Afterwards

by Rosamund Lupton

  Her fingers are sweating, smudging Jenny’s face.

  “And here our kids are, not likely to see the inside of a private school unless they’re lucky enough to teach in it, or more likely clean it, with our eldest starting in September at the local thirty-in-a-class failing primary. But even so, I’m still really proud of him. For being the best bloody teacher that school could have.”

  Aggression is pressing up against her words.

  “His friends from Oxford all have these high-flying, highly paid careers in media and law,” she continues. “While he is—was—just a primary school teacher. Not that he ever got any credit for that. It’s a private school, so not even considered worthy. You think it’s any wonder he went and sounded off at your prize-giving?”

  A child has come to join her. She holds the little boy’s hand. “That’s where I met him,” she says. “At Oxford. I was just working as a secretary there. I was so proud to be with him. I couldn’t believe it when he chose me, married me, made those vows to me.”

  Is that what this is about? For richer for poorer, to lie for and cover for.

  Such undeserved and unreturned loyalty.

  “He’s a good man,” she continues. “Loving. And decent. There’s not many you can say that about.”

  Does she believe her version of her husband? Or is she, like Maisie, presenting an image to the outside world, no matter the cost to herself?

  “It wasn’t Silas’s fault, what happened to that boy in the playground. It was—”

  You interrupt; you’ve had enough. “Where was he yesterday afternoon?”

  “I haven’t finished telling you—”

  “Where was he?” Your voice angry, loud, frightening the child.

  “I need to tell you the truth. You need to hear it,” she says.

  “Just tell me.”

  “With me and the kids,” she says, after a moment. “All afternoon.”

  “You said he works on building sites,” and your tone implies she’s a liar.

  “When there’s work, yes, he does, but there wasn’t any work for him yesterday. So we went to the park for a picnic. He said we might as well make the most of him not being in work. And it was broiling indoors. Left here together about eleven, got back around five.”

  “A long time.” Your disbelief is clear.

  “Nothing to come back for. And Silas likes playing with them outside, giving them rides on his back, playing with a ball; he’s devoted to them.”

  Jenny said he’d pretended to be running an after-school club so he could avoid coming home. This picture of a family man that Natalia is painting doesn’t exist.

  “Did he ask you to say this, or did you come up with it yourself?” you ask, and I am relieved you’re challenging her.

  “Is it so hard for you to believe that a family like ours could have an afternoon out together?”

  I think by “like ours” she means a family with no money in a flat not a house and the dad working on a building site. And no, of course, it’s not hard to believe a family like that could enjoy an afternoon in the park. But she’s keeping something from you, I’m sure of it. She has been from the moment she opened the door to you.

  “Did anyone see you in the park?” you ask her.

  “Loads of people; it was packed.”

  “Anyone who’d remember?”

  “There was an ice-cream van; maybe that guy would remember.”

  A sunny July afternoon in a park—how many families with small children did he see yesterday? How likely is it he’d remember?

  “Who did your husband get to lie for him?” you ask. “To say they’d seen Adam?”

  “Sir Covey?”

  That pet name infuriates you, but I think her surprise looks genuine.

  “Who did he get to blame my son?” Your anger hurling the words at her.

  “I’ve no idea what you’re on about,” she says.

  “Tell him I want to speak to him,” you say. You turn to go.

  “Wait. I haven’t finished! I told you, you need to hear the truth.”

  “I have to get back to my daughter.”

  You start to leave, but she comes after you. “The accident in the playground was Robert Fleming’s fault, nothing to do with Silas.”

  You hurry on, not listening. But for a moment I think of eight-year-old Robert Fleming, who bullied Adam so horribly.

  You open the car door and one of Adam’s knight figures slips out of the door pocket.

  “Children can be little bastards,” she says, catching up with you. “Evil.” She holds the car door so that you can’t close it. “You made Mrs. Healey fire Silas for not supervising the playground properly, didn’t you? You wanted him out.”

  “I don’t have time for this. Have a go at other parents if you need to, but not me. Not now.”

  I can smell her hostility, like a strong cheap perfume around her.

  “You got the Richmond Post to print that crap about him, to make sure he was pushed out.”

  You yank the car door out of her grasp and slam it shut.

  You’re driving away and she’s running after the car. She bangs her fist on the trunk and then we turn from the street.

  Maybe she should seem more like a victim to me. After all, in return for her love and loyalty Silas lies to her and bad-mouths her to teenagers. But her spikiness and aggression mean she can’t be pigeonholed so neatly. Is her rage because she genuinely thinks that Silas has been wronged? Or is it the anguish of a woman who knows she made a terrible mistake in the man she married?

  15

  The pain has gone. It stopped the moment I stepped into the hospital, as if this white-walled building offers me its own skin.

  My mother is sitting next to Jenny. I know she won’t have left Addie on his own; a friend or a nurse must be with him. Amid the shiny hard equipment she looks so gentle in her cotton skirt and Liberty-print blouse. Her hand hovers over Jenny, as yours often does, unable to touch her.

  You go up to Sarah, who’s standing a little distance away—giving Mum time with Jen while still fulfilling her obligation to you to protect Jenny. I’m still not sure if she thinks it’s necessary or if she’s just doing it to make you feel better.

  “Hyman wasn’t there,” you say to her. “And his wife would do whatever the bastard asked.”

  Then Mum sees you. “Is there any more news on Gracie?” she asks.

  “Not yet,” you reply. “I was meant to have a meeting with her doctors earlier, but I got called away.” You don’t say you were called away because Jenny’s heart stopped. You haven’t told Mum about the three weeks. “They’ve said they might not have time now today,” you continue.

  “But surely they could make the time?” Mum says, as if time was one of her tapestries, minutes stitched onto canvas in flower-colored yarns.

  “Apparently there’s been some appalling bus crash, so it’s all hands on deck.”

  And for one moment this hospital isn’t all about us. There are others too, God knows how many, all that anguish and anxiety compressed into the bricks and glass walls of this one building. I wonder if it leaks out of the windows and roof, if birds fly a little higher overhead as they pass.

  Trying to think this to avoid shameful, awful thoughts.

  But I suspect you’re thinking them too.

  Will any of the bus casualties die? Will any of them be a match for Jenny? How strange that selfless love can make you morally ugly. Wicked even.

  “I’m sure they’ll have the meeting as soon as they can,” you say.

  She nods.

  “Adam’s in the relatives’ room,” she tells you.

  “I’ll go and see him in a minute. I’d just like a little time with Jen first.”

  I go to the relatives’ room. A fan whirs the heated air. Addie is huddled close to Mr. Hyman, who has his arm around him, reading him a story.

  I go cold.

  Jenny is on the other side of the room. “He saw Granny G and Adam in the café,
” she says calmly. “He offered to look after Adam, so that Granny G could be with me.”

  And Mum would never suspect anything. She’s heard me and Addie praise Mr. Hyman countless times.

  Over the whir of the fan, I listen to him reading. At his feet is a bunch of flowers.

  “He told his wife he was going to work on a building site,” I tell Jenny.

  “Poor bloke. Is that all the work he can get?”

  “He lied to his wife, Jen.”

  “Probably to get away from her.”

  She looks at me and must catch my expression because I see exasperation in hers.

  “I’ve told you about the hate-mailer now. The red paint. You can’t still think it’s Silas.”

  “Could there be a connection?” I ask, more thinking aloud.

  “No. There is no way that he is anything to do with the hate mail. Quite apart from the fact that he’s just not that kind of person, why would he?”

  I also think it’s very unlikely that Silas Hyman is the hate-mailer turned stalker. Even if he had a reason for hate mail, which he doesn’t, an Oxford-educated, highly articulate man doesn’t fit with hate mail and red paint. I simply can’t imagine him cutting out words from a newspaper or a magazine and sticking them onto A4. He’s far too subtle and intelligent for that.

  But the fire might be nothing at all to do with the hate-mailer. It could be, as you are so certain, simply revenge by Silas Hyman.

  “He tried talking to Addie,” Jenny says. “But Addie couldn’t say anything back. That’s when he started reading him the Percy Jackson story. Perfect choice, isn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  You missed most of Addie’s Percy Jackson phase, but he’s a schoolboy who can vanquish evil monsters against impossible odds. Mr. Hyman knows that Adam loves Arthurian legends but knights would be too adult, lacking any childlike vulnerability, for him to relate to them now. They wouldn’t offer him any fantasy escape from what is happening. This is a better choice.

  I’m disturbed by how well he knows Addie.

  Once I liked his physicality, but now I don’t want his arm around our son, and I want him in smart trousers and a jacket, not shorts and a clinging T-shirt.

  Mr. Hyman. Silas.

  Two names. Two men.

  Jenny and I were in the sitting room, the night before her English A-level paper. Jenny was in her pajamas, her hair still wet from the shower.

  “So do you know what Dryden called Shakespeare?” I asked her.

  She shook her head and water flecked the paper I was holding.

  “A Janus poet,” I told her. “Because …?”

  “He was two-faced?”

  “Wore two faces,” I corrected as she dangled a slipper on one toe. “Janus was also the god of gates and doors, beginnings and endings. January is from Janus, because it’s the month that begins the New Year.”

  “I don’t have to be that informed, Mum, really.”

  “But it’s interesting, isn’t it?”

  She smiled at me. “I can see why it should be,” she said. “And why you went to Cambridge and I’ll be lucky to scrape into anywhere.”

  I watch Silas’s Janus face, so close to Adam’s.

  I remember again Maisie’s words at the prize-giving: “That man should never have been allowed near our children.”

  And I want him to get away from my children. Get away!

  Then Mum comes in. She’s again, somehow, forced color into her cheeks and energy into her voice, that magic smile appearing on her face.

  “Have you had a good story, Addie?” She turns to Silas Hyman. “Thank you for giving me time with my granddaughter.”

  “Of course. It was great to be with Addie.” He gets up. “I’d better be going now.”

  Adam looks as if he’ll follow.

  “Daddy will be here in a minute,” Mum says. “So let’s wait here for him, shall we?”

  Silas picks up the bunch of flowers and leaves the room. I follow him. The flowers are yellow roses—mean buds that will never open, plastic-wrapped and scentless. He must have bought them from the hospital shop because he didn’t have them when Jenny and I followed him earlier.

  He presses the button on the door of the ICU ward. A pretty blond nurse comes to answer it. I see her notice his attractiveness. Or maybe it’s just his vigorous health, which stands out in this place.

  The nurse opens the door and explains to him that flowers aren’t allowed because they are an infection risk. There’s a flirtatious tone to her voice but flirting isn’t an infection risk, is it? However inappropriate it seems.

  “For you then,” he says, smiling at her. She takes the flowers and lets him into the ICU.

  A smile and flowers.

  That simple.

  I follow him.

  To be fair to the pretty nurse, she’s accompanying him all the time, making him wait while she puts the flowers in the nurses’ station, away from the patients. But are all nurses so cautious?

  He follows her towards the section that has Jenny’s bed.

  Through the glass wall I see you sitting next to her, Sarah a little distance away.

  Silas Hyman doesn’t recognize her. The pretty nurse has to point.

  “That’s Jennifer Covey, there,” she says.

  He no longer looks healthy or handsome, but pale, as if he’s about to vomit, his forehead sweaty, stricken by what he sees.

  I think I hear him whisper, “Oh God.”

  He turns away and shakes his head at the nurse. He isn’t going closer.

  Or is he pretending this is the first time he’s seen her since the fire? A brilliant performance so that nobody will suspect him of being the person who tampered with her oxygen tube?

  Perhaps he feels watched.

  Through the glass wall, you see him turning away. You hurry out after him. The ICU doors close behind him and you follow.

  You catch up with him in the corridor, your anger skidding on the slippery linoleum and bouncing off the walls.

  “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “I saw Adam and his grandmother earlier and—”

  “Your wife said you were at a building site.”

  For a moment he is speechless, caught out.

  “A load of crap, wasn’t it? Like your alibi. Lying bastard!”

  Yelling now, sound tumbling through the open door of the relatives’ room, where Adam is waiting for you.

  He and my mother come out, but you don’t see them, rage focused on Silas Hyman.

  “Who lied for you about my son?”

  “What do you mean?”

  My mother tries to be appeasing. “Someone lied and said they saw Addie starting the fire,” she tells him.

  “But that’s ridiculous,” Mr. Hyman says. “For goodness’ sake, of all people to accuse.” He turns to Adam. “I know you wouldn’t do that, Sir Covey.”

  He bends towards Adam, perhaps to stroke his hair or give him a hug.

  “Keep away from him!” you roar, moving towards him, going to hit him.

  And then Adam is standing between you and he’s pushing you away from Silas Hyman, protective of him, furious with you. All his strength in those small hands as he pushes you away.

  I see the terrible hurt on your face.

  It’s the first time you’ve seen Adam since the fire.

  Silas turns and walks away.

  Mum takes Adam’s hand in hers. “Come on, sweetheart, time to go home.” She leads him away.

  “Go after him!” I say to you. “You’ve got to tell him you know he didn’t start the fire.”

  Silas Hyman said that straightaway. “I know you wouldn’t do that, Sir Covey.”

  But you turn away.

  You think that he must know you think he’s innocent. I hope to God that he does.

  You return to Jenny’s bedside. Sarah doesn’t know what has just happened in the corridor.

  “Can you stay here?” you ask.

  Something in your voice sou
nds a warning, and she doesn’t automatically agree.

  “Why?”

  “Hyman told his wife he was on a building site,” you say. “But all the time the bastard was right here, with Adam.”

  “Is Addie OK?”

  “Yeah.”

  You hesitate a moment, but don’t confide in Sarah about Addie pushing you away.

  “I need to find out who Hyman got to lie about Adam,” you say. “I need to do that for him.”

  But what Addie needs from you is to be with him. For you to make a testudo for him. It makes me so sad you don’t know this.

  “Finding out who this witness is—and the arsonist—should be my job,” Sarah says. “I’m a police officer; it’s what I do.”

  “I thought Baker had made you take compassionate leave?”

  “He has.” She pauses a moment. “OK, we know there were only two members of staff, apart from Jenny, who weren’t at sports day—a reception teacher and a secretary. We need to speak to both of them, but especially the secretary because it’s her job to buzz people in and out of the school.”

  “I’ll go now,” you say, standing up. She puts a hand on your arm. “He’s my son.”

  “Exactly. And what if she recognizes you? Do you think that’ll help if she is involved in this?”

  You are silenced and frustrated by her logic.

  “The most useful thing for you to do is to stay here and guard Jenny,” she continues, and I’m not sure if she really thinks Jen needs guarding with so many medical staff around, or if she sees you as a loose cannon and wants to tether you at Jenny’s bedside.

  “Here’s how it’s going to work,” she says, using one of your expressions—or perhaps it was hers first, which you adopted as you grew up. “I will share everything with you, brief you, update you on everything.”

  I don’t think you believe her. You’ve had years of her only giving you small pieces of information, no more than was allowed to the press, and only hints at the bigger and more dramatic picture. Such a rule-abiding police officer; such a frustrating older sister.

  “You think the arsonist is Silas Hyman, with an accomplice who lied about Adam, and we’ll come back to him, but we also have to look at the hate-mailer.”