Slowly and deliberately, Nina placed her palms down flat on the table. Only as it began to shake did she realize her whole body was trembling. ‘It wasn’t all lies, was it?’ she said. ‘Oh, Scarlett, what have you done?’
‘Mrs Thomas, are you feeling all right?’
‘Of course she isn’t,’ Sarah said. She reached across to take hold of her hand. ‘Nina, it’s going to be all right. Take a deep breath.’
Sarah’s voice seemed to come from a distance because Nina was too busy dealing with the stampede of thoughts trampling through her brain. The horror of it all was almost too much to bear, but Nina pressed her toes into the blue carpet tiles and steadied herself. Pulling her hand from Sarah’s grasp, she grabbed hold of a thought, and went with it.
‘Just because you’re not pregnant doesn’t mean you’re not involved with someone, does it, Scarlett?’ she began. ‘Why make up a story about a married man? Why not say you had been sleeping with Linus, unless of course you hadn’t?’
Horrified that Nina was openly discussing her sex life, Scarlett cried, ‘Mum!’
Nina continued unabashed. ‘You couldn’t say it was Linus because I would have gone around to his parents and confronted him, only to discover that he wasn’t prepared to stand by you – and rightly so. Which makes me wonder, Scarlett. If you weren’t sleeping with Linus, who were you sleeping with?’
Rob Swift had been edging towards the door, pulling his wife along with him. ‘I really think we should leave you to it.’
‘No,’ Nina said quickly. ‘I want you to stay. I want you to hear this.’ Nina wasn’t looking at Rob but Vikki. ‘Scarlett told me she was sexually active.’
‘But I’m not, Mum!’
‘Don’t you dare!’ Nina said, her voice rising. ‘Don’t you dare tell me any more lies, Scarlett! You’re on the pill, I found them this morning. You have been sleeping with someone and of all the lies you’ve told lately, I don’t think the story about the married man was one of them. I’ve been sitting here wondering where I went wrong and how I could have missed what had been going on under my nose. I took everything at face value because I wanted to believe we were one big happy family, but you’ve made me doubt everything, Scarlett, and everyone.’
She stopped only to glance at Sarah. ‘And you didn’t help. You’ve been waiting for me to fail. Was it so awful to see me happy? Did it make your marriage look so dull and lifeless, Sarah? Perhaps if you’d spent more time examining your own life instead of judging others, you might have been there when Charlotte needed someone to turn to. She was being groomed by her teacher, and if she hadn’t convinced you to pay for private tuition when a certain someone suggested extra lessons, who knows what could have happened.’
‘You’re still going along with this crazy idea that I’m involved with your daughter?’ Rob interrupted.
‘Yes!’ Nina cried out. ‘My head’s been spinning all weekend and it’s still spinning now, but at last it feels like I’m getting nearer the truth.’
Nina cast her gaze around the room. Liam and Eva had their mouths open while Scarlett had hers pursed tightly shut. Vikki’s eyes were widening with horror, while Mrs Anwar appeared as confused as ever, but it was Rob who Nina settled her gaze upon.
‘It didn’t help that I had no idea what I was looking for, but I think I saw it a moment ago, in this room, Rob,’ she said, emphasizing the name Scarlett had used so casually, so intimately.
‘Look, Mrs Thomas,’ Rob said, ‘you’re in shock and I can appreciate how confused you must be. Like you said, your head’s spinning, but blaming someone else is not going to make your husband feel any better about you accusing him.’
‘Which makes me wonder how you knew,’ Nina said. The adrenalin had kicked in and her befuddled thoughts had cleared just enough to make the connections she had missed earlier. ‘You knew about Bryn walking out before I’d even mentioned it. How did you know?’ She turned to Vikki. ‘Did you tell him?’
When Vikki shook her head, a tear slipped down her cheek. ‘I only texted him to say you were on your way to accuse him.’
Vikki was torn between wanting to return to the table to continue the debate, and running straight out of the door. She could do neither because Rob was holding her arm. His grip was firm and as the accusations began to fly, he was no longer holding but clinging to her.
When Nina had said they should stay, Vikki had been relieved, but not in a nice way; she had a morbid curiosity that had to be satisfied. It reminded her of the time she had been caught up in a traffic jam following a horrific accident. When she had driven past the scene she had craned her neck for a better look. What she had seen had given her nightmares for months and she wondered how long this latest one would last. She could turn away now and hope never to know the gory details, but she wasn’t going to do that.
‘Mrs Thomas …’ Rob began.
‘How – did – you – know?’
‘Scarlett told me,’ he said. ‘I won’t deny that we have a good student–teacher relationship. When she came in this morning she was understandably upset and naturally I asked her what was wrong.’ He turned to Mrs Anwar. ‘It’s our job to pick up on changes in behaviour.’
Nina turned to face her daughter. ‘OK, Scarlett, this is your last chance to redeem yourself. You want to be an adult? Well, start acting like one. If you’ve done something wrong, at least have the courage to stand up and admit it.’
Vikki’s heartbeat drummed against her ears and she couldn’t hear Scarlett’s mumbled response, although it clearly wasn’t the confession her mother was praying for. Nina stared in disbelief until Scarlett broke eye contact and looked away.
‘Don’t look at him!’ screamed Nina.
‘Mum.’
It was Liam this time. He had taken the seat next to her and put a hand on her trembling shoulder. ‘Are you sure about this?’
Nina attempted a smile and cupped Liam’s face in her hand. ‘No, son, I’m not. I’m not sure of anything any more.’
‘Do you want to find out?’
Everyone in the room tensed as one. Liam wasn’t asking his question out of curiosity. It was an offer.
‘Yes, I do.’
‘Me too,’ Vikki said, before she could stop herself. Feeling the need to explain, she turned to Rob. ‘Isn’t it better that we find a way to prove to Nina that it isn’t you?’
She didn’t add that she was just as desperate for that proof, that his word alone wasn’t enough, but from the look on Rob’s face, she hadn’t needed to. He let go of her and folded his arms across his chest in disgust. They all watched Liam rise to his feet.
The young, self-assured man turned to his sister and held out his hand. ‘Give me your phone.’
With a look of pure horror on her face, Scarlett said, ‘No, Liam.’
‘She has an app on her phone that I created. It encrypts messages,’ he explained to anyone who would listen, which was everyone except Scarlett, and possibly Rob.
‘This is outrageous,’ he said. ‘I was happy to work outside of protocol to sort this out, but enough is enough.’ He looked to Mrs Anwar for support but she was as enthralled as the others.
‘Give me your phone,’ Liam repeated.
‘No.’
‘I have it,’ Mrs Anwar said, taking a silver phone with a diamanté-encrusted cover from her pocket. ‘It was confiscated this morning in class.’
‘You can’t, I have rights,’ Scarlett told her.
‘Yes, you do,’ Mrs Anwar said, ‘but I think yours are secondary to your mother’s at this present moment.’
As the head handed over the phone to Liam, Scarlett launched herself at him. ‘No, Liam! That’s mine! You can’t do this!’
Rob moved forward too, but took no more than half a step before changing his mind. It was Sarah who found her chance to act and she was there in a flash, manoeuvring herself between the feuding siblings so Liam could check the phone.
Scarlett began wailing, but no one in the room p
aid her any interest. Vikki had spent a restless night worrying about the schoolgirl, but her present behaviour wasn’t generating the level of sympathy Vikki had imagined. If anything, she wanted to slap her.
‘The app hides messages and anything else sent to or from specific contacts, and you need a passcode to access them,’ Liam said, sounding quietly confident and unmoved by his sister’s histrionics. His only response was to raise his voice as he provided a running commentary on what he was doing.
‘The thing is,’ he continued, ‘the best programmers always leave a backdoor so they can get back in if someone messes around with their software, which means I have the magic key.’ He had a smile on his face when he tapped in the override code.
‘What’s in there?’ Nina asked when Liam went quiet.
‘She’s set up encryptions for a few contacts, Eva for one, but I’m guessing no one’s interested in those conversations,’ he said, glancing briefly at his girlfriend before turning to Nina. ‘I think one of them is Bryn’s number too.’
‘See!’ Rob said. ‘Can we go now?’
His question went unanswered as they waited for Liam to reveal more. ‘Sorry, Mum, but I can’t see any messages. She must have deleted them, and if that’s the case, then the software makes sure they’re gone for good. Unless …’
As he tapped away, everyone grew impatient. ‘Unless what?’ asked Sarah.
‘There are a few messages still in the cache memory. Yeah, one that must be to Bryn saying ‘Can you come now?’ and one to someone else, that says, ‘What do you think?’ Oh, wait, there’s a photo attachment. I might just be able to—’
‘Please, Liam, stop,’ cried Scarlett.
‘Scarlett’s right,’ Rob said. ‘We have safeguarding procedures, including respecting a student’s privacy. I can tell you now, Mrs Thomas, that what you’re doing will have a significant impact on your relationship with your daughter going forward.’
‘I’m willing to take that chance, Mr Swift.’
‘I’m inclined to agree,’ Mrs Anwar added.
Vikki wasn’t paying much attention to the exchange. She was watching Liam, waiting for his reaction, and then she saw it. His face went pale and the tall, handsome man shrunk back, leaving an insecure teen who didn’t want to be the centre of attention any more.
‘What have you found?’ Vikki asked.
Liam turned to his sister. ‘Really?’
Scarlett buried her head in Sarah’s shoulder. ‘I want to go home.’
‘Show me, Liam,’ Nina said.
Liam was struggling for words and, although his face remained pale, his cheeks had turned blood red. It was Eva, who had been looking over his shoulder, who said, ‘It’s a bit, erm, explicit.’
‘Who did you send it to, Scarlett?’ Nina asked. She didn’t wait for an answer but turned back to Liam.
‘The number’s embedded in the data.’
‘I’m sure the police could trace it,’ Mrs Anwar said. ‘And, sadly, I think that’s where all of this is heading.’
Liam took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. ‘Or I could just ring it.’
‘Do it,’ Nina said.
Sarah unravelled Scarlett from her arms and took a step away as Liam made the call. She looked from Nina to Vikki, unsure who she would need to comfort first.
Vikki noticed Rob’s body tense as they all strained their ears. Her husband’s ringtone was ‘Another Brick in the Wall’ by Pink Floyd. He had thought it ironic and perhaps it was the perfect song to herald the end of his teaching career and his marriage. Except it didn’t play.
Rob let out a sigh, ‘Can we go now?’
As he took his first step towards the door, Vikki heard a jangling noise coming from his pocket. She knew immediately that it couldn’t be loose change alone: Rob’s phone was vibrating.
Scarlett
So everyone turned to Rob as if he were a child snatcher. I felt so sorry for him and I started crying again, only this time no one came to put their arms around me. Mum stayed where she was at the table while Sarah went to stand next to Vikki, who had moved away from Rob, and Liam was fussing around Eva, who was in tears too.
‘For God’s sake, Scarlett, stop crying and tell them what happened!’ Rob yelled.
That only made me worse.
He turned to Mrs Anwar and said, ‘It was a schoolgirl crush that got a little out of hand, that’s all. When I was giving Scarlett extra lessons, we got on really well, but she got the wrong signals and that was when she sent me the photo. I deleted it straight away and then we had a chat and moved on. If I’d known how incriminating it would look, I would have thought twice about covering up for her mistake. She’s a silly girl in too much of a rush to grow up, that’s all.’
And there it was, someone else turning against me, and I was sort of glad when no one believed him. I was in so much pain and maybe I should have been thinking about all the people who had been hurt, but, if I’m honest, in that moment, I didn’t care if Mum and Bryn never got back together, or that Eva’s parents would force her to have an abortion. I didn’t care that Rob’s marriage was over and that Vikki would be left with two snotty kids to bring up on her own. My life was over.
Mrs Marshall must have had the police number on speed dial because they were there minutes later. Everyone was split up and I was taken to a room with Mum. I was about to be interviewed by the police and I was so scared, but Mum hadn’t so much as put a hand on my shoulder. Eventually I was so exhausted that I stopped crying and we sat in silence right up to the moment we heard a policewoman on her radio just outside the door.
‘You tell them everything, Scarlett,’ Mum told me. ‘You tell them everything or I’ll never forgive you.’
What the hell was I supposed to do? I’d told her over and over there was nothing between me and Rob, or me and Bryn for that matter, but I swear, no one wants to listen because it’s not what they want to hear. I’m sorry, but what kind of person wants to hear all about the sex life of a schoolgirl anyway? If you ask me, it says more about them than the man they were hunting down.
The more I thought about it, the angrier I got. I was almost tempted to give up and tell the police what they wanted to hear, or at least what Mum wanted to hear. I could so easily have told them I was having mad passionate sex with Rob, and the photo I’d sent was nothing he hadn’t already seen in the flesh.
Or maybe I could have told them a different story, one where I was being abused by my wicked stepfather who had taught me how I shouldn’t be ashamed of my body. Maybe I’d only sent the photo to Mr Swift because I thought it was what all men liked to see? Maybe I only did it to shock him.
Then again, I might have given the police a story that none of them had thought of yet. What if it was someone else entirely, someone so clever that he had set up everyone else as suspects? Now that would be a man worth knowing, don’t you think?
What I actually told the nice policewoman was that I was still a virgin and I only went on the pill because I had bad period pains. She asked me if I was sure and I said it was the honest truth. The thing is though, truth and lies are all just stories we tell each other, and when I told mine, I begged the policewoman to believe me. I don’t think she did, and neither did Mum, which I suppose means she’s never going to forgive me.
26
The house was cold and dark when Nina returned home, darker still when she realized she would never again step into the house to find Bryn cooking up a storm in the kitchen. She hadn’t tried to get in touch with him yet, there hadn’t been time between her arrival at the school and the interviews with the police, and even if there had been, she was at a loss as to what to say. If she knew her husband, and apparently she didn’t know him that well at all, Bryn would be reading her silence as reinforcement that she still suspected him. She had thrown away her marriage and lost the only person who could have helped her through this crisis. What had she done?
‘Do you want me to make us something to eat?’ Liam asked.
‘Mum?’ Liam asked again. ‘What should we do?’
Nina fought for her next breath and won. The answer was simple. What she needed to do next was act. It didn’t matter what she did, as long as she kept moving.
‘Right,’ she said, ‘first things first. Scarlett, I want you to go upstairs, wash your face and get changed. We have to be prepared that the papers might get wind of this and I do not want anyone taking pictures of you in your uniform. Just because the press aren’t allowed to publish details, it doesn’t mean journalists won’t be sniffing around.’ There had been a suggestion that they should have a police officer close by, but Nina had refused, for now at least. Their family had been intruded upon enough.
‘Liam, you can make us all some pasta,’ she said, returning to his earlier offer.
‘I’ll help him,’ Eva said.
Looking carefully at the two of them, Nina added, ‘And in the meantime, I’m going to make some calls. One of them is going to have to be to your parents, Eva.’
‘Please don’t,’ she said, but without much hope.
‘I’m sorry, but I have to.’
‘Eva has a right to privacy,’ Liam said. ‘We made sure of that before she saw the doctor.’
‘A doctor might be bound by the Hippocratic oath, but I’m a florist. They need to be told,’ she said. Seeing tears threaten when too many had been spent that day, she added, ‘Let’s have something to eat first, and later you can tell me exactly how you both thought you could manage with a baby. And then I’ll call your parents. Unless you want to do it yourself?’
Eva shook her head.
After Liam and his pregnant girlfriend disappeared into the kitchen, Scarlett remained.
The Affair Page 22
