The hush just before the bell goes is like the calm before the end of the world. Every day, at 12.25 and 3.40, the school enters the eye of the storm, the silence palpable as the students listen for the bell, the teachers’ voices suddenly audible above the shifting hubbub.
Sarah, behind her desk in the administration office, has become so accustomed to it that she no longer needs to look at the clock. As the sound drops, she picks up her keys, locks the office and hurries down the raised corridor by the dining hall to stand on the doors. The last thing she anticipated when she left the Wellesley Academy – Finbrough Church of England School, as it was then – was that she would one day return to work there. But there’s barely a thing about her life now that she would have predicted three years ago.
Helen Brown is waiting in her usual spot. They team up for this duty every day, since these supervisory roles are often handed out to the people who won’t be shut in a classroom when the bell goes. It was how they became friends in the first place; two-minute chats before the dam breaks, just short enough that Sarah didn’t get nervous, didn’t get shy, didn’t worry that she was boring Helen the way Liam said she bored him.
She smiles as Sarah approaches. ‘Afternoon,’ she says. ‘How did it go?’
‘Um,’ says Sarah, ‘it was ... interesting.’
‘Nice to hear some enthusiasm.’
‘Yeah, maybe I need a while for it all to sink in?’
‘I should think so.’
‘Social Services seem to have practically decided I’m going to take them whether I like it or not.’
Helen frowns. ‘Maybe we should talk about this in my office?’
Am I a client now? she wonders. I thought we were friends. ‘No, it’s okay,’ she says. ‘I think I’d rather have a friend’s opinion than a therapist’s.’
Helen nods. ‘Okay. Friend’s advice: you don’t have to do anything, Sarah. I know you probably feel like you don’t have a choice, but you do. I think you need to think hard about whether you’re up to the job.’
‘Surely nothing can be worse than the care system?’
A little twitch of the eyebrows. ‘Why do you think the care system exists, if that’s really true?’
‘Okay, fair point.’
‘Look,’ says Helen, ‘devil’s advocate. They’re going to be a massive mess, you said it yourself. I mean, the stuff they’ve seen, by itself ... there’s going to be trauma, and PTSD, and God knows what cognitive dissonances, and brainwashing, and survivor’s guilt, and ... you don’t know them, Sarah. It’s not like taking on a real niece and nephew. It’s not going to be, you know, Little Orphan Annie.’
‘They are a real niece and nephew, though,’ says Sarah. ‘They’re the only family I’ve got left.’
Helen glances at the clock. Two minutes till the barrage breaks. She glances around in case an early bird has broken loose to overhear, then steps over to stand beside Sarah and lowers her voice. ‘But you’ve never met them before yesterday. And a cult, Sarah. A cult. And they’ve not left it, you know, voluntarily. They’ll not be looking for ways to liberate themselves from their beliefs.’
‘I don’t know,’ says Sarah. ‘Don’t you think a mass suicide might straighten your head out a bit?’
‘I’ve no idea. Seriously, this is well out of my zone of expertise. I mean, if they come to Wellesley Academy they’ll most likely be passing through my office, but I can’t say I feel confident about helping them. I’m more handsy dads and boozy mums, you know?’
‘But surely Social Services ...’
‘I wouldn’t count on it. They’re buried under piles of shaken babies. You’ll be on waiting lists all over the place. Sorry. I know I sound pessimistic, but you need to know what you’d be getting yourself into. How did they seem, to you?’
‘Polite,’ says Sarah.
‘Polite?’
She shrugs. ‘They said Alison talked about me,’ she tells her, and is surprised to feel that swell of grief again. How can I be grieving for someone I’ve not thought of for years? she wonders. Maybe it’s the other stuff I’m grieving. That my life has ended up so empty that Helen is the closest thing to a confidante I’ve found since I came back here and all the old friends somehow melted away with my husband. Alison was the only person who knew what it was like, in our family. If things had been different, we might have been friends. Might have been each other’s armour against the world.
‘Did they?’ asks Helen. ‘Do you know what she said?’
‘She said I was her one regret,’ says Sarah. ‘That she left me behind.’
‘So you think that makes you responsible for her kids?’
‘Well, at least I have a house,’ she says, lamely.
‘Which you were going to sell,’ says Helen.
‘I know,’ she says, and the sense that the prison bars are closing around her once again is almost overwhelming. ‘But you know, by rights half of it should have been their mother’s ...’
‘You don’t even know them,’ says Helen. ‘You didn’t even know they existed till last week.’
‘I knew about the older one.’
‘It’s not the older one they want you to take. Have they given you any sort of timeframe for this?’
‘I’ve not said I’ll do it yet.’
‘Mm,’ says Helen. ‘Look, do you know anything more about the sister? How about her? They know her.’
‘Yeah, not really,’ says Sarah. ‘She’s in a facility at the moment, apparently.’
Facility. Oh, the lengths we’ll go to, to avoid saying ‘mental hospital’.
‘Sarah,’ says Helen, ‘it sounds as if you’re talking yourself into it, honestly.’
The bell goes.
‘Oh, hell, here we go,’ says Helen, and goes back to her post. ‘Brace!’
An escalating rumble, a salvo of slamming doors and the rumble becomes a thunder. Children tumble from the classrooms like water over rocks, ignoring raised voices begging them not to run. The big ones toss the littlies aside like flotsam; thousands of words burst from hundreds of mouths as though their owners have been in solitary confinement for days rather than the hour and a half since morning break. Sarah stands her ground as the wave breaks. The rebels first: big boots, greasy unisex hair, girls pouting and boys with ties at half-mast. Tuesday is chip day in the canteen – the only prospect that will make the rebels break into a run. Then, once they’re safely out of the way, the normal kids, the ones who have friends to walk with, the ones who have nothing either to fear or to prove. And finally, blinking into the light like dormice emerging from hibernation, the kids who want to avoid the attention of the ones in the front: the undersized, the ones with the cumbersome musical instruments, the geeks and the uncool and the socially awkward. And, hanging over it all, the scent of body odour.
And then here comes Marie Spence. Always the last to appear and always, nonetheless, at the head of the queue. Every school has one, at any given time, and the moment one melts away to join the real world, another springs up in her place. At her shoulders, inevitably, following in her wake like Secret Service agents, Lindsay and Mika and Ben McArdle, this year’s court favourites. Sarah can’t stop a wry smile rushing across her lips when she sees that they have taken to sporting white earbuds dangling from a single ear. It’ll be Ray-Bans next, and grey suits. And even from this distance she can smell Victoria’s Secret body spray.
Marie swanks up the hall past the staff room, and the smaller children – the less privileged children, children who don’t want trouble – part before her like the Red Sea.
She reaches the queue, walks past as though it doesn’t exist.
‘There’s a queue, Marie,’ says Sarah.
‘Someone’s saving my place, miss,’ says Marie. Tosses her hair over her shoulder like a shampoo ad. ‘She’s got my purse.’ And she walks on past, her sentinels in step behind her.
Sarah looks up and catches Helen’s eye.
Helen winks. ‘God, I hate that girl,’ Sarah says, as they count up the lunch tickets, and Helen doesn’t even bother to ask who. The entire faculty hates Marie Spence and her Jaguar-driving parents.
‘The curse of entitlement,’ says Helen.
‘A curse on who?’
Helen laughs. ‘God, on everyone. Like the universal quest for victimhood. It’s a zero-sum game, in the end.’
‘I can’t wait for GCSEs,’ she says. The school doesn’t have a sixth form. They go to college in Newbury, or one of the big schools in Reading, if they want to go on to A-levels.
‘The sister,’ says Helen ten minutes later, picking up their earlier conversation. ‘Can you maybe track her down and get in touch, at least?’
‘I’m not sure how.’
‘Ask someone?’
‘I suppose.’
‘It might give you some sorts of clues, at least. See what she’s like? I mean, she might well be fine.’
‘She’s in a loony bin, Helen.’
‘We don’t say loony bin these days,’ says Helen, all professional offence.
‘Okay, sorry. I mean yes, if I could. It would be helpful to meet someone who’s got some knowledge, but I don’t think that’s particularly an option.’
‘Well, just think about it a bit more, then, Sarah. Don’t take this decision in a rush, please. If you really are the last resort, and it sounds as though you are, they’ll still be there.’