Rachel barely looked at anyone else, but then Gail was walking towards her, her neat grey bob as firm as ever. Gail, her fellow English teacher, suddenly rubbing Rachel’s upper arm, as if to warm her.
‘God, Rachel, this must be so wretched for you.’
Rachel’s heart thudded, one single beat, nothing more. She could only stammer. ‘Sorry . . . ?’
‘Being so close to it all.’
‘No. No. I mean, we’re all close to it, I’m not . . .’ Her throat closed to the air; no breath could eke in. Gail couldn’t know. She’d have no glimpse of what Rachel had done, of what she hadn’t done. Rachel gripped the mug in her fist so tightly it felt like the handle could rip from its roots.
‘I mean with Mia being such friends with Lily.’
The mug slipped to the floor. Rachel couldn’t move to clear it up, just watched as Gail rushed for napkins, dabbed the tea stain from the new blue carpet. No one knew what she had known. They didn’t know how she’d sat silently, with the knowledge stewing inside her. They didn’t know how she’d carried it around with her, feeling its heft in every moment.
Graham strode in at eight exactly. Rachel noticed he was straight-backed as ever, but there were creases in his suit. He must have been up since very early, or not slept at all. He didn’t need to say anything for the room to turn to him. In the fluorescent lights, he looked ashen.
‘Thank you for coming in. You’ve all heard the news. There is no point in going over it again.’ He was brusquer than usual; he’d lost the matey pauses and hand steeples. Rachel preferred it.
‘First of all, nothing is to be said to the press. Not a word. Not even if you think you are helping. We will issue a formal statement, but nothing more is to be said. I will deal with all press interaction.’
He stopped, swallowed, breathed, moved onto his next topic. There were no Blair hesitations now, no exhalations in the middle of phrases.
‘We will hold an assembly for all students at nine am. It is mandatory. Make sure all your forms attend. No exceptions.’
He seemed to speak in bullet points.
‘We’re obviously in an incredibly difficult and unpleasant situation.’
No one even nodded.
‘The school is already being watched very closely, and that isn’t going to stop anytime soon. We are of course going to work with the police in any way that will help to return Lily safely home, but we’re going to face intense scrutiny.’
It was so quiet that Rachel could hear the swallow of other throats.
‘Parents send their children to us for six hours a day, most days of most weeks, and we have a duty of care over each and every one of them. This is going to be very challenging indeed. People will make judgements, terrible things will be said and written, we will be accused of every oversight, every folly in the book. But we must be seen to stay calm and professional. We must be honest, to acknowledge if we could have done more, and make changes accordingly. We must rise above it. We must carry on teaching. We have no option. The parents need to feel like they can absolutely trust us. The students need to feel safe.’
Mutters of approval came from the group, even the odd clap. He sounded like a leader for the first time Rachel could recall. He turned as if to leave, then swung back around.
‘Also, I’m going to assume that none of you had any idea this was going on, but I advise you now – if you have anything to share, go to the police immediately. We will not be lenient if anyone has been protecting Mr Webb.’
No one was calling him Mark any more.
Rachel felt the blood flush her cheeks, felt the small of her back turn liquid. No one knew. No one would be examining her with particular interest. She didn’t have to calibrate every feature. As Graham left, the room sparked to life. Their comments reduced to squawks in Rachel’s head, a cacophony. Noise with no meaning. She closed her eyes against it.
A calm face came easily to Rachel, far more easily than to express what she was really thinking. There was no way to communicate that. There was no one she could possibly tell. The mood in the room had become brave; Graham’s speech had roused them to a consistent level of stoicism that enraged Rachel. She knew it was the only way to get through the next few days and weeks, but no one seemed furious enough. They should be inflamed; they should be calling Mark every name, every slur they knew; they should be screaming for some brutal form of rough justice; they should be hollering to lynch him, to string him up. What he’d done, what he was doing, was unforgivable, repulsive, it was against everything they stood for as educators. It blackened the reputation of all of them. Their fury was too tempered.
But they also seemed too harsh. Too quick to judge. No one had proved loyal enough to show empathy. He was their colleague, their comrade. They’d stood side by side with him as he faced the same stresses and tensions they all did, the same absurdly increased workload, the same eternally raised expectations, the same graphs and charts, the same bureaucracy, the same flaming hoops. And Mark stepped up more than anyone. Mark ran after-school science clubs two nights a week, sending water bottles flying through the air to demonstrate trajectory, determined to get the kids to grasp it, to master it, to seize that C grade at GCSE. Mark Webb was more dedicated than any of them. But no one would utter a word in his defence.
Rachel sat behind her concerned face, livid with every emotion that should be tearing around the room.
Rachel’s phone rang seconds after the lunch bell. It never rang at school, and seemed so much louder than necessary. The trills screamed through the classroom, as feet still scuffled out of the door.
Tim already knew the developments. They’d talked briefly the night before. She’d updated him on the news, explained who Mark Webb was. But here was his name in digital letters on her flashing screen.
‘Bloody hell, Rach, your school is all over the internet.’
He’d already known the facts, but they didn’t appear to have registered until he’d seen them on Twitter. His concern had suddenly triggered.
‘What a fucking creep! Totally unbelievable. Are you guys all okay?’
‘Tim, we spoke about this. It’s awful, but we’re as okay as possible.’ Rachel’s words echoed around the empty classroom. Transatlantic calls seemed to demand a volume, a clarity that felt absurd as she paced around the desks.
‘What a creep.’
That word, parroted from tabloids, was becoming sticky, unshakeable.
‘What was he like, this Mark Webb?’
‘I don’t know him well. He’s quiet. He seemed okay.’
‘It’s always the quiet ones, though, isn’t it? That’s what they say. Hiding all their twisted thoughts behind crap conversation.’
Tim was talking loudly too, not the corridor greetings he usually kept to, not the stilted words from that Cincinnati business hotel. That hotel room twelve hours away, half a day of flight. So many months had gone by. He worked every weekend, trying to cut the time down, but it always expanded. Six months had turned to eight, and his return date was now stuck deep into autumn, those cold months Rachel could barely imagine.
‘It’s bloody horrible, though. Is Mi going to be safe in school?’
‘Tim!’ The note she hit on the exclamation was familiar. She’d reached it so many times throughout their marriage. ‘Tim, it’s not a conspiracy. There aren’t packs of middle-aged men prowling the corridors, waiting to look up their skirts. We’re not pimping them out. Everyone is horrified. Horrified. It’s school. She’s totally safe.’
Tim laughed; a big yelp of a laugh that jabbed Rachel’s ear down the phone line. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry. It’s not funny. It’s not. You just paint a vivid picture, Rach.’
Tim had always been swift to find the wit in every situation. His reactions were so animated, they could lighten anything, but the playful edge in his voice grated on Rachel. It wasn’t over. It wasn
’t so distant that a joke was appropriate.
His voice changed. ‘I’m sorry, love, that was really insensitive. It’s just so hard to get my head around. This sort of thing doesn’t happen. It must feel totally surreal.’
‘It does. It’s like a weird dream.’
‘I can imagine, sweetheart.’
But Tim wasn’t there; he couldn’t possibly understand.
Mark could have used a grey Formica desk, like all the other teachers, but he’d chosen one with history. She’d felt the varnished grooves of its wood and wondered what else it had known. How many other hands had spread flat upon its surface? So many exercise books, salmon and slippery, equations scratched in biro, had piled on it, hundreds and hundreds of sheets of paper. Had anyone else been lifted onto it like they weighed nothing? Had anyone else looked at the ceiling lights from this angle, worried their legs were dangling foolishly? Was hers the first spine to run its full length?
The world had narrowed that afternoon. Just his breath and her breath, just the sound of no footsteps in the corridor, the click of his dry mouth. His whisper. ‘I’ve imagined this so many times.’ The tightness of his eyes was a challenge. The door might not be locked.
Sat at this desk, he had imagined her. Whilst his classes stumbled to calculate force by blending mass with acceleration, grappling with Newton’s thoughts, his mind had been on her. The feel of her, the smell of her. She couldn’t walk away, no matter who might knock on that door; she had to embody his thoughts. She took the lead, the way she imagined he’d have imagined, tugging at his tie, biting on her own lower lip, tilting her head to look up at him through her hair. Every noise made her tense, but his eyes were on her. She couldn’t let the light in them snuff out, couldn’t let the moment turn to ashes. She had to be his longing made flesh. Thighs bare on his wooden chair, shoulder blades pushed backwards, making her body into a parabola, a problem for him to solve. Her arms stretched to the full extent of the desk. Then, the realisation that she could accept sensations, that her body was a receptor as well as a transmitter. Her hair pooled on that thick varnish. Sensation after sensation, with no resistance. She’d let her head fall back against the grained wood.
As she walked down the corridor to her classroom, Rachel had to summon the swagger that usually came so easily. She forced her back to hold straight, her shoulders to sit low. She made the heels of her sandals click evenly as she strode. She managed to clear a gaggle of squawking Year 7 girls with no more than the raise of an eyebrow. She usually felt invincible in school. That day she had to force it, to mimic herself.
Three boys from the year above Mia were in the corridor ahead, blocking the way. Rachel had to consider how she would usually deal with the situation. She wasn’t a young teacher, but she was the only one to wear a leather jacket all spring, a fur-hooded parka all winter; the only one who could comment on their taste in music. She channelled archness in school, a brittle humour that could put even the cockiest little upstart in his place. She rounded on the tallest boy in the group. He held a half-eaten doughnut from the canteen in his hand. It wasn’t until he turned around that she saw who he was. He must have been in school for his final exam.
‘Aaron.’
The other boys turned to her, nudging one another in the ribs, snickering. Aaron seemed taken aback that she knew his name, but only stared.
Rachel prepared her voice. ‘Aaron Mitchell, could you kindly refrain from such public mastication?’
When Mark had pulled in and parked facing the water, it was the first time she’d seen the river properly. She was only faintly aware of it, lying on the edge of the town. He hadn’t waited, but got out of the car, instantly tugging his socks and shoes off. She’d thought he’d wanted to paddle. The cold water would have lapped against their toes, licked up their ankles. The bottoms of their jeans would get damp – they’d have feet that were white under their socks on the journey home – but it would feel incredible. She untied her trainers, pushed her socks into them, then rolled up her skinny jeans, padding down the grass to the water’s edge. She reached for his hand, but his hands were busy. He hadn’t stopped at his socks, but had pulled his T-shirt off, his trousers, until he stood in the gloom wearing nothing but snug black jockey shorts. He’d looked to her to follow suit, nodding towards her in encouragement. She shook her head.
‘Come on.’
‘No way!’
It was dusk, nearing full darkness with every minute. It was ridiculous. They couldn’t walk around naked so close to the main road. But he didn’t look away. She couldn’t say no to him, not when his eyes were on her. He didn’t look away until she’d peeled off her jeans, her top. The cool air hit her flesh. It was still weeks before the real heat would come. She wanted to jiggle on the spot, keep her blood moving, rub her arms, warm herself, but she stayed still for him. He walked towards her, now entirely naked, black and white in the half-light, like a film, like a still from long ago. He grabbed her hand and walked them towards the edge of the water. The river widened at that patch, splayed out into a pool. It was pretty for picnics. Children watched for fishes and frogs. The edges were shallow, but the centre – only metres out – grew rapidly deep. Signs all around warned of it. DANGER. STRONG CURRENTS. DEEP WATER. Together, they took one step in. The water was so cold, she felt it as pain rather than wetness. They gasped at the sensation. It was early May, and the air was beginning to warm with each day that passed, but the water still held the memory of winter.
They inched their way in, torturing themselves. There was no quick dunk, no reckless splash; instead they savoured the feeling. She couldn’t decide if she liked it or hated every second. She kept her arms high as they walked. Their eyes locked. His were wide – too wide, the whites bright in the dark. They stepped again, again, until the water was up to their knees. A stray wave flashed across the water, the wake from a lively fish or duck, and it lapped higher, into the soft, warm scoop at the back of her knees.
‘Oh, God!’
‘Isn’t it incredible?’ His hands clutched her fingers too hard. ‘When have you ever felt like this? When has your body ever felt so alive?’
Mark strode forwards, taking long steps as if he didn’t feel it at all. With her hand firmly in his grip, she had to keep pace. He wrenched her forwards. Every step seared, until their thighs were in the water, their waists. Her mouth gaped at the outrageous shock of the temperature on her groin. He didn’t stop, so she didn’t stop. The water crept up their torsos, covering her breasts. The water pooled into her bra, making it heavy and abrasive. She wished she’d left it on the grass with the rest of her things. The ground beneath their feet changed from solid earth to silt, grainy and shifting, and the water buoyed them up, so every step felt less firm. She forced her shoulders under the water, her eyes on Mark the whole time. They were together. It was their water. Once they were submerged, the sensation altered from one of temperature to something more textured. It wasn’t painful, exactly, but a constant pressure. She tried to submit to it, to embrace the wildness, to let herself get drunk on the glorious intensity, and not think about her clothes on the grass verge or how they would ever get out safely.
‘Rachel. I’m sorry. Can you talk for a bit?’ Cressida was in the doorway before Rachel reached her classroom. Rachel wanted to be alone, with the door closed.
‘Of course. Of course I can, is everything okay?’
Cressida tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear, seemed to bite her lips together from the inside. ‘I just wanted to talk outside of the staffroom, you know?’ Her expensive education was present in every word. She took every syllable right to its very end, letting the final sound trip off her tongue before starting the next.
They sat on adjacent desks. Sitting on the chairs meant for pupils always felt odd – too low, too cluttered – so they sat on top of the tables instead. Rachel’s classroom was a sacred space. She spent a whole Sunday every holiday, and troub
ling amounts of her own money, to transform it. She’d wash away every foot scuff, every slump mark on the walls. She’d put pads on the metal chair legs so they wouldn’t screech. She’d decorate the walls. Not with the Blu-tack other teachers used, not by spacing out some foolscap A4; Rachel hung frames and replaced the contents every term. This summer it was a poster of Sam West as Hamlet in 2001, troubled and stubbled and soulful, and a letterpress version of Anne Sexton’s ‘The Black Art’. She’d burned candles every morning until she was found out and forbidden to use matches in school. She liked the room to smell like sandalwood or amber. It should be a chapel of learning, and in those few minutes before every term began, those shimmering moments, it felt perfect – a place where literature could be set free from the dusty shelves of GCSE anthologies.
Rachel tucked one leg underneath her in a mime of relaxation; Cressida crossed hers at the ankle and let them swing. Up close, her eyes seemed paler and her ears glowed pink through her hair. Rachel had long feared Cressida wasn’t tough enough even for their suburban comprehensive. Despite their healthy Ofsted report and limited discipline issues, her glassy consonants seemed too fragile.
‘Is there anything wrong, Cress?’ The nickname sounded foolish, but Rachel had the urge to calm her. Cressida still chewed on her own lips.
‘I just . . . I wanted to ask you about Lily.’
Rachel stared at her. Cressida was surely too gauche to wield any weapon. This meek creature – who Rachel could scarcely imagine commanding a class to conjugate a single French verb – couldn’t possibly have the knowledge to damage her.
Heatstroke: an intoxicating story of obsession over one hot summer Page 10