‘We’re going to make a house out of our tables,’ she said to them.
6.
9.01 a.m.
They arrived at Fulmar beach. Miss Kowalski’s phone made a cuckoo sound and Mr Lorrimer’s phone pinged – ping! ping! ping! – with messages. Miss Kowalski read her phone and did a little scream, then put her hand over her mouth like she could put the scream back in again and started crying and Mr Lorrimer said ‘Fucking hell’, and the children all laughed because it was such a bad word and if they laughed it would make it funny he’d used a bad word, but Basi just looked down at the beach which had snow footprints not sand footprints. Other teachers couldn’t get reception on their phones, so they all looked at Miss Kowalski’s and Mr Lorrimer’s phones, and Rafi did that too.
‘Everyone run under the cliffs as quick as you can!’ Mrs Cardswell shouted, like she’d got all excited about the game. ‘Each form will hide all together. My form with me, please!’ But the sea and the wind were too loud. So Mr Lorrimer, who had a big booming voice, shouted it too and they all ran under the cliffs, the teachers hurrying them along, like the teachers all really, really wanted to win.
The cliffs made a roof over them. The teachers emptied all the bin bags they’d been carrying and they had life jackets in them.
Basi was still looking down at their snow footprints because he didn’t want to look at the sea. But the sea was shouting at him:
Wa-Hush, Wa-Hush, Wa-Hush.
Wahush meant ‘monsters’ in Arabic; the sea was telling you that it had monsters inside it.
Miss Kowalski said, ‘We’ve got a big treat today. We are all going to go on a real lifeboat! And maybe a police boat too! And then the seekers will never find us!’
And everyone apart from Basi was laughing, because all the grown-ups were playing, the lifeboat people too, even though it was a little bit like cheating.
Rafi was holding a life jacket and he started putting it on Basi. It felt all rubbery and damp and he hated the smell and the cold heaviness.
‘Remember the piñata in Alexandria?’ Rafi said, because he could tell Basi didn’t like the life jacket and he wanted to make him smile. And it was really funny. There’d been a shop selling little life jackets for children and babies. An old man had said something to Rafi, but really quietly so Basi couldn’t hear. He thought what he’d said had made Rafi angry because Rafi got a stick from the back of the shop and hit a little life jacket and hit it and hit it. The shopkeeper got angry too and Basi started to cry, then Rafi said, ‘It’s a piñata, Little Monkey!’
‘Are there sweets inside?’
‘No, it’s a terrible piñata.’
And they’d laughed because it was funny Rafi thought a life jacket could be a piñata and because they’d been naughty and were afraid of the shopkeeper.
‘We ran so fast, didn’t we?’ Basi said.
‘Super-fast.’
When they’d got their breaths back they found another shop. Before they went in he told Rafi the old man had lied, life jackets are never piñatas, they never have sweets inside. It was the first time he could tell Rafi something important he didn’t already know. The shop had been selling balloons too, maybe that’s what had got Rafi muddled. Rafi looked at the life jackets in the next shop really carefully, but he didn’t hit any of them, and then he bought Basi a Yamaha one, which was red and grey and used up almost all their euros but it was the best kind you could get.
The school life jacket was yellow. Rafi pulled it up over his head, snagging it on his ears, and it hurt.
Rafi made sure Basi’s life jacket fitted properly and wouldn’t come off over his head. They were safe now under the cliffs, he was pretty certain of that. Nobody had followed them along the path, nobody had seen them. He’d done it. And boats would soon be coming.
He tried his phone again but there still wasn’t a signal. Miss Kowalski had shown Rafi her text messages when they’d got to the beach, like he was a member of staff too: code red; gunman in the woods; police car shot at.
‘Rafi? You need to put on your life jacket.’ Basi was tugging at him.
‘I’m sorry, Little Monkey, I can’t come with you.’
‘Then I won’t go.’
‘You’ll have Miss Price looking after you and Mrs Cardswell and you’ll be with all your friends.’
‘I don’t want to play any more.’
But he knew Basi had already guessed this wasn’t a game.
‘It won’t be anything like the Journey, I promise.’
‘No. You have to come too.’
‘It’ll be a very short boat trip with nice English policemen who’ll look after you; special boat policemen. Please will you be brave and go on the boat?’
‘They’re shouting at me, the monsters, wa-hush, wa-hush, listen! Can you hear?! It’s worse than a hole!’
He was breathing too fast, eyes dilated, terrified.
Rafi listened to the waves crashing on to the beach and understood Basi’s terror and knew that this was the worst thing he’d ever done to him.
‘Remember the princess in Milan, Basi? Do you remember her face?’
Trying not to rush Basi, he talked about the beautiful woman in Milan station, who’d been so kind to them. When Basi’s breathing slowed, he took his hand and led him over to Miss Price, who was doing up life jackets on a group of children.
‘Rafi, I don’t know how to thank you. If it wasn’t for you—’
‘Look after him, for me.’
‘But—’
‘I’ll be fine.’
She didn’t argue; evacuating them bought him a bit of trust, he thought, deserved or not. He passed Basi’s hand over to hers, but Basi tried to hold on to him.
‘It’s a Have-To-No-Arguments,’ he said to Basi. ‘Okay?’ He waited and then Basi nodded and stopped trying to hold on.
He kissed him on the top of his head, his silky hair soft against his lips, saw the pink raised scar along his cheek, his long curling eyelashes, tears at the ends like beads. He told him to be brave, that he loved him, and then he ran back towards the cliff path.
Being apart from Basi felt like a physical severing but they’d all look after him and he was in a proper life jacket, not one made out of foam that soaked up water and drowned children faster. An old man had quietly warned him. Not thinking about the effect on Basi, he’d picked up a stick and bashed a tiny life jacket so that the foam spilled out and everyone could see it was an evil trick, and not to buy one, and the shopkeeper had yelled at him but he hadn’t cared and then he’d seen Basi crying as he hit the life jacket. It’s a piñata, Little Monkey! The balloons probably gave him the idea, like it was a party shop, but they were sold for keeping phones dry at sea.
It was snowing more heavily as Rafi sprinted up the path to get to Hannah, his feet sometimes slipping as he struggled to get purchase.
* * *
Matthew walked back towards Old School, his phone’s ringer switched on, bashing against branches, snow falling inside his collar and down his neck, wanting to draw the man after him, away from the pottery room – if it’s me you’re after, you bastard, then come and get me, but leave the children alone. No point shouting this in your head so he shouted it at the woods, ‘Come and get me! You bastard!’ The noise startled a flock of fieldfare thrushes that scattered into the sky. But then there was silence, no one behind him.
His phone rang,
‘Matthew? Are you okay?’ Neil asked.
‘I think the gunman was following me in the woods, almost to the pottery room.’
‘Can you see him now?’
‘No. If he comes back … They don’t even have a lock on their door, Neil, nothing. And no shutters.’
‘The police are treating this as a major incident and sending in armed officers and everyone else they think is needed. I’m sure they’ll make the pottery room a priority. Everyone in junior school has got to Fulmar beach and the coastguards have been alerted. We’ve accounted for everyone apart from
Tobias Fern and Jamie Alton. The policeman who was shot at isn’t hurt, he’s in the gatehouse. I’ll wait by the front door for you.’
‘Thank you, Neil.’
He was grateful to Neil for rising to this crisis, for taking it so impressively in his stride, but not hugely surprised. He’d always seen Neil’s strength of character, had thought him a person who, if it came to it, would step up to the mark; thought too that Neil probably didn’t know this about himself nor that courage wasn’t the same thing as robust mental health.
He’d read that Winston Churchill suffered from depression. A historian suggested it was his depression that meant he saw the evil in Hitler, the true threat he posed, long before anyone else; as if depression had already adjusted his eyes to the darkness so that he could see the danger it contained; Neil’s drumming fingertips.
As he neared Old School he saw Tobias Fern on the lawn holding his flute, wearing his noise-cancelling headphones; he must have heard the siren even with the headphones, but it probably just terrified him, made him withdraw further into his private world.
‘Tobias?’ The boy startled. Matthew tried to take his hand but Tobias winced away from him; he hated being touched. So, instead, Matthew held his arm a little way from Tobias, as if holding the air around him, and Tobias understood and moved quickly with Matthew over the snow-covered grass in front of the school.
It was suddenly quiet; Neil must have switched off the siren – it had done its job in alerting everyone and its screech would just induce more panic. Shutters were pulled across all the windows, no lights shining out, the facade of the school no longer welcoming.
He knocked on the door. Neil quickly let them in.
‘You found Tobias,’ Neil said to him, his relief clear. ‘I’ve told Tonya to wait with Donna and Jacintha, she has her laptop and phone with her. Once the major incident response people arrive they’ll set up a command and control centre and organize things from there. I’ll see you in your office.’
Then he was leaving the reception area and striding briskly along the darkened corridor.
Matthew bolted the heavy door, glad of its heft. It took a little while for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. Tobias had visibly relaxed, his hands no longer covering his headphones, though he kept his headphones on.
‘Mr Marr?’
He hadn’t seen Hannah in the shadows by the door.
‘You should be in your classroom, Hannah.’
‘I heard something in the woods earlier, a really loud noise, and I saw smoke. It was an explosion, wasn’t it?’
‘Probably, yes.’
‘I’m sorry, I should have told you. If I had—’
‘Teachers heard it too and didn’t know what it was either. Mr Benson complained about some kind of rumpus in the woods – rumpus, like Where the Wild Things Are.’
‘I don’t know where Rafi is,’ she said. ‘I keep phoning him but he’s not answering.’
So that was the reason she was by the door – waiting for Rafi. Or perhaps she was on her way out to find him; he wouldn’t put it past her. ‘Cliff Heights School’s very own Romeo and Juliet’, staff called them, but the teasing epithet, the sarcasm implicit, was more about the adults and a certain wistfulness.
‘He’s fine, Hannah, he just doesn’t have any reception. He evacuated everyone in Junior School down to the beach, coastguards will be on their way to pick them up.’
She smiled, eyes shining, her relief luminous in the darkened space.
‘Love is the most powerful thing there is,’ he said. ‘The only thing that really matters.’
Was it appropriate for a head teacher to be saying this kind of thing to a student? Yes, he thought, this was exactly the time and place for it to be appropriate. And he loved Rafi Bukhari too and his relief that he and his little brother were safe, while not making him glow, was none the less something light inside him.
‘Let’s get going,’ he said and they started walking along the shadowy corridor, Tobias lagging a little behind. He was thinking about love, that it was such a vital thing, like gravity or breathing.
His phone rang and he answered it.
‘Mr Marr? PC Beard here. The copper who got shot at.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Fortunately, the bugger missed. I’m in your gatehouse. I phoned the main school number, spoke to someone called Tonya. She gave me your numbers. Mr Forbright said you went to warn the teacher in the pottery room?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mustn’t go putting yourself at risk like that. You have a police officer here. So, it’s my job not yours to do anything like that.’
‘But you’re not armed either and—’
‘It’s my job and besides it’s much more exciting than dishing out speeding fines to tourists and there aren’t many of those in November.’
Matthew guessed him to be in his fifties; imagined a bit of a paunch from evenings with mates in the pub. He liked him.
‘Mr Forbright said you thought the gunman was following you. Probably the same nasty bugger who shot at me. Any idea where he went?’
‘No.’
He walked round the bend in the corridor with Hannah and Tobias, towards the library, English classroom and his office.
The sound of something behind them. Matthew hung up the phone and listened.
A door being closed.
Which door? A classroom door? No classrooms behind them. It must have been the door to the drawing room, which was empty. Surely to God the drawing room had been empty.
Tobias, with his headphones on, hadn’t noticed but he saw Hannah stiffen, afraid.
Someone had been hiding all this time, locked with them inside Old School.
Footsteps behind them.
‘Go into the library, quick as you can,’ he said.
Hannah hurried into the library but Tobias either hadn’t heard him or wouldn’t be hurried. He put his arm around Tobias, trying to get him to hurry, but Tobias flinched at being touched and stood stock-still.
The footsteps continued, getting closer.
A click. The cock of a gun.
He put himself between the gun and Tobias.
He pushed Tobias’s earphones away from his ears and whispered to him, ‘Go into the library now.’
Tobias walked through the open library door; he wasn’t sure if Tobias was doing what he was told or just getting away from being touched and having his headphones removed.
He turned to face the man behind him, because going into the library might draw the man into the library too.
A black balaclava covered his face, eyes looking out of slits. He was pointing a rifle, another gun strapped to his chest. The guns rigid and inhuman, the man rigid too, as if his guns and his body and his hate were all the same terrible thing.
Matthew took a step backwards, against the wall now; his head by the display case of medals.
‘Please …’ Matthew said, dropping his mobile on the floor, betraying his fear. ‘Talk to me. Tell me why you’re doing this.’
The man looked back at him and said one word.
Matthew recognized his voice.
And the one word explained everything.
A moment of stillness, as if time itself was waiting.
He thought he saw his finger move, maybe imagined it moving.
The bullet travelling faster than its own sound.
Those boys dying so that this wouldn’t happen.
Their medals turning to shrapnel.
The benevolent order of things destroyed.
Another shot. Hannah was pulling him inside the library, she must have waited by the door; a habit of waiting by doors. Brave girl. Why didn’t he know about this courage of his students?
She’s bending over him now and time must have passed, but how much time? He doesn’t know. Can’t tell. She’s saying to him that help is on the way and he can tell that she’s lying, that she’s being brave for him and Jesus Christ it should be him being brave for
her. He should be brave for her. She’s by the door; the most dangerous place. He must tell her to move away from him and the door. And he must tell her the gunman’s name, he must warn all of them. And he must find out about the children in the pottery room and if the junior school children have been rescued. Again and again he tries to speak; Hannah bends down closer to him, trying to understand, but it’s no good, he can’t make the words and he feels part of his consciousness fragmenting into blackness, forgetting who the gunman is and the word he said, knowing only that it is all his fault.
7.
9.34 a.m.
Beth Alton arrives on the outskirts of Minehead; country lanes have given way to roads and traffic lights. Her mobile vibrates and she grabs it. But it’s a PTA group message, not Jamie:
Matthew Marr shot, wounded in library. No children hurt.
The word yet hovers there. Yet. Yet. Yet. And she feels guilt that she can only think about yet and not about Matthew Marr, not until she knows Jamie is safe.
She parks on the snowy pavement by The Pines Leisure Centre, other cars parked erratically in front of her. As she opens her car door, another PTA message buzzes on her phone.
New School evacuated!!
So, that mother’s child is safe. What about other people’s children? Is there a terrified emoji, for Christ’s sake? These women, these women. She’s never understood them, never been an insider and now especially not.
Parents are running through the open glass doors of the large modern leisure centre. Beth doesn’t run because she feels too far from Jamie as it is, five miles away through the snow.
You worry too much about me, Mum.
Not any more. I don’t care if you flunk your A levels or go to university, none of that matters.
She says after we’ve all traipsed off to St Andrews.
And I don’t mind that you’re not outgoing and not very confident.
Jeez, thanks, Mum.
Sorry.
I’ll phone you when I go off to university.
More than you do at the moment?
I live with you, why should I phone you?
Three Hours : A Novel (2020) Page 7