The Secretary

by Zoe Lea

  ‘You will never be Sam’s mother!’ I pushed her again, harder.

  She shook her head, opened her mouth to argue, but my push had made her lose her balance. She did a kind of dance, where she sidestepped over the rough ground and then she went down. I lost sight of her, but I heard her.

  Heard the bang as she went into the wood, and the crack, and as she screamed I realised where we were – the disused well.

  I swung my torch round and saw where she’d fallen, the crack in the wood. I went forward. She was gripping the sides, sat awkwardly at the bottom. Her face was pale as she stared up at me, and I could see the whites of her eyes. I heard her whimper. Saw her hands scrape at the stone on either side of her.

  ‘My leg,’ she said. ‘I think I’ve broken my leg.’ She let out a wail. A high-pitched cry full of pain.

  I looked around, desperately searching for something to lower in. When I couldn’t see anything, I got to the ground.

  ‘Here,’ I leaned over, put my arm down trying to reach her, but it was useless. She was about a foot away from me. Reaching as high as she could, moaning and crying.

  ‘I need a rope or something,’ I told her. ‘I need a better light. Hang on.’

  ‘Wait!’ she shouted as I scrambled to my feet. ‘Don’t leave me.’

  ‘I’ll be quick,’ I told her. ‘I just need to get a rope from the house. Or something. I think she’s got an old washing line and then I can get you out.’

  We stared at each other for a moment. She was panting, and in the semi-darkness I could see her fear, her pained expression. She winced. Let out a howl.

  ‘Hurry!’

  I ran inside my mother’s house, my heart pounding. I went into the kitchen, pulling open drawers and cupboards, and as I searched the words she’d said before she’d fallen became fresh in my mind. Stinging like a slap.

  I was a good mother, I hadn’t caused Sam’s behaviour. He was a fragile boy. My history of depression had nothing to do with how he was. I’d been so careful to keep it from him. To make my illness something separate. I’d never indulged his, I didn’t think. Or had I?

  I helplessly looked around, emptying drawers, and then I heard Will’s shouts for Sam. They sounded close. I abandoned my search and made my way back to the front of the house, panting and gasping. I saw Will and ran up to him.

  ‘It’s Becca,’ I told him and my mother, who’d now come back to the house. ‘She’s fallen down the well at the back. I can’t reach to get her out.’

  Will moved without speaking. The three of us ran, our lights breaking through the dark. We could hear her whimpering, making small sounds, as if in conversation before we got there.

  ‘Becca?’ Will shouted.

  And then far off, Becca’s reply. ‘Don’t come any closer!’

  The terror in her voice stopped us. Will’s light shone around, a pinprick of light breaking lines in the black, and then we saw him.

  Sam was standing over the well, his clothes filthy, even in the dim light.

  ‘Sam!’ His name escaped me before I could say anything else and he looked up. He looked up straight at me and he smiled. And then I saw what he was holding. He’d managed to lift up one of the flags at the opening of the well, rotated it around and was now levering it up, his face a sheen of sweat. It scraped against the other stones as he moved it and, from below, I heard Becca’s frightened cry. A terrified moan along with the grating of the stone as Sam gained purchase and began to tilt it forward.

  ‘Sam?’ I said, moving forward. ‘Sam, honey, what are you doing?’

  He looked up at me, his eyes alight.

  I heard Becca say something, between sobs, a strangled, pleading sound.

  ‘It’s all right, Mummy,’ Sam said, ignoring her, ‘I know what to do.’

  ‘Sam?’

  ‘I understand now, Dad,’ he said, as Will joined me at my side. ‘I’m not going to be soft any more. I know what to do. I have to get rid of the bullies. I have to stand up for myself. Auntie Becca has been playing jokes on us that aren’t funny. She’s a bully. She did that to our car. She’s not behaving nice. She wants to take me away. I know what to do, Mum showed me. You have to put them out of their misery.’

  Something clicked at the words and I suddenly saw very clearly what my son was about to do. How he thought he was doing the right thing. The hare that he’d watched me kill at the side of the road, how he’d heard me talk about Toby, all the times I’d told him to stand up for himself, to be brave. Sam had been paying attention and was now doing what I’d been telling him to do in the worst possible way.

  ‘NO!’ I went forward as Sam began to lift the stone flag. ‘Sam, no!’

  He looked at me then, the flag raised in his hands, Becca whimpering, and for a moment time stood still. For a moment he was unsure.

  ‘DROP IT!’ Will shouted, and I turned to tell him not to say that, not to use those words, because Sam would take it literally. ‘YOU DROP IT RIGHT NOW!’

  I ran forward but it was too late.

  Sam did exactly as Will told him, and dropped the flag.

  I didn’t stop running towards him. There was a moment’s silence as the stone flag plummeted down the well, and then the sickening sound as it hit her. The dull thud-like sound as her skull shattered. And I grasped Sam in my arms.

  THIRTY-EIGHT

  The police arrived minutes after Sam had thrown the flag on top of Becca. I’d forgotten I’d called them, asked them to send someone over to have a word about her threatening behaviour, and now she was dead.

  Will saw what had happened and began shaking, and it’s then that I wonder at my actions. I was calm suddenly. Collected. I knew exactly what I had to do.

  ‘Hello,’ the officer shouted, her torch cutting though the light. ‘Everyone OK back here?’

  ‘No,’ I screamed in answer, and there was real terror in my voice. ‘Someone is dead. My ex-husband just killed my friend.’

  Will looked up at me, and I stared back at him. Hadn’t he done it? Sam had only done as he’d asked.

  We never actually had the discussion where we decided that Will would confess to Sam’s crime. I told the police what had happened, and Will began to weep silently at the side of me while my mother took Sam back to her house, and he didn’t argue the case. Because Will knew. He knew what he’d done and he knew he was to blame. You can’t accuse an eight-year-old boy of murder, not when he’s just doing as he’s told.

  He nodded as I told them that Becca had been sending me messages and letters. He wept while they searched her mobile phone, finding all the texts she’d written out. I explained that they’d arrived in an argument, that Will wasn’t aware of Becca’s behaviour, and after she fell down the well he’d gone to save her and inadvertently pushed a loose stone on top of her instead.

  It was a terrible accident. It was manslaughter.

  My mother agreed it was all very tragic, and when Will was sent to prison, we decided to sell up and go. She couldn’t leave that house after my father died there, but after Becca had died there it was a different story.

  Glen had put the idea in my mind, without even knowing. A cruise ship, a tour of the world that lasts for months. Away from the crowds on the open sea. It was the perfect solution. Time away, time to start afresh. It took a while to persuade Sam, who didn’t want to go, but I told him it was for the best. There was no way I could go back to being the school secretary, back to the parents at the school gates, the teachers and their gossiping in the staffroom about what had happened. We needed to leave.

  My mother sold her house quickly and, for now, we’re all living on the ship. In six months we plan to go to Anglesey. Make a new life there with what money we have left over.

  I wrote Glen a letter, apologising. Telling him that I’d like to see him again. That by the time we get back in the UK, perhaps we can start over. Perhaps. And I wrote four more letters, anonymous ones.

  One to Ashley, one to Janine and one to Rob. Notes of heartfelt apo
logy. And I am genuinely sorry for what I did to them, for the anxiety and fear I caused. For the turmoil I must have put their children in.

  The last letter was to Toby Morley-Fenn. His mother never did go to the police, and after Becca died I never returned to the school. I wrote to him, telling him he was brave. I wrote words of what a great boy he was, how he was full of courage and strength. My letter was full of compliments because I couldn’t make it full of anything else. I wanted to explain my reasons, to tell him why I did that to him at the back of the school, but I found it hard to write down. Hard to explain that, in trying to protect my son, I hurt so many others.

  I never write to Will.

  But he writes to me.

  By law, I have to tell him where his son is, so he knows how to contact us, but I send nothing else. I don’t reply to anything. I don’t answer any of his questions or wonder how he is. I can’t. My priority is Sam. It always has been and always will be. Writing to Will would jeopardise that, and it’s a chance I can’t take. If I talk about what happened I might break down and everything would fall to pieces.

  He’s in his prison and I’m in mine.

  I do sometimes look at Sam and wonder if Becca was right. Did I encourage his behaviour? Was it my actions that made him think it was the right thing to do, dropping that stone on her head and killing her, and yes, I think it was. I have to take some of the blame. Even though I wasn’t the one to tell him to do it, he got the idea from me.

  Sam didn’t mean to kill Becca – it’s not like he’s a murderer or anything. He just thought he was teaching her a lesson. Like I’d taught Toby a lesson. He thought that’s what you did with bullies, that’s what you did with people who were in pain. I don’t think he would’ve dropped that flag over the side of the well at all if Will hadn’t shouted out to him. But it was my fault that he’d had the idea, and Will’s fault that he carried it out.

  We did that to him. As his parents. We provided the circumstances for our son to murder someone. We made him do it. We are to blame, not Sam.

  Sam’s the only one who’s innocent in all of this. He’s an eight-year-old boy, and I failed him. I’ve told him that he’s not responsible for Becca’s death. I’ve told him that she died of a heart attack in the well that night. I told him that Will had to go to jail for what he did to my car, and as an eight-year-old boy he believes me.

  For now.

  I’ve spared him that at least. My son doesn’t know he’s a killer, and I know it’s what any parent would do. Everything I did, all my actions, are what any good parent would’ve done. I believe that. It might be wrong what I did, but I did it for all the right reasons.

  And I can say that with certainty because it’s what ties us together in this secret pact, the pact that all parents are in. The unspoken understanding of love.

  The love we have for our kids, it cuts through all the bullshit and allows this kind of behaviour to take place.

  We are all agreed that we’d do anything for our kids, and as you read this, if you have children, ask yourself what you would’ve done?

  Let your innocent child be punished for the thoughts you put in his head? For him taking some words literally? For the mistakes you made while trying to protect them?

  No.

  Didn’t think so.

  We’d do anything for our kids. It’s the unspoken rule. The secret pact, and I’m no different to any other mother. I’m no different to you.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  There are so many people who have helped with this book and whom I would like to thank dearly. Firstly, to my family, to my mum and dad for buying me a typewriter back when I was a kid which sparked the ambition for me to write, and for their life-long belief in me even when the rejections were thick and fast. You showed me what it is to be a good parent and I can only hope I’m half as good.

  To Stephen, thank you for listening to every thought I had about this book (and every other idea that didn’t make it to the page), for your brilliant feedback, for chatting through issues, for your never-ending support and loving me the way you do. I take none of it for granted. To Aidan and Talia, you are the loves of my life and I’m so very lucky to have you both.

  To Kirsty Brennan, Jill Pilkington and Heather Peake for reading the early versions and for the wonderful advice and pointers. And to the rest of my family, thank you for always turning out, for the hilarious and uplifting messages and for knowing that you are always there. Your support and friendship is invaluable.

  Thanks also to Claire, Murt, Caz, Simon as well as Teresa and Gardi. Also, to my dear friend Paula Daly, thank you for the wine, the meals, the endless chats where we don’t take a breath and for matching my giddiness in all things literary. I’d also like to thank Rachelle Upton for telling me a story of revenge over dinner one evening that was both horrifying and inspiring.

  A massive thank you to my wonderful agent, Jane Gregory, and the rest of the team: Stephanie Glencross, Mary Jones and Laura Darpetti. I am very fortunate to have such a great team of people behind me. To my brilliant editor, Emma Beswetherick, your enthusiasm for this book has been wonderful and thanks also to the brilliant Hannah Wann, Charlotte Cole and the team at Piatkus.

  Finally, I would like to say thanks to all of those that work in schools whom I have come across past and present. I’m pleased to say that I have never met anyone like the staff I’ve written about in this book and have never observed anything other than compassion and care. And a shout out to all the parents and carers who wait at the school gates, who do the after-school clubs and activities resulting in missed weekends and evenings, who taxi children around, who wait up, who worry and generally put their kids’ wellbeing first – you have my admiration.