The Good Samaritan
Page 60

A moment passed while Bruce looked me dead in the eye. He leaned over his desk and pressed a button on his keyboard. Suddenly I heard a recording of my own voice.
‘About what happened that afternoon. It was completely inappropriate and I want to apologise,’ I heard myself saying.
Shit. Effie had recorded our last conversation.
‘I shouldn’t have given you a lift, I shouldn’t have said the things I did and I – well, we both took things too far. I’m your teacher and I should have known better. I blame myself for giving you the wrong signals. I won’t put either of us in that position again, I promise.’
Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
‘Have you told anyone else?’ my recorded self asked.
‘No.’
‘So we can keep it between ourselves?’
There was an awkward gap before I spoke again. ‘Have you noticed your grades have improved?’ I asked.
‘Is that your way of shutting me up, Mr Smith?’ Effie replied. ‘Giving me better marks so I’ll keep quiet about what you did?’
My silence only added to my guilt.
‘Thought so. Can I go now?’
My stomach felt as if it had dropped forty floors.
‘No, no, no, this has all been taken out of context,’ I said. ‘This isn’t what happened at all!’ I looked at Sadie and Dave in the hope of gaining their support, but doubt was written across their faces.
‘What were you apologising to her for?’ Bruce asked.
‘Effie thought I was attracted to her and she tried it on with me, but I turned her down.’
‘Where was this?’
‘In my car.’
‘The car that you told me a few moments ago that she hadn’t been inside?’
‘Yes,’ I muttered.
‘I’m sorry to do this, Ryan, but I’m going to have to suspend you and ask you to leave the building with immediate effect.’
‘But it’s Effie’s mum. She has a vendetta against me . . .’
‘I note that you failed to tell me you were arrested for breaking into her house and threatening her life on Saturday.’
‘If you can just let me explain what happened—’
‘I’m sorry, but no. You can explain it to your union representative when I launch an investigation.’
Bruce escorted me through the building and into the car park. I felt many eyes watching me as the children entered the school at the first bell of the morning, wondering what was happening.
‘You are forbidden to set foot in the school grounds or school buildings until this matter has been resolved,’ Bruce advised quietly. ‘I ask that you don’t contact me, or any of your colleagues, pupils or their parents. And I suggest you get in touch with your union at the earliest opportunity.’
I remained rooted to the ground, unsure of which way to turn. I opened my mouth to try to defend myself one last time, but I wasn’t an entirely innocent party. I had led Effie on, and while I didn’t groom her sexually, I had groomed her nonetheless.
‘Could you please leave now, Ryan?’ Bruce added. ‘Let’s not make this any worse than it is.’
I climbed into my car, slipped the keys into the ignition and drove away, utterly humiliated. Laura was destroying me and I had no idea how to stop her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
LAURA
I followed Janine’s green Astra from End of the Line’s offices into a familiar industrial-estate car park.
She remained seated and held a phone to her ear. Tony eventually appeared from his building and joined her. My stomach did somersaults when, once inside the car, they gave each other lingering kisses. I wanted to run over to them, open the door and drag Janine out by her cheap hair extensions, my fists pummelling that stupid, ugly face of hers. But now wasn’t the time to act on impulse. I had a plan I was working towards, and beating her half to death in front of my husband wasn’t part of it.
I trailed them as they picked up Effie and Alice from Tony’s house, then they drove half an hour to a multiplex cinema in Milton Keynes. There were two similar cinemas in Northampton to choose from, but I assumed they didn’t want to be seen by anyone they knew. They were quite content playing happy families, just as long as it was covertly.
I watched from outside as Janine bought the tickets, a family-sized bucket of popcorn, family-sized fizzy drinks and family-sized nachos and cheese. I followed them inside, and from the shadows of a seat fifteen rows behind them, I spent a couple of hours watching them behaving like every other family. They threw their heads back and laughed along to the comedy, and shared their drinks and snacks. But my anger soon made way for resolve. I hoped Janine was making the most of this moment, because it wasn’t going to last. Once Tony remembered the woman he’d fallen in love with all those years ago, he’d be on his knees begging me to take him back. I was the girl he loved, not the one he’d read about in my records.
It had been my own fault. I’d removed the lid from Pandora’s box. It had all come to a head one day when Tony accused me of not loving the girls. He claimed I devoted all my time to Henry, while his sisters’ emotional needs were neglected. Some of what he said was correct, but that was his fault. I’d close my eyes and listen to the close relationship he’d formed with the girls, and there was no room for me. He was doing the same thing to me that my father had done with my sisters – and they’d both left me out in the cold. That made me want to push Effie and Alice further away, or risk being hurt by them like I’d been hurt by my family as a girl.
Our row had been brewing for days; I could smell it in the air like the coming of a storm. Ever since we’d moved into that house and work had commenced renovating it, it had taken over our lives. Everything was always covered in dust or smelling like fresh plaster, and there were workmen constantly traipsing around, speaking in foreign languages. I could see no end to it and I began to hate that place. If we’d stayed in our last home, everything would have been all right.
‘Are you even capable of love?’ Tony spat out the words as if they were contaminated.
‘Of course I am!’ I replied. ‘I love every one of you equally.’
‘Sometimes I look at you when you’re with the girls and I don’t see anything in your eyes. It’s like they aren’t even in the same room as you. I think what happened to you as a kid has broken you.’
‘Why are you being so cruel?’
‘I’m just trying to work out in my head what the hell is going on in yours. I don’t even know if you know how your mind operates.’
During my first year in foster care, social workers didn’t know what to do with me. I’d been appointed therapists who’d tried to break through my shell, but none succeeded. My brain had been prodded and poked at, but nobody had thought to inform me if there was anything wrong with me or offered me treatment. Then, much later, after Olly killed Sylvia while trying to protect me, there’d been no effort to find me another foster carer or family. I’d been downgraded from damaged goods to unsellable. Group children’s homes were the best it would get.
Tony’s accusations tapped into a long-standing fear that there was something very wrong inside me, something deep-rooted that prevented me from loving my daughters as a mother was supposed to. So I made the decision to apply to view my records.
As I’d been in social services care, now, as an adult and through a subject access request, I could obtain a copy of my personal data and they couldn’t lawfully deny me access to it. Eight weeks passed before it arrived by post. I waited nervously until after I’d taken the girls to school before I braced myself and tore open the envelope.