“Brian!” I shout into my mobile as I sprint down the corridor, past artwork displays, sporting achievements, and tall metal lockers. “Brian, you need to come home now. James Evans is working at Charlotte’s school. I read a conversation on your computer between her and Ella and they were scared of him. Call the police, Brian. I’m at the school now.”
I reach the stairs and speed up them, using the banister to yank myself up, cursing my legs for not moving faster. I haven’t been to Brighton Academy for at least a year, but I can still remember where the headmaster’s office is.
“Can I help you?”
A fair-haired, middle-aged woman in a pale pink blouse with pearls at her neck looks up from her desk as I charge into the small room adjacent to the headmaster’s office. She’s about the same age as me, maybe four or five years older. Her name is Clarissa Gordon. She was here the last time I came to see the head.
“I’m here to see Mr. Anderson.” I make a halfhearted attempt to pat down my hair. “It’s urgent.”
I can tell from the expression on Clarissa’s face as she looks me up and down that she remembers me. Her nose narrows, and the hint of a smile plays on her pursed lips. “And your name is?”
“Jackson. Sue Jackson. It’s very important that I see him. The safety of two of the pupils is at stake.”
Clarissa raises her eyebrows. She’s remembering the last time I was here, when I stormed into Charlotte’s biology lesson and demanded I remove her for her own safety. We’d been burgled a month earlier and that, plus a news report I’d just watched on the TV about a teenager being raped in a local park, had convinced me that James had found me and my daughter was in danger. I was shaking so much I couldn’t breathe. Mr. Prosser, the biology teacher, took me through to see Mr. Anderson, who called the school nurse. I can still remember Clarissa’s pinched face peering at me through the glass panel in the head teacher’s door as the nurse instructed me to take slow, deep breaths while I shouted that no one understood how much danger they were putting Charlotte in by stopping me from seeing her. I was on high-dose anti-anxiety medication for six months afterward.
“The safety of two pupils, you say? Gosh. Well, if you could give me a few more details, perhaps I could call through to Mr. Anderson and…” She tails off, distracted by half a dozen staff chatting noisily as they stroll past the window behind me.
“There’s no time.” I sidestep her desk and reach for the door handle to her right. “I need to speak to him now.”
“Excuse me. Excuse me, Mrs. Jack—”
Her chair squeaks as she rises to come after me, but I turn the handle and I’m in the headmaster’s study before she can reach me.
“Clarissa, I—” The head looks up from his desk, his lips parting in surprise as I burst into the room, his secretary in close pursuit.
“Sorry, Mr. Anderson,” she gasps. “She just burst in. There was nothing I could do to stop her.”
“It’s okay, Clarissa.” He nods. “I’ll take it from here.”
“But you specifically said you didn’t want to be disturbed.” She pulls a face. “You said you had to prepare a report for the governors about—”
“I’ll take it from here, Clarissa. Thank you.”
“Yes, Mr. Anderson.” She retreats, stepping backward out of the room. From her expression, I’m fairly certain that if we were thirty years younger, she’d be waiting for me at the gates later with two of her mates.
“I’ll just be outside,” she says, closing the door with a click.
Ian Anderson eyes me from under his heavy brow and waves a hand in the direction of the empty chair in front of me. “Do take a seat, Mrs.…”
“Jackson. I’ll stand, thank you.”
“Okay.” He leans back in his chair and folds his arms across his broad chest. “What can I do you for, Mrs. Jackson?”
“I’m sorry for bursting in on you,” I say, gripping the back of the chair, “but it’s urgent. One of your teachers poses a very real danger to the children.”
He sits up sharply. “One of our teachers?”
“I have reason to believe that one of your teachers is working at this school under false pretenses. I think he may have harmed Charlotte and possibly her friend Ella too.”
“Charlotte…” Mr. Anderson looks at me as though seeing me for the first time. “Not Charlotte Jackson? You’re her—”
“Mother? Yes.”
I wait for him to jump to his feet and take action. Instead he keeps staring at me like he’s expecting me to say something else.
“Please.” I motion for him to stand up. “Can we just go and find him? The longer we wait, the more chance there is that he’ll leave for the day.” Or maybe forever. I can’t shake the feeling that James knows I’m onto him. “Please, Mr. Anderson. He needs to be stopped before he hurts someone—if he hasn’t already.”
“If who’s hurt someone?”
“James Evans.”
“James Evans—our business studies teacher?”
“Yes. No. He’s not really a teacher; he’s an impostor.” I inch toward the door. “Please, Mr. Anderson. Let’s go.”
He holds up a hand. “Mrs. Jackson, sit down for a minute and let’s start this again. I’m struggling to keep up.”
“There isn’t time.” I cross the room and stoop down, my hands gripping the edge of his desk, my face at the same level as his. “Please. I’ll explain everything but I need you to find James Evans with me now. You have no idea how much danger the children are in. We need to stop him before he can escape.” I can’t keep the exasperation out of my voice. “Please, let’s go.”
“We take accusations against our teachers very seriously, you know, Mrs. Jackson.” He gets up interminably slowly, and I wait as he pulls his jacket from the back of the chair and slips one arm, then the other, into it, then smooths it over his shoulders. For one terrible second, I think he’s about to do up his buttons too, but he suddenly becomes animated and crosses the room in four large strides.
“Mrs. Jackson,” he says as he opens the door and I catch sight of Clarissa’s arched eyebrows, “if you’d come with me.”
Even with Mr. Anderson’s long-legged strides, it takes forever to reach the staff room. When we cross the bridge between the science block and the main building, I pause to press my hands up against the floor-to-ceiling window and search the parking lot. A dozen or so teachers mill around below, some chatting in small groups, the others letting themselves into their cars. I scan the group for James’s face, but he’s not down there.
“Mrs. Jackson?”
The headmaster is standing at the far end of the bridge. I hurry after him.
“Of course, he might not even be here,” he says, holding open the door to the staff room. “There’s every chance he’ll have left for the day, be in the business studies room, or even…”
I don’t hear the rest of the sentence because my heart is hammering so hard in my chest, I feel sick.
There is a man standing at the opposite side of the staff room. He has his back to us, his blond head dipped as though he’s reading a book or marking a pile of papers. I can still hear Mr. Anderson’s voice, but I can’t make out a word he’s saying. Every fiber of my being is commanding me to turn, run, and never look back, but I can’t. I can’t tear my eyes away from the broad expanse of back and the strong arms of the man across the room. The air stills, the distance between us closes, and it is as though I am standing behind him and breathing in his musky scent. I reach out a hand and feel the coarse wave to his hair, the soft skin on the back of his bent neck, and the starchy stiffness of his shirt collar under my fingertips. I have seen this shape, felt these things, in a hundred nightmares. He just needs to turn around so I can see his face, so I can wake up.
“James?” I whisper as the edges of my vision turn amber and then black. It’s as though a match is being held to a photograph. I blink to try and clear my vision, but now there are black spots and my ears are ringing with the sound of the ocean. I feel like I’m swimming under water, deep, deep down under the—
“Mrs. Jackson?”
I feel a hand touch my elbow and try to turn my head to the left to see who has touched me, but I’m fighting so hard to keep my balance, I’m worried that even the slightest movement will send me hurtling like a stone toward the seabed.
“Mrs. Jackson, do you need to sit down?”
There is another hand, touching my right elbow, and I feel something nudge the back of my knees and then I’m pushed/pulled down until I am sitting. Everything is black and the ocean inside my head pounds the sides of my skull. My stomach lurches and—
“Oh god, she’s been sick.”
“There are paper towels in the gents. I’ll get some.”
“And a glass of water if you—”
“We’ve got mugs. There might be a clean one some—”
And then there is silence.
***
“Mrs. Jackson. Mrs. Jackson, can you hear me?”
“Mrs. Jackson?” A different voice, female this time.
Then, “Sue?”
My eyes flick open.
“Brian?” I say, but no sound comes out. I try to sit up, but gentle hands press down on my shoulders, on my hips, and I am forced back down.
“Don’t move. You hit your head when you fainted. The paramedics are on their way.”
“James,” I say, staring into the bright blue eyes that are looking at me with a mixture of concern and puzzlement.
“No, Sue. It’s Brian.”
“I know. I know you’re Brian. Where’s James?”
My husband twists around to look at someone behind him, someone out of my eye line.
“James, she wants to talk to you.”
“No! No!” I try to scream but the words catch in my throat. “No!”
“Mrs. Jackson?” A face I’ve never seen before appears beside Brian. “I’m James Evans.”
“No.” I shake my head from side to side. “No, you’re not.”
The man smiles. It’s a warm smile that lights up his face, spreading his nostrils wide and crinkling the skin under his eyes. “You can ring my mum or check my birth certificate if you like but I’ve spent the last twenty-nine years being called James Evans—well, Jamie to my friends—so I’m pretty sure—”
“The other one,” I say. “Where’s the other one?”
I try to sit up so I can look around the room, but Brian shakes his head.
“This is James Evans.” He puts a hand to my face and gently brushes the hair from my cheeks. “Charlotte and Ella’s business studies teacher. He’s the only James Evans in the school, Sue.”
“But…” I look from Brian to the young, blond-haired man beside him and instantly realize my mistake. James Evans wouldn’t be blond anymore, not at forty-eight. “Oh god.”
I cover my face with my hands and close my eyes. What have I done?
“The girls skipped a school trip,” I hear Brian say. “They were supposed to go to London with Mr. Evans but—”
“They called in on the day and said they had food poisoning. Said they’d been to Nando’s together the night before and had some bad chicken and were up all night with dodgy stomachs. I had no reason not to believe them, although, in retrospect, perhaps I should have called you to check.”
“You should,” says a voice I recognize as Mr. Anderson.
“The MSN conversation you read, Sue. They weren’t really scared that Mr. Evans was going to kill them,” Brian says. “It was just a figure of speech.”
I remove my hands from my face and look at the four faces hovering over me.
“If they didn’t go on a school trip with Mr. Evans that weekend,” I say, “and they weren’t at home with us, where were they?”
Brian shakes his head. “We don’t know.”
Saturday, April 6, 1991
I’ve been a mess all week. I haven’t been able to sew or sleep and I’ve barely eaten. Every time the phone’s rung, I’ve jumped, certain it was James, terrified he’d found out what I was about to do. As it was, he only rang me once this week, and then it was just a brief call midweek to check where we were meeting on Friday.
I didn’t want to go. I kept telling myself James wasn’t that bad, that there were a lot of men out there who were worse than him, but then, almost as if she could sense my resolve wavering, Hels called me at 5 p.m.
“I’ll be there for you,” she said. “We both will. Rupert and I will help you through this. Be strong, Susan. Remember all the times he’s made you cry.”
Typical then that James, sitting alone at a wooden table by the bar, jumped out of his seat the minute he spotted me walking into the Heart in Hand, wrapped me in his arms, and told me how beautiful I looked. He was in a fantastic mood, buzzing about a television role he’d seen advertised in The Stage, and apologizing profusely for not ringing me because he’d been so busy preparing for his audition.
“It went well, really well,” he said, squeezing my hands between his. “And if I get this, I’ll be able to afford somewhere big enough for you and me to live with a granny flat on the side for Mum. We’ll have our privacy and she’ll have the reassurance that I’m close by. And, and”—he practically jumped out of his seat—“you can have your own sewing room, maybe start up a business rather than do it for free for the Abberley lot. It’ll be perfect.”
We stayed in the pub—him gushing and fantasizing—me nodding and playing the supportive girlfriend for a good two hours until, unable to bear it a second longer, I suggested we grab a takeaway and go back to my place. James was surprised—he’d expected to go on to a restaurant—but I said I was tired and he acquiesced. The walk home was horrible. I was too preoccupied to talk, and we lapsed into an uncomfortable silence, James glancing at me every couple of seconds while I avoided his eyes.
He wrapped his arms around me as I unlocked the front door and nuzzled his face into my neck.
“Maybe coming home wasn’t such a bad idea after all. You just wanted to lure me into your bed, didn’t you, you little minx?”
I stiffened at his touch and slipped out of his arms. He followed me into the kitchen and watched from the doorway as I opened the fridge and pulled out a bottle of wine. I could feel his eyes boring into my back as I unscrewed the lid and poured myself a large glass.
“Want one, James?”
He didn’t reply.
I put the bottle back in the fridge, then, noticing how messy it had become, set about rearranging packets of ham, cartons of milk, and half-empty tins of baked beans.
“What are you doing?” His voice cut through me.
I murmured something inane about a tidy fridge and a tidy mind, unwrapped the cling film from a chunk of cheese then rewrapped it, tighter, and placed it in the top drawer of the fridge door.
“Sue, stop fucking about with the fridge and look at me.”
I turned slowly, my eyes fixed on the tiled floor.
“Look at me.”
I tightened my grip on my glass of wine and forced my gaze upward. A jolt of fear flashed through me as our eyes met. There was no warmth in James’s eyes, no humor, no love. He was looking at me dispassionately like he’d never seen me before.
“Let’s go through to the living room.” My voice came out as a whisper. “We need to talk.”
James turned on his heel and left the kitchen. I followed behind, pausing in the corridor to gulp my wine as he disappeared into the living room. I’d barely taken a step through the door when a hand gripped my neck and I was shoved up against the wall.
“I knew you’d cheat on me. You dirty, little slut.”
“James.” The wine glass tumbled from my hand as my fingers flew to my neck. I pulled at his hand but he was too strong. “James, I can’t breathe.”
“No one will ever love you as much as I do.” His top lip was curled back, his nostrils flared. “No one.”
“Please.” I pulled at his hand again, my heels dancing against the skirting as I tried to find my footing. Only my toes were touching the floor. “Please, James. Please, you’re hurting me.”
“Good.” He pressed his face against mine, his breath hot against my cheek, his skin damp with sweat. “Because you’re hurting me.”
“I didn’t cheat on you. I swear. I swear on my mum’s life. On my dad’s grave.”
James pulled back and looked at me through narrowed eyes and then smiled. For a second, I thought he was going to head-butt me, but then he kissed me full on the lips, pressing so hard I lost all sensation in my mouth. His hand grasped for my breast and then, just as I thought it was over, he threw me across the room. My foot hit the coffee table and I stumbled forward, landing face-first on the sofa.
“James.” I twisted onto my side. He moved across the living room toward me, the same dead expression in his eyes that I’d seen in the kitchen. “James, stop it. I didn’t cheat on you. I swear. I—”
He stopped walking and laughed. He laughed so hard he gripped his stomach and gasped, reaching for the arm of the sofa as he doubled over.
“You?” He snorted. “Cheat on me? As if.” He pointed and laughed again. “Have you looked in the mirror recently? Have you? Who’d sleep with you, you fat bitch? I’m glad that you wanted to talk tonight.” The laughter stopped as suddenly as it had started as James pulled himself up to his full height and smoothed down his clothes. “Because I wanted a little chat of my own. Things aren’t working, Suzy-Sue, and I think we should split up.”
He stopped talking.
He was waiting for a reaction, but I couldn’t work out what he wanted me to do. To cry? To beg him not to finish with me? To agree? Too scared to make the wrong decision, I said nothing at all.
“Ah,” he said after what felt like an age. “No reaction. No reaction to the man you claim you love more than life telling you he wants to leave you. How strange. That’s not the behavior I’d expect of a woman in love.”
“I…I do love you James but—”
“LIAR!” He spat the word in my face, and I covered my face with my arms, cowering into a ball. “Filthy liar!”
I felt his fingers on my left wrist and, for a horrible moment, thought he was going to break my hand, but then I felt a sharp tugging on my ring finger and I realized what he was doing. I peered through my arms as he crossed the living room and opened the window. The traffic outside roared in response.
“Oh, Granny.” He held the ring aloft, between the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. “I’m so sorry. I really thought I’d met the one. I thought I’d met my soul mate. But she didn’t love me, Granny, not as much as she claimed.” He stifled a sob. “So now it’s time to say bye-bye. Not just to her, but to your ring too. Sorry to let you down, Granny. I tried. I really did.”
I watched, horrified, as he pulled back his arm. He was going to throw the ring—a family heirloom—out of the window, and it was all my fault.
“No!” I jumped off the sofa and hobbled toward him, my hands outstretched. “James, don’t. Your granny wouldn’t have wanted—”
But it was too late. The ring flew through the window, arched over the road, and landed in the path of an oncoming car.
“It’s not too late.” I grabbed James’s arm. “We can still get it. It might not be damaged.”
“You money-grabbing bitch.” He swiped at me, and unstable on my injured foot, I tumbled onto the carpet. “You don’t give a shit about me but you want to keep your precious ring, do you? Well, I’ve got news for you, my darling gold digger.” He stooped down and cupped my chin, forcing me to look up at him. “It’s not a fucking diamond and sapphire family heirloom. It’s a cheap piece of shit I picked up from Camden Market. You should have seen your face, lapping up that Great Granny shit like an alley cat with its nose in a bowl of cream. And you claim to be intelligent? Honestly.”
He pushed me away from him.
“Mother said I was worth more than you—some bar scrubber with a sewing machine—and she was right.” He shook his head. “Poor Mother. And to think I almost abandoned her to spend time with you. You! Jesus. Still, it’s true what they say about fat girls being easy.” He crouched down again and ran a finger along the side of my jaw, then pinched the small deposit of fat under my chin. “You might want to keep your legs crossed a bit longer with your next boyfriend. He might respect you a bit more.”