Junior School had more security than the rest of the school, with a link-wire fence around the playground and building, barbed wire at the top, the suggestion and ugliness disguised by clambering ivy. The secretary always took ages to open the locked gate, huffing and puffing and complaining and making him sign something; every time; like she didn’t already know who he was.
No time.
He ran at the fence, leaping as high as he could, one foot hitting against it, bouncing against it, while his left hand grabbed the top through the ivy and his right helped swing him over, the barbed wire tearing his hands as he vaulted it.
As he ran through the playground to the building, he saw a hardback book on a swing, protected from the falling snow by the pirate ship canopy. The illustration on the cover of the book was a woodland in snow and looked so like the real school woods in snow that for a moment he paused, then ran to the door.
The secretary busybodied after him down the corridor; she must have seen his ninja-vaulting from her office window.
‘Tell Mr Lorrimer I need to see him straight away, please,’ Rafi said. ‘It’s an emergency.’
Then he ran to Basi’s classroom.
Just before circle time Basi Bukhari was looking at their scarecrows on the windowsill, waiting for springtime to guard the allotment, when he saw snowflakes. Everyone else in his class saw the snow too and ran to the windows, shouting, ‘Snow! Snow! Snow!’ But Basi was sick. Mrs Cardswell didn’t get cross with him, just with Samantha, who said it was gross. Mrs Cardswell told everyone else to go to the reading room and then Miss Price came because she was his teacher when he’d first arrived and still came to be with him when he was upset. But he was falling down the hole and no one could reach him. And then he heard Rafi’s voice.
‘S’okay, Little Monkey, I’m here, you’re safe. It’s all okay.’
‘Snow.’
‘I know. A hole.’
‘The worst hole.’
‘I’ve got you now.’
He put Basi on his lap.
‘The judge. Remember him in the boat? I was just thinking about him. His long grey beard with all the salt in it?’
‘He gave me a lemon, because I was seasick.’
‘Yes. He did. And it helped, didn’t it?’
Basi opened his eyes, fixed them on Rafi as he came back to the classroom and his brother.
‘His last lemon,’ Basi said.
‘That’s right. I have to go and see Mr Lorrimer for a minute but Miss Price will look after you and then I’ll be back, I promise.’
Rafi hurried to Mr Lorrimer’s office. It would be too dangerous to take Basi through the woods, the bomber might still be there, but this building wasn’t safe, he’d just got in without any problem. Junior School was at the top of the cliffs with a path leading down to an out-of-bounds beach. He’d gone to the beach last summer, a big group of them playing music and laughing, making more noise than they needed; challenging someone, claiming something. Too hot in the sun, they’d drunk beers and smoked in the cliff’s shadows and no one had seen; maybe the beach.
He arrived at Mr Lorrimer’s office. Miss Kowalski was with Mr Lorrimer and she smiled at Rafi as Mr Lorrimer started on about irregular visits during school hours. Rafi interrupted, trying to sound adult and calm.
‘There was an explosion in the woods, near to the path.’
‘You’re saying there was some kind of bomb?’ Miss Kowalski asked, but she was worried about him, not about a bomb; she didn’t believe him.
‘Probably firecrackers or something,’ Mr Lorrimer said, irritated. ‘Someone pissing around.’
Pissing because Lorrimer was annoyed with Rafi, and because he was sixteen so Lorrimer could use words like that. With the little kids, he probably would have said messing.
‘I heard it and saw it,’ Rafi said. ‘Afterwards I checked and found a container, the size of a lunch box, and there was shrapnel in the trees. It was a bomb.’ Trying not to speak too quickly, to sound mature, so he’d convince them. But he could see his reflection on their faces – a teenager with PTSD who imagined things that weren’t there.
‘A lunch box?’ Mr Lorrimer said.
‘Was anybody hurt?’ Miss Kowalski asked, but without urgency, just saying this because she had to, like she knew that nobody was hurt because there hadn’t really been an explosion.
‘No.’
‘Was anyone with you when you saw it?’ Mr Lorrimer asked.
‘No.’
Mr Lorrimer looked down at his paperwork, so Rafi would get the message that he was wasting his time.
‘This building is very safe,’ Miss Kowalski said patiently. ‘No one can hurt Basi here.’
And even if he didn’t have PTSD, they would still find it hard to believe him because around them were books sorted out into reading age and coloured crayons in pots and small coats on pegs, each with a photo of the wearer above. It was so gentle and organized that it felt safe.
‘Perhaps you’d like to go home for the day,’ Mr Lorrimer said, not knowing their foster mother wasn’t there today. The house was in West Porlock, only three miles away, and if he could take Basi there he would, but to get there they’d have to go through the woods, on the drive or the path, and the woods weren’t safe.
‘I need to talk to Mr Marr,’ he said, sounding too loud in the quiet room.
They were silent, Miss Kowalski with that patient quietness of teachers, Mr Lorrimer with annoyance, and all the time they were patient and annoyed Basi was in danger. He’d just have to take Basi and run. But what about the photos above the small coats? He’d have to take all the children to the beach, but he didn’t know how he could do that.
Mr Lorrimer hadn’t picked up the phone on his desk so Rafi got out his mobile. Mr Marr always took his calls. Should’ve done that straight away; he’d wasted time.
* * *
Through his office’s large sash windows Matthew Marr saw that it had started to snow, the first time in years. Opposite him was his young deputy head, Neil Forbright, huddled into his chair, looking cold despite the fire Matthew had lit in the grate, and Matthew worried that Neil should have taken more time off, had again come back to work too soon; a pattern for the last year. His mobile vibrated, ‘Rafi’ displayed, and he picked it up.
‘There was an explosion in the woods, Mr Marr,’ Rafi said. ‘About fifteen minutes ago, maybe less.’
‘Has anyone been hurt?’ he asked.
And in the few moments before Rafi replied, fear blew inside him, a barely perceptible spasm in his face, a gust of adrenaline speeding his heart and breathing; and that physical reaction meant that he didn’t dismiss what Rafi told him, because he had felt a presage of something appalling.
‘No,’ Rafi said. ‘But I heard it and saw flames and smoke.’
Matthew put the phone on speaker so Neil could hear.
‘I found the remains of it,’ Rafi continued, ‘a burnt-out container bent out of shape, the size of a lunch box. And there was shrapnel in the trees.’
Rafi was trying to sound calm, but Matthew heard the boy’s fast breathing.
‘Did you see anyone near the explosion?’ he asked.
‘No, but I didn’t look, just ran to Basi.’
Matthew thought that Rafi’s explosion probably had an innocent explanation – a bonfire that had an aerosol can and a lunch box burnt inside it; bits of bonfire floating up and getting caught in the trees looking like shrapnel to Rafi. He suffered from severe PTSD, which would transmute a small bang with an innocent explanation into a bomb. He imagined Rafi hearing a loud noise and seeing flames and PTSD taking his mind away from the woods and back to Syria; the horrors there.
Tonya, his secretary, came in from her adjacent office, and he thought she must have heard some of their conversation.
‘Two teachers have phoned in,’ Tonya said. ‘Complaining about a loud noise in the woods. They think it’s kids messing around with firecrackers.’
That’s what Raf
i’s explosion most likely was, firecrackers and a bonfire.
‘I’m at Junior School,’ Rafi said. ‘But they don’t believe me. I have to get Basi, all of them, to safety. They can’t stay here, Mr Marr.’
It could well be, most probably was, PTSD that had convinced Rafi it was a bomb, when in fact it was, as the teachers thought, kids fooling around. But what if Rafi was right? A thousand-to-one shot – but what if? At Columbine, teachers had thought it was firecrackers not bullets to start with; just a prank.
‘We have to get them out,’ Rafi said.
Matthew remembered the schoolroom in the Dunkirk camp, plastic crates on the mud floor as seats and desks, the other two volunteer teachers also in wellies and hats. Two filthy boys walking towards him, the older one looking angry, his dark eyes and mouth forming a surly expression, until he got closer and Matthew saw that he was fearful and defensive. One hand was holding tightly on to his little brother’s, his other holding a battered copy of Macbeth.
At fourteen Rafi had brought his six-year-old brother all the way from Syria to France. He’d told Matthew about their journey, fragment by fragment, over the last two and a half years; his love and responsibility for Basi gluing the fragments together. If Rafi thought Basi was in danger then Matthew had to help him, had to give him the benefit of the doubt. And Rafi did have first-hand experience of bombs; the only one of them that did.
He took the school’s emergency plan from his bottom right-hand desk drawer.
‘Can you ask Mr Lorrimer to speak to me, please, Rafi?’
He turned to Neil.
‘I’m grading the incident amber, instigating the school emergency plan and evacuating Junior School,’ he said, a little alarmed by what he was saying. ‘I want the rest of the school to stay inside school buildings and not go anywhere near the woods until the police give us the all-clear.’
Neil picked up the phone to call the police; under the emergency plan the deputy head was in charge of liaison with the emergency services.
Lorrimer came on the phone and Matthew thought that his lack of hurry, his deliberate keeping him waiting, was to let him know how busy he, Lorrimer, was and that he resented being handed a student’s mobile phone.
‘I am activating the school’s emergency plan. I want you to evacuate Junior School,’ Matthew said without preamble. In retrospect that was a mistake, he should have prepared the ground a little.
‘You believe Rafi Bukhari?’ Lorrimer sounded dumbfounded. ‘It’s just kids fooling around, Matthew, and—’
Matthew interrupted. ‘You are to evacuate all the children and staff to Fulmar beach immediately.’
There were a hundred and forty children in junior school between the ages of four and ten, plus ten members of staff. When Matthew had planned junior school’s evacuation drill he’d imagined a heatwave in the summer term drying the woods to tinder and a fire started by a careless smoker or picnicker. The Junior School building was surrounded on three sides by woodland so the children would escape by evacuating down the cliff path to Fulmar beach, from where they would be rescued by police launches and coastguards; they had life jackets kept ready for just such an eventuality. He’d never imagined a freezing day at the end of November, with snow falling.
He heard the sound of a door closing and guessed that Rafi had been ushered out of Lorrimer’s office; then Lorrimer came back on the phone again.
‘I know how much you care about Rafi,’ Lorrimer said. ‘That he’s something of a son to you. But he has mental illness and is surely therefore not reliable? I understand that this is something you might feel you need to do to help him feel safer, but it’s snowing, the cliff path down to the beach will be slippery, it’s not safe, some of the children have asthma and—’
‘Yes, they are vulnerable young children. You’re isolated there. It’s a mile to the road, half a mile from us down a drive through woodland. Your building is not adequately secure. If the school is under attack, if there is any possibility of that, then we need to act swiftly. You have a route out, but a route that could be closed off. If it turns out to be a false alarm, which I’m ninety-nine per cent certain it will be, you can bring them all back again for break.’
Opposite him Neil was talking to the police. Tonya was telling receptionists there and in New School to lock the doors.
‘You’ve seriously graded this a code red?’ Lorrimer asked, and Matthew imagined Lorrimer opening his office door and looking at Rafi and wondering how a teenager could wreak such havoc in his junior school.
‘Amber at this stage,’ Matthew replied. ‘But amber still activates the emergency plan. Do you know if any children or staff are missing?’
‘The Year Threes were picked up as usual by Camille first thing to go to the art block in New School, so they aren’t here.’
The children in Junior School were taught art and sport in the facilities of New School, minibuses took them to and fro. He would get confirmation from New School that they had safely arrived.
‘Please send this morning’s electronic register to the school secretary,’ he said.
‘I’ll get it sent to Bethany, then.’
Lorrimer wasn’t using the emergency protocol when people went by their role not name, so that roles could be reallocated if necessary. Bethany was off this morning.
‘Find your Emergency Plan document and use it,’ Matthew said. ‘Tonya is acting the role of school secretary.’
Lorrimer, like the rest of the senior management and governors, had a hard copy of the Emergency Plan in his office as well as on e-format. Matthew had scrutinized it many times, usually as a tick-box exercise rather than as a document they’d ever need to use. But after a terrorist atrocity, or any violence against a school, he’d find himself redrafting it in the middle of the night, the insomniac periods of anxiety when the responsibility for so many children weighed heavily.
‘Take the emergency mobile and keep us updated as best you can,’ he told Lorrimer.
He’d tested mobile reception on the cliff path when he was planning the fire drill and no mobile network covered the path. Vodafone got patchy reception on the beach; so the emergency phone was on a Vodafone network.
‘And what should I tell my members of staff?’ Lorrimer asked.
‘That this is just a precaution; that we are doing it to avoid a very small likelihood of risk, but to take it seriously. I know that Margaret and Peter have children in upper school. You can tell them that the rest of the school is not in full lockdown at this stage but students and staff will be staying inside until the police say it’s safe.’
‘Right.’
He could imagine Lorrimer’s own explanation to the teachers; a neurotic headmaster making a ludicrous judgement call.
‘Head of New School is liaison for parent queries and information. Tell Junior School’s secretary to automatically forward calls to her before evacuating the building.’
He put down the phone. Tonya turned to him. ‘I’ve sent out the amber alert.’
It would have gone out as a group text, email and WhatsApp to all members of staff. It would also go on to classroom smartboards as a code, known only to teachers.
‘Thanks, Tonya. We need an up-to-date register of all children and staff.’
A key part of the emergency plan was that his office would collate a central register of everyone on site and anybody who was missing.
A knock on the door and Donna, Old School’s receptionist, came in.
‘I’ve locked the doors securely. There’s something you should know. I’m so sorry, I was going to say, to tell you, but I phoned maintenance first instead … It’s the CCTV camera. The one on the gatehouse, that connects to my monitor so I can see who’s coming up the drive? The thing is, it wasn’t working this morning. I went and had a look just before eight, just after I got here, and someone’s splattered yellow paint all over it, the camera. I thought it was just kids with a paintball.’
‘Well, that’s the most likely exp
lanation,’ Matthew said. ‘It’s probably nothing.’
And it probably wasn’t anything. It could easily have been kids with a paintball gun, besides which the drive going past the gatehouse and camera wasn’t the only way into the school. Because as Matthew knew, but hadn’t fully appreciated until now, the school’s border was insecure. The extensive school grounds, mainly woodland, only had a post-and-rail fence separating them from the road and neighbouring land. On foot, anyone could simply climb over the fence. So the paint-splattered camera wasn’t necessarily significant; but he felt a frisson of anxiety shift inside him as a weight was added to the side that said he wasn’t being paranoid.
* * *
In the pottery room, the children were making acorns from clay, small fingers patting and moulding the cupule shape, and Camille was pleased to see that although each of them kept glancing through the windows at the wondrous snow, checking it was still really there, they were working with quiet concentration, the feeling of the clay on their fingertips absorbing.
Coming here was mining something precious from a timetabled day, a sanctuary from hectic technological demands, where important quieter things had a chance to be noticed. In here there was no Wi-Fi or whiteboards or computers, not even any phones as the younger children weren’t allowed them at school and hers was switched off in her jacket pocket.
Despite the huge windows, she’d had to turn on the overhead lights. When it had first been built the trees would have been further away, but over the last century the woods had crept steadily closer.
A little while ago, she’d smelt bonfire smoke, not the lovely tangy earthy smell of wood burning, but something with a chemical bite in it. She looked out of the window and saw a line of black smoke moving between the trees.
5.
8.38 a.m.
Rafi said they were all going to play a game outside and they put on their coats, not one class at a time like normal, but all squashed together. Rafi got things out of the big cupboard and put them into black bin bags and Mr Lorrimer looked even crosser and said it was a fool’s errand, but Basi didn’t know what that meant.
Three Hours : A Novel (2020) Page 5