The History Room (20 page)

‘I’d like to say hello to your father.’ He looked awkward. ‘Can’t get used to it just being your father. Your mother was great, Meredith, sending me cards
regularly. And books.’

I hadn’t known that. ‘She missed you.’ Damn. Another weakness admitted to. To cover my annoyance I found myself moving faster. Then I remembered Hugh’s new leg and slowed
down.

‘Don’t worry about me. I need to speed up.’

‘You’ll probably end up even faster than you were before.’ I remembered walks when his long strides had left me tearing along to keep up with him.

‘At least I’ll have one leg I don’t have to worry about breaking when I go skiing.’

Above us in the west I spotted a Globemaster plane curving round to land at RAF Lyneham, bringing home the dead rather than the wounded. I glanced away. But Hugh had spotted the plane.
‘Another poor sod coming home.’

He kept his eyes on the plane until it curved out of sight behind the hills, and I could feel emotion coming off him. The autumn sun, fitful today, came out from behind a cloud and gilded him in
its rays. He reminded me of a knight. His face was solemn: pensive, yet not broken. A small ripple of hope ran through me and I tried to smooth it over so that it wouldn’t show on my
face.

‘When the bomb went off the blast wave didn’t just cut off my leg and fingers. It shook my brain.’ He said it dispassionately but his hands were curled into fists. I remembered
what the nurse had shown me with the orange but said nothing. ‘I feel better since they changed the drugs, calmer. But I don’t know what damage’s been done here.’ He tapped
his head. ‘And nobody can tell me.’

I put out a hand towards him but an invisible barrier seemed to prevent it from making contact with his arm. He didn’t seem to notice the gesture.

‘Shall we turn for the house?’ was all he said.

As we reached the steps up from the terrace we met Cathy. I’d imagined she’d be away from school this week, as she wasn’t involved in the entrance exams. ‘Ah,
Meredith.’ The sight of Hugh beside me made her widen her eyes.

See
, I wanted to tell her,
perhaps I’m not as mucked up as you think
.
My husband wants to see me, be with me
.
Don’t count your chickens
, I reminded
myself, immediately. Nothing he’d said had indicated a firm commitment to a future together. I nodded at her. ‘Just on the way to see Dad.’ I didn’t introduce Hugh to her,
even though he stopped to nod at her.

‘Who was that?’ he asked, when we’d moved on.

‘School nurse,’ I said. For a moment I toyed with telling him how she probably still believed I’d put the reborn into the history room cupboard. But I didn’t want to talk
about the wretched doll again. It seemed to insinuate itself into every situation.

My father was tidying up after the examinations: placing scripts in piles to post to teachers away for the holidays for marking. I hadn’t told him Hugh was coming today. I’d felt
superstitious that he might change his mind and not turn up. ‘Quite a good set of candidates,’ my father said as we walked in, without lifting his head. He turned when I didn’t
answer. ‘Oh, Hugh.’ A note of wonder in his voice. He stood up. ‘It’s really you. At last.’ I’d forgotten or put out of my mind how fond of Hugh Dad had always
been. The son he’d never had, perhaps. ‘Are you staying long?’ He cast a hopeful look in my direction as he came towards us, arm out, looking as though he wanted to do more than
shake hands, as though he wanted to embrace Hugh.

‘Just a day trip.’ Hugh stepped forward and shook my father’s hand. I noticed my father make the downward glance at his new leg beneath the new and expensive-looking jeans.
‘It’s good to see you, too. I was so sorry about Susan.’

‘Thank you for your letter.’ Dad was still holding his hand. ‘I hope you got the card I sent back?’

Hugh nodded. I hadn’t known that Hugh had written to Dad.

If she’d been here now my mother would have held out her arms and Hugh would have stepped into them, probably even keener to see her and Dad than he had been me, I thought. I
couldn’t remember whether he’d even given me a peck on the cheek when he’d got into the car at the station.

I felt rage, hot and sour, sweep over me. What a cosy little pair Dad and Hugh made. He seemed happy enough to see my father. And the dog. It was obviously just me, his wife, who was the
problem. I stooped down to Samson and patted his head so that they wouldn’t see the emotion on my face.
Pull yourself together
, I ordered myself.
You’re like a jealous
first-year. Or the envious little sister you were all those years ago when Clara seemed to have everything you didn’t
.

‘You look better than I expected,’ my father told him. ‘When Meredith described your injuries . . .’ He shook his head.

‘Been lucky with my treatment. The doctors and nurses and physios are great. Hard on me, you wouldn’t believe how hard, but great.’

‘They’ve done a good job,’ Dad said.

‘I’ll probably pay for today tomorrow, if you see what I mean.’

Someone knocked on the door. Olivia popped her head around. ‘Please, Mr Statton, can I help you with anything?’

‘Emily not around?’

‘She’s gone into town. I didn’t want to go.’ She was wearing a jumper with the arms rolled up. The red rubber band was still around her right wrist.

‘There’s nothing I can think of,’ Dad said. ‘Oh, hang on, why don’t you help me sort out the filing. Mrs Evans would be grateful.’

Samantha had long been complaining about Dad’s filing. Hugh watched Olivia leave the room.

‘What is it?’ I asked him.

‘Who’s that?’

‘A pupil. Olivia Fenton. She’s staying at school over the half-term.’

‘I’d better go too,’ Dad said, holding out his hand again to Hugh. ‘Good seeing you.’

‘That girl Olivia’s a bit of a mystery altogether,’ I told Hugh when we were alone again. I explained what I knew about Olivia’s aunt in Bellingham and her job as a
housekeeper, and the connection with the reborn doll. ‘I shouldn’t be telling you all this, really. Dad doesn’t approve of what I’ve been up to, all the
sleuthing.’

‘She doesn’t look the kind who’d do something daft like that,’ he said.

I knew what he meant. Olivia had a wide-eyed, honest look about her. And yet I still had the feeling of her hiding something away from us all. Secrets. Even if she’d had nothing to do with
the reborn there was something Olivia was worried about.

‘Shame about her arms though,’ he went on. ‘All those little scars. What happened?’

He always did have an eye for small details. ‘You noticed too. I think she’s self-harming.’

‘What?’

I explained how teenagers sometimes responded to stress or unhappiness by cutting themselves.

He looked appalled. ‘Can’t you do something?’

‘The school nurse’s been talking to her. It seems to have stopped now.’ I paused, thinking of Emily. ‘I think she might have had a kind of accomplice or
partner.’

He frowned.

‘The gap-year student, Emily. I’ve started to suspect that she’s doing the same thing.’

‘That’s sick.’ He swallowed. ‘Have you spoken to this Emily?’

‘Olivia just clams up if we ask her. And there’s no proof that Emily had anything to do with it.’

‘I find the whole thing extraordinary.’ I imagined him thinking of all the blood and trauma in Afghanistan. And here were girls in the West, living in comfort and calm, subjecting
their bodies to blades. ‘In Afghanistan the Taliban tried to stop girls going to school. Some of them would give anything to come to a place like this. If I told them that girls here stick
knives into themselves they’d think they were mad.’

‘I know.’

‘I wish I could—’ He stopped abruptly.

I waited.

‘I wish I could tell them that none of the things they’re worrying about matter. When you’re in your teens everything worries you: friends, clothes, whether you’re good
enough at sport. And none of it really matters.’

‘Perhaps we could ask you to give a talk.’ I stopped myself. Assuming too much, assuming that he’d still be around. ‘It might help,’ I went on, because he was
staring at me. ‘It might give them a sense of proportion.’

He was silent. Hugh always liked to play it fair and he wouldn’t want to raise my hopes by agreeing to another meeting if he wasn’t sure we had a future together.

‘Anyway, pop back sometime if you want,’ I said as casually as I could. ‘Samson would love to see you.’

‘I’d like to talk to them,’ he said. ‘About what we’re doing out there, what we want to achieve. If you wouldn’t . . . ?’

‘Oh, it wouldn’t bother me.’ I hoped I sounded airy. I held the front door open. ‘Shall we go back to say goodbye to Samson in the stables? Your train leaves
shortly.’ He paused on the doorstep.

‘The history room, wasn’t that where you said Simon found the doll?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Didn’t that history room use to be something else? Not a teaching room. Some kind of office?’

‘A bursar’s office.’

‘That’s right. Before I met you.’

‘What made you think of that?’

He shrugged. ‘I always thought it must be such a glorious classroom to teach in, with those windows and that big oak cupboard. It must have been great to sleep in that room when it was
still a bedroom.’

‘Yes.’ I was still thinking about the history room as we drove to the station. Probably trying to keep my mind off the coming separation.

‘It was good to see you,’ I said when we arrived. I gave him a kiss on the cheek and my senses flooded with longing. He smelled of the same shaving soap he always used. For a moment
I kept my face close to his, hoping he’d want to kiss me again. But he stepped back. ‘No need to wait for the train,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

And then he stepped away, moving swiftly through the crowded concourse. I stared at his back until my eyes filmed over. I switched on the engine and was just releasing the handbrake when a
tapping on the window made my heart leap. Hugh. He opened the passenger door.

‘Completely forgot I’d got this for you.’ He dropped a small parcel onto the seat. ‘Glass from Herat. They followed me back from Afghanistan when they packed up my
things. But they’d gone to my mother’s flat. Must dash.’

And he was swallowed up into the crowds at the station.

I opened the parcel when I reached the stables. Layers of newspaper stripped away to reveal two tall and elegant bluey-green glasses with bases. A matching pair, I noted. I imagined Hugh on the
trip to Herat, finding his way to some bazaar or glass-making factory and taking his time, finally choosing the glasses because he knew that they were exactly what I’d love.

I held them one in each hand for a long time, then I placed them on the mantel over the fireplace. At last my home had some personal possessions on display. I stared at the glasses in their new
position for some minutes. Their soft blueness was just right for the muted neutral room. I jumped up from the sofa again and wrapped them up in their newspaper. Then I stowed them away in a
kitchen cupboard. Best not to get my hopes up. I could manage alone. I’d shut up my hopes in a mental cupboard like the old oak cupboard in the history room until I knew they were reasonable
ones.

The history room. Thinking about that cupboard had triggered a memory, but so fleetingly I couldn’t retrieve it.

I thought about it for a moment but it didn’t come to me.

‘Tell me,’ my father said, peering at Olivia over his specs, ‘about your life before you came here, where you lived.’ We’d invited her over to the
big house for an early supper on this last night of half-term. We’d asked Emily, too, but she’d been suffering from a virus all day and had retired to bed. We’d finished the
shepherd’s pie and chocolate mousse I’d brought over and now we were sitting in the drawing room. Olivia had chosen to sit by the fire in a low nursing chair. She looked curiously at
home there. Clara and I had often sat in the chair as children.

‘I grew up in Kent. I went to a village school for a while. Then we moved and I went to a secondary school in Reading. I didn’t like that much.’

‘Have you always lived with your aunt?’ I asked.

She nodded. ‘She’s Czech. She had a permit to work here as an au pair, nothing more than that. Then she was allowed to do more work.’

When the Czech Republic had joined the EU, I guessed. But would a woman be able to bring her niece over as a dependant? My father caught my eye. I knew he was thinking the same thing.

‘I went to a nursery while she was cleaning. She married an Englishman and then she didn’t need to work so hard.’

So that was where Olivia had acquired her English-sounding surname.

‘But her husband died.’

And the aunt had taken on the housekeeper’s job with Mrs Smirnova.

‘Somehow she managed to save a bit of money for me to come here.’

‘Which part of the Czech Republic did your family come from?’ my father asked, watching her closely.

‘I don’t know. My aunt doesn’t talk about it.’ She pinged at the elastic band on her wrist. ‘She says our lives are in England now. I am an English
schoolgirl.’ She sat straighter. ‘An English public schoolgirl.’ The pride was clear in her voice. ‘That’s what matters.’

‘I’m glad,’ my father said. ‘I’m glad you’re so attached to that idea. But don’t you have a curiosity about your roots?’

Her hands wound in and out of one another on her lap. She shook her head.

‘It’s been interesting talking to you,’ he said. ‘You must come over again and eat with us. Perhaps next holidays.’

She rose.

He gave her a smile. ‘Your teachers tell me you’re working hard. Well done.’

A blush covered her face and she almost sprinted from the room, muttering a thank-you over her shoulder.

‘What’s this about, Papa?’ The old name for him fell from my lips. As a small child, that’s what I’d called him. At some point around my early teens I’d
replaced it with Dad.

‘I can’t tell you. Not yet.’ He stood. ‘I need to make a trip home.’

‘Home?’

‘To the Czech Republic.’ The plates I’d been stacking rattled in my hands.