The Friend

by Dorothy Koomson

  ‘Realistically, there’s nothing you can do, Mrs Carpenter,’ I reply. ‘It won’t be as easy to get rid of me as it was Yvonne Whidmore. And the fact you’ve brought two children into this whole mess will make it worse for you. For example, how are you going to explain it when Trevor Whidmore says he didn’t call the school and he didn’t take my children? And the school secretary will say the message came from you.’

  Mrs Carpenter smiles at me. ‘No, Mrs Artum will say she found a telephone message on her desk, just like I did, written on message pad paper from the staff room.’

  This situation is rapidly deteriorating by the second. She has planned a lot in a short amount of time, like the night she tried to kill Yvonne Whidmore, but this improvisation, this behaving as though there is a possibility she will get away with it, means she is losing touch with reality. She can’t see that there is no way out of this. Even if she manages to do away with me and the boys, there is too much that she can’t explain or undo. She has just told a staff member that the children are safe. They will remember that. Trevor has probably already gone to the police. Yet she still thinks she will get away with this. She is not going to give me back my children. And she is going to try to kill me.

  I watch the clock on the wall above Mrs Carpenter’s head tick, the second hand jerking from mark to mark, counting out the length of time my children have been holed up wherever they’re being held. Seconds have turned into minutes have turned into hours. It is past seven o’clock. Harmony will have been texting, asking where we are, what’s for tea, do I want her to start cooking? Sol will have called, asking where I am, and what did I think I was doing acting all crazy by coming to work like that, and where are the boys? Gareth has probably returned my calls, and is now wondering where I am and why I’ve suddenly gone silent on him.

  ‘Why did you take my children?’ I ask Mrs Carpenter.

  ‘Because I wanted you to listen. The only way you would listen to me is if I had something so precious to you that you wouldn’t be distracted. When Trevor came and accused me, said that you had made up these lies about me, I wanted to speak to you. I wanted you to listen.’

  ‘But it wasn’t a lie and it has nothing to do with my children.’

  ‘OF COURSE IT HAS!’ she screams. Her voice returns to a normal level, but her eyes are wide and her nostrils flared. ‘It’s always about the children. That was why Yvonne was trying to take my school away from me. She didn’t think I was good enough to be in charge of her children’s education because I hadn’t given birth. It’s always about the children, don’t you see?

  ‘Don’t you think Yvonne, in fact all of these parents, would treat me differently if I had managed to have children? Don’t you think they would understand whatever I did if I could use my get-out-of-jail-free card of being a mother? I would be able to not work. I could swan around all day not bothering to earn any money, expecting the world to praise me for simply not being smart enough to use contraception. Everything is about the children, and the women who pushed them out earn sainthoods for the privilege.’

  ‘Why did you become a teacher, a job where you have to deal with mothers and parents, if you have such contempt for them?’

  ‘Because that was the plan! Are you really so dim? Do you not understand? Are you not listening? That was what Trevor and I had planned. I was meant to have him, I was meant to be one of you – a mother – with him. He changed the plan but I didn’t. How could I, when I had a plan that was perfect?’

  She has spent more than thirty years living out a plan she formulated when she was tiny.

  ‘Where do you think Trevor is now?’ I ask her.

  ‘At home with his children or at the hospital visiting her.’

  ‘Really?’ I say to her. ‘You really believe that after finding out that his affair possibly led to his wife almost being killed that he’ll just go about his business like nothing has happened? Do you really, honestly believe that?’

  For the first time since we have entered this room, sat at her desk with the light fast dimming from the large picture window to my left, she looks genuinely uncertain, worried.

  ‘If you were him, wouldn’t you be wondering if you should go to the police and confess all about the affair, and see what the police will say about these accusations?’

  The streaks of worry broaden on her face, start to tense up her shoulders.

  I am talking, but I am also thinking. I am ransacking my mind, searching, desperately trying to work out where she would take the children. It will be in the school. This place is her life so they are here somewhere. Away from where the teachers and staff normally go so they are not discovered. I am trying to remember. I walked these halls. When she showed me around I walked these halls with her, I saw her school, I mapped out the place with my feet and my eyes, and I know I can remember if I try.

  This is what my mind does: it makes patterns. I can remember the pattern of the tour. I know I can. In through the front door, approach the large sweeping staircase, up to her office. Then down the staircase, to the ground floor, to the lower year groups’ classrooms. Along the glass walkway towards the huge library. Turn left, towards the art department, a generous space with a glass wall and patio doors that open out onto a paved area so the students can paint and draw outside, overlooking the playing fields. On towards the science block, with its two labs.

  Continue on to a storage room, to arrive back at the staircase, or back the way we came. Start again at the staircase, this time, right. Down towards the middle years’ classrooms, all decent-sized and light-filled, moving you round to arrive back at the staircase. Then back, up the stairs this time. Left to the upper years’ classrooms. Then back, and right, to the head teacher’s office, to the school office, to the staff rooms.

  No, none of those places. They are all too public, too frequently accessed.

  ‘Trevor Whidmore has as much to lose as me in all of this,’ Mrs Carpenter says.

  ‘Really?’ I say to her.

  They must be in the outbuildings. We went to the wet-weather gym space, situated beside the netball/basketball courts, where they hold exams as well as indoor sports. We went to the left side of the building, to more playing fields.

  ‘You really believe he has as much to lose as you?’

  We didn’t complete that pattern. It’d rained the night before and that playing field, for some reason, was unusable if there was rain. They had a mini cricket pavilion but she had explained that it became waterlogged in autumn, rock-hard in winter. They’d spent thousands trying to sort it out but no joy. For some reason, that part of their land was unstable. They hadn’t given up, though. ‘The head of the Parents’ Council is trying to raise funds to allow us to come out here even in the later months,’ she had said. ‘Watch this space.’

  They are at the cricket pavilion. I remember the football match where I had to stand facing the pavilion because I had a child on each pitch. They are there, I am sure of it. No one would go out there at this time. But if they are there, they will be cold as well as scared and hungry. I have to get to them. I have to take the gamble that they are in the cricket pavilion.

  ‘I think your best bet, Mrs Carpenter, is to run while you can. You can either stay here and plead self-defence while praying that Yvonne Whidmore doesn’t wake up, or you can dash home, pack a bag and your passport and go before they come to talk to you. You could probably get on a flight somewhere since we’re so close to Gatwick.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I am not leaving my school.’ She points outside, to the fields and buildings she can see from her office. She can see the cricket pavilion from her office – that is the perfect place to keep an eye on them and the comings and goings from that area. ‘It would fall apart without me.’

  I glance at my bag in my lap. I can’t run with my bag. Any sudden move I make will mean leaving my bag and running for my life. For my children’s lives. This is a gamble. The weight of it bears down on my shoulders. If I’m wrong and they�
��re somewhere else, or if I can’t get there first … She knows the fastest way. The fastest way, of course, would be out of the window. But obviously not an option. I walk the pattern in my head again. If I could get down the side of the school, that would be the quickest way, but it will be locked up. Padlocked. I need to go down the stairs, to the left, through the art room. I don’t have a key, so I will need to smash through the doors, both sets. Or fire exit. I will use the fire exits that sits at the bottom of the stairs to get to the back of the building – through those fire exits, across the small courtyard.

  I do not have anything to smash through the fire exits if they are against me. My eyes scan her desk. She has a small, clear paperweight sitting beside the nameplate. When I run, I have to grab that.

  ‘Fine,’ I tell her. ‘You stay here.’

  I throw my bag at her as I leap to my feet, grab the paperweight and run for the door. I meant to throw the chair behind me to block the way but there is no time. Mrs Carpenter cries out in surprise. She wasn’t expecting me to do this, but what else was I going to do, when the only thing that could happen next was her trying to do away with me and the boys?

  I race down the corridor to the staircase, take the steps two at a time, and I can hear her behind me, her sensible head-teacher shoes clattering as they come for me. I leap down the last four steps, land awkwardly, my left ankle wobbling, acting as if it will give way. But I ignore it. I turn at the stairs and find the fire exits are propped open. I don’t know why, when the school is empty, and it’s as illegal to do that as it is to deadlock them, but they are. I run for the first exit, aware I can hear her behind me. I kick aside the brick holding the door open and tug at it, the door’s stiff, slow-closing hinge almost fighting me as I try to slam it shut. She is halfway down the stairs when the door finally relents and works with me. It slams shut just as she nears the bottom of the staircase. I run again, aiming for the next open doorway, waiting for me like an extended hand, urging me to reach it, to touch safety. This is the door that will make the difference. Even as her hand reaches for the opening bar of the first clear-glass fire door, I am pulling this one shut, tugging and tugging until it comes to. I see her face contort into a scream as she realises what she’ll have to do to get through it. Maybe let herself into one of the classrooms and come round that way. Or set off the fire alarm to release the door, but that would bring the fire brigade.

  I run through the next door, slam that shut, and chance a look behind me. She’s gone. The small courtyard I have just run across is empty and I don’t have time to stand and search for her. I race through the final fire door, out onto the small paved area that runs around the outside of the school. I hesitate, brace myself to run out into the silky darkness that hugs the school.

  I can see the pavilion, an old white, weatherboard building with a red-tiled roof and a large clock sitting proudly above the large patio-style doors. There is a terrace that you need to step up onto from the ground, where I imagine they put out tables for the match tea, and windows almost all the way around the building. There are two wall lights that are lit along the side of the building and they cast a weak, yellow-orange glow around the pavilion, its patio and a good few metres of grass around the area.

  I begin to run again, my chest contracting painfully at the sudden cold. As I pass the gym building, the motion-activated outside lights snap on, blinding me. I stop, blink away the flashing and get moving again. As soon as I hit the first pitch, my feet skid. It has poured with rain for the last two nights. I’ve lain awake both nights listening to the rain, trying to work out patterns, listening to Sol snoring away the remainder of our marriage.

  I push on, the ground more mud than grass, and the soles of my shoes disappear into the brown mush. I stop for a moment to pull my feet up, steady myself. In the stillness, the lights go out. When I move again, they snap on, and I see them: footprints. Clearer at some points than others, two small sets of footprints flank one large adult set of footprints. The wavy patterns on the smaller footprints are the inverse of ones I’ve had to clean from the corridor tiles many times. I look up at the pavilion.

  Forgetting the mud, its slippery surface and the danger it poses to me falling over, I break into a run again. Slipping, sliding, but moving as fast as I can, until I reach the pavilion. I skid sideways, and have to put my arms out to stop myself completely going over.

  I reach the raised terrace and jump on, grabbing for the door handle. I rattle it, but it’s locked of course. I still have the paperweight, and raise it to break the glass.

  I have a sudden sensation of movement behind me and I turn to see Mrs Carpenter, her face a murderous red, coming at me with a hockey stick raised aloft. I don’t have time to move, I can only raise my arm to protect myself as she brings the stick down. I feel the crack at the exact same time as I hear it, before the pokers of pain shoot through every part of my arm and stinging stars of agony explode in my head.

  Mrs Carpenter raises the stick again, this time aiming for my head, and I step backwards, slip on the mud from my shoes and land painfully sitting down, my arm automatically coming down to help brace me. I scream as the pain shoots through me again, the agony erupting a sickness in my stomach. I’m about to heave, more and more stars fire behind my eyes, a never-ending cacophony of fireworks.

  She raises the stick, steps forward with her face contorted, this time knowing she has a clear shot at my head, and I manage to move and she instead dents the white weatherboard. Again she swings, and I manage to move and she leaves a deep impression in the wall behind me. I catch my broken arm again and the pain explodes again; I’m dizzy and I can’t keep myself upright. She swings again, this time coming from above, and before she can bring it down I kick out, aiming for her front knee, the one bearing all her weight.

  My foot connects, muddying up the front of her skirt and knocking her off balance. She stumbles backwards, her face lit up with surprise, and catches the edge of the terrace, which causes her to lose her footing. She lands flat on her back in the mud. I struggle to my feet, and go for the hockey stick. I snatch it up and step back so she can’t kick at me.

  ‘DON’T MOVE!’ I scream at her. ‘JUST DON’T MOVE!’

  She ignores me, instead moaning, sobbing, while rocking side-to-side in the mud and cupping her knee with her hands.

  ‘Cece,’ Gareth’s voice says.

  I know I must be hallucinating, that the throbbing pain from my arm, the jarring agony in my spine, is making me hear things.

  ‘Cece.’ I hear him again. ‘Cece, look at me.’

  It’s him. It’s really him. He has his hands up – scared of the hockey stick and what I might do with it, I suppose.

  ‘Cece, it’s me. It’s the police.’

  The police? The police. I look up and the playing field, waterlogged and muddy, has several people on it. Most of them uniformed police officers. They are rushing towards us; a couple of them go straight to Mrs Carpenter.

  He points to the stick in my hand. ‘Can I take that?’ he asks, still signalling surrender and peace.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I reply and hand it over to him.

  ‘Trevor Whidmore came and told us everything. We were trying to get hold of you but your phone was off, you weren’t at home and neither were your twins. We thought we’d come to talk to Mrs Carpenter and found the school wide open and then saw you both out here.’

  I stare at him and listen to him but he is talking another language. The pain is dulling my senses, stopping me from properly understanding anything. I think I’m about to pass out.

  Two officers help Mrs Carpenter to her feet, but when they let go of her, she almost falls over again.

  The boys. My boys. I run the short distance to the pavilion’s door.

  ‘The boys!’ I say to Gareth. ‘She’s got them in there. They’ve been in there for hours.’ He pulls me back and tries to shoulder the door. It shudders but does not relent. He tries again. Nothing. He stands back, then kicks at the door, aim
ing for the join of the lock. On the third kick it shatters open, both doors flying backwards and opening up the gloomy interior of the building.

  ‘Oscar? Ore?’ I call. ‘It’s me. It’s Mama. Boys. Boys, are you …?’

  The silence that inhabits and coats the dark space terrifies me. It’s unnatural. When two boys who are as relentlessly noisy as my twins are in a place, it should not be this quiet.

  ‘Boys!’ I call again, desperately. I am trying to keep the terror out of my voice. Because if I hear it, then I will accept that they might be—‘Boys! Oscar! Ore! Where are you?’

  Gareth comes in behind me, followed by two police officers. I need to hear them to find them. I stand still, close my eyes, listen for them. For their voices, their breathing, a sign that they’re still here.

  I can hear Gareth breathing loud and fast, I can hear the rustle of the police officers’ uniforms, the thrum of the wall lights outside, but I can’t hear the boys. The two officers go to the right, I go left, using my one good arm to feel my way.

  There is a semicircle of chairs, right at the back of the space. It has the shape and feel of a fort they would have made to protect themselves. They must have been so scared, especially when the light began to fade and Mrs Carpenter didn’t come back.

  ‘Oscar! Ore!’ I call at the top of my voice as I run towards the area. ‘Ore! Oscar!’

  At the centre of the semicircle, on the dusty white-wood floor, they are two crescents, wrapped around each other. They are very still, facing each other. When I was pregnant and I used to imagine them, this is how I saw them, how they found a way to fit together in a small space, facing each other, communicating without words. My heart turns over at how immobile they are. In this dark I can’t see if they’re still breathing.