She watched Mr Starling struggle from the building.
He carried a box.
Inside she saw a framed photograph, a mug, keepsakes from his desk and a stack of notes from past students.
‘What’s going on?’ Mae said.
Sunlight bounced from the rusting bonnet of his car. ‘You’re a good student, Mae. I always said that. I know what you have at home, I know how difficult it must be.’
‘You’re leaving us?’
He looked past her, back to the old school building.
‘This is because of what you did?’
‘I know my place, my role. I’ve been here thirty years.’ He said it with a smile. ‘I taught some of your parents. I’ve watched this school go from a struggling secondary in a small coastal town to one of the finest in the county.’
‘They should have let you stay till the end.’
‘I struck a student.’
‘Not hard enough.’
He opened the boot of his old VW and set the box down inside, took a last look at the school. His wife had died three years before, the day after the funeral Mr Starling had sat down and told them about cancer. That day no one had messed around, just sat and listened as their teacher bared a part of himself they were quite unused to seeing. People said Selena humanised. Mae had not known what that meant until then.
‘What will you do now?’ she said.
‘I have an old boat. I’ve spent a lifetime trying to make her new again.’
She nodded.
‘There’s been so much tragedy.’ His voice caught. ‘I think of James, Melissa and Abi. I know we failed, all of us who played the slightest part in their lives.’
Mae looked down, his pain hard to witness as he started the engine and drove.
She turned, feeling the heat in her cheeks as she pushed through a group of younger kids.
She passed the empty reception desk and opened the door to Mr Silver’s office. She found him on the sofa, his eyes lost in the painting, so dark and threatening.
‘I saw Mr Starling,’ she said.
Mr Silver wore his shirt open two buttons, the sleeves rolled over tan forearms, a Swiss watch on his wrist.
‘You must have known this would come, Mae.’
‘He was here thirty years.’
‘He was.’
‘He’s a good teacher.’
‘He was.’
‘Couldn’t you just …?’ She felt foolish then.
‘I know the student. I know he would’ve provoked him.’ He smiled at her, perfect teeth too white, then he walked over to the window and lifted the blinds. ‘I deny it. I tell students it’s a test of their faith.’
‘You believe though.’
‘Some days I want to tell you all not to come in. To go lie on the beach or go into the city. See things. Feel things. What’s tangible, while it still is.’
‘But you don’t.’
‘I can’t. The government, we avoid the chaos. You know they’re burning churches now. All across the world. Like this is proof of nothing, proof we’re on our own and always have been.’
‘We all know, deep down, doubt is what makes us human. It’s our ability to ignore it. Evolution is a four-letter word in this school.’
‘It’s a test, Mae.’
‘I’d rather fail.’
‘You saved my daughter.’
‘She didn’t. I had it totally under control.’ Hunter stood in the doorway.
Mae left them, walked back through halls now empty, just the click of her shoes and their echo. Out into the sunlight.
At the edge of the woods Hunter caught up with her. ‘You skipping?’
Mae nodded.
‘Can I come?’
‘No.’
Hunter opened her bag, showed Mae the bottle of whisky.
‘Okay, you can come.’
They lay flat on the sand, shoes off, the water touched their feet and retreated, leaving them with goosebumps.
Mae drained a quarter of the bottle, then sat up and passed it to Hunter, who drank liberally.
‘You stole this from your father?’
‘He gave it to me, told me to go find you and take the day off. He’s cool, you know, not like people think.’
It was ten o’clock on a Monday morning and she was drinking with the headmaster’s perfect daughter. The world must be about to end.
‘Sometimes I think I can see it coming. Some days it’s angry, full of fire and metals and all that shit. And other days it’s just a dull rock, grey and too nothing to ever take us out,’ Hunter said.
The sun rose high, the heat getting up but a breeze cooled them off. It was worse in the cities, the newspapers said London was burning. A last hurrah, a wild summer before eternal dark.
‘Can I ask you something?’ Hunter said, taking the bottle like she needed the courage.
‘Your hair looks fine.’
Hunter looked to the waves. ‘What did she look like?’
‘Everyone wants to know that.’ Mae’s mind turned slow, the alcohol clouding over her thoughts. ‘Like Abi, but not. She was just … empty.’
Hunter tipped the bottle onto the sand, and then reached for her bag and pulled out a pad and pen. She started to write.
‘Anything you want to say, Mae?’
Mae lay back. ‘Fuck me, Selena.’
‘Poetic.’ Hunter wrote it, then rolled the paper and slotted it into the bottle. She stood, unsteady as she screwed the cap back on, and then threw the bottle far out to the water.
‘I wonder where it’ll go. I mean, how it will end. Will it smash in the middle of the ocean? Or will it boil till it melts? Will anything live?’
They stretched out, arms and legs like starfish. Seventeen, young enough to clutch at the girls they had been, old enough to see the women waiting for them.
They let the world spin for an hour, the booze and the sun reddened their cheeks. They felt the faint rumble of the town behind them, this time it was less, more a slight protest than a roar of discontent. A car alarm in the distance, no one noticed, no one cared. They waded knee deep and watched the small fish through water too clear, the waves died and the ocean turned into a lake.
For a while they talked about nothing much at all, the drink still softening their words as they smiled towards the sun.
‘Have you thought about what you’ll do at the end?’ Hunter said.
‘I’ll get so wasted I won’t even be afraid. Then I’ll grab hold of you and maybe I’ll sneak my way in upstairs.’
Hunter laughed again, so loud and hard Mae couldn’t help but smile.
‘You going to the Final?’
Mae looked at Hunter, no emotion, nothing said.
‘Fair enough then. There’s a romance to it, like it really is the final dance or something.’
‘It really is the final dance.’
‘Then you should go. I’d lend you a dress but you’re so short … and it’d gape at the chest and –’
‘We could do each other’s hair?’
Hunter glared at her, incredulous. ‘Like I’d let you touch my hair.’
Mae almost smiled at that one.
‘Go with the hot rich boy. For some reason he wants to risk it with you … STDs and everything.’
She thought of Sail. ‘I messed things up. I mean, he’s messed up. Together we’d be …’
Hunter motioned for her to continue.
Mae took a breath. ‘I took something from him and it’s all I see when I look at him. And he pretends it’s all right and …’ She stopped. ‘I don’t know why I’m telling you this.’
‘The thing you took. Give it back.’
‘There’s a bigger picture. And anyway, I don’t think I can get it back. Not on my own.’
Hunter watched the gentle water. ‘I suppose I owe you a favour.’