The Stranger Diaries

by Elly Griffiths

  ‘Please, Mum.’

  ‘Oh, OK,’ I say.

  There’s no point in ruining the day, after all.

  Ty comes round promptly at seven. He looms in the doorway in his leather jacket and I can see exactly why Georgie likes him. He’s good-looking in a very grown-up way; dark hair, hint of stubble, muscles very much in evidence. I watch Georgie surreptitiously as she takes his coat and asks him about pizza choices. She doesn’t seem infatuated but I hope she’s too cool to show it even if she is. She mocks him for wanting pineapple on his pizza (too right!) but he just grins at her in a lazy way and refuses to rise. I like that and I like the way he refuses a glass of wine, opting instead for water. While we’re waiting for the pizzas I ask him about his family. He’s from Kent and was brought up by his grandparents after his parents died in a car crash (I think Georgie had already told me this sad fact).

  ‘My grandma’s very cool though,’ says Ty. ‘She’s got the internet and everything. She’s a silver surfer. She goes to classes at the library.’

  ‘How old is she?’ asks Georgie.

  ‘Not that old. Seventy-five.’ Point to Ty.

  ‘That’s ancient.’ Point deducted from Georgie.

  ‘I mean it in a good way,’ she says, when I protest. ‘Old people are, like, well wise.’

  ‘Gran always says I should listen to her because she’s wise,’ says Ty, ‘but, then again, she follows Kim Kardashian on Snapchat.’

  I’m quite impressed. I’ve only got the vaguest idea what Snapchat is.

  The pizzas come and we eat them in front of the TV. It’s the usual Friday night topical quiz show stuff and, while Ty has never heard of Michael Gove (lucky him), he’s quite funny about Ian Hislop and Private Eye. He’s clearly not stupid. Ty and Georgie sit on the sofa and I share my chair with Herbert. He’s always wary of male visitors and watches Ty underneath his fringe. Ty, for his part, seems quite nervous of Herbert.

  ‘I couldn’t have a dog when I was growing up because of my allergies,’ he says, sneezing as if to prove a point.

  ‘Poodles are good for allergic people because of their fur,’ says Georgie. ‘It’s more like wool.’

  ‘Herbert’s only part poodle,’ I say. But, by the end of Have I Got News For You, Herbert consents to let Ty pat him.

  Georgie wants to watch Graham Norton because some brainless celebrity is on it. I’m torn. I’m tired after the drive and want to write my diary and think about the day, about the letters from R.M. Holland and the meeting with Henry. But should I leave Ty and Georgie downstairs unchaperoned? Simon would say definitely not. He’d want me to stay here glaring at them, possibly wearing a lace cap. This decides me. I’m not going to do Simon’s dirty work. I say goodnight and go upstairs. Funnily enough, for once Herbert doesn’t follow me. He stays in the sitting room, perhaps because the fire is still burning. Anyway, it’s good because he’ll definitely bark if Ty lunges at Georgie. I don’t want to think of lunging, or of any of the other components of teenage snogging. It makes me feel old and sad and slightly pathetic. I don’t want to be a repressive parent or — worse — a jealous one. But I haven’t kissed a man since Simon left me. That’s been my choice, I know, but, right at this minute, that doesn’t seem much of a comfort. I remember DS Kaur asking me whether Ella had a boyfriend. Should I have answered differently? Told her the truth about Rick?

  At any rate, Herbert’s presence does the trick. Ty has gone before the end of Graham Norton. I hear a brief goodbye in the hall and Georgie takes Herbert out for his last wee. Then both my babies come upstairs to bed.

  I think I’ll go to sleep quickly but the day’s events keep rearranging themselves in my head: the drive, the ancient buildings grouped around the quad, the office with H.H. Hamilton on the door, the letters, Mariana, the ravening beast. After a while I give up and put the light on. I look in my bookcase for something reassuring to read — P.G. Wodehouse or Georgette Heyer — and see my battered copy of Tennyson. Holland said he prays that Mariana’s name wouldn’t prove to be a bad omen. I flick through the thin pages to find the poem.

  Upon the middle of the night,

  Waking she heard the night-fowl crow:

  The cock sung out an hour ere light:

  From the dark fen the oxen’s low

  Came to her: without hope of change,

  In sleep she seem’d to walk forlorn,

  Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn

  About the lonely moated grange.

  She only said, ‘The day is dreary,

  He cometh not,’ she said;

  She said, ‘I am aweary, aweary,

  I would that I were dead!’

  The ‘dark fen’ reminds me of Cambridge and the drive over the causeway, the road the highest point in the landscape, the flat fields stretching away on either side. It’s a spooky passage: the night fowl, the darkness, the cold winds and the gray-eyed morn. Did Holland’s Mariana feel like this? Did she too wish that she was dead? I must find out more about her. This could be my breakthrough, my reason for getting the book published. But, more than that, I feel a strange fellow-feeling for her, this girl who seems to exist only in words. Holland obviously loved her but he was also very patronising, ‘not that she’s exactly a literary critic’. But maybe Mariana was clever as well as being ‘sweet-natured and kind’, maybe she too was a thwarted writer . . .

  My curtains are slightly open and I can see the moon high over the old factory, illuminating the broken windows and ghostly tower. I get up to close them and, just for a second, the light reflects on glass as if a candle is flickering, high up in the ramparts. Then all is dark again. Another Tennyson line comes back to me, ‘Four grey walls and four grey towers’. I have the ridiculous feeling that someone is watching me. I pull the curtains tightly and turn back to the bookcase. Herbert, who is sitting on my bed, growls softly. ‘Don’t you start,’ I tell him.

  I select Jeeves in the Springtime and get back into bed. Herbert continues to gaze at the window, doing that whole annoying ‘psychic animal’ thing. Sometimes I regret naming him after the dog in Holland’s story. I remember what I said to my students on Monday, ‘Animals are expendable.’ Why would I say such a thing?

  ‘It’s all right, Herbert,’ I say. ‘There’s no one there.’ I stroke my beloved companion animal and let Jeeves and Wooster lull me to sleep with Homburg hats, lunch at the Ritz and a scheme to prevent Bingo Little from being disinherited for wanting to marry a waitress.

  Clare’s diary

  Sunday 29th October

  I’m dreading school tomorrow. All the students will be hysterical about Ella — half genuinely upset, half enjoying the drama of it all. These last few days — Cambridge, Saturday with G — I’ve managed to put Ella to the back of my mind but now she’s here again. I don’t dream about her but the bad dreams are back. Last night I had lost Georgia in a forest and had to make a path for her by pulling out my own hair. I don’t need Freud to tell me that there’s some deep mother anxiety going on there. Is it pelicans who feed their offspring by tearing the flesh from their own breasts? I would do that for Georgie, but I doubt she’d be delighted to be offered chunks of human flesh on toast. She’s always threatening to go vegetarian.

  I rang Mum and Dad for our traditional Sunday phone call. I didn’t want to tell them about Ella but I thought they might read about it in the papers (despite only reading the arts pages of the Guardian). Mum seemed to have trouble understanding the word ‘murder’. ‘Is she dead?’ she kept asking. ‘Yes, Mum. She’s dead.’ ‘But she was such a lovely girl,’ said Mum, not seeming to realise that lovely girls often do get murdered. Neither of them seemed to think about how it would affect me, one of my best friends and closest work colleagues killed. Dad said it was ‘shocking’ but in a way that seemed to close down the conversation. Mum said how sad but immediately started talking about arrangements for Christmas. I
told her we’ll just stay for one night. That’s about as much as I can take and G is sure to want to see her friends on Boxing Day. Martin isn’t even staying for that long. He thinks he’ll be ‘on call’. I swear he makes it up. He’s been on call for the last five Christmases, by my reckoning.

  I put the phone down feeling obscurely resentful, as I always do. But I’ve had a good few days, despite everything. Last night G’s friend Tash came round and we all watched the Halloween Strictly. I did think about Ella then because I often used to text her during the show. But it was so nice, just the three of us and Herbert on the sofa, yelling insults at Craig and cheering on Jonnie and Susan. The girls are merciless — ’they need more swivel in the cha-cha’ — but I just love the whole thing, the glitz and the glitter, the big band renditions of pop songs. I did briefly wonder what Henry Hamilton would make of it. Probably far too low-brow for him although he wasn’t the grey-bearded academic that I had imagined. Georgie said that he ‘liked’ me. Did I like him? I suppose I did a bit. He was attractive in an Abe Lincoln kind of way and it was nice to meet someone who had actually heard of Holland and seemed interested in him.

  Georgie is out with Ty tonight. Nebulous plans, ‘going to see some friends in Brighton’. No point in saying she can’t go, though I did mutter about homework and made her promise to be back by ten because it’s school tomorrow. It’s ten o’clock now and I wish she would come in. At least Ty has a car and she’s not shivering at a bus stop. But, on the other hand, a car brings all sorts of new worries. Ty could be drunk or on drugs for all I know. High on something, the modern equivalent of opium, like Wilkie Collins. Why am I still suspicious of Ty? OK, he’s too old for Georgie but he seems sensible — he didn’t drink on Friday night — and he’s cleverer than I first thought. It’s just, there’s something opaque about him; I felt as if I wasn’t seeing the real person behind the good-looking agreeable mask. But he’s not the sort to drive under the influence of drugs. His parents died in a car crash, so he’s probably a super cautious driver. Nevertheless, I can picture him swerving all over the coast road, music playing, Georgie laughing, neither of them looking where they’re going. Shall I turn on the local radio or Google ‘car crash West Sussex’? No. Thank God. There’s her key in the door.

  Chapter 6

  I can sense the atmosphere as soon as I drive in through the school gates. There’s still quite an impressive entrance left over from the Holland House days, with wrought-iron gates and stone lions on either side, but today the driveway is full of teenagers in blue sweatshirts, the girls with kilts rolled over at the waist to form strangely unflattering minis, the boys wearing black jeans in defiance of school rules. They move to let my car past but it seems to me that they stare more than usual, nudge each other and point. I can imagine them saying, ‘There’s Miss Cassidy. She was best friends with Miss Elphick.’

  Georgie is almost horizontal in the front seat.

  ‘Let me out here,’ she says.

  I stop and she leaps out of the car. Within seconds she is lost in the blue crowd. I drive on to the car park in front of the Old Building. Rick has called a department meeting before school today. He has to do this, I know, but I am dreading it. I collect my bag, crammed full of half-term marking, and walk quickly in through the main doors, not looking left or right.

  The English staffroom is on the first floor of the Old Building, next to the library. It’s hot in the summer and freezing in the winter but at least it has high ceilings and sash windows, unlike the science block which is in the basement and never sees natural light. But, today, when I push open the door, there’s a pall of sadness and shock over the place. Vera and Alan are sitting on the sofa in silence, Anoushka is in tears and Rick stands hopelessly in the middle of the room as if he’s just finished speaking. There’s a stranger sitting in the blue armchair. I can’t see his face but assume that this is the supply teacher brought in to cover Ella’s classes.

  When she sees me, Vera comes over and gives me a hug. It feels odd because she’s so small, her head under my chin, the hair from her bun tickling my nose. Besides, we’re not really a staff that does physical contact. We get on well and we go out for end-of-term meals but we don’t do hugs, team bonding, talking about emotions. So it seems strange, standing there by the department noticeboard, with tiny Vera hugging me and Anoushka, who’s only twenty-five, sobbing in the background. Eventually Vera lets go and we sit on the sofa beside Alan. He’s not crying but his hands, holding an ‘Old Teachers Never Die’ mug, are shaking visibly.

  ‘What’s Tony going to do?’ he says to Rick. ‘Have a group therapy session?’ Alan is old school and doesn’t get on with Tony. His tone suggests that, whatever Tony does, it will be wrong.

  ‘He’s going to talk to the kids at assembly today,’ says Rick. ‘Counselling will be offered.’

  ‘Counselling!’ Alan snorts. But he liked Ella, I know. They shared lots of in-jokes and they also shared an open contempt for Tony and his new-age growth mindset culture.

  ‘I think it’s a good idea,’ says Anoushka. ‘The kids will be heartbroken. They loved Ella.’

  ‘We’re all heartbroken,’ says Rick. ‘But we’ve got to get through it somehow. Now, I’d like to introduce you to Don, who’ll be covering Ella’s classes this week. Don’s got a lot of experience and we’re lucky to have him.’

  Don certainly looks as if he’s had a lot of experience and not all of it good. He’s probably in his fifties, with suspiciously dark, thinning hair and pouchy skin.

  ‘I’m sorry to be here in such sad circumstances,’ he says. He has a voice that the students will immediately classify as ‘posh’ and, most likely, ‘gay’ (however much I tell them that this is a sexuality and not an insult).

  ‘Clare,’ Rick turns to me. ‘I’m making you head of Key Stage 4 with immediate effect. We’ll meet later in the week to discuss GCSE predictions.’

  Rick has already warned me about this so I don’t have to do more than nod. It’s a promotion really, but I certainly can’t feel pleased about it.

  ‘Vera will take over Key Stage 3,’ says Rick. ‘I know we’ll all pull together at this difficult time.’

  ‘Can we . . . you know . . . do something for Ella?’ asks Anoushka. ‘Plant a tree or establish a prize in her honour? Something to remember her by.’

  ‘Tony’s opening a book of condolence,’ says Rick. ‘Her parents want to hold her funeral here, in the chapel, so we can celebrate her life then. But it would be good to do something as a department. Let’s think about it.’

  ‘What about the play?’ says Vera.

  Ella was always in charge of the Christmas production. This year it’s Little Shop of Horrors. Rick looks more wretched than ever.

  ‘I did think about cancelling it but Tony thinks we need something to raise morale. Clare, do you think you and Anoushka could take it over?’

  Anoushka perks up slightly. ‘We’ll make it a wonderful show in Ella’s memory,’ she says. ‘Won’t we, Clare?’

  Suddenly, as clear as day, I see Ella standing in front of me, hands on hips, hair over her face. ‘You’ve got my job,’ she says, ‘and you’ve got my play. Are you taking over my life?’ The vision is so clear that I have to rub my eyes to get rid of it.

  ‘Clare?’ Rick is looking at me.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘Yes, we’ll put on the show in Ella’s memory.’

  ‘We’ll never forget her,’ says Vera. ‘She’ll always be with us.’

  I’m starting to believe that this really might be true.

  On the way out, Rick stops me. He looks terrible, I think: pale, red-eyed, a rash creeping up from his neck.

  ‘How are you doing?’ he asks.

  ‘Oh . . . you know . . .’ I’m always telling my Year 7s not to use ‘you know’ as punctuation but it comes in useful sometimes.

  ‘Have you spoken to the police?’

 
‘Yes, on Tuesday. They came to my house.’

  ‘Did they . . .’ Rick looks around the room as if he has been asked to mime the word ‘furtive’. ‘Did they mention Hythe?’

  I stare at him. I can’t believe he’s asking this. ‘No,’ I say.

  Rick runs his hand through his hair which is now standing up like a crest. ‘If they do, please don’t tell them about Ella and me. I know she confided in you. There were no secrets between you two, were there?’

  Oh, there were plenty of secrets, I want to tell him. But, of course, I did know about the affair with Ella. If it can be described as such.

  ‘What happened between you and Ella is your business,’ I say. ‘I’ve never told anyone.’

  ‘Thank you,’ he says. And I’m embarrassed to see the relief in his face. ‘It’s just . . . Daisy’s very vulnerable at the moment.’

  This strikes me as low, even for Rick.

  ‘It was over,’ he says. ‘It was over between me and Ella back in the summer.’

  Back in the summer is not that long ago and, before that, Rick was telling me that he’d kill himself if I didn’t sleep with him. I’m surprised at the anger that suddenly surges through me.

  ‘If you say so,’ I say. ‘I have to get to assembly now.’

  ‘Clare . . .’ Rick stretches out a hand but I evade it. As I leave the room I can hear his ragged intake of breath. It sounds as if he is crying.

  There’s nowhere in the school big enough for everyone to gather together so Tony speaks to the students in two separate assemblies. I go to the one for the Upper School, five hundred teenagers crammed together in the gymnasium with a basketball hoop hovering over Tony’s head like a halo.