‘I worry that we – as a school, you know – could have done more.’
Rachel’s reply was swift. ‘What more could have possibly been done?’
Cressida suddenly crushed all her fingers into her eye sockets, as if trying to stop herself from crying. ‘I just don’t understand, Rachel. She is such a sweet girl, but he was always so lovely as well. I don’t understand how this can have happened.’
Rachel could move again. She unhooked her legs and crossed to the desk Cressida sat on, placing a hand on her shoulder. ‘Hey there, I know. I know it doesn’t make any sense.’
‘He was always so caring, so supportive. I can’t bear the way they’re portraying him on the news, but also around here. I can’t stand the way people talk about him in school. They make him sound like a monster, and he’s not. He’s just not. He’s kind.’ Her mouth made sticky noises, gluey with the beginnings of tears. ‘They just don’t know him like I do.’
Rachel stiffened again. ‘Don’t they?’
‘No, they don’t. He was wonderful to me. He took me out for coffee when he could see I was struggling. He gave me such good advice about how to get the kids onside. He really opened up about how hard he’d found it at first, how tough he found his classes. I’m not sure I’d have got through last term without him.’ She was practically blushing, confiding a treasured secret. ‘We even went to the ballet together, in London. The Nutcracker. It was beautiful, Rachel. He knew I needed a treat, something to pick me up.’
Despite the heat, Rachel flashed cold.
‘He’s not the man they’re making him out to be. He’s not. He’s truly lovely.’
Rachel inhaled. ‘I’m sorry, Cressida, but to be honest, I just didn’t know him that well.’
‘Ms Collins, can we watch the rest of P and P today?’
‘Please, Ms C, you know it’s perfect revision.’
‘And it’s practically the end of term . . .’
Rachel gladly slid the DVD in, then settled at the back of the room whilst her Year 12 class watched the adaptation she’d seen so many times. She sat silently, facing in the direction of the television. The screen flickered, the images registering as stills rather than coherent scenes. Flashes of a few seconds each. Girls flitting through the house, tying bonnets at their throats. Cressida had come to her to confide. Five girls trotting through the streets of Meryton. Mark had sought Cressida out. They’d sat together, their bodies only inches apart in a darkened theatre. Arch jibes being traded across a beautiful room. Cressida, pale, insipid Cressida, with her soft cardigans and wispy hair. There were so many echoes of Lily. A white muslin dress getting smattered with mud. Mark had surely pursued others. There may be a string of seductions, a parade of vulnerable young women. There may be other stories, just waiting to emerge. Rachel’s teeth were clenched.
She stood up, nearly knocking her chair to the ground. The nineteen students who made up her lower-sixth class were gripped by the screen, hopelessly in love with actors who were twice their age when the series was filmed nearly two decades ago. Their eyes were on the women in silk and men in uniform stepping through complex dance sequences. Their thoughts weren’t on Rachel. They didn’t notice her stand up, walk to the window. She needed to breathe, needed to feel cold against her skin. Rachel pressed her flaming cheek against the window’s glass, exhaling, her breath making clouds that vanished instantly.
With the water up to her neck, with her shoulders fully submerged, she’d tried to enjoy it, tried to abandon herself to the sensations. She’d gripped her insides tighter, pushed her feet up from the silty ground and tilted onto her back. She’d let herself float. The water, so cold it felt almost solid, had shocked her scalp, searing the final patch of virgin skin. The last part of her was no longer dry. The top of her skull was at once wet and cold. The stab of pain down her spine felt glorious because he was watching her.
After searing seconds, she pushed her hands down, using the weight of the water to get back to standing. She was almost out of her depth, perching on tiptoes to keep her chin above the surface. It became alarmingly apparent that the water was not still, not a stagnant pool, but a living, flowing river. The current tugged at her legs as she stood, pushing her metres further down. It had grown so dark that she couldn’t discern the edges of the water. Mark was further downstream now, fuzzy in the dim light. The current flung itself against her legs again, knocking her off balance. She kicked, feeling desperately for the silty bottom, unable to find it, her head under the surface for a second as she tried to stand. The water lapped into her mouth, her eyes; reeds brushed against her bare calves and she wanted to scream. Her whole body was covered in dirty, freezing water. There was no way out except through the silt and the mud, and it might not be possible to heave herself up the banks.
Then the water buffeted her again, and she was suddenly standing, firmly, in safe depth. He was taking in every reaction. She threw her arms up and out, letting the water buoy her weight so she floated to him, tethering herself to him with her legs, stroking the water from his cheeks, his eyebrows, kissing his filthy mouth. The cold stopped being the primary sensation in her body. With his skin against hers and his approval granted, she could nearly be carefree, nearly find the grime liberating and the dark only a thrill.
Rachel nibbled on a triangle of warmed pitta bread. She didn’t dip. The homemade hummus sat in a ring of bright yellow oil and smelled thick with garlic. She’d hardly emptied a plate in over a week. The idea of eating had become repulsive. She felt lighter, less encumbered, as if her body was readying itself to flee at any moment.
The book group was scheduled for every fourth Friday night of the month, and Rachel had waited for the cancellation message to light her WhatsApp notifications, but it never arrived. So they gathered at Tina’s house as the rota dictated. They took turns to host, providing the wine and nibbles that accompanied their conversation, shouldering the responsibility of selecting the next novel.
‘I absolutely love this, Rach.’ Samantha reached over and rubbed the material of Rachel’s sequined shrug between her thumb and forefinger, grazing the skin of her shoulder. Rachel winced at her name’s one abrasive syllable.
‘Thanks. I wasn’t sure. It’s just impossible to know what to wear in this heat.’ Rachel pulled the top away from her body to let a waft of cool air in.
‘Your top is . . .’ She struggled for the word, taking in the aquamarine halter, digging a little into Sam’s neck: ‘. . . gorgeous.’
They treated it like a night out; dressing up and indulging in both food and drink in a way that would seem reckless otherwise. Tina was hosting, but it was Sam who carried the plates of antipasti in from the kitchen, who poured every glass of Pinot Noir. It was Sam who tapped the iPad to trigger Spotify, Sam who selected the young male singer-songwriter to croon along in the background. Rachel held her red wine in both hands, unable to sip without imagining the splash, the pooling carnage on Tina’s silver-grey sofa, her dove-grey carpet.
Rachel had been part of the circle of mums for well over a decade, but never at the centre. Debbie, Sam and Tina had known each other far longer; since they were at school themselves. They had a lifetime in common. They’d never left their hometown. They’d joined the same NCT group when they fell pregnant – posing for pictures with distended bellies and wide grins – and it was inevitable their daughters would grow up together. They still knew the mothers who’d borne sons, but the connection was weaker.
Rachel had moved nearby just after Mia’s first birthday. When Mia started playgroup, she’d immediately marched over to Ella and Lily, comparing the bored eyes and puffed lips of their plastic Bratz dolls, leaving Rachel no choice but to chat to their mothers. Mia’s instant attachment to that gaggle of little girls meant that Rachel and Tim became automatic invitees to dinners, parties, barbecues. The other women couldn’t have been more welcoming, but Rachel never fully relaxed. If they’d
met under any other circumstances, they simply wouldn’t have mixed. Their groups at school would have been dichotomous. They’d have seen Rachel’s hair, her nails, her clothes, and baulked. But time had dissolved their differences, or Rachel had actively erased them with her marriage, her suburban home, a child at twenty-five. They were bound now by motherhood, and Rachel had been drafted into their gang. She so often found herself deferring to their tastes, their views, grateful to be included even when she didn’t want to be there. Marianne was the only one she sought out.
The group was usually made up of five, but Debbie was absent as expected. With only four, the balance was thrown.
‘So, what did we all think?’ Sam held up her copy of the novel, a film tie-in edition with an actress festooned in purple lace on the cover. Last month had been Rachel’s turn to host and she’d selected Madame Bovary. Their taste as a group usually sat in a pacier, modern space, but she remembered the book as a favourite from her youth and wanted to see how it landed now.
Tina spoke up first. ‘Well, I quite liked it.’
‘Yeah?’ Sam prompted her to elaborate.
‘I thought it was very interesting.’ Tina shifted in her seat, sipped her wine, evidently had no more she wished to say.
Marianne took up the mantle. ‘I found it almost unbearably sad. This poor deluded woman who just seemed to make every decision the wrong way. I wanted to march into that book and shake some sense into her.’ Marianne was older than the others, nearer fifty than forty. She’d clocked up over a decade in London before having Dominic.
Sam nodded, swallowing a mouthful of prosciutto, licking the fingers she’d held it in. ‘Yep. Totally. I just wanted to tell her to appreciate what she had, and not get all stupid about some bloke. She throws away everything for nothing.’ Sam bent the book back and forth as she spoke, taking her disgust out on the paper itself.
‘I suppose she was just destroyed by her daydreams.’ Marianne sat back.
Rachel waited for the silence to fall. She tried, in these gatherings, not to play the English teacher, not to correct them or lead the conversation, not to point out that they’d all read from different translations. She made sure she was the last to speak.
‘I loved it. And, more specifically, I loved her. We all have an Emma Bovary inside us, don’t we? I think the incredibly gruesome physicality of her demise shows so clearly how women are treated, especially women who try to—’
Sam cut her off. ‘But she treats her husband like dirt. She only seems to like shopping and parties. Do you not think she’s a bit of a bitch?’
Rachel smiled. ‘Of course, but don’t we all have that in us? The part of you that gets bored and just wants to experience something exciting?’ Maybe they didn’t. Maybe these women were not straining at the seams of their circumstances. Maybe their lives fitted them.
Sam pressed her lips together. ‘Well, quite. But look where that gets people.’
It was almost a relief. They’d tried, but the pretence could end. The news had hung in the air like a fog. They had tried: they’d talked about the book and anything from that moment couldn’t be called gossip.
‘Debs must be feeling awful.’ Tina spoke up again.
‘Oh, God, she must.’ Sam shook her head slowly. ‘It makes you wonder, though, doesn’t it, if they’d discussed this sort of thing enough?’
‘I know what you mean. I talk to Abby all the time. You’ve got to keep your guard up around boys, I tell her. She has to come to me first, before anything goes too far. You can’t trust them.’ Tina sat up straighter as she talked.
‘I mean, how on earth did she miss it?’
‘She must have picked something up. Lily must have been behaving differently. She must have been.’
‘I’d definitely know if something was up with Ella. Definitely.’
Rachel’s glass of wine had vanished in easy mouthfuls. She enjoyed the feeling of it seeping through the flesh of her mouth, numbing her from the lips down. She closed her eyes. Would she know if Mia was plotting something; if it was her and not Lily? Did she know the inside of her daughter’s head with such confidence? Before she opened her eyes, the glass was full and red again.
Sam was the first to mention the school.
‘I still can’t believe that something like this could happen at St Joe’s, can you?’ Sam glowed in her concern, her oblique involvement. Her Facebook updates had become hourly, uploading pictures of Lily and Ella together, snapshots where they were unambiguously close, the best of friends.
‘Rachel. What has it been like? Is everyone shocked?’
Rachel had known it was coming. She felt the eyes of the group light upon her. They hadn’t yet grilled her for staffroom gossip. She knew what she had to do. ‘Of course! Of course they’re shocked. It’s been awful, to be honest. Really awful. No one knows what to do with themselves. The kids are freaked out, we’re just doing what we can to keep things as normal as possible for them.’
Sam wasn’t satisfied. ‘But was it a shock that it was him? That it was Mark Webb. Did you have any suspicions?’
There was the meat of it. She had to stay steady. Rachel sipped from her glass, buying a few seconds as she swallowed, as she licked the residue from her lips. ‘A total shock.’
‘Really? There was nothing weird about him? Nothing that gave it away?’ Tina was chiming in now. They weren’t giving up.
‘Not really, no. I didn’t know him well. He was pretty quiet, always seemed very pleasant.’ Rachel kept her voice firm.
Sam leaned forwards slightly. ‘Well, there must have been something odd about him. We know now what he was doing.’
‘We know he was grooming poor Lily the whole time, planning this all along.’ Tina’s eyes were wide. ‘He’s a monster.’
Sam agreed. ‘Totally. It’s disgusting. It’s pathetic that he couldn’t get someone his own age.’
Rachel had no more breath to exhale. Sam was louder now. ‘What I don’t understand is what on earth she saw in him.’
Tina leapt to agree. ‘I know. It’s not like he’s even that good-looking. I don’t get it. We met him on parents’ evening, and he’s just not the sort of man you really remember. He looked like a bit of a wimp to me. A bit wet.’
Sam was nodding. ‘A bit of a creep.’
That word again. Rachel nodded slowly, biting down on her lower lip, hard enough to send a pulse through her whole body. She set her face, determined to look committed to the sentiment. She reached forward to spear a green olive from the platter on the coffee table, and lifted it to her mouth. Marianne caught her eye, but her features didn’t move.
Sam spoke again, bold and clear. ‘There must have been boys her age she fancied, or even boys in the sixth form. I have no idea why she’d go for him when there are younger lads around her who are far more attractive.’
Rachel put her cocktail stick down and used the silence to ask a question. ‘Don’t you remember, though? What it’s like to fancy a boy?’
They turned to look at her, but no one spoke.
‘Maybe it’s not all that complicated. It’s not about how good-looking he is, or how clever or how funny, or even how cool. There’s always someone who can beat them on any of those grounds. He’s amazing just because he’s the boy you fancy. He’s the one you chose. He’s your boy.’
Sam interrupted. ‘Isn’t that exactly the point, Rachel? He isn’t a boy, he’s a grown man.’
‘Exactly. It’s inappropriate.’ Tina’s voice was lower.
‘It’s not like fancying someone your age at all.’
Rachel knew she had to stop, had to let them talk around her, but allowed herself one quiet comment. ‘It is to her.’
Had they forgotten it, or never felt it in the first place? That energy might never have coursed through their veins. The Robs and Jasons and Simons they kept at home may never have sp
arked that feeling. Twenty-five years ago, Rachel would have dismissed the women sitting around that table as plain and dull, but they had grown into a solid web of support. It was their numbers she called to ask not only about the logistics of bowling parties and shopping trips, but to seek advice about fussy eating, sickness bugs, how to handle three teary nights in a row. They were invaluable. Her teenage self would never have understood, and Rachel sometimes mourned that clarity. The status she would have granted herself over them had all but dissolved, but she was still different. At least Rachel had some sense of what Lily was feeling.
‘It’s not really about attraction, though, is it?’ Marianne spoke softly from her corner of the room. ‘It’s about power.’
Ethanol in her blood usually fortified Rachel for these occasions, gave her the strength to get through to ten o’clock, but now it was doing nothing but depleting her resources. It felt like slow poison. Rachel wished she could press her fingers against the tangled blue and green at her wrists and stop its progress through her body.
‘He had power over her, and he abused it. It’s as simple as that.’
Sam nodded, ‘Yep. He abused it.’
‘Lily is too young to give her consent. He’s the perpetrator here. This is no love story.’ Marianne’s face was firm.
Suddenly, Tina emitted a strange noise. ‘I’m sorry.’ It was close to a sob. ‘I just can’t stop thinking about what might be happening to her.’ The thought seemed to force her head backwards. ‘I can’t help worrying that she’s frightened. That even if she wanted to go with him, she might not want to be there any more. She might have changed her mind.’ Her chin pushed into her neck and concertinaed the flesh there into a series of folds that added years in seconds.
Sam was next to her by then, arms around her.
Tina sighed. ‘Sorry. I don’t want to bring us all down. It just upsets me.’
Rachel stood up. She wanted to get to the downstairs toilet, to be alone for a moment, to close her eyes and gather herself together. She wanted to be alone with the pearl-coloured tiles and the handwash that smelled of lemons or lavender. As soon as she started to walk, she felt her legs wobble. She felt suddenly untethered. She was aware of her shins hitting the coffee table, the sofa, of being moved against her will, but it wasn’t until she was sitting back down that she realised she’d been caught. Caught in their capable mothers’ arms, well trained for this sort of situation.
Heatstroke: an intoxicating story of obsession over one hot summer Page 11