The History Room (29 page)

She swallowed the last of her Diet Coke and raised her eyebrows at the sales reps. ‘And the men are often more interesting than those. Bankers. Lawyers. Internet millionaires.’

A few months later Emily and Olivia had started at the school.

Olivia had been the medium of her revenge. But now? Now Charles and Meredith had probably found out for themselves who Olivia was when they’d visited Prague. Emily had rung Sofia and
interrogated her about whom they’d seen and what they’d found out. Sofia had claimed ignorance. Said she’d been called into school to discuss Olivia’s grades and ways of
maintaining her improvement. Prague hadn’t been mentioned. Nor had family secrets. For this lie she, too, would pay. This damn play had kept Emily too busy to get into Meredith’s
apartment yet, to discover what she’d nosed out.

Best to face the worst case. The possibility of using Olivia as collateral had gone. And anyway, despite everything, despite the coolness shown to her by the girl, Emily felt increasingly warm
towards her. She wanted to hold Olivia in her arms, untie the hair from its severe bun and run her fingers through it. Perhaps this unexpectedly deep emotion for another person was reward enough
for her time at Letchford.

But Emily had made her promise. She owed it to her parents and to Toby, innocent little Toby. She should never for one instant forget the discovery of his cold little body that morning and her
mother’s long, desperate howl.

Olivia was shuffling in front of her. ‘Have you finished?’

Olivia didn’t like her any more. Viewed her with distaste. Was far less easy to manage. Time was running out.

Jenny was saying something. ‘. . . time to look at John Proctor’s waistcoat?’ She was staring at her with a strange look on her face that told Emily that some of her emotion
had shown itself. She had to be very careful.

She clenched her fingers round the scissors in front of her on the desk and wanted to throw them at Jenny’s silly face. ‘Fine,’ she said. ‘I’ve nothing else planned
tonight.’

‘We were going to the White Oak after rehearsals. Why don’t you do it tomorrow?’ Jenny suggested.

‘I wouldn’t mind a night in.’ Maybe she’d let herself into Meredith’s apartment tonight and look at her laptop. Emily threaded a needle and pondered talking to the
newspapers. The
Daily Mail
, perhaps.

Idyllic school whose upright head isn’t what he seems.

Charismatic head left pregnant girlfriend to Russian invaders.

Teacher at top private school abandons injured soldier husband.

She felt resolution pour through her veins with each invented headline. Charles Statton hadn’t seen her mother start hoarding her sleeping tablets. Or been with Emily when she’d come
home from school to find Mum lying on her bed, her mouth open, a thread of vomit on her pillow. He hadn’t seen her father, his former colleague, sitting with the whisky bottle in the
evenings, offering to help her with her maths homework when he could hardly sit upright.

The pupils here would draw their own conclusions when she explained it all. And the head himself and his precious Merry would start to learn a bit more about the nature of suffering. She pulled
the thread hard through the eye of the needle.

‘Can’t I come to the play?’ Hugh asked as he topped up my wine glass.

I blinked. Usually only the cast’s parents and grandparents wanted to sit through school plays. ‘I suppose so.’

‘Don’t do me any favours. I could always stay in and watch a boxed set.’ He sounded amused.

‘I’m simply stunned that you’d want to.’

‘I know it’ll be excellent. And I like
The Crucible
. Saw the film with Winona Ryder and Daniel Day Lewis in it.’

Not with me, he hadn’t. Must have been while he was on tour. Or in hospital. ‘I’m not sure we’re quite up to that standard.’

‘I’d like to see Olivia again. Does she know yet?’

About her headmaster actually being her grandfather? ‘We’re keeping the revelation until after the holidays.’ I hadn’t dare ask him his own plans for Christmas.
‘How’s it going with the new leg?’ I ventured.

A long silence.

‘Let’s just say that my brain hasn’t yet accepted that I don’t still have a shattered left leg,’ he said at last, quietly. ‘Some nights are . . .
interesting.’ I’d read up on the pain of phantom limbs in an attempt to understand what he was going through and winced. ‘Some evenings I just give up trying to sleep and drive
around.’

‘Where do you go?’ He hadn’t brought the new car tonight for dinner, saying that he didn’t dare risk a single drink when he was in it. Obviously an evening with me was
only bearable with an alcoholic crutch.

‘I just drive around aimlessly.’ He fiddled with the garlic press I’d taken out of the drawer.

I only hoped he’d ask for all the help he could get. I cooked the pork strips and vegetables in a wok with chillies and sherry and some other bits and pieces the recipe book assured me
would do well together. Some of the onion stuck to the wok and the pork was a bit overdone but Hugh ate with apparent relish. ‘You’re a good cook these days, Merry.’ We ate in
companionable silence.

‘May I use your laptop?’ he asked when we’d finished.

I waved him towards the living room. ‘On the sofa.’ Perhaps sitting with me in the kitchen wasn’t as cosy and familiar as I thought it was. But he brought the laptop back to
the kitchen.

‘I’m just going to search on a few names.’ He put it on the table. ‘I haven’t any hopes of finding much about the Czech side but I have a few other
ideas.’

I stood behind him to clear the plates. His body felt very warm beside mine. It would have been easy to let myself slip back. Every cell of my flesh longed for contact. But something told me to
let him make the first move.

After we’d finished the chocolate mousse I’d prepared before school Hugh returned to his Internet search. I made coffee and watched him. ‘Tell me more about the bursary
fraud,’ he asked. I related what Clara had told me about it.

‘A sad story.’

‘What are you looking for?’

‘Just seeing if there is any archive newspaper coverage of the story.’

‘Dad didn’t go to the police.’

‘Thought as much.’

‘What do you mean?’

He gave a shrug. ‘He doesn’t like to think badly of people.’ He got up, moving so fluidly that I forgot he was wearing his prosthetic leg. ‘I’ll do some more on
this at home. I suppose I should ring for a cab now.’

‘You don’t need to do that.’ I stopped and wondered where the words had come from. It certainly had not been my intention to invite my husband to sleep over tonight. To my
annoyance I realized that I was blushing like a third-year girl when one of the pin-ups from the sixth form strolled past.

He looked at me and then downwards towards his leg. ‘I don’t know.’ He touched it. ‘It’s too quick for me, Merry. This . . .’

‘There’s the sofa-bed,’ I said wildly. ‘It’s quite comfortable, I’ve . . .’ I’d spent a night on it in that lost week. I’d drunk my way
through a bottle of wine and fallen asleep on it, Samson curled up beside me on the floor. ‘It would be a start,’ I said. ‘Just being in the same building overnight. It would be
the first time in—’

‘Nine months,’ he said. ‘I know. The first time in nine months we’ve spent the night together.’ Samson padded in and flopped down by his master with a relaxed
sigh.

‘Have a think,’ I said, brightly, falsely. ‘I’ll just put a few things away in the kitchen. I can drive you to the station if you still want to go. I didn’t drink
much.’ My hands shook as I stacked plates and glasses in the dishwasher. I told myself that tonight’s decisions meant nothing. He hadn’t been expecting to stay, hadn’t
brought a washbag with him. Hugh never liked plans to change at the last minute; he always liked to be prepared.

I heard him talking to the dog in a low voice, heard the
swoosh swoosh
of the dog’s tail against the wooden floor. He came into the kitchen. ‘I’d like to stay,’ he
said. ‘But not on the sofa, so not this time, Merry. When I spend the night with you again I want to do it properly.’ The blaze of blue in his eyes made me take a breath. He put a hand
out to push my hair off my shoulders. ‘You and I have been through too much to muck around with sofas,’ he said. ‘One of the counsellors I’ve been seeing is good at getting
me to decipher what’s going on up here. I am getting to grips with some of the guilt.’ He put a hand to his head.

‘Guilt that you survived?’ I said slowly.

He nodded. ‘I don’t see the faces of the men I lost in my dreams any more. But I think I need a few more sessions.’

‘Do you want me to go to the counselling with you? As soon as the holidays start I’m free.’

‘You’d do that?’ He sounded surprised.

‘Of course I’d bloody well do it.’ I banged the dishwasher door shut so violently that the plates crashed together in protest. ‘You’re my husband. We’re still
married. I love you. I think you might still love me a bit because you choose to come and see me. I haven’t exactly forced myself on you since you banished me.’

He winced.

‘I want to help us get back together, but—’ Memories of the time he’d thrown me off the ward flooded me. I clung to the worktop. ‘But I’ve got a good job
here. I’ve got friends, a purpose. I can’t let myself be hurt again. I’m willing to do all that I can to help you – help us, I mean, I want us . . .’ He moved so
quickly that his mouth was over mine before I’d finished trying to say it all, his hands grabbing me and scooping me towards him. It had been nine months but my body hadn’t forgotten
his. His lips tasted of wine and chocolate mousse. At some point we must have moved towards the bedroom.

‘What would the counsellor say?’ I asked, when my mouth was free.

His answer was to push me back against the pillows. ‘There’ll be a brief commercial break while I take this bloody thing off.’ He patted his prosthesis. ‘The physio
hasn’t prepared me for what I have in mind now.’

I hadn’t seen the stump for months and despite my attempts my muscles tightened in anticipation. He must have sensed this. ‘It’s OK.’ He stroked my hair again.
‘Everything’s healing. You don’t have to be scared, Merry.’

I was going to dispute the word but then I realized just how scared I had been. For months and months. And then I saw the leg, cut off just under the knee, still swollen around the stump, still
pink, mottled in tone, but neater and tidier, more
sorted
than I’d thought it would be. He eyed his leg dispassionately. ‘It changes all the time,’ he said. ‘As the
stump gets less swollen and the muscles develop. That’s why they keep measuring it to make sure the socket fits properly.’

I put a hand on the leg, about an inch above the stump, as though I was touching something wild and vicious. It didn’t bite. ‘Am I hurting you?’

‘No.’ He laughed. ‘Only physios and gym instructors are evil enough for that.’ He moved my fingers up his leg.

I wasn’t frightened any longer.

Emily

Meredith had been in her apartment all night with peg-leg. But the moment came when Charles Statton was taking assembly two days before the play was to be performed. Meredith
herself was sitting with the other staff in the hall, naturally, very much the loyal daughter. Emily was supposed to attend assembly but it was easy to make an excuse about a possible clash next
term between a hockey match and a rugby sevens festival. The look of horror on Jeremy’s silly pink face might have made her laugh if things hadn’t been so serious. ‘I’ll
sort it out, don’t worry.’

He’d muttered something about not being able to manage without Emily. ‘You didn’t seem very keen on sport when you first got here,’ he added. ‘Or so I
thought.’

Never distrust first impressions, eh, Jezza? she’d thought.

She’d remembered Meredith’s dog and had taken a couple of pieces of bacon from the morning’s breakfast to distract him. Samson was large enough to make her palms sweat. He
hadn’t liked her much before when she’d come across him at Simon’s house. The feeling was mutual.

He was standing by the door as she let herself in and he growled. She took off a boot and smacked him on the end of the nose. He retreated to the kitchen door, whimpering. Perhaps that had been
a mistake. If the whimpers turned to barks someone might come over to see what was happening. Emily wasn’t even sure what it was she was looking for. An email to or from Meredith was still
her best hope. Perhaps she’d written down all the details and sent them to that sister of hers.
You’ll never guess what I’ve found out about Emily . . .

She spotted the laptop on the living-room coffee table and walked slowly towards it, hoping the dog would stay where he was. Although she was in a hurry there was time enough to see how
elegantly this apartment had been decorated: all off-white walls and wooden floors. No pictures on the walls, though. Meredith must be extremely plain in her tastes. There was a photograph of a man
in uniform on the fireplace. The maimed husband before he’d lost his leg and fingers.

The dog was still watching her from the kitchen door, ears pricked. She switched on the laptop. No prompt for a password. Good. She went into Internet, looking at the bookmarks. There was a
folder for the Czech trip, just details of flights and car hire. Prague was the only place mentioned. They hadn’t downloaded any street maps or googled on particular addresses, as far as
Emily could tell.

She wondered where Meredith would spend the Christmas holiday. Perhaps she’d fly somewhere sunny with the wounded hero husband. Emily had watched him enter the apartment last night and
leave in a taxi only this morning, just before assembly. He was pretty hot, even with the peg leg. No wonder Meredith was looking so pleased with herself.

She went into Meredith’s Internet search history. Froze. Blinked. Took a breath. Looked again. And still saw the same name. Meredith had been raking up the past. Unsuccessfully, as it
happened. But that wasn’t the point.

Emily sat back on her heels, shaking. Meredith might have worked it out. Emily stared at the names and felt the anger as a white-hot pulse through her bloodstream. This changed everything. The
dog growled from the kitchen, obviously picking up her fury. ‘Shut up,’ she muttered at him. She would have liked to have taken one of her blades to him but she hadn’t planned on
doing that. When you departed from plans things went wrong. Like when she’d lost her temper before half-term and pushed Olivia downstairs.