The Fallout (23 page)

“And this is one of them,” the Head continued, and Josh knew without doubt that this was a prelude to something bad.

“I've asked Sean to come here in his capacity as union rep, because I'm sorry to tell you there's been another allegation of inappropriate behavior made against you. As you know I'm not at liberty to go into details, but suffice it to say this was an anonymous phone allegation from a former female pupil.”

And there it was. The Something Bad that had, Josh now realized, been hanging in the air all morning. Under the desk, his leg was shaking.

Struggling to hold back the panic he could feel building inside him, Josh fixed his gaze on the photos tucked into the giant computer monitor sitting on the perpendicular of the Head's desk. They showed Ian on holiday with his wife and two small children, all of them pale-fleshed and beaming under a huge beach umbrella, and Josh found himself strangely embarrassed, as if he was spying on something private.

“Why wouldn't she have said something at the time?” Josh countered.

Ian, who was pressing his steepled hands against his mouth, sighed.

“Josh, you know I can't tell you any more about the allegation, as much for your sake as for...the other party's.”

Josh was aware of his head shaking from side to side as if on some sort of fulcrum. If he just closed his eyes and pretended he hadn't heard, this would surely turn out to be a mistake, a manifestation of his own crappy mood. But when he opened his eyes and saw the Head's pale, almost colorless eyes looking at him from over the top of that steeple of fingers, waiting for his reaction, he knew it was real. He glanced over his shoulder at Sean Silverman, who gave him a weak smile that was probably meant to be supportive, but somehow made him feel even worse.

“She's lying,” Josh managed to say.

His voice lacked conviction, even to his own ears, going up slightly on the last syllable.

“Any idea why anyone would want to make something like that up?” Ian asked.

Josh once again felt his head shaking from side to side, even while he realized that, yes, there were people with an ax to grind against him. Kelly Kavanagh, for one. She'd probably expected him to be suspended after her allegation. Who's to say this wasn't her dirty work?

“I should tell you we are treating this as completely separate from the earlier allegation,” the Head assured him.

For a second, Josh thought he must have been voicing his thoughts out loud, before he realized that, of course, it was the obvious conclusion.

But Ian seemed to want to make it very clear he didn't think they were linked. So who then? Who would want to do him harm? It came to him like a body blow, knocking the breath clear out of his chest.

Sasha.

She wouldn't.

Would she?

He remembered Hannah's face as she described Sasha's reaction to the phone call from her lawyer. “She was actually shaking,” Hannah had said. “She kept repeating that she couldn't believe you'd done that to her.”

Josh had seen Sasha turn on people enough times over the years to know what she was capable of. Once on a joint holiday in Spain, she'd buried the clothes of a woman she'd taken exception to in the sand while the woman was swimming late one afternoon. When the woman had emerged from the sea and started hunting around for her clothes, Sasha had pretended not to know anything about them. He and Hannah had sat there rigid with embarrassment waiting for Sasha to give them back, but she hadn't. In the end the two of them had slunk away, unable to watch any longer.

But that was a total stranger. They were her friends. Was it really conceivable that Sasha could have phoned his head teacher and made an allegation like that, knowing it might cost him his job? No sooner had the thought formed than he felt a bolt of nausea. It was true. This was the kind of thing that ended careers. He'd heard about it happening.

“Josh?”

Ian was wearing a concerned expression on his pale face, but Josh thought he detected a wariness that hadn't been there earlier, as if he was already trying to distance himself from this teacher with the question mark swinging over his head.

“There is one possibility. Some good friends of ours are in the process of splitting up and we've somehow become embroiled in their battle. I think at least one of them might feel like I've sided with the other one. Maybe even both. You know how that can happen.”

The Head was looking at him faintly disapprovingly. “You know you should never get mixed up in other people's breakups, Josh. I wouldn't have thought I'd have to tell you that.”

For a moment there was silence while Josh's stomach churned and the Head looked increasingly pained, as if there was something causing him physical discomfort.

“I want you to know, Josh, that you have my complete confidence,” he said at last. “Personally speaking, that is. But I'm sure you'll appreciate I'm now in a very tricky situation. Normally I might be able to use my discretion over one anonymous call, but taken together with the previous allegation...well, you can see I have no choice. There are procedures to be followed, governors to be appeased.”

“You're suspending me?”

Josh swung around to face Sean, looking for outrage—
did you hear what he said?—
but the other man was staring straight ahead.

“Just 'til we can investigate. You'll be on full pay, of course.”

“Mud sticks, Ian.” Josh's voice came out louder and harsher than he'd intended. “You know that. Even if I can prove these two ridiculous claims are malicious rubbish, which they are, some people will still believe there's no smoke without fire. If you suspend me, there'll always be a cloud hanging over me.” The Head leaned back in his chair and removed his glasses, rubbing them absently with a small cloth he picked up from his desk. His eyes, when they looked up at Josh, seemed genuinely sorrowful, although that might just have been how they looked without the lenses to give them focus.

“I really wish there was another option, Josh, but I'm afraid we have to follow strict protocol in cases like this.”

Cases like this.

Sexual abuse, pedophilia, that's what “cases like this” meant.

“You know Hannah is pregnant again?”

The note of accusation in Josh's voice was impossible to disguise and he felt gratified when the Head's eyes widened in surprise.

Ian put his glasses back on slowly.

“I'm really terribly sorry,” he said. “All I can do is reassure you that we'll be carrying out our investigations as quickly as we can and hopefully we'll have you back at work before anyone even notices you're gone. Maybe you and Hannah can use it as an opportunity to spend a bit of time together before the baby comes.”

“Oh, yeah, every cloud's got a silver lining, right?”

“I don't blame you for being angry, but my hands are completely tied on this.” The Head clasped his hands together as if to demonstrate.

It was clear the interview was over but still Josh stayed in his padded chair, as if by staying he could delay it, keep the nightmare confined to this room. Once he'd left, it would be spread in the wind like pollen.

“Go home, Josh,” Ian said eventually. “Kiss your wife. Hug your daughter. Remind yourself of all the good things you have.”

Josh drove himself toward home in a daze. Though he'd traveled this same route just over an hour before, everything looked so different it might have been a foreign country. In fact that's just what he felt like—a tourist who'd got lost somewhere he didn't know, somewhere he didn't want to be.

Somewhere dangerous.

“This isn't happening,” he told his own reflection in the rearview mirror.

He was possessed by a fear so strong he felt his stomach was coming away from his body. Someone was trying to end his career—maybe two people, even. Everything he'd done and worked for throughout his adult life could be ripped to shreds and there wasn't a thing he could do about it.

Hannah.

How was he going to tell Hannah? He'd have to admit that he'd kept the Kelly Kavanagh allegation from her these past weeks. She wouldn't forgive him for that, especially if she knew he'd confided in Sienna instead. At the thought of Sienna, he felt a pang that was almost like grief. He longed to call her now and tell her what had happened, feeling that curious release he got from talking to her, but how could he after what Dan had done, sharing his private emails with his lawyer?

Once again his thoughts swung back to Hannah. She was his wife. She deserved to know everything—but what if she thought his not telling her about Kelly Kavanagh meant he had something to hide? Everywhere he looked, it seemed, there were dead ends and risks.

Josh pulled over to the curb abruptly, earning a long beep on the horn from the car behind. As he overtook him, the driver, a middle-aged man wearing a headset, glared at Josh and shook his head slowly from side to side.

Josh put his forehead on the wheel, aware he was hyperventilating but not sure what to do about it. He wondered if he was in a bus lane, but couldn't face looking to find out. That's all he needed was to get a ticket on top of everything else. Hannah had picked one up once just for pulling in momentarily opposite the post office while he jumped out to mail a letter. She'd been stopped for just seconds, but a couple of weeks later a letter had arrived with a photograph of their car. CCTV. It was everywhere. No doubt there was a camera trained on him right this moment. Well, good. Let it take photos. Let him be captured like this for posterity—a man slowly breaking apart in his car.

Now he was shaking, his whole body convulsing. He wondered if he was having a breakdown, right here by the side of the road.

When he felt able, he resumed his drive home, thinking only about having Hannah's arms around him. He felt weak. He supposed it was shock. And cold. He was so cold. As he drove, his leg on the accelerator pedal quivered, as if in spasm. Hannah was the first woman who'd ever really been able to comfort him. He remembered one weekend morning, early in their relationship, lying in her bed in that cramped flat she'd shared in Maida Vale. She was asleep, her head on his chest, and he remembered trying to work out what it was that felt so good about being there, realizing with amazement and a huge rush of gratitude, that he felt completely safe. Strange thing for a man to think, but that was the truth. She made him feel safe.

But letting himself into their flat in Crouch End, he didn't feel safe or comforted.

“Josh? Why are you home early?”

He hesitated in the doorway. Hannah's voice was tight, like it had been wound up too much. He fumbled at the words he'd been rehearsing in his head, but they evaporated away, leaving him grasping at air.

“I'm not feeling well.”

He felt Hannah's sigh as much as heard it. A gust of breath that whispered through the flat, blowing disaffection like dust into his eyes and ears.

“What's up?”

She was trying to sound sympathetic. But the strain of it was threaded through the question.

“Headache,” he mumbled.

Another sigh. Louder this time.

“Wish someone would give me a day off,” she said, but when he came through into the living room, something in his face made her soften.

“Actually, you don't look too good.”

“I feel like shit.”

“Have you spoken to Dan? He's called here three times leaving messages for you.”

Josh took out his phone, as always set to silent. There were six missed calls from Dan and a voice mail.

“Josh. I've been trying to get hold of you. My cunt of a lawyer told me what happened. I swear to god, mate, I never gave him permission to use that email. It was just part of a whole load of background stuff I sent to the legal team to help them make their case. It was never intended to be quoted. I told him straightaway to take it off the official documents. I read him the fucking riot act actually. Please don't think it had anything to do with me. Call me back. Okay?”

“He says he didn't give his lawyer permission to use my email.”

Hannah didn't even look up from her laptop.

“Yeah, I gathered that. Doesn't change the fact that he should never have given it to them in the first place, though, does it?”

“No. I know. You're right.”

“God knows what Sasha is going to do now. I'm pretty sure she's going to insist I write a statement in her favor just to balance that email.”

“But you can't. You know she's not stable.”

“And Dan is? With pictures of women being raped on his computer?”

“Oh, Hannah. You know you don't believe all that crap.”

“I don't know what to believe. All I know is Dan isn't going to provide a stable home for September any more than Sasha is. He's so besotted he probably wouldn't even notice she was there half the time. God, I'm so glad we're getting away tomorrow.”

Josh's stomach dropped inside him, an unpleasant sensation that left him instantly sweating and short of breath. On top of everything that had happened, he had this to look forward to—a visit to Oxford with all that entailed.

Hannah looked up, eyeing him watchfully as if waiting for him to object. The moment stretched out between them, each of them painfully aware of the things the other was not saying. Josh was the first to turn away. He didn't have energy left for a fight. All thoughts of Hannah comforting him had now been banished so thoroughly it was as though they had occurred to someone else entirely. He couldn't remember ever feeling so weak, as if those minutes in the head teacher's office had opened up a tear inside him through which his life force had drained away, leaving him hollow and empty.

“I'm going to go and lie down,” he said.

* * *

In their bedroom, he closed the curtains and lay fully clothed on top of the duvet. Closing his eyes, he probed the newly vacant space inside of him, looking for something. Eventually he found it, a lump of hatred, hard as a cyst.