The History Room (26 page)

‘Another week?’ She peered at me through her tears. ‘I suppose I could try and hold on for another week.’

‘Do.’ I reached across and touched her shoulder. ‘And try and spend more time with the teachers. Come out to the pub after school again. I’ll let you know when Simon and
I are planning another outing.’

She stood up, knocking her chair over, eyes no longer filled with tears but filled with another emotion I couldn’t exactly decipher. ‘Simon?’

‘That’s right.’ I had picked up something in her tone. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Nothing.’ She flicked back her curtain of hair. ‘That would be lovely.’ Outside a group of girls chattered as they crossed the lawn towards their first lesson. I saw
Emily’s eyes narrow as she observed them. ‘Some of them find it all so easy, don’t they? The friendships, the group stuff.’

I knew what she meant. Some youngsters seemed to be born programmed to know how to operate in groups. School was a social doddle for them. Others, such as Olivia and probably Emily herself, were
born without this innate knowledge. Living with other people constantly around them was hard work. ‘They seem to glide through life here,’ I said. ‘But sometimes when they leave
they find the world a tougher place.’

She seemed to swallow a retort.

I thought of myself, so happy and secure here at Letchford and at the school in the town. I’d done my A levels here but nothing else because my parents had wished to keep my education
separate from my home life. I’d been one of those pupils who enjoyed the bustle of the classroom, the gossip of the sixth-form common room at break. Merry, I’d been, by name and nature.
Yet life had still not spared me. Perhaps the pupils who’d been tried and tested at school had an additional toughness which helped them later on in life. ‘Don’t worry,’ I
told Emily, not even sure what it was I didn’t want her to worry about. ‘Everything will be fine.’ I realized I was saying it to myself, as much as to her.

Emily

It confused the hell out of her when people were nice to her. Made her wonder if she should change her plans completely. Stay at the school. Be the person she might have been.
Forget the rest of it.

Meredith had that seductive English ease about her. She hadn’t met Meredith’s deceased mother, but imagined someone similar, but older and even more appealing. Emily corrected
herself. She
had
indeed met Susan Statton. When she’d been a toddler and had come to this school with her mother to borrow something. ‘I liked Letchford,’ Mum had said,
years later. ‘It felt as though we were part of the family.’ And she’d laughed in that way that didn’t sound as though she thought it was very funny at all.

Simon had been kind to Emily as well, taking her out for a drive through the countryside to the second-hand bookshop. He’d wanted to screw her, but that was OK. What wasn’t OK was
that he hadn’t taken her seriously as a possible girlfriend. Either because he had thought of her as a guileless nineteen-year-old, or because he’d seen through her. Either way,
he’d made it clear that it had just been a fling. To be honest, she didn’t really want a relationship, either. But it bugged her that she wasn’t considered worthy of the honour.
So Simon Radcliffe, with his musty piles of old papers and photos of women in Edwardian costume promenading round Letchford’s gardens, thought that he was too good, did he?

Anger hardened her. She wouldn’t be sidetracked. Or it would all have been a waste of time. Remember what you set out to do, she told herself. Don’t let Meredith or Simon or Olivia
or anyone else sidetrack you. Remember Dad. Mum. Toby.

Toby. She barely remembered him at all. It was her mother’s desperate scream when she found him dead that lived on in her memory. Emily’s hand went to her left arm. She pulled up the
woollen sleeve and examined her skin. Nearly healed over. She tried rolling the sleeve back down and forgetting about the cut. But now the impulse was in her mind she knew she’d be unable to
push it away again. This was what happened when she thought about the past; she was drawn back to the blade. It did hurt when you cut yourself, she’d agreed with Olivia. Very much, at times.
But that sense of the bad stuff flowing out of you with the blood, and the relief, numbed the pain.

Olivia had nodded. ‘You feel clean,’ she’d agreed. ‘That’s why I do it, to feel pure afterwards.’ They’d done it together once, sitting out by the
fountain at dusk. They’d let the drops of blood fall into the water. It had been beautiful. Emily had cut herself again after the interview with Meredith. The bleeding had calmed her, as it
always did. Had made her resolute again.

Emily remembered the first time she’d taken a blade to her skin. It had been one of those mornings when Dad hadn’t risen in time for work. He’d been drinking until the early
hours. She’d gone into the bathroom to get ready for school, that dismal school that was so far from being Letchford it might have been on a different planet. Dad’s razor sat on the
shelf under the mirror, unused. On a good morning he hummed as he applied the blade to his soaped face. As a small child Emily had liked to sit on the edge of the bathtub and watch him shave,
creating smooth lines through the white foam. She picked up the razor, a heavy steel instrument. He’d warned her about the blade before.
Never let me see you playing with this, Em . .
.
She pressed her thumb on the blade. Nothing happened. Perhaps it wasn’t as sharp as she’d thought. She pressed hard. A small bead of blood appeared, like a little berry. It stung.
But there was another feeling too, a release, as though the hurting feeling was blotting out the pain inside Emily. A small hurt instead of a big one.

She’d done it again, not too often, but when the kids at school were being vile to her. Sometimes Dad dragged Emily off to church on Sunday and they sang hymns about the pure blood of the
Saviour washing away sin. Perhaps that was what her own blood was doing, washing away all the badness. Keeping the three of them safe.

Finding someone else who understood about cutting had been a revelation. She recalled the first time she’d seen the marks on Olivia’s arm and had asked her. ‘Yes,’ Olivia
had whispered. ‘I am sorry, I have done that to myself. I know I shouldn’t.’

It had all come tumbling out: Olivia’s homesickness, her aunt Sofia who worked so hard, her family abroad. She was reticent about her aunt. Probably screwed up by Sofia’s absences.
Emily knew most of it already, of course. ‘Will you tell the school?’ Olivia had whispered. ‘Will they make me see the doctor or something?’

‘No. I won’t tell them.’ Emily had rolled up her sleeve and shown her own cuts. ‘I know about cutting. You don’t need psychiatric liaison teams and all that
stuff.’

Olivia’s eyes had widened.

‘Sometimes it feels like the purest thing in my life.’ Emily touched the cut on her arm. ‘It gets me through hard times. Nobody else is harmed by it.’

‘That’s what I think too. It stops me worrying people with my problems.’

‘But it’s lonely,’ Emily had gone on. ‘I’ve heard of people cutting together.’ Olivia looked doubtful. ‘To keep an eye on one another. Making sure they
don’t hurt themselves badly.’

‘Keeping an eye out.’ Olivia looked thoughtful. ‘I can see that would work.’

Emily had taken the plunge. ‘I feel like cutting now. But I don’t want to be alone.’

Olivia’d drawn back, eyes wide. Emily had sworn at herself silently. Too much too soon. ‘I have had a hard day,’ Olivia said slowly. ‘I know that cutting would make me
feel better, but . . .’

‘You shouldn’t do it alone,’ Emily said quickly. ‘Look, just stay with me while I do it. See what happens.’ She’d had the razor blade wrapped up in a tissue
in her trouser pocket. And a spare. ‘Never ever share your blades. These are new,’ she told Olivia. She’d unwrapped the first blade and drawn it over the skin on her upper left
arm. A fine dark line appeared. Beautiful. Like an artist’s brushstroke. Olivia was watching. ‘Thank you for staying with me,’ she told the girl.

And then Olivia had put out a hand for the second blade and drawn a similar line on the back of her own wrist. ‘We are like sisters now,’ she said. The crimson mark on her pale skin
was like a silk thread. Then a drop of blood beaded at one end.

But not any longer. Olivia had stopped cutting. Perhaps the shock of tumbling down those stairs onto the marble floor had shaken up something in her brain. That had been regrettable. Emily
hadn’t meant to push her; it had just happened when Olivia had mouthed off about not wanting to snoop around the house when the rest of her boarding house were watching a DVD.

Now Olivia wore that stupid elastic band around her wrist. Said that pinging it was a form of acupressure or something, helped to relax her or distract her away from the compulsion to cut. And
Olivia seemed busier these last weeks. The play, naturally, was absorbing her energies. And the pressure of work had gone up now that term was halfway through. They pushed them hard here, for all
the liberal wishy-washy stuff about allowing pupils to flourish in a supportive and encouraging environment. If Emily herself had been to a school like this who knows what she might have made of
herself. Emily Fleming would have blossomed into her real, her fullest self.

But enough of this self-indulgence. Time was short. The play would be the obvious occasion at which to bring things to a head. Everyone would be there: parents, many of the staff, governors.
There had to be a way of pulling it all together.

But first she needed to know what intelligence Meredith and Charles’s trip to Prague had yielded. Emily had made calls, left messages on voicemails, but had had no replies yet.

Sometimes Charles looked at her in strange way. Did he know who she was? She could try to get into his apartment during the day when he was out and about snooping on the staff. But it was a
high-risk option. People walked in and out of the main house all the time.

Which left the option of Meredith’s flat. Meredith had left the spare key with Simon when she’d left the dog in his care. Emily had taken the key out of the carrier bag and placed it
under a pile of bills and letters on Simon’s kitchen table. If Meredith had missed it and asked Simon where the key was Simon would panic and root around in his debris. And simply think
he’d forgotten to put it back in the bag. He was careless with keys, had left the history room cupboard key lying about in the staffroom.

Merry’s spare key was still under the pile of papers. Emily would borrow it. Perhaps there’d be an email on Meredith’s laptop that would spell out what they’d discovered
in Prague.

Meredith

‘Sofia said she’d be over at about half six, when she finishes work.’ My father sat up straight in his seat. ‘I’m fairly sure she knows what we
want to talk about, though I didn’t go into details on the phone.’ His eyes still looked over-bright. I wondered whether he’d had any sleep the previous night.

‘You haven’t said a word to Olivia?’ I knew this must have been a temptation he’d find hard to resist.

He shook his head.

‘Do you think Sofia would have said anything to her?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘I still don’t know why Sofia didn’t say something back when Olivia started here.’

He shrugged. ‘It makes no sense to me, either.’ His face brightened. ‘But it doesn’t stop this from being a happy occasion.’

‘What will happen to Olivia, Dad?’ I thought of all the gossip if it were discovered that this quiet girl was the head’s granddaughter. ‘Will she be able to stay
here?’

‘I don’t see why not.’ His expression became defensive. Having found this grandchild, his only granddaughter, there was no way on earth he was going to be separated from
her.

I imagined how she’d hate people whispering about her. I knew myself how hard it was to work in a school where a parent was the head. How many times had I come into the staffroom to see
people nudging one another in warning? I knew it was because they’d been moaning about my father. However hard he tried to maintain good relationships with his staff, there’d always be
areas where people disagreed with him. For a vulnerable child it would be harder than for me. A teacher or housemaster would sometimes have to send a pupil to the head to remove a privilege or hand
out a Friday evening detention. The pupil concerned might take out any resentment on Olivia.

I moved my eyes around the room to try and dislodge this uneasiness. The reborn doll in its cardboard box had moved from the top of my father’s desk and now sat on the floor beside a
bookcase. ‘I need to get rid of that thing.’ My father saw me looking at it. ‘I suppose the drama department might like it.’ He sounded weary.

I wished he’d removed it already. The box and its contents seemed to drag me back to the confusion of the early term.

A car drew up outside. I stood and looked out of the window. It was a small red Vauxhall, clearly not in its first youth. Something about it was familiar. I couldn’t remember what. Sofia
got out. She’d dressed very smartly for this interview, in a black coat and cashmere-looking scarf. I stood back from the window in case she saw me watching her. ‘It’s
Sofia,’ I said, turning to Dad. ‘Is Olivia going to be here too? Shall I go and get her?’

‘Not yet. I’ve warned her housemistress that I’ll need time with Olivia later this evening.’

‘Shouldn’t she be here with us as well?’

‘Oh, I don’t think we want to involve any other staff just now,’ he said, sounding vague. I wasn’t so sure. A little voice inside me insisted that this had to be done
properly. Cathy ought to be here. Or Olivia’s housemistress.

‘I’ll go down to meet Sofia now.’ He stood up, straightening his tie and looking suddenly nervous as though he were the one about to meet the head, not the other way round. As
he left the office he glanced over his shoulder. Looking for my absent mother, I guessed. Momentarily forgetting she wouldn’t be here to help him through this potentially difficult meeting. I
felt a double pang for her and for Hugh. I was still mentally recording everything that happened to me for playing back to him at some point. I switched off the mental tape recorder.