Although Freda and I get off to an early start, I am slow-moving from lack of sleep and it takes us an age to be ready to leave the house. For a start, there is a fair bit of clearing up to be done in the kitchen. I heard Annie’s troupe return and crash about last night, and the evidence is here in the form of malodorous burger wrappings, bloody ketchup smears and a small puddle of beer. Then we make eggy bread for breakfast, which necessitates further clearing up; I require a second cup of coffee and take longer than my allotted ten minutes to do the quick crossword; Freda gets bored and goes to find some morning rubbish on the television, from which she has to be prised away. In the end, it is after nine before I get her strapped into my bike’s child seat and we set off for the campus. I am dropping Freda at Acorns. Although term has finished, there are children’s holiday activities going on in venues around the campus, and activities for the under-fives happen at Acorns. This morning, Freda is looking forward to dance and percussion sessions – less messy than yesterday’s potato prints.
I drop her off and as I’m wheeling my bike through the car park I spot a familiar figure unloading a toddler from a shiny green four-by-four. It is Lavender, my ex-husband’s newish wife, looking as fragrant as ever, despite having produced two sons in quick succession. This morning she is wearing tailored cream trousers, a crisp tan-and-cream-striped shirt, a tan bow tying back her discreetly streaked blonde hair and pearl earrings. Earrings, even? For the nursery run?
I have nothing against Lavender, actually. She is a sweet, if not very bright young woman and Andrew and I were long divorced before he met her. If anything I feel a bit guilty towards her; I feel I should have warned her what hopeless husband material Andrew is. She looks cheerful enough, though. It all depends on what you want, I suppose. I am surprised to see her here; I assumed she was going for total immersion motherhood.
‘Good morning,’ I call as I approach. ‘Is Arthur a regular Acorns attender these days?’ I flash an obligatory smile at the solemn infant.
She leans in to mwah mwah me. ‘I’m getting him used to it,’ she says, blushing slightly. ‘I’m starting a course next term – just part time – Art Appreciation.’
‘Lovely,’ I say.
‘Well …’ the blush deepens ‘… I thought I should have something to talk to Andrew about in the evenings. Don’t want to be a drudgy wife who can only talk about nappies, you know.’
‘Absolutely,’ I say, not adding that in my experience Andrew prefers talking to being talked to. ‘Well, good luck with that!’ and off I go.
As I’m wheeling my bike past the Student Union towards the English Language block, my eye is caught by activity over to my right, near the dance studio. There are flashing lights. An ambulance and a police car. I swerve round and steer in that direction, trying not to look like an obvious rubbernecker, keeping my eyes to the ground as though deep in thought. When I’m close enough, though, I look up, just in time to see someone being loaded into the ambulance. She is being carried feet first, so I see first the folds of a grey chador, and then her face.
I am so shocked that I let my bike fall to the ground and the clatter alerts one of the policemen, who comes bustling towards me, waving me away.
‘This is a possible crime scene,’ he calls. ‘No nearer, please.’
‘But I know her,’ I call, moving closer. ‘I’m her teacher.’
‘Well, good for you,’ he says. ‘We still don’t need you all over the crime scene.’
‘I can identify her,’ I say. ‘I know who she is.’
‘We know who she is, madam. She had ID on her. Now if you wouldn’t mind—’
’Of course,’ I say. ‘Sorry.’ But I linger as I pick up my bike, until he turns back and scowls at me and I am forced to wheel it away.
Jamilleh. A crime scene. What the hell is going on?
There is one person who could definitely tell me and he is the very person I have sworn not to contact. I have decided, since yesterday’s meeting in Malcolm’s office, that I am not speaking to David any more, and that it – whatever it was – is over between us. I am not being unreasonable. David has been back from London for almost a week now and he has not contacted me once. All attempts at communication have come from me and the only ones he has responded to have been those relating to the murders. Otherwise, he has not answered his phone, he has ignored my texts and has sent automatic out of office replies to my emails. I didn’t expect the affair, relationship, folie à deux or whatever else you like to call it between us to end like this. I fully expected it to end some time, but by mutual agreement between two mature adults. I didn’t envisage one of us dumping the other as though we were a pair of hormone-crazed teenagers. When I think about it, though, David has played this cleverly. He wants to be rid of me but hasn’t the guts to dump me, so he is ignoring me, knowing full well that I won’t be able to stand that and so will be the one to dump him. He walks away feeling virtuous – even hard done by – and I have no-one to shout at.
I am pondering this, and probably snarling a bit, as I round the corner of the English Language building and come face to face with Margaret Jones, current head of the USLS and putative director of the new, amalgamated unit. This is a situation which is beyond even my social aplomb, and it is certainly way out of her league. We stand and stare at each other until she ducks her head, performs an odd little scamper and heads off in the direction of the registry. I watch her go. Those sandals! As I walk upstairs to my office, I’m reminded of a scene I had with Annie when she was fourteen and insisted on giving up GCSE Physics. ‘Miss Proctor’s shoes,’ she said. ‘I cannot spend another year looking at those shoes. There is a distinct possibility that one day I shall throw up.’ I rebuked her, of course, and told her how immature it was to let such trivia get in the way of her education, but today I’m with Annie all the way.
In my office I can’t settle to anything. I need to know what happened to Jamilleh. Would Paula tell me? Unlikely, I know, but there’s no harm in trying. I don’t have her mobile number, so I ring the police station, to be told, brusquely, that DS Powell is out of the station and they can’t say when she will be back. So where is she? At the hospital? Well, I can ring the hospital, can’t I? I ring reception and I explain, in my most authoritative tone, that I am the director of the English Language Unit at the university (for how much longer? an insidious little voice in my head asks me). ‘I have been informed,’ I say, ‘that a student of ours, a Mrs Jamilleh Hamidi, has met with an accident and has been taken to A&E. I wanted to enquire about her condition and the circumstances of the accident as I may need to inform her family.’
‘Just a minute,’ the receptionist says, and the line goes quiet. I wait. She returns. Her tone is unfriendly. ‘Mrs Hamidi is still being assessed,’ she says. ‘We are giving out no information about her at this time.’
‘So, if I ring back later?’
‘You’re not family, are you?’
‘No, but as I said—’
‘Her family will be kept informed.’ She snaps, and cuts me off.
So that’s that. I’m not done yet, though. In a while, I’ll ring Monica in the International Office and see if she can find anything out. And I’ll try Paula again. In the meantime, I turn to my emails, where I find an application form for the post of Director of the Unit for Specialist English Language and Enhanced Skills Support. Look at it! See what they’ve done? It is, quite literally now, USELESS.
I print off the form, nonetheless, and I track down my CV document with a view to updating and enhancing it. In the pursuit of this, I find my end-of-year report, just submitted, which reveals, among other things, that the unit had over 2,000 students through its doors in the course of the last academic year – some of them, admittedly, for only one class a week – and that our stand-alone courses raised over two million in overseas student fees. And how much did USLS make, you arseholes? I mutter, as I insert this information into my CV.
I make myself some coffee, though I know I’ve already had more than enough this morning, and I start to read through the application form. I can’t fill it in. I suppose it’s the combination of the coffee and the sleepless night, but I am seized with an overwhelming urge to scrawl all over it, like spoiling a ballot paper. MY JOB, DICKHEADS is what I seem to want to write, but I don’t. I am distracted by a call on my mobile, which is sitting on my desk. The call is from David and I am not going to answer it. Whatever he may have to tell me, I have vowed not to speak to him and I will keep my word. So, I sit and watch as my phone glows and buzzes and jumps about, pleading eagerly for my reply. When it stops, I pick it up and put it in my bag, and a minute later I hear a message buzz. Well, I haven’t sworn off reading his messages, so I take a look. Jamilleh Hamidi attacked on university campus, it reads. Possible connection with yesterday’s interview. You and Farah should be aware. David.
I stuff the phone back in my bag and pace the room, fuming. Thank you, David, for your care and concern. Be aware? Is that the best you can do? And Farah? Have you told her or am I supposed to pass the message on? I didn’t ask to be there at Paula’s interview yesterday, did I? You can’t claim this time that I’ve been sticking my nose in and have only myself to blame. You asked me to be there, remember? So if it has put me in danger and all you can manage is Be Aware, I call that dereliction of duty, quite apart from being a totally heartless and inadequate response to the possible peril of a woman you claimed, until quite recently, to love.
It is a good thing I don’t say any of this out loud because the walls of these offices are scarcely more than hardboard and I would, undoubtedly, have shouted. As an alternative to shouting or breaking things, I decide to leave. I shove the application form into my in-tray, put my copy of Bring up the Bodies into my bag, get on my bike and cycle round to the abbey, picking up a sturdy-looking cheese and coleslaw roll from the The Burnt Cake on my way. It is not really the weather for alfresco reading and eating but it’s not actually raining and I have a windproof jacket and my rage to keep me warm. We have a run-through in costume of Much Ado starting at one o’clock and it is already half past eleven, so I’m unlikely to succumb to hypothermia in the interim. I succumb to the book instead, to Mantel’s lyrical, haunting, spiky, witty, addictive prose.
An hour or so of this, helped by my cheese roll, restores me enough to face the irritations of a rehearsal in costume. People are so incompetent. They have all had the chance to try on their costumes but the women still turn up without the right bras to go under the wide square necks of their dresses, and I know I shouldn’t make gender assumptions but I do think any woman should be able to do the odd running repair – a bit of hem come down or a seam coming apart – rather than handing the damned thing to me. As for the men: they can’t seem to master the idea of keeping all the bits of their costume together, so they end up fighting over ruffs and people are wearing odd shoes. I almost experience a wince of fellow feeling with our we-in-the–profession director as I mutter so bloody amateur under my breath.
As Ursula, I’m on and off throughout the play but I do get a chance to watch quite a lot and I think it’s going to be all right. It’s difficult to wreck it completely if you have a decent Beatrice and Benedick, and our B & B are doing a good job. They are well cast – young enough to have a life ahead of them but old enough to know this is probably their last chance. They are both wary and warm in equal measure and you hope the audience will cheer, or at least sigh with satisfaction, at the final kiss. There was a time when I liked to think of David and me as a Benedick and Beatrice couple, our spiky exchanges masking an attraction we were too wary to acknowledge. In recent months, though, when David has been working in London, our weekends together have been more Elyot and Amanda in Private Lives, our rows, I freely admit, generally started by me. There was too much pressure of expectation about those weekends, too much drinking on Friday nights for quick relaxation, too much hung-over disappointment and ill-temper, too many apologies and regrets. It’s a good thing, really, that David has decided to call it a day; if we had stayed together much longer we would have morphed into Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf.
When the run-through is over and I have restored some order to the men’s dressing room, I go back to the campus to pick up Freda. Nico’s ear infection is not clearing up and Ellie has an appointment for him at the doctor’s. In the car park at Acorns I encounter, of all people, Andrew, the man I was once married to. He has come, he says, to pick up Arthur because the news has got round about the attack on Jamilleh and he doesn’t want Lavender on the campus while there’s some maniac on the loose. This is, you will have to agree, a whole order of magnitude more caring than Be aware. I consider Andrew, taking in the details. He has just jumped out of the green Range Rover I saw Lavender in this morning. This will not be Andrew’s usual car; he will always be driving something zingier, more sporty. But you can’t get a baby seat into one of those, can you? I see from Andrew’s clothes – lightweight silver-grey suit, gleaming with a hint of silk, and polished Italian shoes – that he has been at work today, so he must have left his law chambers, driven to his gracious Georgian home in Marlbury’s rural hinterland, exchanged whatever the latest sports model is for the Range Rover and returned to pick up his son
Would Andrew ever have gone to these lengths for me? Been this protective? Not a chance. Lavender is young, of course, and a more obvious candidate for protection than I ever was. It would be a pleasure to look after Lavender, wouldn’t it? She would be so grateful, blush so prettily. And me? Tough as old boots, that Gina. Woe betide any man who tries to look after her.
I seek around for something unkind to say to Andrew, and I find it.
‘Well,’ I say, ‘what a model father you’ve become, Andrew. Quite hands-on. Don’t forget that you’ve got a couple of daughters too, though, will you? You are going to see Annie’s play at the Aphra Behn, I assume?’
‘Ah,’ he says, feebly, ‘babysitters, you know, with the two boys. Tricky.’
‘Well, you don’t have to drag Lavender along. I’m going to the matinée on Saturday. Why don’t you join me? Annie’s boyfriend’s coming too. Jon. Remember him from Elsinore?’
‘Ah,’ he says again, and I see a faint blush rise under his permatan. ‘Weekends – family time, you know.’
‘Absolutely,’ I say, smiling sweetly. ‘It just depends which family you’re talking about, doesn’t it?’
‘Annie’s a grown woman,’ he protests, summoning up his adversarial skills. ‘The boys need me.’
‘Of course,’ I say. ‘But Freda’s not a grown woman, is she? Remember Freda? Your granddaughter? She’s four now, five soon. Come into Acorns now and I’ll introduce her to you. You’ve probably forgotten what she looks like. They change so fast at that age, don’t they?’
I tuck my arm into his and start to propel him towards the entrance. There are a number of other parents around and he can hardly resist without making a scene. ‘Of course,’ I say conversationally, ‘it’s rather ageing being a grandparent, as I know, especially if the image you’re aiming for is groovy, ever-youthful, second-time-around dad, but it has it’s rewards, I can assure you, and Freda is a delightful child when you get to know her.’
‘I know her,’ he growls. ‘Don’t talk as if I never see her.’
His protestations are belied by Freda herself, however, who comes hurtling towards me, brandishing sheaves of yesterday’s potato print designs, now dry enough to be taken home. She stops when she sees Andrew, says, ‘Oh, hello’ with perfect coolness and then tugs me by the hand. ‘These are for Mummy and Nico,’ she says, ‘and we have to take them home very carefully so they don’t get crumpled.’
We walk away and leave Andrew to collect his boy.
When I’ve dropped Freda and her artwork and enquired after Nico, who has been prescribed a second round of antibiotics but raises a cheerful smile, I cycle home with the troubles of the morning crowding in on me once again. Jamilleh, David, the job. Where to start? With a glass of wine, I decide, but the phone is ringing as I walk into the house so I dump my bag and run to it, forgetting to consider that it might be David. It’s not David. In fact, it appears to be nobody and I’m about to put it down, assuming that it’s one of those automated phantom calls, when I hear my mother’s voice, fainter than usual, but still with its crisp edge.
‘Virginia?’
‘Mother. Are you all right?’
‘Of course.’
‘It’s just …’ how should I put it? It’s just that you never ring me.
‘I just wondered,’ she says, ‘if you were in need of refuge again.’
‘In need of refuge?’ I ask, bewildered.
‘Yes.’ She sounds irritated. ‘Last time I saw you, you were taking refuge from Annie and her friends.’
I remember now, Sunday’s white lie. ‘Oh yes, I say. They’re all still with me.’
‘So, I thought you might like to come here at the weekend.’
She wants to see me. The invitation is not for my benefit but for hers. My white lie has become her face-saver, because heaven forbid that she should say I’d like to see you. Why do our dealings have to be so complicated?
‘On Saturday,’ I say, ‘I’m going to see their play in the afternoon, and then we’ve got a dress rehearsal for this production of Much Ado About Nothing that I told you about, but on Sunday Annie and the others will be packing up to leave for Edinburgh and the house will be chaos. How would Sunday suit you?’
‘Fine.’
‘Shall I bring food?’
‘Food?’
‘Yes. Lunch. Or will you—’
‘Yes, better bring something,’ she says, and rings off.