Rachel kept walking. Step after step. With hands that felt unattached to her wrists, she knocked on the door.
‘Thank you for joining us, Ms Collins.’ That name, in the mouth of an adult, always sounded strange. It was the name of the woman who did her job. The three syllables of her real surname were now lost for ever. Rachel smiled with closed lips. It wasn’t the name she was born with, but it was the name she shared with Tim and Mia. It bound them together through the matching swirls of their signatures.
‘Can you tell us your relationship to Mark Webb?’
‘Colleagues. We were colleagues.’
‘Yes. Of course. Did you get on well?’ DC Redpath was back, introducing herself as Moira, as if Rachel couldn’t remember her; as if they hadn’t drunk tea in her living room just over a week before, as if that afternoon might have faded from Rachel’s mind. The young man with his notebook and questions was gone. It was serious now.
‘He was always pleasant enough, I suppose.’
‘Would you say you were friends?’ Moira Redpath had rid her voice of the sing-song that had irritated Mia on Sunday afternoon. The Sunday afternoon that felt like another life. By that Monday morning, her tone was flat, official.
‘We were acquaintances. We’d sometimes chat in the staffroom.’
‘Did you ever see each other out of work?’
Rachel swallowed, kept her face still. ‘Once or twice.’
‘Just the two of you?’
‘Yes, I think so.’
DC Scott sat silently, just like before. This time neither of them took notes, just listened. Rachel’s voice was being captured by a black box in the middle of the desk. The room had been brightened for the occasion. There were flowers now, in a vase, as if the cameras outside could see in, as if the police would take it into consideration, gain a more positive impression of the school. The colours jarred Rachel’s eyes.
‘What would you do together, Rachel?’ Her first name now. The affricate at the heart of the word clashed in Moira Redpath’s mouth. It sounded like an accusation. Rachel’s saliva was suddenly viscous.
‘We attended a few school events. He drove me home once.’
What would they do together? She’d never find the right phrases to describe it.
Moira tucked her already-neat hair behind her ears, leaned forward a fraction more. ‘Did you talk much?’
‘He played music in the car, mainly.’
They’d been in the same school year. Their memories were perfectly aligned. They’d sat their A-levels in the same weeks of 1993, and she’d headed to Bristol as he’d driven to Manchester. The collections of CDs, vinyls, endless mixtapes they’d packed into the back of those different cars would have been almost identical. He made playlists for when she drove, and strung the songs together with impressive deftness; Sonic Youth album tracks nestling up against PJ Harvey, The Pixies, Pulp before they became popular, a smattering of Riot Grrrl. He loved those songs more than anyone she’d ever known. They would have dressed the same way as teenagers: clunky boots and faded T-shirts. They would have hated the same things. They would have faced the same darkness.
They’d spent so little time together. Stolen afternoons and evenings. Less than four months between their first and last kisses. Little more than one hundred days. Rachel could feel her heartbeat in her throat, her eardrums.
‘Did you ever go to his house?’
‘His flat? I waited outside in the car, and popped up with his bag once, but not really.’ No hairs of hers would have been found in the fabric of his sofa, no skin cells would be picked up in his bathroom, in his bed. The place would be nearly clean of her intimate debris. She’d hardly spent any time there, but had clocked every detail. Every inch of that flat was curated. A whole bookshelf with only the spines that defined him. Penguin Modern Classics. Professionally framed film posters. A Clockwork Orange. Pulp Fiction in German. Drei schwere Jungs und ein Flittchen. Warhol prints. His beloved vinyl albums propped up by his record player. They’d never chopped vegetables in his kitchen, never drunk tea in his bed, or napped away a hangover on the sofa. That wasn’t what it was like. They’d never gone out to a local café for brunch, never walked hand in hand down a nearby street. They’d never woken up together in his bed. Nothing adult, nothing ordinary. This tidy woman wouldn’t understand.
‘Did you ever notice anything unusual about his behaviour?’ Everything. Everything about his behaviour was unusual. Moira wouldn’t understand; she’d misread every moment, too bland to grasp the nuance, the beauty. Rachel drank from the flimsy plastic cup of water she’d been given.
‘No, nothing unusual.’
‘Did he ever talk to you about his pupils?’
Rachel swallowed the water, but her mouth remained arid. ‘He was very passionate about his subject, about physics – he thought it had bad PR – and he worked very hard with the kids, especially the ones who were struggling. But he never mentioned particular pupils.’
‘What about women, did he talk about girlfriends?’
Rachel forced her eyes to stay open, focused, steady. No spasm of thought could show. His hand on her thigh, his hands in her hair, his tongue down her spine. She made her face a mask, forced it to twist in disgust. ‘No, never, we really weren’t that close.’
There would be no trace. Mark would rarely talk on the phone. He hated to text, although Rachel wheedled him. He preferred the methods of spies, or lovers from old books: notes passed in corridors, indecipherable messages hidden in plain sight on the staff noticeboard, times and places scribbled on scraps left between pages fifty-six and fifty-seven of Pat Barker’s Regeneration in the sixth-form library. There would be no way to connect them.
‘And how did he behave around women?’
Rachel’s back was stiff against the wooden chair. Their eyes on her seemed intrusive. They had been inside her home. Their lips had touched her mugs. She was pleased she’d given them the ones they never used.
‘To be honest, I never saw him that way.’ Rachel felt her vowels become more clipped, the words pushing to the front of her mouth, up against her teeth. She sat as straight as she could, her legs crossed at the ankles. She was a schoolteacher, an upstanding member of the community; she was beyond reproach. She could not be implicated. No one could ever know about her and Mark. No one could know how she was drawn to him, this man they all loathed, this man who had done something so terrible.
‘Did Mr Webb ever confide in you about his feelings for Lily Dixon?’
‘What on earth are you implying? Absolutely not. I knew nothing, nothing about any of this.’ Her voice was painfully high, even to her own ears, and the chair screeched as she rose to her feet.
DC Scott spoke for the first time, crouching out of his seat, hands spread wide, physically calming the air. ‘Sorry, Ms Collins. We are sorry. We have to ask, we’re asking all of your colleagues the same thing. I know it is unpleasant, but it needs to be done.’
Rachel sat back down, face firm. ‘Well, for the record, I think he is a monster, preying on that young girl, grooming her the whole time. It disgusts me that we were ever associated with each other. I think he is repulsive. He’s a hideous man, running off with that child. I mean, it’s pathetic he couldn’t get someone his own age.’
Lunch was fish and chips. Rachel knew she needed substance, so went for the heavy offering despite the temperature. She carried her food to the table, the contents of her tray precarious, sliding dramatically to one side in her bloodless hands. She headed for the empty chair next to Graham. Since his inauguration, staff were encouraged to sit together in the school dining hall. It was an open replica of the high table from Graham’s Cambridge college. Hiding away in The Hub was frowned upon now, and they were instead urged to sit side by side and be part of the school community as they ate.
‘Rachel.’ Graham smiled as she twisted into the seat next to
him and leaned over to fill her Picardie glass with water from the metal jug. He didn’t break from scanning the rows of pupils. They were all bolting down their chips so they could get outside, visibly uncomfortable in their uniforms. ‘How’s your day been? Have you spoken to the police again today? I know they are going department by department, starting with science, of course.’ Graham didn’t so much as incline his head towards hers. She had to assume the question was addressed to her.
‘Yes. Earlier today. Pretty standard stuff.’ A smile felt inappropriate.
There was a pause whilst Graham swallowed his mouthful of fish, his fork circling in the air to imply the action, and that she should wait. He speared each morsel with precision, but loaded his fork so heavily that every bite jammed his mouth.
‘He’s a fool if he doesn’t know how this ends. There’s only one conclusion. Only one. It’s just a matter of time. Of where and of when. There is no ending to this that doesn’t see him behind bars. We just need to tell them everything we can to hasten that.’
Rachel nodded.
The clang of cutlery against crockery hundreds of times over meant talking took effort. Rachel peeled the batter from her fish and ate only the flakes of white that lay inside. She could feel sweat beading in the crooks of her knees, the liquid squirm exacerbated by the plastic of her chair. Graham hadn’t even loosened his tie.
‘Rachel. I’ve been meaning to ask you.’ He stopped as if the sentence was complete. Rachel had no choice but to ask.
‘Yes?’
‘I’ve been meaning to ask if . . .’ He stood up without warning, his chair screeching backwards. ‘Could whoever is whistling please desist immediately?’ His voice cut through the canteen’s tumult, freezing it in time. He waited for a few seconds in silence, then sat back down. ‘Sorry, I just won’t stand for low-level disruption. Not during all of this. So, I was wondering if you and your husband would like to come round for a spot of dinner.’ Somehow the sentiment sounded old-fashioned. He didn’t pause long enough for her to form a response.
‘We’d – we being Mandy and I – we would love you to join us. Are you free on Friday?’ He stopped to sip from his water glass, to lift another laden fork to his mouth, all the time facing directly forwards.
It was a night in late February, just as spring was beginning to take hold. That night they’d been the last two people in the staffroom and conversation had sparked. They’d barely spoken before. They’d never discovered the rich frequency they shared, never littered the room with curses that turned the air electric. His eyes had lit with the delight of having found her. Before that night, they’d meant nothing to each other. Before he strode across the room, held her arms without asking, pushed her backwards against the wall by the noticeboard. Before he tugged the buttons of her shirt loose, and tossed the material on the floor, flicked the clasp of her bra with stunning dexterity. Before he crashed into her life and made everything, from the coffee machine to the stained carpet, sparkle. Before he’d greeted her the next morning with a detailed story about his weekend plans, in a voice only a smudge too loud. Before he’d let the pinkie of his right hand brush her arm as he reached over for a teaspoon and, in that brief touch, let her know it had all been real.
Mark would have bought the dye in advance. Rachel could picture him standing in Boots. He’d have compared the lids of the boxes at length, taking in the names – Mocha, Sienna, Brasilia – before selecting the one he could most imagine staining her blonde hair dark. He’d have put the thought in, sensitive to how she’d look, how she’d feel. The passage time of the ferry would be too short, and the detritus of the process too messy. So, he’d have stopped the hire car at a service station just outside Dunkirk. She’d have perched on the seat of a disabled toilet cubicle, waiting for him to knock three times on the door when it reached half past. Without her phone, time would be slippery.
The smell would have overwhelmed her, chemical fruitiness covering something dark and eggy. In the cubicle’s mirror, Lily would have stared at her own face in dismay, smudges of inky dye around her ears and forehead. She’d have done a sloppy job, underestimating the skill needed to apply it evenly. She wouldn’t be blonde any more. The second she’d squeezed the applicator and watched the claggy liquid hit her hair, she’d have been changed. The molecules of her hair would have been forever rejigged.
With no distractions, thirty minutes would drag. Rinsing would be near-impossible in the tiny sink, drying it under the electronic air would burn her scalp. Then, her hair would be dark. A flat, even raven with no nuance. It would have recalibrated her features, changing their dimensions, making her skin pinker, her eyes a paler blue. She’d worry that the process had taken something from her, robbed her of that golden glow. She’d fear opening the door, and seeing on his face that he hated the change he’d mandated.
Rachel watched the three-minute clip over and over on the tiny screen of her phone, parked outside the school. The car had become her sanctuary. It was the one place she could be alone, shut away from everything and everyone. She wished the windows were blackened. She watched the clip until she knew every word, every sigh, every slight movement. It had juddered and stuttered at first, the circle endlessly chasing its own tail whilst it buffered. Then it became smooth. She had to lean her head close to the screen to make out the details. Their faces were no bigger than fifty-pence pieces.
It felt shameful to watch it anywhere else, in front of anyone else, on a screen bigger than her hand. The car kept it private. At the beginning, after the police constable introduced them, there was the smash and clatter of cameras, so loud that nothing could be heard over it. They had to wait before they spoke. Their names were printed on signs that sat in front of them. Rachel had never asked their names. Rebecca and Eric Webb.
The idea of Mark having parents was absurd. He was surely born fully formed, born of the earth, self-sufficient and cynical. But here they were. They sat with their chairs close together, holding hands, faces firm as they spoke. His father held a piece of paper in his other hand, and read from it slowly.
‘Mark. Wherever you are, we hope this reaches you and we hope you are well. So many people here are very eager to hear from you.’ His mother nodded. They kept their heads straight, their chins up. Unlike Debbie and Gary, there was no crying, no pleading, no slump of sheer anguish. They were dignified. His mother was the sort of woman who would never allow herself to be referred to as Becky; always the three full syllables of Rebecca.
Rachel had never imagined meeting his parents. That was never the plan. There was no world in which she’d have wrapped expensive hand lotions and bottles of port to take up the M40 towards Congleton for Christmas. She’d never pictured kissing them on both cheeks when they met, had never envisioned his mother finding a quiet moment in the kitchen to say how delighted they were, how he seemed so much happier than before, how they’d stopped worrying about him. That wasn’t the sort of relationship they had. It was ridiculous that Mark even had a family.
Now they were in a room with Lily’s parents, an awkward clutch of in-laws with neither of their children present. They all sat along one side of a table, but only Mark’s father spoke. It had been almost a week since Rachel had seen Debbie, since she’d been lost to the police process. Rachel had sent short, supportive statements on a group WhatsApp. Debbie looked several pounds heavier, several years older.
They wouldn’t have even said Rachel’s name. Not one of them would know how close she was to the centre of their story. Not one of the conversations they were having with the police, with each other, would even have referred to her. His parents would have no idea who she was.
His father’s voice was sonorous. ‘Mark, Lily. We’re not angry with you. We are here for you. We just need you to get in touch.’ He was addressing Lily too. He was speaking to them both, as if they were a proper couple, as if Lily was a legitimate part of their family. It made sense. Mark seemed l
ike less of a monster if it was real, if they were in love. That way, he wasn’t a predator, just a man swept away by his feelings.
‘You know that you need to make contact. Please do so by any means you wish.’ Mark’s mother said nothing, just sat, hands now carefully positioned in her lap, face stern, as though she was only disappointed. They both sat upright, both wore jackets, like they were attending a wedding. They couldn’t have contrasted more with Debbie and Gary’s crumpled jeans and jumpers.
At two minutes and forty-three seconds the camera zoomed in on their faces. Rachel paused it every time. Mark had his mother’s colouring; black hair against pale skin, dark eyes. He had his father’s straight nose. She pressed the arrowed circle to make the video play again.
The girls’ routine didn’t alter that Monday night. They got ready in Ella’s bedroom, still taking a clear hour to replace their school faces. Rachel waited for them at the park. The boys rocked up around twenty minutes after the girls had settled around the same bench, the same streetlamp. That night, they pulled bottles from their bags; alcohol lifted from the back of parents’ cabinets. Rachel didn’t want to see it. It was a school night, and Mia was fifteen. She’d rather have looked away, but kept watching. Someone had to keep an eye on them, check they weren’t going too far. She was their guardian now.
Heatstroke: an intoxicating story of obsession over one hot summer Page 14