‘I didn’t know that.’
‘She doesn’t like people to know.’
He laughed loudly as if he thought there was a lot that Jennifer didn’t like people to know. They talked on like old friends. When she left she was sad to go and leave him on his own.
MACK
The investigator, Detective Grant Johnson, turned up one afternoon in an unmarked sedan, or rather Mack guessed it was unmarked but he couldn’t actually tell from that distance. Mack assumed he was a salesman or a Jehovah’s Witness and the tight suit didn’t excuse him from either.
Mack said nothing when Grant told him the fire was started by a cigarette. He was thinking about what he’d seen and what he’d heard, but shared none of it.
The copper looked like a bloke without a clue, someone who had fallen into mid-level detective work because nothing else had turned up. He could just as easily have been the local insurance agent or building inspector. He seemed to huff and puff his way through every conversation.
He stayed quite a while, telling Mack about his father in the nursing home, how his legs didn’t work very well, his eyes were shot and his hearing gone, but ‘his mind still sharp as a tack’. Mack doubted it. Royce Johnson’s mind had never been very sharp and it seemed unlikely that it would have developed an edge with age.
Mack feigned his own vagueness and forgetfulness so that Royce’s son would feel comfortable sharing information with him. But the revelation of how the fire started was more dangerous than he had expected. Was he now party to information that could be uncomfortable for his family?
When, suddenly lucid, he asked if that information was public knowledge, Grant eyed him as if he realised he’d been hoodwinked and said: ‘Not for a couple of weeks. Can we keep it that way?’
‘Of course.’ Mack said. ‘Who am I going to tell?’
The investigator nodded sagely. He rubbed his hands up and down the top of his thighs. ‘It’s a difficult case. It’s not quite as straightforward as I thought it would be. Kids burn schools down all the time, but not usually by lobbing a cigarette in the window and hoping that it’ll catch alight.’
‘Maybe it was a kid just showing off, not meaning to burn the building at all.’
‘Possible.’ Grant was troubled, breathing heavily as if the case was a genuine physical burden. ‘In most schools those windows are shut. They’re pretty hard to get open from the outside, especially without making any noise that would alert a meeting.’
The breathing got more laboured and Mack began to wonder if the first person to need an ambulance at his house might not be him.
‘My alternative scenarios aren’t any better. The principal was in the office on the afternoon, just before the meeting, and he says he’s a smoker. So circumstantially, he’s our man. He does appear to be a smoker now. Thing is, none of the locals I’ve talked to had seen him smoking at any time before the incident. Not in his garden or his house or the pub or anywhere. No one’s even seen so much as a cigarette butt, and in a community like this that’s pretty surprising.’
Mack didn’t let on that he’d met the principal with Andy and Jennifer in his first week at the school. At the time the young man had looked like china in a bullshop and there was no sign of him being a smoker of anything.
The investigator appeared to stop breathing. Mack wondered where the phone was.
‘No one saw him, except, that is, for your daughter-in-law.’
Mack realised, rather suddenly, that he hadn’t been duping Grant; it was the other way round. He’d fallen for the whole ‘I’m telling you this in the utmost confidence’ line, taking the investigator lightly because he was an overweight man in a cheap suit whose father wasn’t very bright. A mistake anyone could make, he felt sure, but disappointing at this late stage. Bugger it. Whatever happened to wisdom that came with age?
‘She said she knew the principal was a smoker, saw the evidence. She was with him before the meeting. I guess he’s just very good at concealing his habits. Smoking’s probably a bit taboo for a teacher these days and you don’t want the parent body to have a poor opinion of you. The bit I don’t get is that he’s a new principal. His house is a stone’s throw away. So why would he smoke in the school? It’s a real no-no for teachers. I mean, I’d understand it if he’d been in the job for a few years and was, you know, jaded and trying to get out, or piss people off, but in the first few months? He looks to me like a bloke who really likes his job.’
Mack saw now that the investigator, pretending to be an incompetent, had decided Mack would be a good conduit to the community: an old man whose information could spread through a community without anyone really knowing how or where it came from.
‘No accounting for human behaviour I s’pose,’ Grant said.
He was right about that. The investigator stood, shook Mack’s hand and walked heavily away. Mack watched the blur of him leave and thought about the turmoil he had been handed on a platter. He’d wanted to be more at the centre of things and here he was: dead centre.
An investigator had basically told him he didn’t believe his daughter-in-law’s story. What did you do with that sort of information? No matter what he felt about Jennifer, she needed to know. And Madison would certainly be interested, considering the conversation they’d had.
If he could text he would have texted Madison but that option wasn’t open, and not just because her phone was confiscated. If he turned up at their door it would create a situation. They’d want to know why he was there, why he hadn’t asked them to drive him, what was so important he couldn’t phone them? And he didn’t want to phone either. It wasn’t the sort of information that should be blurted out under pressure. There were too many possible connections and offshoots. He needed to be able to leak it and let it permeate in case it wasn’t significant information at all. Nothing could be worse than going to their house in high drama, with information that couldn’t wait, only to find it was of no consequence at all. That might be the first step on the road to the nursing home.
He would write Madison a letter, then she could filter it and decide which bits her mother needed to know and when. If he got the right day, the postman would run the letter down to her mailbox for him.
SARAH
Sarah decided a phone call to Andy would be the best way to keep control of the conversation and herself. It wasn’t being cowardly. It was being practical. It was no good fronting up at the Booths’, all pride and bluster, only to be frightened into saying less than she intended (and she wasn’t frightened).
She waited for that time of day when she thought Jennifer might be cooking dinner or having a glass of wine so she didn’t have to talk to her. Sarah was doing her very best not to hate Jennifer. They’d been friends, or sort of friends—colleagues at least—for years. It had always been difficult not to be envious of Jennifer. She was strong, organised, decisive and built like she was Photoshopped. And now her daughter had made a claim to Sarah’s husband. Even though Sarah knew Ian was as much to blame as Madison, and even though she knew that if not Madison then possibly someone else, she couldn’t shake a residual resentment of the Booth family. Not rational, she knew, but still real.
She made the call standing, jiggling the hand-piece and, as she finished clearing her throat again, Andy answered, slightly annoyed and a bit distracted.
‘I’m sorry to bother you, Andy, but I think it’s important to talk about what happened.’
He was saying something in agreement but Sarah couldn’t wait for the finish of pleasantries.
‘There was no need to punch my husband. I’m not defending him. He did the wrong thing by both our families.’ She’d done her best to stop the words wobbling in the air.
‘He had sex with my daughter.’
‘I know that, believe me, I know that.’ That vision of Ian on top of Madison revealed itself again.
‘I think that’s a good enough reason to hit him.’
She was suddenly irritated at his self-righteousne
ss. ‘I’m the one who should be upset. Your daughter is eighteen. She’s a consenting adult. She did as much consenting as he did.’
There was no sound on the line.
‘You do know that, don’t you?’ She said it as firmly as she could, avoiding the ‘r’ word and all the terror linked to it.
‘Maybe it wasn’t rape, but that doesn’t mean it was right. He’s a grown man and she’s a schoolgirl and he took advantage of that. I think I have a right to defend her.’
It was true. There was an imbalance of power. Anyone could see that. She began to lose heart. She was defending something and someone that didn’t deserve defence, least of all from her.
‘You didn’t have to use violence.’ She said it in a quiet voice.
‘I’ll make the choice as to how I defend my own daughter. If your husband is an arsehole, if he can’t be trusted to behave properly when he has a teenager in the house, then he deserves everything he gets.’
It was worse that at any other time she would have agreed with him. He was arrogant, in the right and really pissing her off. She expected him to ask why she was still with Ian. The answer would be cold fat in her mouth.
She let the line go quiet and told herself she hadn’t made this phone call to share her pain about Ian. She had rung Andy because he had threatened her family. The basic need to protect her family had prompted her anger and the decision to respond. It wasn’t the time to concede her husband’s weaknesses.
‘Did it make you feel better?’ Not her greatest riposte, but better than the ‘You’re a dickhead’ option that had been swimming around in her mouth.
‘In some ways, yes.’
‘Well, if you’re going to go round hitting people who sleep with the women in your family you’ve got more punching to do.’ She put the phone down before she could say more things that she really didn’t want to say.
Up until that point she’d been very proud of herself. Andy could be intimidating when he wanted to be but she had confronted him and been honest. Old Sarah wouldn’t have done that. She would have let it go, reasoning that Andy was a sensible man and knew what he’d done was wrong without being told. But it hadn’t finished well. The desire to let him know about Jennifer, for his sake as a friend, and for her own sake because he was being so superior about her husband’s cheating, had come out in a form that was gossipy and nasty. If Jennifer slept with the principal and it didn’t affect Brock’s work then it was no business of hers, was it? Snide comments were foreign to old Sarah.
After the phone call, with the children in bed and Ian still at work, Sarah decided the best therapy she could think of was baking. Afghan biscuits came to mind because they were a favourite of her father’s and Angela’s. She knew the recipe by heart, but looked at others online simply to think of other things. None of them baked and rolled the cornflakes like her mother always had so she shut the sites down in frustration.
Unpleasant spiky bits seemed to be developing in her personality and she knew it was because she was still angry at Ian. For him, other than not sharing a bed, things were gradually going back to the way they had been. They ate meals together, looked after the children together, discussed the crops and the bills. One night, after one too many white wines when she had been feeling unwarrantedly good about him, and the relentlessness of being hurt and angry had worn on her, she told him about her suspicions of Jennifer and Brock. The next morning she hated herself for it. She had almost made light of his infidelity. She had gossiped in the way others would have gossiped about them. For two days she couldn’t talk to him. She may not be giving him affection or sex, but he had everything else and she resented him for it. Wasn’t that the same for her? She had the kids and the life she had before, didn’t she?
She put a tray of cornflakes into the oven, beat butter, sugar and vanilla in a bowl until it was fluffy, then added the flour and cocoa. She took the cornflakes out when they were crispy, put them on the cutting board and rolled them flat, listening to them crackle under her rolling pin. Then she tipped the cornflakes into the bowl and mixed them in with her hands.
Everywhere she looked she saw people like Ian and Jennifer taking what they wanted and not suffering the consequences. For all she knew, Ian was out in the paddock having itchy sex with Madison over a hay bale right this minute.
She scooped out spoonfuls of biscuit dough and made balls of them with her neat hands, then placed them on greaseproof paper on a baking tray, squashing them slightly as she did so. The aroma was rich and chocolatey and it smelled to her of friends and family. She put the biscuits in the oven and felt the loss of their distraction.
It was so bloody godless is what it was. She wasn’t particularly churchy but she’d always held the belief that goodness would be rewarded, that good people would receive goodness in return.
Looking at it now, in the harsh light of her experiences, she realised it was a fanciful, childish idea. Good people got the same as everyone else. Good people didn’t even point out to bad people that they were bad. In another time, a community might have shunned you for bad behaviour or sentenced you to corporal punishment, a week in the stocks or something, but now everyone did whatever they damn well pleased and no one said anything.
Sarah leant against the bench and thought about Ian, family, baking and biscuits. There could be no running away. She had chosen to stay, chosen not to kick Ian out, chosen not to shame him and demand the sale of the farm, chosen her punishment, and she would have to live with it.
MADISON
She didn’t tell her parents about Mack’s letter. Whether it was to protect her mother or crucify her, she couldn’t be sure. Or maybe it was to protect herself. If she told her mother about the investigator’s unease it would be as if she thought it was worth giving credence to and so incriminating herself. But that was weak. She would find a way to tell her mother soon.
In the meantime, it wasn’t the sort of information she could keep to herself and it wasn’t something she wanted to share with her town friends. They wouldn’t understand its significant and what it might mean to her family. It might be very significant and it might be nothing at all, just a misdirected hunch from the investigator.
She stared at her phone, which had just been given back, thinking about whether she could tell one of her boarding school friends. They were much more used to scandal, divorce and parents behaving badly. But what could they possibly make of it? That her mother smoked occasionally and the school had burned down and an investigator had a vague suspicion that she was involved? When she said it like that, it seemed like a big nothing. Of course she could make it sound like something, words could always do that for you. They could make any incident evil if you wanted.
This was one of the important lessons she had learned at boarding school. That if you controlled the words you controlled the incident. It was why she had manufactured an incident that was funny (she thought) and pretty hard to distort in a mean way. Of course, they still managed to. They were quick to cover their expanding bottoms and so their words were nasty. Didn’t matter, she wanted to leave anyway. It was all she wanted back then. Now she was thinking perhaps she had been wrong.
A text from Ian appeared. She thought about deleting it straight away, but couldn’t stop her eyes reading it. It asked if she was okay. Innocent enough. Caring even. Fatherly? Perhaps. She deleted the message. Who did he think he was contacting her? It was best to stay away from that whole episode. She remembered realising that after Sarah left that night, Ian must have walked or ridden a bike in the dark to pick up the ute, because in the morning it was gone and her father made no mention of it.
He texted twice more. Asking about her welfare. That was all. Maybe he wanted to show her that what had happened was in the past and he was back to being a normal father and husband. She read the texts again. They were definitely innocent.
She closed her books and pushed her seat back from the desk. Outside, the musk lorikeets had arrived in numbers and were making a fest
ive racket in the eucalypts on the edge of the garden. How did they know to arrive when the trees were proffering one of their periodic blossomings?
Only a couple of properties separated Madison and Ian. She couldn’t pretend he didn’t exist forever. Maybe it was better to break the ice. That would be the sensible, mature thing to do. Sarah and the kids were back home and what was done was done.
It had been unpleasant for everyone (well, not the whole time) and now it was finished.
She took a deep breath and sent a message back that she was fine and sorry for what had happened. She hoped he had patched everything up and no one was too damaged. A number of texts followed: chatty, friendly, nothing harmful or flirty. It seemed the Howards were close to being back on track. Ian wasn’t forgiven and he was out of the bedroom, but things were improving and he felt eventually they would return to the way they were.
She was desperate to share what Mack had said and, after a few friendly messages with Ian, she surprised herself with the ease in which she developed a rationale for telling him. Not about the investigator’s suspicions, just about the cause of the fire and the principal being the number one suspect. Ian was already in too much trouble to be judgmental of anyone else or to have an effect on what was going on.
His reply was simply ‘Wow.’ And then something more curious: ‘I’ve got something to tell you but I have to tell you in person. Too powerful. Can we meet?’
The combination of something ‘too powerful’ and the idea of meeting up with a man she should never be close to again was too explosive to ignore. She’d had three weeks of holidays without going to a party or seeing any friends. Now at least she was back at school, but the weekends were very uneventful. ‘I’m grounded. You know why.’
‘It’s to do with your mother and the principal.’
The Good Teacher Page 9
