The Pupil

by Dawn Goodwin

And that’s exactly what he had done last night. I had had a challenging day at the nursery, with two children throwing up on me during nativity rehearsals, one nasty toilet incident that would haunt me forever and a parent reporting that her son had head lice again – and I could feel my own scalp tingling psychosomatically as a result. So I popped into the shop on my way home and bought a bottle of wine and a big slab of Dairy Milk to enjoy in a hot bath when I got home.

  But Paul had had other ideas. He had come home from the gym ahead of me and used all of the hot water for his lengthy shower, then had pointed out exactly how many calories were in each square of chocolate I was shovelling in.

  I had a go at him then, told him I wasn’t a child and I didn’t need him to parent me and he had sloped off to his study for the rest of the night, while I had stubbornly eaten all of the chocolate and drank the entire bottle of wine before collapsing in bed feeling sick.

  This morning I had felt the throbbing in my head and the dry, sticky tongue before I even opened my eyes. But I didn’t want to admit to Paul over his healthy breakfast of crushed avocado on sourdough that my bowl of Crunchy Nut Cornflakes was turning my stomach.

  I looked around at the exuberant faces rushing around me and smiled. I hadn’t expected to enjoy this job as much as I did. In my head, I had envisioned training to become a secondary school English teacher and immersing myself in Dickens and Shakespeare, but Paul had got me an interview for the teaching assistant job at the local primary school through someone he knew after insisting that being a secondary school teacher would be a really tough challenge. I had to admit though that there were times when it was a lot of fun being around these little bundles of energy. They were exhausting, and Biff and Chip were not the literary geniuses I had in mind, but I could see myself making a career out of this, maybe even training to be a full-time nursery teacher instead.

  I felt something tugging on the sleeve of my coat and looked down into the bright eyes of Imogen Matthews. Quite an earnest child, she wasn’t prone to flinging herself around like so many of the other children. She was more likely to be found in the reading corner paging through a picture book or quietly acting out scenes from her favourite stories. Today she was gazing up at me, her bright yellow velvet pinafore dress emphasising the aquamarine of her sparkling eyes.

  ‘Miss Katie?’ she said, little above a whisper.

  ‘Yes, Imogen?’

  ‘I can fly.’

  ‘Can you? Well, that’s clever,’ I said absentmindedly.

  ‘I can fly like Tinkerbell.’ I noticed a copy of Peter Pan tucked under her arm.

  ‘Well, Tinkerbell has wings to help her fly.’

  ‘Yes, but I have fairy dust.’

  ‘You do, huh? Well, that’s amazing! In which case, yes, you can fly.’

  She smiled sweetly at me and ran off towards the climbing frame that the children all loved, which was sculpted into the shape of a pirate ship just like the Jolly Roger.

  I took another look around the playground, then checked my watch. Only five minutes left of break time and Celia would be back any minute. I eyed the wooden picnic table nestled invitingly in a pale beam of sun, then wandered over and sat down on the hard bench before laying my aching forehead on my arms.

  A blissful minute passed before a scream pierced through my head. I jerked upright, my heart hammering. Another child started to scream and feet clattered in my direction as a stream of children ran towards me, crying.

  ‘Miss Katie! Miss Katie!’

  From the bench, I couldn’t see around the corner to the pirate ship where they were pointing. I got to my feet, my legs moving through wet cement.

  As I rounded the corner, the cause of the mayhem was laid out in front of me with painful clarity. Imogen Matthews was hanging upside down from the climbing net of the pirate ship like a bug caught in a spider’s web. Her neck was twisted at an unnatural angle and her lips had turned the bluish grey of a bruise, grotesque against the sunny yellow of her pinafore, as the rope constricted her throat. Peter Pan lay in the dirt beneath her, the pages bent, muddy footsteps blurring the words.

  I was paralysed in the moment and couldn’t get my feet to move. I felt rather than heard Celia rush up behind me. She ran straight over to the pirate ship and started screaming at me over her shoulder to come and help her as she struggled to free Imogen.

  I expelled my held breath and managed to propel my feet forward. Staff members were rushing to the scene, the caretaker and some of the teachers, all with wide, horrified eyes. As I neared, the headmistress of the school came up behind me.

  ‘Katie, take the children inside please. Everyone back to their classrooms!’ she called.

  I looked over at the pirate ship just as Imogen was finally freed from her noose. Her wide blue eyes were open but unseeing. It felt like they were staring straight into my soul. Her face was pale with cheeks already waxy, the colour of funereal pillar candles, but it was those eyes that would stay with me forever.

  Five minutes ago she had told me she could fly.

  Oh god, she had tried to fly. I told her she could.

  I started to shake and had to get away from those eyes staring silent accusations at me. I turned and vomited aggressively in the bushes, tears obscuring my vision. I became aware of little pairs of eyes around me, watching, weeping, scared.

  ‘Come, children, everyone with me. Let’s get back to our classrooms.’ I gathered them to me, like a twisted Pied Piper, but I could feel Imogen’s eyes burning into the nape of my neck as I led them away.

  26

  I was being taken back there, where I didn’t want to go, a place I had avoided for so long. The image of her wide, staring, unseeing eyes still haunted me in the middle of the night and was tattooed on the back of my retinas even now.

  ‘I don’t remember much of what happened after that. I know she was pronounced dead at the scene. Some of the children said they saw her jump from the top of the pirate ship. The police thought she tripped and the rope had snagged on her foot and she’d got tangled up in it as she tried to free herself. But I was cleared of any involvement in what happened.’ My voice was barely above a whisper.

  The words didn’t do justice to the numb horror I still felt, as though in that moment a piece of my soul had come loose and was rattling around inside me, a constant reminder of the damage that had been done in one careless minute.

  ‘That is what the inquest said. “Accidental death” apparently – asphyxiation.’ Viola spat the words out, poisonous on her tongue, her eyes slits of rage. ‘But it was your responsibility to watch her. You were on duty.’

  ‘I was, yes. And I’m sorry.’ I choked on the words, briny tears leaving tracks of warmth on my cold skin. ‘I told her she could fly.’

  Sam was silent, his face pinched, still staring at the newspaper articles in front of me. I wanted to reach out to him, make him understand.

  Viola towered over me. ‘No, you don’t get to do that. Throw out a quick apology with a few tears on your cheeks like you’ve been crushed by all of it and expect us to forgive you. We were crushed. We had our lives ripped out from under us, our family destroyed.’ She punched her fist to her chest. ‘We have spent the last twelve years trying to remember to breathe every day and reminding ourselves that there must be something for us to live for, trying to create something to live for. But not you. You had some time in a quiet hospital bed, got yourself a comforting little prescription for antidepressants and then snuggled down with your lovely little family.’ Her voice cut into me a hundred times over, every word delivered with a shard of glass. She grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet. ‘Well, that’s not good enough for me. I need you to feel even just a tiny bit of the pain I have.’

  ‘What do you want me to say? That I suffered too? That it ruined me too? I can never feel the pain you have had to experience, but I didn’t get off lightly. It wasn’t a nice little stay in a hospital as you think. There was a time when I thought I wouldn’t come back out
– and there were plenty of days when I didn’t want to. What I didn’t know at the time of Imogen’s accident was that I was pregnant. I spent my first pregnancy in an institution trying to convince myself I could actually be a mother and that I was worthy of being one. But eventually I had to admit to myself that, yes, I was responsible for her that day and I did take my eye off her, but that it wasn’t my fault. It was a freak, tragic, sickening accident. And I have paid for it every day since then – and I’m still paying up here.’ I tapped my index finger hard against my temple, feeling the nail stab into the thin layer of skin. The tears dripped from my chin and snot pooled beneath my nostrils, but I didn’t care.

  ‘Oh, but I want you to understand what it’s like to lose your family, to feel it ripped from your clawing fingers. You, with your sensible husband and your beautiful children demanding your attention. I have a plaque on a wall, a box of ashes, and a bedroom like a shrine in the hope of keeping my memories alive when she isn’t.’

  ‘Stop it, Viola, that’s enough.’ Sam looked old, as though the last ten minutes had sucked decades from him. He paced, his hands turning over in themselves, his brow furrowed.

  ‘Sam…’ I didn’t know what to say to him. He looked at me then, the anguish plain in his eyes. ‘It wasn’t my fault, you have to believe me. Even if I had been watching, I wouldn’t have got to her in time to stop her jumping. There were so many children, so much going on… I …’

  He nodded, almost imperceptibly. ‘I lived every detail of that inquest, trust me, and I have never blamed the teachers on duty or the school or even the playground equipment. We don’t know that she jumped. She could’ve tripped. Either way, it was an accident.’ He turned to Viola now. ‘And I accept my own culpability in this. Why do you think she spent so much time with her head in books, Viola? Because she was lonely – and that was our fault. I spent so much time locked away writing; you spent all your time focusing on the business and me. She knew the au pair better than she knew us. That is what I regret. So, no, none of this is down to Katherine. If anyone is to blame, it’s us.’

  ‘How dare you,’ Viola spat back. ‘I worked so hard because I was trying to keep us from sinking under the weight of your self-doubt. All that “Oh, I can’t do it, the words aren’t coming”, and all that self-indulgent crap you used to sprout endlessly – and still do. You were the writer, but it was always me that had to save you. So, don’t blame me for not being around more for Imogen, for not being able to save her.’

  He turned away from both of us.

  ‘What do you want me to say, Viola? To do? Nothing will bring Imogen back, you know that,’ I said in a low voice. The unreality of the situation was starting to register, the twisted way fate had worked to bring us face to face after all these years.

  ‘I’ve watched you with your children and your family. It’s not the perfect family, is it?’

  ‘What do you mean, you’ve watched me?’

  ‘It’s so easy these days to spy on someone. That laptop we gave you? It has a camera and software installed so that I could see you, watch you as you anguished over your pathetic manuscript, watch you explain to your husband about your little hobby and how you couldn’t find your antidepressants. Yes, that was me too. I wanted to toy with you, cause you just a fraction of the anguish you have caused me, maybe push you back into that institution where you belong.’

  ‘You what?’ Sam said. He slammed down his whisky glass, making the decanter rattle against the table. ‘What the hell is the matter with you?’

  ‘You took my pills that day, the day you were in my house. Did you drug me that night too? When I came to sign the contract?’

  ‘Annoyingly, I don’t think I gave you enough. Still, it’s been fun tormenting you. Now perhaps you can have a small inkling of the torment I have lived with.’

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How had I been so trusting, so stupid?

  ‘Did you ever intend to represent me?’ I asked.

  Viola sighed. ‘Your novel is shit, Katherine. It would never get published in a million years.’

  I felt my soul crumble.

  ‘Viola, when did you get to be so cruel?’ Sam said. ‘I don’t even recognise you any more.’ He walked over to me. ‘Katherine, don’t listen to her. She’s just trying to hurt you. She’s done this to me for years, wearing me down bit by bit until there’s a mere husk left, until I don’t know where I end and she begins.’ He turned back to her. ‘That’s why I was leaving you for Lydia. Because I’d come to hate you – but the truth is that you can’t function without me. That’s what you can’t handle. You are nothing without me.’

  ‘That may be true, but I don’t ever intend to find out.’

  I wasn’t listening to them any more as they hissed and spat at each other. I was thinking about the day Viola had walked away from school with my daughter, now wondering what her true intentions had been, how far she would’ve gone if I hadn’t turned up when I did. The thought made me feel physically sick and instantly enraged. I had let this woman into my home and she had thought I was so weak and misguided that she could pluck and pull me in whatever direction she wanted. It was one thing to toy with me, but to use my children as a weapon against me was reprehensible.

  Then I thought about the abortion and the years of guilt I had wrestled with over my decision not to keep the baby, how I’d convinced myself at the time that Imogen’s accident was payback in some way. I thought about my mother, my father, Paul – all of it rushing through my mind as if on a ticker tape, their disappointment at what I had become, the choices I had made, the fact that I had never truly forgiven myself for either the abortion or Imogen and had been self-flagellating all this time without realising it. And then I thought about Lily and Jack embodying everything I had done right and I felt a tumour of rage expand and grow inside of me until I could taste the green pus of it in my mouth.

  ‘No wonder Imogen took refuge in books. So would I if I had you as a mother. I would want to get as far away from you as possible,’ I said, my voice low. ‘What I find hard to believe is how such a perfect, sweet, placid child could come from a poisonous witch of a woman like you.’

  Viola paled. I saw her eyes flick to the knife, still lying on the table, lemon juice pooling on the blade. She lunged at it with a growl and reared at me like a feral bear. Suddenly I felt cold and vacuous, as if all the air had been pushed out of me.

  27

  I’m struck by how cold it is.

  Not in a ‘hello Winter, it’s been a while’ kind of way that can be fixed by putting on a jumper. More like a freezing draught blowing through my bones and wrapping around my insides like a vapour. I expect to see my breath exhaling in puffs from my lips, but there is nothing there.

  From the edge of the room, I am an enthusiastic spectator to the drama – or farce – that is playing out in front of me.

  Sam is standing, ramrod straight, his hands clenched in tight fists. He isn’t making a sound, but his body is shivering and his face is a white mask, the lips forming a small ‘o’.

  Viola is standing over me, her face gurning. She has blood on her hands and she is shouting at me, spittle flying from her curled lips, but I can’t make out the words over the whooshing in my ears.

  I look down and see what the fuss is all about. I have fallen back onto the couch, but I’m sitting upright, my arms slumped at my side, as though waiting patiently for someone to offer me a piece of the Victoria sponge. The hilt of the knife is protruding from my stomach, a russet red stain spreading across the beige of my pullover. A flap of material is bulging over the knife, grotesque in its similarity to flesh.

  I look back at Viola, my mouth now mirroring Sam’s in shock.

  How the hell did we get here when half an hour ago Sam had suggested putting the kettle on and getting the good teacups out?

  *

  Sam lurched into action, screaming at Viola, ‘What have you done? What have you done?’ He grabbed her by the arm and flung her a
way from where she towered over me. He grabbed a handful of the newspaper cuttings, the closest things to hand, but he didn’t seem sure what to do with them. He covered the wound with them, patting at the blood, his movements pathetic and ludicrous. ‘I can forgive you a lot, Viola, but not this.’

  He threw the bloodied paper at her as she backed away, the pages floating to the floor like scarlet confetti, then came to kneel in front of me, pressing his bare hands uselessly around the knife.

  He was rambling. ‘She was our daughter and she died in a terrible accident, but you have tarnished her memory forever with your hatred and bitterness. And this? This?’ He stepped back from me, blood staining his splayed fingers. ‘I can’t bear to look at you.’ But then he did. ‘Lydia was right about you, wasn’t she? She said that I should be careful, that you were manipulating me, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt. I wanted us to remain amicable, I felt I owed you that after we had shared so much pain. But she was right. You want to control everything around you and what pains you the most about losing Imogen is that you had no control over it.’ He was shoving and prodding her, his face up in hers, his spittle falling on her cheeks now and his hands leaving bloody imprints on her chest.

  I watched them with fascination as the numbness spread through my body. I could see my bag on the couch next to me. My phone would be in there. I needed to call someone, but I couldn’t will myself to move.

  Viola backed away from Sam. ‘Lydia, always Lydia, your darling publisher. I never understood your attraction to her, what you saw in her. She was pretty, sure, but she didn’t look so pretty when she was lying mangled on the side of the pavement. Someone should’ve told her to wear a helmet.’

  Sam stopped abruptly, letting his hands fall to his sides. ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I had to sort that mess out, like I’ve had to sort out all your messes. She was going to expose us, make us look like frauds. It would’ve ruined my business, your career, our reputations, everything. But you were too smitten to see what the consequences would be. It is such a shame that car door opened when it did.’