The Secretary

by Zoe Lea

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘Too much protein!’ she declared. ‘I read it in a magazine at the doctor’s waiting room. It’s all the animal protein, sugar and food colourings that do it. All these problems with kids today could be sorted if they changed what they eat.’

  I took a deep breath. ‘It’s not just a case of diet, Mum. ADHD is a complex issue, it’s not like there’s one cause and solution. And it does exist, just listen to the parents of any child who’s been diagnosed.’

  She stared at me over the brim of her cup. I could’ve told her how many children are diagnosed with the condition each year, how it’s, in fact, a neurobiological disorder that’s defined at a behavioural level and how challenging it can be for all involved. How schools were struggling to cope, how parents can find it draining, how getting the right treatment can be a minefield. I’d seen it in my job often enough but telling my mother any of this would be a complete waste of time.

  ‘I think diet could make a huge difference is all I’m saying,’ she said quietly. ‘You are what you eat and all that. You should consider it.’

  And I suddenly realised she wasn’t talking about children in general any more and she wasn’t talking specifically about ADHD. She was talking about Sam.

  I was quiet.

  ‘If you’re referring to what Sam—’

  ‘I’m not saying anything!’ She put her hands up, as if I was holding a gun to her. ‘I love that boy.’

  ‘I know you love him, Mum, that’s not what I said.’

  We were both silent.

  ‘I really love him. I’d do anything for Sammy. You know that.’

  I studied my mother. I felt like she’d accused me of something but I wasn’t sure what. The theme tune to On the Buses played out in the living room and then started up again. Sam was watching them back to back.

  ‘How’s he sleeping?’ my mother asked after a while, and I put my cup down.

  ‘Fine.’

  ‘Ruth, you just told me he’s being bullied. Has there been any more of … ?’

  ‘He’s fine, Mum. Fine. Can we drop it?’

  ‘He’s sleeping through? In his own bed?’

  I gave her a look and she held up her hands again, the imaginary gun pointed right at her. I wiped my palms on my trousers. It was stifling in the kitchen and my head was beginning to thump.

  ‘Mum, I’ve had a rough day, can we just … ?’

  ‘I thought you working at that school would change things,’ my mother went on. ‘You. In that school. Where he is. And now kids are spitting at him?’

  I closed my eyes.

  ‘He’s too sensitive.’ She was warming to her theme. ‘No wonder he’s still tantruming and wetting the bed if his classmates are doing that. And all this about his weight, a boy of his age should be—’

  ‘Right!’ I stood up. I couldn’t listen. The visit had been a mistake. I sometimes still thought of my mum as she was fifteen years ago, like she had all the answers and the ability to make everything better. I’d come expecting a different reception. A large part of me wanted to be able to tell her all of what had happened and for her to listen.

  I wanted her to hold me while I cried and felt sorry for myself, for her to tell me everything was going to be OK and what I should do about the whole mess. But the only answers my mother had were bigoted rants and judgemental ideas about what I should be doing with my son.

  I heard the familiar long drawn out laugh of Blakey filter through from the lounge, Sam’s small giggle in response. I picked up my handbag from the back of the chair.

  ‘You’re going?’ She looked up at me. ‘You only just got here!’

  ‘Stuff to do,’ I said, rinsing out my cup. ‘Just came to check up on you.’

  ‘Why not stay for supper?’ she asked quickly. ‘We’ve enough for a shepherd’s pie. I could whip one up in half an hour.’

  ‘You know Sam won’t eat that.’

  ‘Pizza then. I’ve a pizza in the freezer, one of those rubbish ones full of cheese that Sam likes, and I’ll do you and me some chicken.’

  I considered it, the thought of someone else preparing our food was tempting, but eating in the dark kitchen with my mother was not.

  My thoughts were interrupted by the Jurassic Park theme tune. It was my ringtone. My heart quickened; it might be whoever had sent the text. One of Janine’s clique who had got my number and was about to give me an earful. My mobile was on the table, vibrating against the wood as it rang. I leaned closer to see who was calling, and saw it was Will, my ex-husband.

  ‘Will,’ I breathed.

  My mother looked at my face. ‘Want me to answer?’ she asked. ‘I don’t mind.’

  I snatched the phone up off the table and held it as it rang. It finally stopped. I put it down and we both stared at the ‘missed call’ notification in silence for a while. Speaking to Will after the day I’d just had would’ve been the worst. I felt like I’d dodged a bullet.

  ‘Is he being an idiot again?’ my mother finally asked, and I nodded.

  ‘No more than usual,’ I said, and was about to explain what he’d said to Sam when the phone beeped. A voicemail had been left.

  ‘He left a message?’ my mother asked as I picked the phone up. ‘What’s he said?’

  She came closer but I held up my hand. I went out of the kitchen, into the hallway and my mother followed me with the energy and mobility of a teenager, all thoughts of her bad back gone.

  ‘Keep Sam in there,’ I told her, and she registered mild disappointment that she wouldn’t be listening to the message with me, before nodding and going into the lounge, shutting the door behind her.

  ‘Ruth.’

  The pain never went away. Hearing him say my name felt like a small dagger was slicing through my chest. When we first separated, I considered asking him to call me by my middle name, Ann, just to avoid the feeling. It was one of the main reasons I couldn’t talk to him. It was stupid but after four years, hearing him say my name still sparked up such anger. It made me furious, even now. I recently spoke to someone at school, a teaching assistant who’d got divorced and remarried within two years, and she spoke of her separation fondly, as if it was something fortunate. I wondered at her courage at the time before realising she was barking mad.

  ‘I just got off the phone,’ Will went on, ‘with Rob.’

  My heart jumped, making a bid for my throat. I made an involuntary sound that was close to a cry. Listened to him pause, take a sharp breath.

  ‘What were you thinking?’ he hissed. ‘With Rob? Knowing he was married? And telling Janine like that, in front of everyone at the school gates. Humiliating her.’ He paused again and I felt sick. A physical urge to vomit, saliva filling my mouth.

  ‘Rob’s chairman of the rugby club,’ he said. ‘I see him and Janine at training, he helps out with Little League, for Christ’s sake. Janine went to his office. To. His. Office. After you’d screamed obscenities in her face, and they put two and two together. Worked out that it’s you, my crazy ex-wife, that’s shouting in front of all the kids and parents, and then he gets on the phone to me. I didn’t even know he had my number, he’s the bloody chairman, Ruth. I’m seeing them tonight and I just … ’ he trailed off, as if lost for words. ‘So anyway, you’ve had it. This is the final straw. I’m not letting you do this to me any more, to my son. Enough is enough. Sam needs to be with me. Last time I had him he was a nightmare, the checking things, staying inside, those tantrums and the sleeping … and now I see why. He needs someone sane in his life, not someone who’s ranting at the school gates and can’t keep her legs closed.

  ‘This alternate weekend bullshit has gone on long enough. I’m entitled to see Sam for fifty per cent of the time, you know this. It’s the law. I’ll be collecting him on Friday. You don’t need to leave him at my mother’s, that’s stopping as well. I’ll come to you. And we’ll talk about –’ he paused ‘– all of it. I’m taking early leave, so I’ll be with you at about five. And Ruth?�
� I heard him draw his breath in. ‘Don’t be a bitch.’

  EIGHT

  HMP WESTMORLAND PRISON, CUMBRIA

  2 MAY

  It was murder. Whatever way you look at it, however you justify it, someone is dead. Someone is no longer on this planet because of what happened. You are to blame just as much as I am.

  I understand why you behaved like you did after we realised this person was dead. Have I told you that? I realise that you were out of options, that you were backed in a corner, up against a wall. I know that. Me, of all people, knows that. It doesn’t excuse what you did, or how you’re behaving now, but I can empathise with the situation.

  I’ve been over and over the events, and I can’t say I wouldn’t have acted in exactly the same way as you. But it was murder.

  Do you think about it? Do you believe in an afterlife? I do. I often wonder, when it’s late at night, after lights out and I’m in the dark, staring into the blackness, if the victim can understand. If there is forgiveness wherever they are. Do they look back to that night, that autumn night that was to be their last ever on this earth, and sympathise? Have pity on us? And do they see me now, locked up in here, and you, out there.

  It’s funny how things spiral out of our control without us realising; that’s something I’ve time to comprehend here. I didn’t mean to lie to you. I took advantage and that was wrong of me, I didn’t mean for it to end that way. I’ve had time to think it over. I’ve got time. All the time. I can look back on those events last autumn and see where I went wrong. But you’ve had enough time now. It’s my turn. You need to come forward, admit your part. It was the deal we made, remember? I know you haven’t forgotten. Someone is dead. Come forward and admit it, like you promised before you put me in here.

  NINE

  The next morning, I awoke to a text from Becca. She had meant to call, but only got away from the staff meeting late. It was postponed due to a smell. One of the TAs thought it might be a gas leak. Another teacher thought a dead mouse, and it took Gary the best part of an hour to find a half-eaten sandwich that someone had dropped down the side of a chair. The upshot being that the meeting didn’t start until late, so it finished late and she was freezing. They’d had to have the meeting with all the windows and doors open, and once the heat of the day had gone it had got cold.

  Her text only referred to the meeting as being ‘the usual rubbish’, telling me ‘not to worry’. Reading that, and how my sandwich had made an impact, gave me a small moment of pleasure before the reality of the day dawned on me. What lay ahead, what might happen.

  Last night, when I got home from my mother’s, there was a part of me that wanted to call Janine. To apologise again and explain how her husband had lied to me and tell her it wasn’t my fault, but I didn’t.

  For one thing, the text could’ve been from anyone and I didn’t have her number, and for another, me responding would probably make everything worse. Rob, her husband, knew Will. They both did. And the thoughts of them all together, all talking about me, was horrendous. So I’d deleted Will’s voicemail and switched off my phone. I didn’t want to be contacted. I decided I didn’t want to hear about the staff meeting, I didn’t want to listen to Becca after hearing Will’s outpouring of hate. All I wanted to do was pretend it hadn’t happened. Any of it. I’d wanted to hide and lick my wounds and that’s exactly what I did. I’d let Sam climb into my bed and we’d watched some kids’ film that I can’t remember. He’d fallen asleep at around eight, and at about nine-thirty I’d put him in his own bed and taken a sleeping pill from an old prescription I had years ago when Will had first left me.

  I probably shouldn’t have taken it, but it was either that or replay out the scene with Janine and see all those women staring at me, or relive the humiliation in the staffroom with Lisa and wonder what was said about me when the staff meeting finally got underway. Hear Will’s words going around in my head all night and imagine the scene of Rob calling Will. And what would Rob have told him in that conversation? That he’d got his ex-wife drunk and lied to her for a quick shag?

  I kept imagining the scene where Janine walked into Rob’s office. In my imagination, it was an open plan office. I had no idea what Rob did for a living – he’d told me that he was a sales rep, living in Edinburgh and travelling through Carlisle on a job, which was obviously a lie, so I knew nothing about him. Or her.

  Will had said she went straight into his office after throwing her phone at me. Did she tell him that? While asking him if he’d had sex with me? And what would’ve been his reply? Did he tell her how he’d lied?

  If I hadn’t taken one of the old sleeping pills I kept for emergencies, the questions would’ve buzzed around my head all night.

  The next morning my mind was groggy and I desperately wanted to stay in bed. To pull the soft duvet up over my head and hide, but then there was Sam.

  He needed to get to school, needed to be shown how to deal with bullies, and seeing his mother hide under the duvet wasn’t the way. So I dragged myself up and, as I was telling Sam how to deal with Toby, I realised what I was saying could be applied to how I should deal with my own situation.

  ‘Stand up for yourself,’ I said, as we made the journey in. ‘Keep calm and don’t let him call you names or steal your food. And if it gets too bad, tell an adult. Tell a teacher.’ I thought of Lisa, her screwed up face when she spoke to me in the staffroom, how she’d said that Sam was the one with challenging behaviour. ‘And if that teacher doesn’t do anything,’ I went on, ‘tell a different teacher. Keep telling someone until they do something about it. But whatever you do –’ I turned to him as we reached the school ‘– don’t ignore it and hope it’ll go away. Bullies never go away, you have to make them.’

  Sam looked back at me.

  ‘But what if you’re scared?’ he asked, and I nodded, looking to the squat school building with my heart thumping, thinking what the day might contain for me.

  ‘And what if something happens,’ he went on, ‘when there’re no teachers around to see it and they might not believe you later?’

  I turned back to him and took his hand. ‘I know,’ I told him, ‘it can be frightening to stand up for yourself. So, if something happens … ’ I paused, unsure of what to suggest.

  Sam was bigger than Toby, but I couldn’t tell him to lash out. As a parent, it wouldn’t be good to advise violence and, besides, although Sam was twice the size of Toby, he’d be useless in any fight. He would cower and most probably burst into tears at the slightest touch. If Toby did decide to fight Sam, Sam would inevitably get beaten up. Hurt. No, recommending that Sam confront Toby wasn’t the way forward.

  ‘If something happens,’ I went on, ‘and a teacher isn’t there, keep calm and … ’ I took a moment.

  What could I tell him? Apart from punching the child, or telling a teacher, what else was there? Lisa was proving useless and I didn’t want Sam in a fight. I was at a loss.

  ‘Mum?’

  I looked at him a moment.

  ‘Mum, what should I do?’ he asked again.

  ‘OK,’ I said, an idea slowly forming. ‘When Toby picks on you today, don’t do anything … ’

  ‘But Mum, you said … ’

  ‘I know, I know what I said. But you won’t be ignoring him. This is what you do.’ I picked up my bag and took out the red pen that I’d taken from Lisa’s classroom. The ridiculous red pen with the feathers on top that she used for marking.

  ‘That’s Miss Gleason’s … ’

  ‘I know,’ I said, and handed it to Sam.

  He took it and stared at me, his eyes wide. ‘This is Miss Gleason’s pen. She was looking for it, she asked us all, said that whoever had taken it was in trouble, that they—’

  ‘Listen,’ I interrupted. ‘I took it for you.’

  He blinked rapidly.

  ‘If Toby spits at you today, or calls you names, or does anything, then you can say that … ’

  ‘Toby took it,’ Sam finished, and we s
tared at each other.

  His fingers were tight around the barrel of the pen. I could see him tremble a little. I reached out and put my hand on his. I wasn’t completely sure if what I was doing was right, but Sam got the idea. He finished my sentence for me, he knew that this was the only way to defend himself. Blame Toby for something he hadn’t done, put him in trouble with the teacher so he wouldn’t cause further trouble for Sam. I looked at the pen in Sam’s hands. I almost took it back and then I remembered that they were spitting at my son. Spitting at him.

  ‘Put it in his drawer,’ I said after a moment. ‘Without anyone seeing you do it.’

  Sam looked down at the pen in his hand.

  ‘Then, when it’s in his drawer,’ I said gently, ‘that’s when you tell the teacher what Toby did.’ I looked at his small fingers wrapped around the pen, thought of him lying to Lisa, his class teacher. The words he’d use to blame Toby and how his small innocent face would look as he lied.

  What was I telling my son now? To frame a fellow pupil for stealing the teacher’s pen? That’s what it had come to? That was better than him getting beaten up? Than being spat at?

  ‘Actually, Sam,’ I began, ‘on second thoughts, perhaps you should … ’

  ‘I’ll do it when she’s taking the register,’ he said. ‘Everyone’s sitting at their desks then, doing silent reading. I’ll do it when I get my book. No one will see.’

  I took a deep breath as he looked up at me. Sam’s face had taken on a different expression. Hope. I saw hope in his eyes and something eased a little in my chest. It was only a pen, after all. And it was only a small lie. I wasn’t asking him to steal anything, just put something back.

  ‘Make sure no one sees you,’ I said, ‘and don’t tell anyone what you’ve done. No one. You hear? Not a soul.’

  He nodded.

  ‘All we’re doing is showing Miss Gleason what Toby is really like. She doesn’t believe that he’s being mean to you, but if he’s mean to her, then she’ll have to do something. And besides, it’s only a pen. Just a pen. It’s not like it’s anything really valuable.’