No answer. Not even a machine. And he’s been trying all morning. With a bitter sigh, Robert White replaces the telephone receiver on Fanny’s desk –
his
desk – and gazes disconsolately down at the mountain of papers she left behind her. His victory, it occurs to him belatedly, has come at a cost. There is an absurd amount of work to do. He had no idea…
It is ten o’clock on the morning of Fanny’s attempted dawn flit. Robert is a mere hour into his honorary head-mastership and although assembly was fun, when he sat on the stage where Fanny had sat and grandly proclaimed himself leader (to a deafening silence from the children), the novelty is already beginning to wear thin.
His class has once again been put in front of a video (
Are We Being Served?
since it was at the top of the pile) and Linda Tardy is sitting at the back of the room, reading
House Beautiful
and eating a tuna sandwich.
In the mean time, he has forms to fill in, allegations to substantiate and a meeting with the vicar in an hour, who is extremely unhappy at the loss of Fanny, and demanding immediate corroboration for the charges against her. Which
corroboration, of course, Robert can’t provide until either Kitty and or Clive or Geraldine deign to answer their fucking telephones.
Kitty waddled off out of the village hall last night, promising to get a written statement from her daughter. Scarlett was meant to bring it in with her this morning, but so far she hasn’t even turned up. Ditto Oliver Adams. In fact, Robert’s not heard a squeak out of Ollie’s parents for two days.
Robert feels a blast of pleasure, however, as he buzzes through to Mrs Haywood the glass-eyed secretary –
his
glass-eyed secretary. ‘Mrs Haywood?’ he yells, buzzing away. ‘Mrs
Haywood
!’
But she doesn’t answer at once.
He buzzes and yells, intermittently, for longer than it takes, he thinks, for an old woman with one eye to go to the toilet and back; for longer than it would take her to make a cup of coffee and go to the toilet and back. Finally, he gets up from behind his own desk and makes his way into her room.
Her desk is bare. Her coat and bag are gone. Mrs Haywood has disappeared.
The bitch
. Without so much as a—
‘Ahem…Excuse me, Mr White?’
A child’s voice. Robert spins around. ‘
What?
’
Eight-year-old Chloe Monroe is standing shyly behind him. ‘The video’s ended.’
‘Well? Watch it again.’
She sighs. ‘We’ve already watched it a lot of times.’
‘And I suppose you think you know all there is to know, do you, about the service industry in the Midlands? I doubt that very much, madam. Indeed, I do.’
‘Also, Mrs Tardy’s fast asleep.’ Chloe’s pretty face breaks into a grin. ‘Her shirt’s popped open and you can see her –
you know – boobies. And also, I think she’s about to fall off her chair.’
He sighs. ‘Well, wake her up then, for crying out loud! And put the video on again…And Chloe, when she wakes up, tell her I’m going out for a second. OK? I’ll be back in half an hour.’
It’s a three-minute walk from the school to the Old Rectory, and another beautiful morning in Fiddleford. But Robert shivers as the warm, fresh air touches his face, and heads for his Fiat Panda. He drives through the village, mind humming with worry, and oblivious, as ever, to its unassuming loveliness. Unaware of the soft morning sun, the bluebells, the stitchwort and periwinkles bursting from green banks by the side of the road, deaf to the peal of the Fiddleford church bells striking the hour – and profoundly irritated when his path is blocked only metres from the top of the Old Rectory drive, by the slow progress of Charlie Maxwell McDonald and his herd of heifers as they move from one field to another.
Nothing seems amiss to his unobservant eyes as he finally turns in towards the house. He steers down the winding drive, rehearsing what he will say to Geraldine when he finds her. He is angry with her. Angry and hurt. And he intends to use both of those words – before she gets a chance to reprimand him for having laid his pupil-abuse allegations against Fanny without first consulting her.
‘Angry-and-hurt. Angry and
hurt
.’ She was supposed to be on his side. They were supposed to be working together and yet for two days he’s heard nothing but silence. He feels nervous as he slams the car door. ‘Angry
and
hurt…And let down and disappointed.’
He rings on the doorbell. It resonates shrilly through the silence…The absolute silence.
The front door is closed. Robert glances behind him. But
the cars, he thinks, might be parked at the back. He looks up. The shutters, put on by the Adamses at such vast expense, are all closed tight. He peers through the letter-box. There is no sign of life in the hall. Nor any furniture, come to that. Did there used to be furniture in the hall? He can’t remember.
He steps away and his feet crunch noisily on the Adamses’ crispy new French-imported gravel. The house is empty, closed up,
deserted
. They have taken a holiday, perhaps. Odd. In the middle of all that’s been going on. It’s only when he turns out of the drive, back towards the school, that he notices the ‘FOR SALE’ sign attached to the gatepost.
Impossible
, he thinks, slamming on the brakes. Without the Adamses he is lost. He feels a flurry of fear. Why hadn’t they called him? How could they desert him at a time like this, just when everything was going so well?
Robert parks the car and crosses the road to the post office. Mrs Hooper always knows what’s going on.
‘That’s right, Mr White,’ says Mrs Hooper, coldly. She’s just had the General in, bringing her up to date. She knows what happened at yesterday’s governors’ meeting, and she’s a supporter of Fanny. Even so, she can never resist the opportunity for a gossip. ‘The Adamses upped and offed, day before yesterday. Middle of the night. And frankly I don’t know of anyone who’ll miss them.’
‘I will!’ Robert cries.
‘Oh, well. Yes, I dare say
you
will.’ Mrs Hooper glances through the shop window behind Robert, gives a wave to Macklan Creasey, walking past with his arm wrapped tightly around his new fiancée, Tracey Guppy. They look so happy together, she thinks, and so happy when they came in earlier to tell her the news. Like they were made for each other. Just looking at them makes her smile.
‘But are you certain they’ve gone?…Mrs Hooper?…Are you absolutely
certain
?’
She looks back at Robert. It wipes the smile off her face. ‘Of course I’m certain,’ she retorts. ‘I wouldn’t tell you if I wasn’t. Have you come here to buy something, Mr White?’
‘But why?’ he wails. ‘
Why would they suddenly leave like that?
’
She shrugs. ‘He’s got the law after him, apparently.’
‘No!’
‘Evidently, Mr Adams was into some insurance-fraud thingummy. So I’m told.’
‘No!’
‘Of course, everyone knew the business down in Lamsbury was doing badly…’
‘Yes.’ (Robert hadn’t.)
‘And these high flyers,’ continues Mrs Hooper, ‘they don’t like it when things don’t go their way…So, yes. Done a moonlight flit. And I don’t suppose we shall ever see them again.’
‘But that’s so…extraordinary,’ says Robert. ‘I’m shocked.’
Mrs Hooper shakes her head. ‘I never liked them myself. They were snobs. Especially him.’ She shivers. ‘He was a cold fish.’
‘Oh, but it’s awful, Mrs Hooper. It’s awful. It’s just awful…I just don’t know what to say…’
‘Right,’ she says, briskly. ‘Are you buying, then?’
‘Mmm?’
She stares at him. ‘What can I get you, Mr White?’
‘Oh! Yes. Sorry.’ He dithers. Casts about for the cheapest thing.
‘Enjoying ourselves, are we, now we’ve booted poor Fanny Flynn out of the job?’ She folds her arms. ‘I don’t believe a word of it, by the way. All this nonsense about abusing the kids. You should be ashamed of yourself.’
‘How much are the Tunes?’
She folds her arms. ‘I expect you’ll have your work cut out now, won’t you, following a lady like Miss Flynn. She was doing a super job. All the parents liked her.’
‘I suppose Lockets are more expensive, are they? Because of the honey.’
‘The children must be ever so upset.’
‘Oh! You’ve got Fisherman’s Friends. I’ll take them.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ll be showing your mug at the darts and croquet tomorrow? I wouldn’t if I were you.’
They finish the transaction in silence, and Robert trips hurriedly out on to the street again.
‘Robert,’ says Macklan pleasantly. He’d been waiting for him, leaning against the wall to the side of the post office door, just out of sight.
Robert jumps. Spins around. ‘Oh. Hello, Macklan,’ he says uncertainly. ‘Nice day.’
Macklan straightens up, takes what might appear to be a friendly hold of Robert’s arm, just above the elbow. ‘Where are you headed, then?’
Robert glances at the hand, callused from the years of carpentry; alarmingly strong. ‘Ow,’ says Robert.
‘Come,’ says Macklan lightly, giving the arm a pull.
‘What – what are you doing? Ow, Macklan, you’re hurting me!’ Robert glances at Macklan’s face. It is barely recognisable, warped with hatred. ‘Come on. This way. I want to tell you a little secret, OK? A little secret between you, me and Tracey.’
‘
What secret?
’ Robert tries to ask. But his voice fails him. ‘What—’ It sounds like a mouse squeak.
‘
What secret?
’ Macklan finishes for him. ‘Tracey and me just want to have a little chat with you,’ he says.
But where Macklan takes him, back down the drive of
the deserted Old Rectory, and to the woodland beyond, Tracey is nowhere to be seen. Tracey has gone home, to her new home. She wants to concentrate on babies’ names and wedding dresses and
happy things
, and she knows exactly what is going on.
By the time Robert is strong enough to drag his bruised and bloodied body back to his car it is early evening, and the vicar and the two men from the Diocesan Council with whom he had arranged meetings, have long since been and gone. There are (though he doesn’t know it) seven messages from the LEA on the school answer machine, six from angry and worried parents, nine from the Diocesan Council, five from the vicar, five from Atlas Radio, six from the
Western Weekly Gazette
, one from the
Daily Telegraph
, and one from Mrs Haywood the glass-eyed secretary, resigning.
It is Friday. He has, he thinks, as with shaking hands he starts up his faithful Fiat Panda, at least the weekend to recover.
But when he gets back to his house he finds Mrs Guppy lurking: Mrs Guppy and a rusting metal stick, waiting to make him feel at home.
And at some stage in her barbaric welcoming ceremony she happens to whack him, with her metal rod, right there where he always aches the most. And she whacks him in such a way that it would be a miracle if he ever felt erotic pleasure again.
But really, given Mrs Guppy’s track record, and her general hatred of men, he is very lucky to have been left alive at all.
Much earlier that same morning Fanny had not taken long to realise that, since she was anyway stuck in Fiddleford until Solomon returned with her keys, and since she was keen not to bump into anyone while she waited, she might just as well take up his annoying invitation, and spend the day hiding out in his house.
Solomon’s house, invisible from the street, can be approached by car only via a longish detour; its short drive forks off from a lane behind the village which loops up behind the Manor and on towards Kidstead-St-Vincent. It is more easily approached by foot. From her car, parked outside number 2 Old Alms Cottages, Fanny and Brute needed only to cross the road, walk forty yards to the old stone wall separating Solomon’s garden from the village street, find the small weather-beaten door, half-hidden behind ivy, and push it open. Fanny had walked past the high wall often enough – and often found herself wondering what lay beyond it. She had imagined something plush and vulgar – something, perhaps, to match Solomon’s cars and laugh – but she misjudged him.
Hawthorne Place, long and low, was more of a large
cottage than a house. Painted a warm pinkish orange to complement the dark red soil, it stood in a sweeping private garden enclosed on each side by old stone walls. Walls which looked, to Fanny, as though they were emerging not from the earth but from dense clouds of wild flowers: foxgloves and cow parsley, forget-me-nots and meadowsweet. To one side, water trickled gently from an ancient russet-stoned church font (rescued by Solomon many years ago from a junk shop in Barnstable); to the other was a terrace surrounded by giant pots of wild geranium. And around the terrace lay a vast, sweet-smelling lawn, long-grassed, daisy-speckled and dotted with fruit trees.
Fanny stood quite still, drinking it all in, enchanted. She might have lingered longer, only fear of Solomon’s children spotting her there, roaming about at five in the morning, drove her, eventually, to continue on to the front door and ring the bell.
Sabine, the Creasey children’s Filipina nanny, is usually quite detached from activity in the Creasey household. But when she opened her employer’s front door and glimpsed first Brute, and then Fanny’s angry, messy, defensive early-morning face, she began to laugh.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing funny. Nothing funny,’ she said, pushing back the door to let in Fanny and her dog. ‘Mr Creasey already say you’re coming. I got you breakfast.’ At which point she started laughing again, and continued to laugh as she ushered Fanny and Brute through the hall, which smelt of ancient, polished wood and wild flowers, to the breakfast room.
It was a lovely room, small and square, with a large, east-facing window, through which the early-morning sun streamed in. The walls, painted yellow, were crowded with artwork from different centuries and different corners of the
globe. An old Tabriz rug covered most of the wooden floor, and in the middle of the room was a round oak table on which Sabine had laid newspapers and food. Fanny was hungry, she realised; actually, she was famished. She hadn’t eaten properly since the day before yesterday. Now, freshly sliced mango, lime and papaya gleamed at her enticingly beside a basket of giant croissants. There were saucers of strawberry jam and marmalade, and a jug of steaming coffee.
‘Wow!’ she said, staring at it. ‘Is that for me?’
Sabine laughed again. She said the children weren’t due to get up for at least another hour, and that anyway they only ate Coco Pops. ‘Solomon said you’re skinny. But all his ladies are skinny!’
‘Actually, Sabine, I’m not—’
She ordered Fanny to sit down, and disappeared into the kitchen to fetch bacon, sausage, mushrooms and scrambled egg.
Between them, Fanny and Brute ate everything, making Sabine, when she came in a little later, rock with laughter yet again. ‘Nothing funny,’ she said again, wiping her eyes. ‘No no. Nothing funny! All the other ladies just pushing it here, pushing it there. But you – not like the others. You more like a boy, I think.’
‘I’m
not
,’ snapped Fanny. ‘Actually, Sabine, I am not one of Solomon’s “other” ladies. I’m not…And I’m not like a boy, either. I’m just a – person.’
‘OK, OK. Whatever you like. Person.’
‘Anyway, I shared it with Brute.’ She glanced at her watch; still only six o’clock. ‘So – anyway. Anyway…’ She felt a fool for having reacted so strongly. ‘Thanks for a lovely breakfast…D’you want a hand with the washingup?’
Sabine said no, but Fanny felt uncomfortable leaving her with it, so they went together to the kitchen and stood side
by side at the sink, washing and drying in an oddly companionable silence, interrupted only by the occasional guffaw from Sabine.
Fanny couldn’t quite face the children, so at the sound of their rising she left Sabine on her own, and went to hide out in the spare bathroom. She was lying back in a richly scented bubble bath, revelling in a first-of-the-day cigarette, when Sabine yelled at her through the bathroom door to pick up the telephone, attached to the wall beside her.
It was Solomon, calling from the motorway.
‘It’s beautiful, this place,’ she said. Relaxed and warm and well fed; much too comfortable to remember to be angry, or even miserable. The world and her troubles all seemed a very long way away. ‘I’m having a cigarette in the bath.’
At the other end of the telephone, Solomon nodded. Smiled to himself. ‘Glad you like it. Sabine tells me you enjoyed breakfast.’
‘Yes.’ Fanny exhaled, watched the smoke from her cigarette mingle with the rising steam. ‘Don’t know why, she thought it was hilarious.’
‘So. Have you done any thinking?’
‘What? Oh.’ It brought her back down to earth. She sat up.
He heard the water dripping from her; put the image aside. ‘Have you done any thinking yet?’ he said again.
‘Er, no. Sort of been eating breakfast and things,’ and feeling weirdly, eerily disconnected. Exhaustion, perhaps. But she couldn’t remember having felt so mellow in years. What was the matter with her? ‘So I’ve not quite—
Shit!
’
‘Ah-ha!’ said Solomon, who knew only too well. ‘That’s what comes of smoking in the bath.’
She laughed.
‘So,’ he said yet again. (Always keen for a plan, Solomon is. Action Man. Doesn’t believe in – is incapable, actually –
of allowing situations to fester.) ‘Have you thought about what you’re going to do?’
‘By the way,’ she said, ‘it may not sound like it at the moment, because I’m in the bath, but I am extremely –
incredibly
– angry with you. You had absolutely no right to—’
‘Obviously. If it weren’t for me you’d be sitting in a motorway café somewhere between here and Bridgwater, I imagine, crying your heart out and wondering why the bloody hell, at the age of thirty-three, or whatever you are—’
‘Thirty-four.’
‘—your life is still in such a total fucking mess.’
He was right, of course. If she weren’t so exhausted, and so well fed and so damn comfortable, she’d be sobbing now. In fact, she didn’t understand why she wasn’t. Lying there talking to Solomon, hearing his voice, making herself at home in his bathroom, she felt as though nothing much about her life needed improving. She wished she could be motivated to pull herself together.
‘I woke up the General, by the way,’ Solomon continued, ‘and he’s filled me in on what happened yesterday. He says Robert White doesn’t have a leg to stand on.’
‘The General said that?’ Fanny was flattered by the General’s unconditional support, and touched by it. ‘Very kind of him. But he’s wrong. You’re not allowed to kiss the children. Or poke them on the forehead. I shouldn’t have—’
‘Oh, nonsense,’ said Solomon dismissively. ‘There’s a “For Sale” sign up outside the Old Rectory. Have you seen it?’
‘Is there?’ she sighed. ‘Beautiful house, isn’t it? Wasted on them…I wonder who’ll buy it.’
‘The Adamses have gone. Done a runner, apparently. Lots of rumours as to why. But anyway it means—Oh, bugger. Police car. Wait there. Incidentally, I think you should get
out of that bath. Or add some cold water, maybe. You’re sounding as though you’ve had a lobotomy.’ He dumps the telephone on the passenger seat, waits for the police car to pass and picks it up again. ‘Gone. Good. Are you still in the bath?’
‘Yes.’ But she sounded alert now. ‘Solomon, if the Adamses have gone…’
‘Exactly. It means the boy won’t be around to back up Robert White’s story.’
‘But there’s still Scarlett Mozely,’ Fanny said quickly, to douse any sparks of hope – her own or Solomon’s. ‘And I did. I
kissed
her. I saw her work for the first time and I was so excited I kissed her. And she was
mortified
. I had to apologise afterwards.’
‘Does Scarlett like you?’
‘Well, yes…I would have thought so. I mean,
yes
. But Kitty doesn’t. Kitty hates me.’
‘But if somebody could speak to Scarlett…’
‘Scarlett’s completely under her mother’s thumb. Kitty’s going to tell her what to say, and she’ll say it. She’ll do anything Kitty tells her, poor little thing. In any case,’ Fanny added irritably, as if suddenly noticing she’d been drawn into the wrong conversation, ‘it doesn’t matter any more. They’ve suspended me. Or rather, I’ve resigned. And I’m gone. So that’s it. As soon as you give me back my keys.’ She made her voice light, tried to make it sound carefree. ‘I’ll stop smoking in your bathroom and leave. I’ll be out of your life completely.’
A pause. Solomon was thinking hard. ‘It’s my darts and croquet party tomorrow,’ he said, as if suddenly remembering.
‘Yes…I know. I’ll be sorry to miss it.’
‘Well, don’t, then. Stick around. It’s only one more day.’
‘
What? No
, Solomon. The last thing I want—’
‘At least you could say goodbye to people. Oh, shit. Got to go. The buggers are flashing me. They’re pulling me over. Must have been following me all this time. I’ll see you later, Fanny. Have a good day. Help yourself to whatever you want. Except the children, of course. I’d like to keep them.’ With a satisfied smile, Solomon hung up and sped right on towards London. There were no police anywhere near him this time, and he was making excellent time.