The Finishing School

by Joanna Goodman

  After a two-hour nap, Kersti and Jay have supper at the inn, in its traditional wood-beamed pub with planked floors, paneled wood walls, and knotty pine tables sturdy enough to endure centuries of pint-slamming. They both order the shepherd’s pie.

  “I know we’ve talked about this,” Jay says, drawing closer to her. “But now that we’re actually here, are you sure you want to go see this creep tomorrow?”

  “I need to see him,” she says. “I want answers.”

  “You think he has them?”

  “I think he has some,” she says. “At the very least, I want him to know I have his dirty little love notes. I want him to remember what he did, and know that I know. I want to see his face when he reads them in front of me.”

  “He’s not the one who pushed her, though,” Jay says. “He wasn’t there. That much you know for sure.”

  “Doesn’t matter. If it hadn’t been for their affair, Cressida wouldn’t have wound up a vegetable for life. The fact is she was sixteen when it started. Regardless of how selfish or callous she was, she was still impressionable. He was the adult, and he took advantage of her—”

  “And you’re going to make him pay?”

  “No one else did,” Kersti says. “Look around at this charming little village. He’s teaching at one of the most prestigious schools in England. It’s a storybook. Tell me how he’s ever paid for what he did?”

  “I’m not disputing the fact that he’s a douchebag. I’m just saying I don’t want you to come away from this more upset or unsatisfied than you already are.”

  “It seems to me like he got off scot-free,” she says. “I want to let him know I’m still out there and I know, and I’ll never forget, even if he has. Besides,” she adds, “I want to ask him flat out if he thinks his ex-wife might have pushed Cressida off her balcony.”

  “He’s not going to tell you.”

  “Not with words,” she says. “But he’ll have a tell.”

  The next morning, Kersti leaves Jay sleeping in the lumpy four-poster bed and goes downstairs for a delicious English breakfast of eggs and bacon in the shaded courtyard. The sun is shining, though it’s weaving in and out of the clouds, not quite sure if it’s going to stay. A late spring breeze curls around as it passes through the courtyard, carrying with it the sweet fragrance of phlox from the inn’s garden. Kersti gazes distractedly at the footbridge, which she can see from where she’s sitting, her mind on Mr. Fithern.

  You may not remember me, but I was Cressida’s best friend at the Lycée. . . .

  She checks her phone for the time.

  “More tea?” the server asks her.

  “No, thank you,” Kersti says, lifting her new unwieldy body out of the chair. “Can you tell me what bus I take to get to the St. Alden’s School?”

  “It’s just up the London Road a few miles,” she says. “I can ask Nigel to drive you. We’ve got a car.”

  “That would be great,” Kersti says. “I appreciate it.”

  St. Alden’s is much the same as London Colney—a secluded, picturesque English village of weeping willows and hobbit-style cottages clustered around its most precious jewel, the ancient abbey. The abbey itself sits imperiously on a hilltop, where it has watched over the tranquil village since the eleventh century. Its long nave inclines up toward the sky, like it’s proudly thrusting out its chin. The pomp and magnificence of the building, with its two turrets, central cross tower, and fabled setting, is breathtaking.

  She walks along the hill toward the sprawling campus of St. Alden’s School, which faces the abbey on the west side. She easily finds the main building, a great stone and redbrick castle with white dormer windows and the words st. alden’s school main entrance carved into its façade. In the front office, she tells the secretary she’s a former student of Mr. Fithern visiting from Canada and asks if there would be an appropriate time to see him today.

  “Mr. Fithern’s on the field all morning for PE,” the secretary says. “He’ll be there till morning break. Best to wait out by the cricket pitch for him.” She points out the window to a vast field behind them. “See out past the rugby field?”

  “I’ll find it. Cheers.”

  Kersti strolls the grounds, not in any rush. She still has an hour before he’s done. She’s nervous and excited, still can’t quite believe she’s here and about to see Mr. Fithern. The Lycée legend and likely link to Cressida’s tragic ending.

  When she reaches the cricket pitch, she sits down on one of the teak benches on the sidelines and scans the field. She spots him immediately, wearing Dockers and a light blue button-down, holding a clipboard and calling out to the boys who are running around in white uniforms. How anticlimactic, she thinks. She remembers his spiky black hair and Doc Martens boots from back in the nineties, and realizes what a disappointment aging is, what a status leveler. The sex symbol of her youth is now a balding cricket coach in Dockers.

  He notices her sitting there and does a double take. She can tell he’s trying to place her—he’s squinting and straining—and then a shadow of recognition comes over his face and his lips form a pencil-thin line. He remembers her. Their eyes lock and he holds up both hands, letting her know he’ll be another ten minutes. Then he turns away, back to his cricket game, his mind probably racing. She watches him with his students, not surprised by how much they seem to like him. He has an easy way about him, he always did, and Kersti can see how well he relates to boys. She can hear them from where she’s sitting, bantering, teasing, arguing.

  “Leadbetter’s just been in to bat, Mr. F.! How’s he up again?”

  “Wait till they’ve bowled out and then you’ll be up.”

  “Mr. F. I’ve been twelfth man since the beginning of the innings!”

  “Wide ball!”

  “Mr. F., that wasn’t a bloody wide ball!”

  “Peters, get your head out of your arse and bowl!”

  Kersti doesn’t have a clue what’s going on, but it looks like a cross between baseball and lawn bowling. The game finally wraps up and the boys all stampede off the field. Mr. Fithern approaches Kersti, his expression wary and serious.

  “You were at the Lycée in Lausanne,” he says, as she stands up to greet him. She can see up close his teeth are a bit yellow. She used to think he looked like Sid Vicious, which seems absurd to her now.

  “Kersti Kuusk,” she says. “I was Cressida Strauss’s best friend.”

  He flinches at the mention of Cressida’s name. Kersti can’t quite read him, but guesses a lot of shit must be churning behind his impassive face—guilt, embarrassment, discomfort, curiosity. Or maybe he’s contemplating having her removed from the grounds. “You’ve traveled to England to see me?” he asks, sounding quite stupefied. “After all these years?”

  “I’m actually on my way to Lausanne for their centennial.”

  He doesn’t acknowledge either her pregnancy or the Lycée’s birthday.

  “I really felt I needed to see you,” she tells him, as straightforward as she can put it.

  “I’m, uh, shocked, to say the least,” he stutters. “You’ve rather caught me off guard.”

  “Well, that was the point.”

  “It’s not easy to disappear these days, is it?” he says, laughing awkwardly. “Bloody LinkedIn.”

  “Not everyone wants to disappear.” She looks around. “You seem to have done very well. This place is magical.”

  “I’ve been very lucky.”

  “Yes,” she says. “You have.”

  He rocks back on his heels, watching her. He has a nervous energy, like an animal in a trap. Maybe he thinks she’s here to blackmail him.

  “Can I ask you something?” she says.

  “I imagine that’s why you’re here.”

  “Did you ever really love her?”

  He exhales a long breath. “I was young,” he says. “I married too young and too hastily. I was a kid myself—”

  “You were almost thirty. Cressida was sixteen.”

&n
bsp; “She was no ordinary sixteen. But that’s not the point, obviously. It was a mistake. A terrible mistake, one I shall never be able to undo or make amends for.”

  “You never went to see her.”

  “I hardly think that would have been appropriate,” he says, running a hand through what’s left of his thinning hair. “I was busy sorting out the mess I’d made of my marriage, my job. I’d hurt enough people, ruined enough lives. I wasn’t about to go to America and inflict more pain on poor Cressida and her family.”

  “You never answered my question. Did you love her?”

  “I thought I did. I really did.”

  “Mrs. Fithern told me you thought Cressida jumped.”

  “Mrs. Fithern?”

  “Your ex. Mrs. Brains-Chowne.”

  “You spoke to Annie?”

  Kersti nods, watching his pupils spread into black pools.

  “She said you thought Cressida tried to kill herself,” Kersti says. “To punish you because you didn’t want the baby.”

  Mr. Fithern turns gray, the color draining so quickly from his skin he looks like a cadaver. He glances nervously out to the field, making sure no players are straggling around within earshot.

  “What do you want from me, Kersti?” he says. “It was a lifetime ago. I fucked up, I was young and I fucked up. I hurt people. But I’ve tried to move on and be a better man—”

  “Cressida doesn’t get to move on.”

  “I didn’t push her off that balcony!”

  “Do you think your ex-wife might have?”

  He takes a step back, flabbergasted. “That’s what you’re here for?” he says. “Oh, good God, no. Of course not. Absolutely not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Annie?” he cries. “Annie? Really? Never.”

  “So you really do think Cressida jumped?”

  “I thought it was possible at the time, yes. She was a little . . . she was a very troubled girl, you had to have known that. She had a drinking problem. I wasn’t the first one to come along and cause damage. I found her like that.”

  “But Mrs. Fithern had to be angry,” Kersti says. “You humiliated her at the school where she was adored by everyone! We both know how much she adored Cressida, and she was the housemother on duty. How could she not have gone to her room to confront her? You do know that Magnus Foley told her about your affair that night?”

  “Yes, but Annie already knew. She knew. The way a wife knows. It wasn’t a shock hearing it from Magnus Foley. He didn’t trigger some rage that made her run up to Cressida’s room and throw her off the balcony. That’s ludicrous.”

  “She may have suspected about the affair,” Kersti perseveres. “But she didn’t know that any of the students knew. She found out from Magnus that night that everyone at the Lycée was about to find out.”

  “She’s barely a meter and a half!” he cries. “How could she possibly throw Cressida off a balcony?”

  “Cressida was wasted. It would have been easy to shove her—”

  “Exactly, Kersti. Cressida was wasted. She was reckless, careless, and she had a death wish at the best of times. She could have jumped, or she could have fallen by accident like they said. Hell, for all we know, she may have been standing on that railing like a tightrope walker. That’s the kind of girl she was, Kersti. Or have you forgotten?”

  Kersti remembers the car accident with Magnus. Remembers her leaning over her balcony railing and shouting, “I’m the queen of the world!”

  “I still don’t understand why everyone was so quick to rule out a crime,” Kersti says. “She had hurt so many people, your wife most of all. And what a coincidence Mrs. Fithern was the teacher on duty that night—”

  “Kersti, I don’t know who or what has planted this seed in your head after all this time, but Annie wouldn’t kill a mosquito if it was sucking her blood.”

  “The timing of Cressida’s fall prevented the scandal from erupting, and it also took care of the baby—”

  “I think you should go,” he says.

  “Are you protecting Mrs. Fithern because you still feel guilty about what you did?”

  He shakes his head. “I won’t stand here and have us both attacked,” he says. “I have to get back. Is there something else you want from me?”

  “One more thing,” she says.

  His shoulders slump.

  “Cressida’s mother gave me these,” she says, taking the letters from her handbag. “We’re going to pursue this. Deirdre may file criminal and civil charges for sexual abuse—”

  “What are they?”

  “I can only imagine the things Cressida must have written back to you,” Kersti says. “Actually, I can’t, but I do know that if Mrs. Fithern had ever found them . . . if she’d ever read them . . .”

  She hands him the notes and watches him read the first one, waiting for his shocked reaction, for the horror and shame to rush to his face as it all comes back to him. He reads the next one and another after that, until he’s read them all. His expression remains blank, bewildered. No tell.

  He looks up at Kersti and says, “I don’t understand. Who are they from?”

  “Cressida’s mother kept them. You’ve got to admit, they’re very disturbing. In the wrong hands, you can see they’re incriminating. You were going to leave your wife; the gossip would have destroyed her. These could be evidence if there’s ever an investigation—”

  “Evidence of what?”

  Kersti is beginning to lose hope that he might reveal some useful bombshell, some admission that, yes, Mrs. Fithern was angry. In fact, she was so enraged she threatened to kill them both, or something dramatic and prophetic like that.

  “I never wrote any of this,” he says. “That’s not my writing. Nor my, er, style.”

  “To C from C? Please. She told me what you were like. I saw the bruises. Who else could it be?”

  “I’ve no idea who the hell wrote these. It’s not my handwriting. I’d take a test if I thought it would assuage you, but I don’t think anything will.”

  “Who else could possibly have sent her these?”

  “Magnus?”

  “They’re from C. You’re the only C—”

  “I’m sorry, Kersti. I can see you’re still in a lot of pain, you’ve had no closure, I can understand that. But I’m as baffled as you. Cressida obviously had other lovers. I didn’t write those letters. Do whatever you want with them.”

  Not what Kersti was hoping to hear. She looks hard into his eyes, searching for that elusive tell that might betray him, something to reveal he’s lying, but there’s nothing other than genuine bewilderment. He doesn’t seem the least bit concerned about what she might do with these letters. Unless he’s the world’s best bluffer.

  “Maybe you should let it go,” he says. “If the Lycée wants something covered up, it’ll bloody stay covered up.”

  They stare at each other for a few tense moments before he turns and walks off.

  As she leaves the field, her heart is pumping. She’s excited, vibrating with adrenaline. She may not have heard what she wanted to hear today but the mystery is only deepening. Who the hell is C?

  She looks back once as Mr. Fithern disappears into one of the buildings and then she quickens her pace, almost running to get back to Jay and tell him her news.

  She’s going to officially abandon The Jewel of Reval and write this story, wherever it takes her. She can already feel that creative euphoria kicking in. It’s been there all along, percolating in her mind, teasing her, but until now she’s felt an obligation to finish the Estonian novel. No more. This story is demanding to be birthed. And it’s not just Cressida’s story; it’s Kersti’s story, too.

  Chapter 28

  LAUSANNE—June 1998

  A few weeks after the Charity Ball, Lille and Kersti are lying on Cressida’s bed, watching her straighten her hair—an arduous, painstaking process that she’s doing merely to kill time. The calendar beside her mirror has red X’s on every day, coun
ting down to graduation.

  The door is open and Mme. Hamidou walks past with the mail. As usual, Angela Zumpt is trailing after her like a loyal dog. She’s Hamidou’s pet, always telling on people who smoke in their rooms or stay up past curfew. Acting like she’s been specially appointed to enforce the house rules.

  “Cress-ee-da,” Hamidou says. “A package for you.” She tosses a padded manila envelope onto the bed and disappears, Angela at her heels.

  “Probably more bubble gum from Deirdre,” Cressida mutters, ignoring the package.

  “You don’t look like you,” Kersti says, as one-half of Cressida’s usually untamed hair lies flat and smooth against her perfect skull. The room smells of singed hair.

  “Good,” she says. “Maybe Magnus will hate it.”

  “You’re going to see him tonight?”

  Cressida sets the hot iron down on the edge of her sink. “I have to tell him,” she says, her lips making a pretty pout.

  “You’re going to tell him about Mr. Fithern?”

  “I’m going to tell him there’s someone else. I won’t mention Mr. Fithern. But I can’t keep doing this.”

  “But where can it go with Mr. F.?” Lille says, trying to be the voice of reason. “There’s no future.”

  Cressida’s pout explodes into a wide smile. “Charlie and I are going to travel around Europe this summer,” she confesses. “He’s leaving her.”

  “He’s leaving Mrs. F.?” Lille cries, horrified. “To be with you? But you’re his student—”

  “He’s in love with me. He’s going to tell her as soon as school ends.”

  “What about his job?”

  “He can teach anywhere.”