The Taking of Annie Thorne Read online

  ‘Right.’ I nod. ‘I think I understand a little better now.’

  ‘Good. I should have run through a few things like this with you personally. School handbooks can’t cover everything, can they?’

  ‘No.’

  They really can’t, I think.

  ‘Well, I should probably let you get on.’

  ‘Thank you, and thanks for letting me know about Jeremy Hurst.’

  ‘No problem. We’ll catch up later.’ He pauses. ‘I will still have to mark this on your record.’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Your personal record. A complaint like this has to be noted, even if it’s unsubstantiated.’

  The pulse beats harder. Hurst. Fucking Hurst.

  ‘Of course.’ I force out a tight smile. ‘I understand.’

  He walks to the door.

  ‘Is she going to die?’ I ask. ‘Jeremy’s mother?’

  He turns and gives me a strange look.

  ‘The treatment is going as well as can be expected,’ he says. ‘But, with this type of cancer, the odds aren’t encouraging.’

  ‘Must be tough on Jeremy, and his father?’

  ‘Yes. Yes, it is.’ He looks for a moment as if he wants to say something else, then he gives another of his awkward little nods and closes the door.

  Tough on his father. I take out my cigarettes and smile. Good, I think. Good. Fucking karma.

  The English block used to stand between the main school building and the canteen, attached by a narrow umbilical cord of corridor that always created a heaving, sweating jam of pupils between lessons and was hotter than the Hadron Collider in summer. We used to joke you’d end up blacker than Jim Berry (the only mixed-race kid in our school) if you stood in it for too long.

  Although it was officially called the English block, to all the kids it was simply ‘the Block’. Four storeys of concrete ugliness prone to swaying in strong winds.

  No one liked having lessons in the Block, even before what happened. It was always cold, the windows leaked, and one particularly vicious winter I remember a lesson where we all wore hats and scarves, ice flakes frosted on the inside of the panes.

  After Chris Manning plummeted from the top it was closed and then reopened with ‘new safety precautions’, which basically meant making sure that the door to the roof was kept padlocked.

  At some point in the last two decades it has been demolished. Where the Block once stood there is now a small, paved square with three benches arranged around a meagre circle of half-dead plants. One bench bears a small plaque: ‘In Memory of Christopher Manning.’

  I sit down on one of the other ones and sneak a cigarette out of my packet. I twist it between my fingers and stare at the paving slabs, wondering which ones hide the spot where he landed.

  He didn’t make a sound. Not as he fell. Even when he hit the ground. It was soft, a dull thud. It didn’t seem hard enough. I could almost have believed he was still alive, just lying there, taking in the fading autumn sunshine, if it hadn’t been for the fact that his body looked oddly deflated, like someone had let all the air out. And of course, there was the blood, spreading out slowly from beneath him, a ruby-red shadow lengthened by the dying sun.

  ‘Bloody shame, isn’t it?’

  I start. A short girl with dark hair in a messy ponytail and an abundance of silver in her ears stands in front of me. I didn’t hear her approach, but then she’s so thin she could have blown in on the wind.

  For a moment I think she’s an especially forward pupil, then I notice the lack of uniform (unless a Killers T-shirt, skinny jeans and Doc Martens are the new kit) and the lines around her eyes that belie the initially youthful impression.

  ‘Sorry?’

  She gestures at the cigarette I have been fingering restlessly. ‘Bloody shame they create the perfect smoking area and then ban you from lighting up on school premises.’

  ‘Ah.’ I look at the cigarette and slip it back into the packet. ‘Truly a tragedy.’

  She grins and sits down beside me without asking. Normally, that type of unasked-for intimacy would annoy the fuck out of me. For some reason, with Miss Multiple Piercings, it only irritates the hell out of me.

  ‘Sad about the kid who jumped too.’ She shakes her head. ‘You ever lost one?’

  ‘A pupil?’

  ‘Well, I don’t mean a sock.’

  ‘No, I don’t think I have.’

  ‘Well, you’d remember. I hope.’ She pulls out a packet of Polos, unwraps one and pops it in her mouth. She offers me the packet. I want to refuse but find myself taking one.

  ‘A student of mine died. Overdose.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘Yeah. She was a really nice kid. Hard worker. Popular. Seemed to have everything going for her and then … two packets of paracetamol and a bottle of vodka. Put herself in a coma. A week later they had to turn off her life support.’

  I frown. ‘I don’t remember hearing about that.’

  ‘Well, you wouldn’t. Kind of got overshadowed by Julia and Ben Morton.’ She gives a shrug. ‘Always a bigger tragedy, right?’

  ‘I suppose.’

  A pause.

  ‘So, aren’t you going to ask?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The usual? “Did you know them? Did you suspect anything was wrong? Did you see any signs?” ’

  ‘Well, did you?’

  ‘Not well. No, and yes. Did I not mention? Julia came into school wearing a great big placard around her neck: “I intend to kill my son and myself. Have a nice day.” ’

  ‘Well, politeness costs nothing.’

  She chuckles and sticks out a hand. ‘Beth Scattergood. Art.’

  I shake it. ‘Scattergood? Really?’

  ‘Oh yeah.’

  ‘Bet the kids have fun with that one?’

  ‘Miss Shag Her Good is the current bookies’ favourite, just ahead of Miss Fatter Guts.’

  ‘Nice.’

  ‘Yeah. Kids, eh? Gotta love ’em, or you’d get a proper job.’

  ‘I’m Joe –’

  ‘I know. Joe Thorne. The replacement.’

  ‘I’ve been called worse.’

  ‘So, which are you?’

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Only two types of teacher end up at Arnhill Academy. Those who want to make a difference and those who can’t get a job anywhere else. So, which are you?’

  I hesitate. ‘I like to think I make a difference.’

  ‘Right.’ Her voice is heavy with sarcasm. ‘Well, nice knowing you, Mr Thorne.’

  ‘Thanks. Encouraging on my first day.’

  She grins. ‘We aim to please.’

  I like her, I realize. The emotion surprises me more than it should.

  ‘So, which are you?’ I ask.

  She stands. ‘The hungry sort. I was on my way to the canteen. You coming? I can introduce you to some of the other misfits who teach here.’

  I hear the hubbub of the canteen long before we approach it. Once again, it takes me back. The wafting aroma of frying, stale oil and something indefinable that you never see served but only ever smell drifting from the extractor fans of schools or old people’s homes.

  Inside, it hasn’t changed as much as I expect. Parquet flooring. Plastic tables and chairs. The kitchen looks like it’s had something of an overhaul since I used to queue for my burger, fried onions and chips. Now it’s all chicken and rice, vegetable pasta and salad. I blame Jamie Oliver.

  ‘That’s some of our lot over there. C’mon.’

  Beth leads me in the direction of a table in a far corner. The teachers’ table. Four people sit around it. She rattles through the introductions:

  Miss Hardy, Susan – a wispy lady with long grey hair and thick glasses – history.

  Mr Edwards, James – a good-looking young man with a hipster beard – maths.

  Miss Hibbert, Coleen – a strong-jawed woman with a military haircut – PE.

  And Mr Saunders, Simon – a lanky fig
ure in a Pink Floyd T-shirt and faded cords; receding hair yanked back into scraggy ponytail – sociology.

  For some reason, I dislike him instantly. Perhaps because he introduces himself by saying: ‘How’s it going, man?’

  Unless you are in a band or an American surfer, do not use the term ‘man’. It makes you look like a dick, as does a ponytail with a receding hairline – you’re not fooling anyone.

  I sit down and he points at me with his fork.

  ‘You look familiar, man. Have we met?’

  ‘I don’t think so,’ I say, carefully unwrapping my tuna sandwich.

  ‘Where were you teaching before you came here?’

  ‘Abroad.’

  ‘Whereabouts?’

  It takes me a moment to remember the lie. ‘Botswana.’

  ‘Really? My ex-girlfriend taught out there for a while.’

  Of course she fucking did.

  He smiles. ‘Wareng?’

  I consider the odds. Wareng? Not a place. Too obvious. Must be an introduction. Not ‘Hello,’ as we’ve already done that, so it must mean …

  ‘I’m good, thanks,’ I say pleasantly. ‘You?’

  The smile recedes faster than his hair. I take a bite of sandwich and wonder if anyone would care if I dragged him outside and threw him under the nearest bus.

  ‘I hear you’re local to Arnhill?’ Coleen asks, thankfully changing the subject.

  ‘I grew up here,’ I say.

  ‘And you came back?’ James asks incredulously, and only half joking.

  ‘For my sins.’

  ‘Well, we’re glad to have you,’ Susan offers. ‘It’s been difficult finding a replacement after … well, after Mrs Morton.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Simon says. ‘You don’t have to be mad to work here, but it helps.’ He chortles at his own joke.

  Beth eyes him coldly. ‘Julia suffered from depression. She wasn’t mad.’

  He sneers at her. ‘Right. Because smashing your own kid’s face in is completely sane?’ He takes a hearty bite of pasta and chews noisily.

  I turn to Beth: ‘Did everyone know about Julia’s depression?’

  ‘She was quite open about it,’ Beth says. ‘She went through a bad spell after her separation from Ben’s dad. I think moving here was supposed to be a fresh start.’

  Some fresh start, I think.

  ‘She was on medication,’ Susan adds. ‘But apparently, she’d stopped taking it.’

  ‘How did she get hold of a gun?’

  ‘Her family own a farm near Oxton. It was her father’s.’

  ‘Obviously,’ James says, ‘if any of us had suspected there was anything wrong –’

  What? I think. What would you have done? Asked her if she was okay and smiled with relief when she said that she was fine. Job done. Concern-box ticked. The truth is, none of us wants to know. Not really. Because then we might have to care, and who has the time for that?

  ‘Obviously,’ I say.

  Simon snaps his fingers and points at me again: ‘Stockford Academy.’

  My stomach lurches.

  ‘That’s where I remember you from,’ he says. ‘I worked there as a supply teacher before I got the job here.’

  And now he’s said it I vaguely recall a skinny bloke with bad dress sense and halitosis. We weren’t in the same department. But still. Really?

  ‘Well, I wasn’t there very long, so …’

  ‘Yeah. You left kind of suddenly. What happened? You piss off the head?’

  ‘No. Nothing like that.’

  Pissing off didn’t even come close.

  ‘Weird, though.’ He frowns, and nods at my bad leg. ‘I don’t remember you having a limp back then.’

  I stare at him. ‘Then you must be confusing me with someone else. I’ve had the limp since I was a kid.’

  The moment lingers a little longer than is comfortable. Susan intervenes:

  ‘What happened? If you don’t mind me asking?’

  Actually, I do. But I kind of brought this one on myself.

  ‘I was fifteen. I was in a car accident with my dad and my little sister. We came off the road and hit a tree. Annie and my dad died instantly. My leg was crushed. Took half a dozen bits of metal to put it back together again.’

  ‘Oh God,’ Susan says. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How old was your sister?’ Beth asks.

  ‘She was eight.’

  They regard me with sad, sympathetic eyes, apart from Simon, who, I’m pleased to see, can’t meet my gaze.

  ‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘it was a long time ago. And fortunately I had my heart set on being a teacher, not a tap dancer, so here I am.’

  They laugh, a little nervously. The conversation moves on. I’ve played it well. I’m a good man; an honest man. A man who has faced tragedy, bears the scars, but still has a sense of humour.

  I am also a liar. I didn’t lose my sister in a car crash, and I didn’t have the limp back then.

  6

  People say time is a great healer. They’re wrong. Time is simply a great eraser. It rolls on and on regardless, eroding our memories, chipping away at those great big boulders of misery until there’s nothing left but sharp little fragments, still painful but small enough to bear.

  Broken hearts don’t mend. Time just takes the pieces and grinds them to dust.

  I sit back in one of the cottage’s creaky armchairs and take a deep swig of beer. It’s been a long day. The first full day I’ve taught for a while. I’m feeling it, both mentally and physically. My bad leg throbs, and even the four codeine tablets I’ve taken are doing little to ease the insistent dull ache. I won’t sleep tonight, so my solution is to get drunk enough to pass out. Self-medication.

  The room is dim, lit only by a single table lamp and the crackling log burner. I made it to an out-of-town supermarket and stocked up on the essentials: pizza, ready meals, coffee, cigarettes and alcohol. On the way back, I spotted a farmhouse/B&B selling logs. No one answered the door when I knocked, even though a battered Ford Focus sat outside. There were two child seats in the back and a sign in the rear window: LITTLE MONSTERS ON BOARD.

  A basket had been left beside the logs: ‘£5 per bag – pay here.’ There looked to be about thirty pounds in the basket. I stared at the crumpled notes for a moment, thought about the child seats and chucked in a fiver. Then I picked up a bag and drove back to the supermarket for firelighters.

  It’s taken me half a dozen of these and a lot of swearing to get the damn thing lit. However, now, for the first time since I moved in, the room is filled with a pleasant dry heat. I can practically see the damp retreating from the walls. Aside from the ramshackle furniture, lack of any personal mementoes and the fact that two people died here, I almost feel at home.

  A notebook is open on my lap. On the first page I’ve written four names, with scribbled notes beside them: Chris Manning, Nick Fletcher, Marie Gibson and, of course, Stephen Hurst. The old gang back together, on paper at least. The ones who were there when it happened. The only ones who knew.

  Fletch, I have discovered, now runs a plumbing business in Arnhill. Hurst is on the council. Marie, I couldn’t find anything about online, but she may have married, changed her name. Beside Chris’s name I have simply written: ‘Deceased’. Although that doesn’t really cover it. Not at all.

  At the top of the next page are two names: Julia and Ben Morton. Beneath, I’ve jotted more notes, mostly gleaned from the internet and the newspapers – neither wholly reliable, I know. If newspapers are the place where facts become stories, the internet is the place where stories become conspiracy theories.

  What I do know is this: Julia had a history of depression. She’d just finalized her divorce from Ben’s father (Michael Morton, a solicitor). She had stopped her medication, requested a leave of absence and taken Ben out of school. Oh, and after she bludgeoned her son to death – before she blew her own head off – she wrote three words in blood on the wall of Ben’s bedroom.r />
  Not My Son.

  In summary – hardly the actions of a balanced mind.

  I’ve printed off two pictures and paperclipped them inside the notebook. The first is of Julia. It looks like it was taken at a work event. She wears a smart suit, hair tied in a loose ponytail. Her smile is wide but her eyes are tired and guarded. Take your picture and leave me alone, her face says. I wonder if that’s the reason the newspaper chose it. This is a woman about to break. A woman on the edge. Or maybe just a woman irritated at being forced to pose for a stupid photo.

  Ben’s is a school photo. His smile is wide and engaging, front two teeth slightly crooked, tie done up neatly for (probably) the first time ever. The reporters have trotted out all the usual platitudes: popular, a good pupil, plenty of friends, a bright future. They say nothing of the real boy. Simply a cut-and-paste job from their stock ‘dead child’ folders.

  Only one article hints at something more. A shadow skimming beneath the sun-dappled surface of Ben’s imagined existence. In the weeks before he died an unnamed school source claimed that Ben had been acting strangely; getting into trouble, absent from classes: ‘He was weird. Not himself.’

  I think about the words Julia wrote: NOT MY SON. An icy fingernail caresses the top of my spine.

  I chuck the notebook on to the coffee table. My phone rings, ‘Enter Sandman’ piercing the cosy silence. I tense, then pick it up and glance at the screen. Brendan. I press Accept Call.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Good question. Still working on the answer.’

  I wait. Brendan is not the type of friend who calls just to enquire about my well-being. If there are no reports to the contrary, he presumes I am alive, which is good enough.

  ‘Someone was asking about you in the pub the other night,’ he says.

  ‘Someone?’

  ‘A woman. Small, blonde. Pretty, but kind of hard.’

  My stomach cramps, my bad leg throbs harder.

  ‘Did you speak to her?’

  ‘Feck, no. I slipped out as soon as I saw her. Some women just radiate bad news.’

  ‘Okay. Don’t go back.’

  ‘But they serve the finest steak-and-kidney pie outside of my dear old mammy’s kitchen.’