‘Go,’ Nina said without looking at her, and would have liked nothing better than to turn away, but Scarlett had no intention of making Nina’s life any easier.
‘I know you don’t want to hear this, but I’m never going to change my story,’ Scarlett said.
‘So it is a story?’
‘What does it matter? Why is everyone so fucking obsessed with me anyway? Why can’t people just leave me alone to get on with my life?’
Nina closed her eyes briefly. Not only was she drowning, her own daughter had a hand on her head and was pushing her beneath the surface. ‘To be honest, Scarlett, I don’t care one bit what you want,’ she said quietly. ‘I only care about how you behave, and right now I don’t care too much for that either. Go upstairs and do as you’re told because I’m in no mood for reasoning with you, or cajoling you into telling the truth. Right now, I’m finding it difficult to even speak to you.’
Scarlett looked as if she were about to say something else, but instead she gulped back a sob and stomped upstairs. There was a brief cry of rage as she realized her mum had trashed her room earlier, and then a door slammed shut. Nina felt a surge of anger too, which she would have liked to direct towards her heartless, home-wrecking daughter, but she needed to focus on actions that would be far more productive.
She went into the dining room and sat down at her desk. Taking a sheet of blank paper, she wrote down all the people she needed to speak to and the things she had to do. She chose one of the easier tasks to start with and picked up the phone.
‘Hi, Janet, it’s Nina. How was today in the shop?’
Janet reeled off the main highlights, including the drama of getting to the flower market so late. She had struggled to find the rainbow of gerberas, chrysanthemums and lilies they had planned for a funeral wreath, but she had found alternatives and by the sound of it had done a good job. It had been a challenging day, she told Nina.
‘The thing is,’ Nina continued, ‘I’m afraid it’s not going to get any better. I need to take the rest of the week off, and I wouldn’t lay bets on me being in the week after either. Something’s happened.’ She hadn’t practised this part and wasn’t sure where to begin, so she evaded the subject completely. ‘I was thinking that you might be able to get your cousin to help out, if she’s available. I know that still leaves you doing all the hard work, but I haven’t got time to find another qualified florist. The only other option would be to close up shop, and I don’t want to sound like I’m trying to pressurize you, but if I can’t find a way to keep things going, Janet, it’s possible that I might have to shelve the business for the time being. I said it would be a week or two but, honestly, I don’t know when I’ll be back. I’m so sorry about this.’
Nina felt her words begin to choke her. This wasn’t good enough. She had to be strong if she were to pick up the fragments of her life and start piecing it back together. There really was no choice.
To her credit, Janet sounded less concerned about her future job prospects than she did the welfare of her friend and boss.
As Nina struggled to say thank you for what was much-needed support, she looked at her handwritten list. If this was how she handled the easiest task, how would she cope with the rest? She rubbed her gritty eyes and was glad she hadn’t made the same mistake as Scarlett by wearing lots of makeup. Not that Nina had cried, or at least not since she had left the house that morning. She had been at first too shocked and now she simply didn’t have the energy.
There was the creak of a door behind her, and Nina’s body tensed. She thought it might be Scarlett, at long last ready to seek forgiveness, but it was a young man’s hands that rested on her shoulders. Liam leant over and planted a kiss on the top of her head. He had arrived just in time, because on the other end of the phone, Janet had asked the question that still needed an answer: what had happened?
‘One of Scarlett’s teachers has been arrested,’ Nina said, and it wasn’t for Rob’s benefit that she didn’t name him. She simply wasn’t ready to hear it spoken in her house. ‘He’s being questioned as we speak over an alleged relationship. We’ve been with the police all afternoon and we’ll no doubt be back there tomorrow.’
She hadn’t come right out and said that the alleged relationship was with Scarlett, but Janet got the message. She asked if she should worry about journalists and Nina did her best to reassure her that the student was underage and couldn’t be named, and neither could the teacher until he was charged. If Janet did come across anyone acting suspiciously, then as long as they bought something in the shop, they should be treated like any other customer.
‘That’s one problem down, nine hundred and ninety-nine to go,’ Nina said as she twisted around in her chair.
Liam glanced down at the piece of paper trembling in her hand. ‘You’re going to tell Dad?’
‘I have to,’ she said, and her empty stomach lurched. ‘Even out on the rigs, he’d get to hear about it eventually, and I’d rather do the explaining myself than let him hear it second-hand.’
‘Do you want me to tell him?’
Liam’s kindness weakened her resolve not to cry, but she held it together as she stood up to face her son. She even managed a smile. ‘It should come from me.’
‘Maybe, but it’ll be one less thing on your list. I’ll do it.’
Nina didn’t argue a second time and was about to ask when he had grown up, but reminded herself that Scarlett wasn’t the only crisis she had to manage. ‘Why didn’t you come to me about Eva?’
‘Because,’ he said slowly, ‘if we’re old enough to get into this mess then we have to be mature enough to deal with it.’
‘By deciding to keep the baby? You think that’s a mature decision?’
‘I told her I thought she should have a termination,’ he said as he stepped away from his mum.
Liam wanted to say more, but he couldn’t do it while looking at her. He walked over to the bookshelves and ran a finger over the spines of Nina’s treasured collection of Brontë novels as if his story could be lifted from their pages. She wasn’t sure if he was setting himself up as the hero or the villain.
‘That was why we split up. She said she couldn’t go through with one, so I told her she was on her own. I thought it would make her see sense, but she went ahead and sorted out all the medical stuff by herself. Scarlett went with her to the clinic, which is when everything around here started going crazy.’ He had the saddest smile on his face when he added, ‘The way Eva took control made me realize she was being far more mature about it than I was.’
‘I might beg to differ.’
‘I know it sounds totally mad, but we’ve worked it all out, Mum. Eva’s still working on getting her GCSEs, she’ll have the baby in the summer and, if she can get support with childcare, there’s an apprenticeship programme she’s been looking at. Meanwhile, Manchester has offered me a place so I’m going to put it as my first choice, which means I can stay at home and help Eva.’
‘Home? Whose home would that be?’
‘We want to support ourselves, but I know we’ll need help from you and Eva’s parents for a while. We have a plan, though. Won’t you at least hear us out?’
Nina rubbed her temples. ‘OK,’ she said, ‘but maybe not right this second.’
‘I promise we won’t add to your troubles,’ Liam said.
‘If only your sister were being so considerate.’
Nina had sat through the police interviews with Scarlett, as well as giving her own version of events, initially at the school but then later at the police station, for all the good it had done. Nina could only speculate on what had happened, or why, for that matter, while Scarlett had ignored her mother’s threat about never forgiving her and had denied everything except the words that Rob Swift had so expertly put in her mouth during the confrontation in Mrs Anwar’s office.
Scarlett had told the police that she had had a crush on Mr Swift and that was why she had sent him the photo, which Nina had the unenvi
able task of looking at. Her daughter had been naked except for a satin dressing gown, Nina’s dressing gown, which she would be burning just as soon as she could.
From what Nina could gather, the fact that Rob had received the photo wasn’t enough to incriminate him, unless they could find evidence that he had done something with it. If he hadn’t, then he might be in serious trouble with the school for not reporting the incident, but not with the police. Nina wasn’t interested in what the school might do: she wanted Rob Swift locked up, but as far as she was aware, he still hadn’t been charged. Before leaving the station, the police officer in charge, a DS Alice Cunliffe, had told Nina that they would continue to question Rob and take more statements. They would gather as much evidence as they could, most notably from Rob and Scarlett’s mobiles and laptops, although, according to Liam, his clever little app made sure any deleted data on their phones was overwritten and it was unlikely that Forensics would find what they were after.
Charlotte Tavistock had been contacted and would be arriving the next day to give a statement too, but according to Alice, their best hope of securing a conviction was from Scarlett’s testimony. Nina was expected to talk some sense into her daughter before they returned to the station the next morning, but she was struggling to talk to her at all.
‘I don’t know what’s got into Scarlett,’ she said.
‘I think you do, that’s the problem,’ Liam muttered under his breath.
If they hadn’t been talking about Nina’s fifteen-year-old daughter, the comment might have been funny, but Liam’s innuendo turned Nina’s stomach. ‘Don’t, I can’t bear to think about what that man might have been doing to her. But do you know something, Liam? It’s not so much the physical aspect of what he’s done that bothers me most, it’s the way he’s managed to take complete control over her. She had a choice today, to tell the truth and start making things right, or put that man before her own family – and she chose him. She chose to lie for the man who’s been abusing and manipulating her while he was playing happy families at home with his poor wife. Scarlett didn’t even flinch through it all, and do you know what’s worse? I haven’t once heard her say sorry.’
‘Of course I’m sorry,’ came a voice from behind her.
Nina spun around to find Scarlett standing by the door. Her face was freshly washed and, without the rivers of mascara, her cheeks glowed baby pink. Her eyes, however, held no childlike innocence. Despite being red and puffy, the violet in them sparkled with defiance.
‘No, you’re not,’ said Nina.
‘I’m sorry I got Rob into trouble.’
‘If that’s an apology, I’d rather you kept it to yourself.’
‘What do you want me to say, Mum? That I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you?’ she asked. ‘I’m in love, that’s all. People do it all the time, unless you’ve forgotten. I don’t remember you thinking about me and Liam when you married Bryn. All I’m doing is following in your footsteps.’
‘I won’t take the blame for this,’ Nina said quietly, even though there was a grain of truth in her daughter’s cruel words. ‘Did you sleep with him, Scarlett?’
Scarlett gave her mother the same sneer she had given the police. ‘With who?’
‘The man who abused you.’
‘The only people abusing me right now are you and the police.’
‘Did you have sex with that man?’ Nina asked.
‘Who says I haven’t been sleeping around with loads of men? What if Rob wasn’t the only one I sent the photo to?’
Ignoring her, Nina asked, ‘Did you sleep with Rob Swift?’
‘You’re not listening to me!’
‘Because you haven’t said anything worth listening to!’ Nina yelled back before continuing with her single line of enquiry. ‘Did he fuck you, Scarlett?’
Scarlett put her hands over her ears. ‘Stop it! Just stop it!’
‘Not until you tell the truth, not ever, so you’d better get used to it!’ Nina shouted, but her daughter had backed out of the room before she had finished the sentence. Nina went to follow her, but Liam put a hand on her shoulder.
‘Don’t,’ he said.
‘Did you hear what she said?’
Liam cleared his throat. ‘Every word, and that was not the kind of conversation I ever want to hear between my mum and my sister again.’
‘Sorry, but I can’t promise that,’ growled Nina. It was only her anger keeping her going and she couldn’t let go of it, even though Scarlett had stormed back upstairs and slammed her bedroom door, again. ‘I won’t stop asking, Liam. I already know the answer, but I won’t stop asking.’
‘You really think they … you know …’ Liam asked, struggling to find a description that Nina hadn’t yet used about the alleged affair.
‘Don’t you? What does Eva think?’
Liam’s cheeks gently simmered as he was forced to consider his sister’s sex life. ‘Seeing that photo, there was obviously something weird going, but …’ He shook his head. ‘I know it’s an awful thing to say, but while I can believe it of Scarlett, I thought better of Mr Swift. He’s a good teacher, Mum. The girls flirt with him like it’s a sport, which made me think all the gossip over the years was just bitchiness. He ignored them and it drove them crazy.’
‘I think Charlotte Tavistock might not share your view.’
‘But she’s not saying they actually got together, is she?’
Nina could hear the doubt in her son’s voice. With so many different and opposing views, it was impossible to piece together a single cohesive picture of what might have happened and who was to blame. Even as she spoke, she was trying to make sense of it. ‘I know he’s a popular teacher, but what if that’s his way in? What if he’s been fooling everyone – you, Mrs Anwar, Vikki, and even me. You said he ignored all the girls’ innuendos and flirtations. What if he was deliberately driving them into a frenzy? Like an expert predator, he was encouraging them and they didn’t even realize it. All he had to do was pick out the one that would take the bait, separate her from her friends and pounce when the time was right.’
‘Do you think maybe Scarlett didn’t need those extra lessons, that it was all a trap?’
‘Oh God, I hadn’t even thought of that,’ she said, holding her head in her hands, but only briefly. There was a long way to go before they would get answers. ‘Go and help Eva with the food and I’ll mark one more thing off my list before I join you.’
‘You’re going to speak to Bryn, aren’t you?’
‘I’m going to try. That’s as much as I can do for now.’
Nina didn’t think for a minute that Bryn would pick up the phone, but if he didn’t, she would leave a message. She would tell him about Rob Swift and let him know what was happening, if only so he wasn’t surprised when the police contacted him. What she needed to say most of all was how ashamed of herself she was. Sorry didn’t cover it, but it would be a start, something Scarlett could learn from. She would tell Bryn that she wasn’t looking for forgiveness, because what she had done was unforgivable, but she was determined to make amends. She would tell him she was ready to fight for their marriage, but before she could do any of that, she needed to stop shaking.
When Vikki arrived with Freya at her mum’s house, the toddler rushed straight through to the kitchen.
‘Hello, my little sunshine,’ she heard her mum saying, followed by giggles as Freya was presumably caught in a bear hug.
From the tone of her voice, Elaine had had a good meeting with her oncologist, unless of course it was all an act and she was hoping to put off bad news too. Vikki slipped off her coat and rubbed her face. Her cheeks were cold and her skin felt rough where salty tears had dried. She could feel the corners of her mouth being pulled down and, while a smile was beyond her, she did her best to organize her features into a neutral expression. She would have to tell her mum what had happened, but first she wanted to savour that sense of normality that her mum and her daughter could offer before she gave up h
olding up the sky and let it fall.
If Vikki was hurting, if her heart had been shattered and her body torn apart by the shrapnel, then she couldn’t feel it any more. The numbing sensation had taken over at some point between going into the school with Sarah and that horrible moment when they had all heard Rob’s phone rattling in his pocket. When the police had arrived, she had started to cry, but if she were honest, it was because she felt that was what she ought to be doing if only she could feel something.
She had left the school on her own, insisting that she had to pick up Freya from nursery and refusing Sarah’s offer to collect her instead. Her daughter couldn’t be protected forever, but for now it would be as if none of this was happening.
‘Have you eaten?’ her mum asked when Vikki walked into the kitchen.
‘Freya’s had a sausage roll.’
‘Ah, that explains the flakes of pastry all over your coat,’ Elaine told the innocent child in her arms. Freya squeezed her nan’s cheeks with greasy fingers before giving her a kiss.
‘Me get down now, please, Nanna.’
‘All right, but sit at the table. We have chocolate cake.’
Freya clapped her hands and toddled over to a dining chair which would keep her preoccupied for a good minute as she set about climbing up by herself.
‘Are they for me?’ Elaine asked, taking the bunch of bright orange and yellow tulips Vikki was proffering.
‘They’re only from the supermarket,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t fancy going into the florist’s.’
‘Oh, they’re lovely. You must have known I had good news.’
Elaine could barely look at her daughter, but her grin was nearly splitting her cheeks. ‘The consultant is really pleased with me. The results of the latest scan were as good as can be and my bloods are better than expected, too. He said he’s quietly confident – and the best news is, he doesn’t think radiotherapy is necessary. The only further treatment we actually talked about was reconstructive surgery. It won’t be for another couple of months, but the thing is, I feel like I’m on the road to recovery now.’
The Affair Page 23
