‘No, it was definitely Mr Whidmore. Unusually, all of those children were picked up by their fathers today, but no, it was definitely Mr Whidmore who picked up your children with his.’
I hit the redial button, and again it goes straight to voicemail.
‘This is so odd,’ Mrs Carpenter says. ‘I’ve never had this happen before. Never.’
There is not enough panicking going on around here, I realise. There is altogether far too much standing around and not enough panicking, action, desperation to find my children.
‘I need to call the police,’ I say. ‘I need to call the police,’ I say again, louder. I know what I need to do, but I am frozen. It doesn’t seem to be a real thing I need to do. It doesn’t seem a real thing that has happened. I clear Trevor Whidmore’s number from my phone screen and call up the keypad.
‘Come into the school,’ Mrs Carpenter says. Her arm is on my shoulder, reassuring and calming. ‘You can call from my office. Then you can call your husband. Keep your mobile free in case Mr Whidmore calls you.’ She gently guides me in through the gates, ushering me towards the building. She is talking calmly, but she is walking quickly, almost at a run. She’s panicking too. We head up the main stairs of the school, the treads inlaid with marble, and along the corridor of the upper level, the dark wood panels foreboding but familiar.
My heart is beating in double time, I can hear my breath in my ears again. I’m shaking, my body cold and hot at the same time. Whenever they’ve been picked up by someone else in the past, they’ve had to ring me to let me know they’re safe. Ore will be worried now, because he will want to make that call. Oscar will start to worry because Ore is worried. Are they able to be worried? Are they conscious?
Mrs Carpenter opens the door to her office and we both rush in. My chest is heaving now, not from the dash to get here, nor the stair climb, but from fear. I have never been this scared in my life.
Just inside the doorway to Mrs Carpenter’s office, I make myself stop. Physically stop. Then mentally stop. I need to calm down. I need to calm down and then I need to think. I stand still, my feet rooted in Mountain Pose, like I learnt in yoga. I need to breathe deeply. I need to be still. I need to stand here and be still. I just need to be still for a few seconds, to breathe, to think. I close my eyes and concentrate on my breathing. Slowly, I open my eyes and find Mrs Carpenter watching me, obviously wondering if I’m about to completely break down.
‘The phone is on my desk,’ she says warily. ‘I think this is fast becoming a nine-nine-nine situation.’
I nod, quite slowly considering the magnitude of what is happening. ‘Yes, I think you’re right,’ I say. My voice is calm and slow, too. ‘That’s a nice perfume you’re wearing, Mrs Carpenter,’ I continue. ‘Jasmine, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, thank you. It was a present. And yes, I think there are notes of jasmine in it,’ she says.
I keep my gaze fixed on her as I say, ‘What have you done with my children, Mrs Carpenter?’
Anaya
5:45 p.m.‘I’ve told you this loads of times before,’ I say to the police officer who keeps coming into the room with more and more and more questions. ‘I didn’t see the person’s face. Yes, there was something familiar about them, the walk maybe, but I didn’t get a proper look at them. And I don’t really know anything else.’
‘All right. Mrs Kohli, do you go into your children’s school to read with the pupils?’ he asks.
‘Yes, why?’
‘Did you submit yourself for a DBS check?’
‘Yes, why?’
‘Did you list all your previous names?’
‘Oh.’
‘Mrs Kohli, even if you didn’t know that your previous caution would stop you passing the DBS check and signed the declaration forms in good faith, you would not have passed the check if you had declared all previous names.’
‘But I didn’t do it on purpose. Harshani is my middle name, it’s there on my birth certificate. I didn’t think.’
‘I suspected as much.’
‘Am I in a lot of trouble?’
‘Yes, you are.’
Cece
5:50 p.m. Mrs Carpenter smiles at me with the grin of a snake that has been caught about to strike.
‘Mrs Solarin, I really wish you hadn’t said that.’
What I would like to do is grab her and squeeze the information about where she has taken my children out of her. I would like to shake her until their whereabouts rattles out between her chattering teeth. What I have to do is wait. Because if I do anything to her, she will in turn do something to them. I know it. I can feel it. Someone who is able to attack and almost kill a woman and then sleep with her husband weeks later is cold-blooded. Deadly.
‘If you hadn’t just said that, I would know that you had no clue who Trevor’s lover was, so I would have let your children go in a couple of hours. We’d have all laughed about the misunderstanding. As it is, you know too much.’
‘I don’t know as much as you think I do,’ I say. I am keeping my body loose, fluid, unthreatening. I want her to think she can easily intimidate me.
‘Have a seat, Mrs Solarin. We have another fifteen minutes or so until the school completely empties and we can talk properly.’
‘Where are my children?’ I ask her instead of following her outstretched arm as it indicates the two comfortable green leather bucket chairs opposite her desk. I remember sitting in the left one when I first came to look at the school.
‘Take a seat,’ she repeats, irritated now.
‘I will, when you tell me where my children are.’
Her face, which was quite pleasant minutes ago, even seconds ago, tightens in displeasure. I’m playing a dangerous game, but I am testing her. I am trying to see if I can negotiate with her. If not, then I need to think of something else to do. It’s a small, simple test, one that will tell me how to go forward from here. Because the panic, which is lighting up my body like a domino chain of firecrackers lining my veins, will not help me right now. It will at some point, I’m sure, but right now I need to suss her out as quickly as I can.
‘Sit,’ she orders, like a dog trainer with a particularly difficult puppy.
‘When you tell me where my children are.’
She screws up her lips and flares her nostrils as she exhales loudly. I notice the broken veins of a drinker showing through the otherwise flawlessly applied make-up, I see the spidery threads of lipstick that have broken free of her lip line and are radiating outwards from her mouth. She always looks so well put together, so chic and poised, even up close. Ultra close, the little faults show. The tip of her tongue darts out from between her lips and runs over her lips in what might be a nervous gesture.
‘They are not far away. Not near enough for you to find them if you choose to do something as crass as run out of here, but not too far away that I can’t get to them whenever I want.’ She gestures again, much more firmly this time. ‘Sit.’
I move to the seat and lower myself into it slowly, holding my bag on my lap.
‘Please hand me your mobile phone,’ she says.
I hesitate.
‘Please, Mrs Solarin, I do hope I will not have to keep repeating myself. Remember, what happens to your boys is mostly down to how cooperative you are. Please hand me your mobile phone.’
I do as I’m asked and she faffs about, looking for the off button. Once it is off, she drops it onto the ground and without pausing or hesitating, she puts her heel through the screen. I hear the crack. Was she this cavalier when she went for Yvonne Whidmore? Did she hit her without ceremony or hesitation?
‘Isn’t that better?’ she says to me. She sits back in her leather seat, which is ostentatiously larger than the chair in which I sit.
‘Not really, no,’ I reply.
I am trying not to think of my children’s fear-twisted faces, their terror-tensed bodies. If I think of them as ‘my children’, not Oscar and Ore, I will be all right. I will be able to function and
get through this and get to them. If I start to worry about what they’re feeling, if they’re in pain or shock, I will begin to crack up. The thought of any of my children hurting terrifies me. I know pain is a natural consequence of being alive, but the idea that I cannot do all I can to spare them from any form of agony is probably the thing I fear most.
‘None of this was meant to happen,’ she says. ‘You don’t think I enjoy doing this, do you? But you backed me into a corner.’
‘No I didn’t,’ I reply.
‘Of course you did!’ she almost screeches, but collects herself. Gathers together that poise she is famous for, and stops talking while she observes me with a cool, dangerous haughtiness.
Knock-knock at the door startles us both. Her face relaxes back into its usual pose and she sits back, giving the impression of someone relaxed and assured.
‘Come in,’ she says, smiling at me.
The door opens and I do not turn around. If I do, I might give the game away, I might scream at whoever it is to call the police while I leap across the table at Mrs Carpenter to stop her dashing off to hurt my children.
‘I was wondering if you wanted me to hang on for the police?’ Mrs Thackery asks.
‘Oh, no, sorry, Zaina, it was all a misunderstanding,’ Mrs Carpenter lies smoothly. ‘It seems Mr Whidmore got the day wrong for picking up the children, like I thought. Hardly surprising with all the additional pressure he’s under. The children are quite safe and are on their way home as we speak. I was just reassuring Mrs Solarin that mistakes like this don’t often happen, wasn’t I?’
I inhale, catch a nostrilful of her perfume and almost gag, before I put on a smile and turn to the woman in the doorway. She is still anxious, worried that she has done something wrong. ‘Yes, it’s all been a bit of a misunderstanding,’ I parrot.
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ Mrs Thackery says with a relieved smile and a clap of her hand over her heart. ‘I was so worried. I’ll make sure I triple-check from now on so this doesn’t happen again.’
‘Thank you,’ I say.
‘Yes, thank you, Zaina. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
5:55 p.m. ‘How do you intend to get away with this?’ I ask her. ‘I mean, if anything happens to me now, at least two people saw us together. Coupled with what happened to Yvonne Whidmore, they’re going to know you were involved. You have no way out of this. Why don’t you just tell me where my children are and we can leave it at that? I won’t tell anyone; we’ll just pretend it didn’t happen. We’ll even leave the school. If I can’t convince Sol to move back to London, I’ll take the children and go back with them myself. If you think about it, there’s no way for this to end well, so if you just take me to my children, we can find a way to move on.’
Mrs Carpenter’s face tells me she is indulging me, allowing me the luxury of trying to talk my way out of this situation. ‘Do you want to know why Mrs Whidmore is currently in a coma, Mrs Solarin?’
Because you are a psychopath, I decide. ‘Tell me,’ I mumble.
Mrs Carpenter smiles. ‘Shouldn’t you be a bit more enthusiastic about all of this?’ she asks. ‘I mean, you did work it out, didn’t you? You worked it out and couldn’t possibly contain yourself before you went rushing off to tell Trevor. I’d have thought you’d be gagging to know, if I may use such a crude term.’
The thing is, only a little bit of me wants to know. I’m curious, sure, but seriously, I’d much rather have my children back. I’d much rather not be here with her and not be panicking about what they’re going through. Ore always leaves going to the loo till the last minute. He very often doesn’t go during the day at school and has to rush to the toilet when he gets home. He’ll be desperate by now. Oscar will be worrying, panicking that he’s done something wrong, fearful about not having anything to eat.
To get them back, I have to allow this crazy woman her moment. This is where she reveals her genius, shows off how superior she believes herself to be. It must have been awful for her all this time not being able to talk about it, not being able to show off how she got away with it. And now she’s got a captive audience, she wants me to beg her to tell all, to give her attention like I would a misbehaving toddler.
‘Yes, I want to know,’ I say to her. ‘Please tell me. Please.’
Attention is like a warm spotlight being shone on her and she lights up and relaxes at the same time.
‘The story starts thirty-six years ago,’ she begins. ‘I bet you didn’t know that, did you? It began when I was seven years old and I was in the second year at Plummer Prep and I had a best friend called Trevor Whidmore.’
18 August, 2017
Winnie Carpenter stood a little way away and watched four parents from her school fighting. It was odd. They were like little girls from this distance, shouting and shoving, trying to scratch each other’s eyes out. But obviously, being bigger, they were deadlier. She’d been watching them for a while, following them to the beach when they were there knitting and drinking; sitting outside various houses when they went to someone’s home. She had to keep an eye on Yvonne. To find out all she could about the woman who’d stolen her life.
Yes, yes, it was all a long time ago, but she had been in love with Trevor. He was meant to be hers. That sounded so simplistic, but she didn’t know how else to explain it. He had been her best friend since they were seven. Seven! He’d become her boyfriend at fourteen. They’d lost their virginity to each other at fifteen. They’d signed up for teacher training together and they were going to build a future together. They’d have two children – daughters – and they were going to live in a big house in Brighton.
He wasn’t supposed to go away to university, but his parents had insisted he saw a bit more of the world. Winnie and Trevor already had their plan: they were going to study, gain their qualifications, then they would go off and see the world together. Teaching would mean they could pick up their careers when they got back from travelling. Winnie had been sure that Trevor’s parents had been trying to break them up, that they thought she wasn’t good enough for him or them. But it hadn’t worked. They’d stayed together all through the first year at college, and every time they were together they had simply picked up where they’d left off.
It had changed in the October of his second year. He’d changed his course and only told her about it afterwards. He had gone back to first year, and of course, it had been because of Yvonne. He had met her and wanted to be with her.
Winnie was a pragmatic person, even back then, even when it came to love. She’d understood that Trevor needed to spread his wings. He would have an adventure, maybe sleep around a little, but he would come back to her. They were meant to be together and it would happen if she played the long game. Besides, she could have other lovers and liaisons, too. This had probably been for the best. But then, he had done the unthinkable – he had stayed with that woman he’d changed the course for. They had stayed together all through college, and then he’d had the adventure they were meant to have – with her! She couldn’t believe it. She’d been all set to go and see the world with him and he was off doing it with someone else.
Her pragmatism had kicked in and she’d got on with her life, but with a little ache for Trevor and the life she was meant to have. She had a short-lived but passionate marriage, and carried on with normal life.
Then he had walked back into her life. She had recognised him straight away when he’d come to look around the school on an open day. He’d shown up with the blonde on his arm and she had hated him for looking so happy, so content. She hadn’t found anyone to have children with. Sure, she’d had liaisons, sure, she’d had that brief, intense marriage, and her current relationship with Crispin was full and rich, but it still wasn’t the life she had planned with Trevor.
She knew Trevor’s face lit up when he saw her, and she could see that Yvonne didn’t like it. But Winnie had decided she was going to get herself back into his life, and that involved befriending Yvonne.
Winnie
followed Yvonne that night as she walked away from the other women on the seafront. This is what happened with female friendships, she’d found over the years. She had seen this intense closeness develop between groups of girls. They always had one who was The Friend, the alpha female who the others flocked around. Slowly, though, surely, though, the others would stop being happy with their role as betas, they would start to talk behind the back of the alpha, they would start to meet up without her and once the alpha found out – usually because one of the betas developed a conscience and told the alpha – they would have a confrontation that would become physical. That was why Winnie avoided groups of women. She had seen all of this play out with her students, and it’d happened to her once in college, where she had been the alpha and she had been the one who was wronged.
That night, Winnie followed Yvonne and she watched the confrontation between Yvonne and Mrs Smith – Maxie – who she suspected was in line to be the new alpha. After Mrs Smith had gone away, she went to Yvonne, said hello. Asked her what she was doing there, asked her if she was OK, told her she was bleeding. Yvonne, usually so poised, especially in front of Winnie, was disorientated and blurred. Winnie told her that she would take her somewhere, administer first aid and drive her home. Yvonne was grateful to her; she went willingly to the car, clutching the rock inscribed with her initials.
Winnie had decided she wanted Trevor back. He was her destiny and he had come back into her life. She had worked hard over the years: she’d moved up from being a deputy head to being head of the school they had both attended as children. This was her time and she had to be clever about it. Know thy enemy. Which is exactly what she had done. She had begun to watch Yvonne, to be where she was. To find out who she was away from her role on the Parents’ Council. Once she was sure of Yvonne’s movements, how long she was away from Trevor on her nights out, Winnie had begun the next phase of her plan. She would follow Yvonne to wherever it was she would go, and she would put forty-five minutes on her phone. She would go to Trevor’s and she would be with him for forty minutes. No more, no less. She would bring cigarettes, she would bring good whisky, and they would sit in the garden chatting. She would only ever let him smoke one cigarette and she would help him to disguise the smell, would only allow him a small shot of whisky sipped over half an hour. It was a slow plan, but Winnie was a patient person, she was planning for her future and she was as diligent with it as she had been with everything else in her life.
The Friend Page 40
