on the table. ‘It was stuck on the side door, and I didn’t want Carol to see it before you knew.’

Amanda picked up the home-made A4 poster with the headline:

‘CHILD KILLER WORKS AT BUSY BEES NURSERY’

Underneath the headline was a paragraph written reporter-style, claiming that Amanda Danson was the hit-and-run driver of a toddler that had been killed by a car in the town just before Christmas. Police had not been able to trace the driver or vehicle to date but were apparently now investigating her after this ‘second’ accident – again, giving full details.

The bottom third of the poster was taken up with a grainy photocopied black-and-white image of her. She recognised the photograph immediately as being her profile picture from Facebook.

‘This isn’t true,’ she said, quietly, sitting down and laying a hand across her forehead. ‘It’s a load of rubbish.’

‘Don’t worry,’ Sarah said, suddenly a concerned friend again. ‘We’ll destroy this, no harm done.’

‘Somebody has got a hate campaign going against me.’

It was the worst kind of campaign because it contained truth amongst the lies: the accident on Green Road. It seemed so much more plausible because of that.

Suddenly, the staff room door flew open and Pete Tooley burst in again.

‘Amanda, you’d better come quickly.’ He struggled to speak, panting heavily from bounding up the stairs. ‘The posters are all over the High Street. Parents are bringing them in, and Carol is doing her fucking nut.’

One of Carol Hartnell’s obsessions was keeping the profile of the branch squeaky clean in the local community.

‘People will only leave their children with people they can trust,’ was her catchphrase.

Before Amanda could get out of the building to begin tearing down the posters, Carol blocked her exit.

‘Perhaps you should go home early today,’ she said, her voice dangerously void of emotion. ‘I need to investigate exactly what has happened here and get back to you.’

‘Carol, it’s all lies. Someone has got it in for me, I swear—’

‘I’ll see you in my office tomorrow at two p.m. Feel free to bring someone with you.’

So here Amanda was, an hour early out of work and waiting for the bus. Over the road from the bus stop, a quick movement caught her eye but, predictably, when she glanced up from her phone there was nothing to see. A sense of unease enveloped her. Who hated her enough to make up these lies?

The fact that the poster had included the Green Road accident that she was involved in, together with a complete lie – the ‘awful truth’ that the police still didn’t know the identity of the hit-and-run driver of the vehicle that knocked over a little boy – implied she had something to do with a fabricated accident. But somehow it also helped to make her pleas of innocence seem empty.

Since her chat with Carol a couple of days earlier, things had seemed to settle down a little at work. Amanda had kept her head down and got on with the job, and after each appointment, she’d made a point of asking every parent she spoke to if they were happy with the way she had answered their queries and dealt with them. The answer was always yes.

She ended up confiding in Sarah yesterday that colleagues had apparently been whispering concerns to Carol about her but Sarah dismissed all that with a flap of her arm.

‘Everybody knows what a bitch Carol can be,’ she said. ‘Bet she’s just made that up to have a go at you.’

But after all that, there was now today’s debacle to consider.

Someone was out there who hated her so much they’d go to great lengths to destroy her any way they could.

History was repeating itself.

She knew the nursery couldn’t simply sack her because of a malicious poster; such accusations would have to be substantiated.

Unfortunately, she felt sure Carol Hartnell was creative enough to come up with another valid reason – that carried some weight – to get rid of her before the nursery’s customers started to take a real interest in this very public hate campaign and wonder who was looking after their children.

It was shocking how easy it was proving to be to bring about someone’s demise with no solid evidence at all.

Thinking logically, Amanda had to consider why on earth anyone would want to spend valuable time watching and following her. She had probably got the least interesting life of anyone around here. For her, it was just work every day at the nursery and then straight home – or sometimes to Liam’s house – when she finished. There was nothing in between.

A police officer had called round to the house last night to take a statement about the accident. She was stern and virtually accused Amanda of ignoring a previous letter, which she had never received.

Amanda had felt her face flushing but managed to hold her nerve and answered all PC Cullen’s questions. She said the police had been given witness information that indicated Amanda may have been distracted immediately before colliding with Liam. But, of course, they wouldn’t divulge what proof they had.

Then PC Cullen began asking rather weird and vague questions about Liam and why Amanda had made contact with him and his gran after the accident. Had she tried to pressure them in any way?

That was a laugh: Liam had invited her over to the house.

It was all for show, of course. They could think what the hell they liked, they had no proof that she’d done anything wrong at all. He’d appeared out of nowhere on his motorbike, and she had no time to stop.

That was her story and she was damn well sticking to it.