Burning Secrets

by Clare Chambers

  Catching sight of himself in the shiny surface of a parked car, he mopped his sweaty face with his sleeve, and raked his fingers through his hair so that he didn’t look quite so wild, before entering the school through the back door to the admin block. He walked briskly, with a confidence that he didn’t really feel, as though he was on an important errand.

  He stopped outside Mrs Ivory’s office and knocked at the door, his heart drumming, prepared to take off at the sound of her voice. But there was no noise, apart from the distant trill of the telephone in reception. He let himself into the room and closed the door behind him. She had evidently left for Port Julian in a hurry – a coffee mug was on the desk, half full and still slightly warm. And, as he’d hoped, she had left her computer on, midway through some work, without logging off.

  On this occasion he was going to take every precaution. He slipped the catch up on the window so that it appeared to be closed, but could be pushed open from either side, and then looked around for somewhere to hide. The only possible place was a slim metal wardrobe with sliding doors. It contained a navy overcoat, an academic gown, a reflective tabard, a pair of shoes and several reams of printer paper. Once these had been pushed to one end, there was just enough room for Daniel to squeeze inside.

  Satisfied, he sat at the desk and began to work. Mrs Ivory had abandoned the computer halfway through checking emails. With clumsy shaking hands, Daniel typed the word Narveng into the search field. Nothing. He tried Compound K, but again drew a blank. Disappointed, he tried the recycle bin. Here were deleted files going back eight years. He shook his head over this: Mrs Ivory obviously thought just pressing delete actually deleted something.

  This time he was lucky. Performing a search for Narveng brought up an email, six years old, from someone called d.chancellor@narveng.co.uk. He could feel his pulse racing with excitement as he waited for it to open. Like all computers on Wragge it was unbearably, prehistorically slow; you could practically hear cogs grinding. It was the first thread of evidence that actually linked Narveng to the school and, more specifically, to Mrs Ivory.

  Dear Emma

  I enjoyed our meeting and found it extremely productive. Your ideas have set me thinking and I’d be very interested in taking things further. Perhaps we could meet in London?

  Dave

  Nothing exactly incriminating, thought Daniel, but it was a link. The reply was even briefer:

  Dave

  This is my work email. In future please use the Hotmail address I gave you. Thanks.

  Emma

  This sounded more like someone with something to conceal.

  Daniel glanced at his watch. Even if the border officials at Port Julian liked to do things at a leisurely pace, Mrs Ivory was unlikely to tolerate any time-wasting. There was surely only a matter of minutes until she returned.

  He returned to the original message from ‘Dave’ and clicked on Reply. This will stir things up, he thought, cracking his knuckles then beginning to type.

  Dave

  Just to let you know that I’m pulling out of the Compound K experiment as of now. We’ve got problems with the students.

  Emma

  He clicked Send. The pressure of his finger on the mouse was like pushing a button to set off an explosion hundreds of miles away. Somewhere, he hoped, at a desk in the offices of Narveng UK, there would be a man called Dave having a panic attack.

  Beside him the phone suddenly rang, its tinny jangle slaughtering the silence, and making him jump up in alarm. Before he could decide whether to make a swift exit or hide it stopped. When he looked back at the computer screen there was a message, which he read with a smile of something like triumph spreading across his face.

  What???? What do you mean by problems? You can’t just pull out! There’s only another two months to go. Anyway, they can’t just stop taking K – it has to be a phased withdrawal. We discussed all this! We need to talk urgently.

  Dave

  PS OK to use this email address now?

  Oh my God, Daniel thought. It’s true. It’s actually true. And this was the evidence. For a second or two he considered printing it off right now on Mrs Ivory’s own printer, but then he had a better idea. He forwarded the email from Dave to his own Hotmail address, and was trawling his memory for Helen Swift’s details when he heard footsteps approaching. With fumbling fingers, he deleted the exchange with Dave and cleared the screen, and then scrambled into the metal wardrobe, setting the coat hangers shivering on the rail and making the whole structure quake. He clutched the hangers and pulled the sliding door across so that only a knife-edged gap remained. He could see a tiny stripe of carpet, wall and window. Immediately a feeling of claustrophobia engulfed him.

  The office door opened and closed softly and a moment later Daniel heard the pneumatic hiss and creak of someone sitting down on the swivel chair, followed by the scrape and rustle of drawers being opened and searched.

  Only now it occurred to Daniel, crouching awkwardly in the restricted space, and scarcely able to breathe, that he hadn’t really thought things through. Mrs Ivory might well be comfortably installed for the rest of the day. How long could he remain hidden, when the slightest twitch would give him away? It was one thing to be found in Mrs Ivory’s office, but quite another to be caught hiding in a wardrobe. Various appalling scenarios of discovery and humiliation began to play out in his mind. He wondered whether it would be better to burst out and confront her.

  The chair hissed and creaked again as its occupant stood up, oblivious to the storm of emotions raging in the metal wardrobe in the corner, and walked across to the filing cabinet under the window. For the briefest second as she crossed the room she was clearly visible through the paper-thin gap in the sliding door.

  Helen Swift.

  Chapter 37

  DANIEL WAS SO astounded that for a second or two he froze, unable to trust the evidence of his own eyes. But there she was again, quite unmistakably, caught in that tiny visible strip of room, and heading directly towards him as though intending to check out the contents of the wardrobe for herself.

  He was about to call out to her when the office door opened again. There was an electric silence – the sort that flows between people recovering from an unpleasant surprise – then Daniel heard Mrs Ivory say, “Helen! What are you doing here?” Her voice was polite, professional and without a trace of warmth.

  Daniel shrank back inside the wardrobe, thanking God that he hadn’t chosen that moment to emerge.

  “I assume you haven’t come to ask for your job back. I know that you gave me false references, although I’ve no idea why. That’s quite a serious offence.”

  “Quite serious,” said Helen. “But not as serious as some other things.”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about. You’ve committed a criminal offence. I don’t know why the police didn’t pick you up at the border,” said Mrs Ivory. Her tone was still smooth, but she sounded slightly less assured.

  “Let’s ask them, shall we?” said Helen, moving towards the telephone, out of Daniel’s line of vision. “Give them a call.”

  There was a click of the door closing. “I’m a busy woman. You’ve got two minutes to tell me why you’re here, and then I’m going to have you removed from the premises.”

  Helen gave a snort. “Who by? Kenny? He’s your loyal slave, isn’t he? He’s the one who searched my cottage, went through my things. I could smell the chlorine.”

  “What do you want?” Mrs Ivory’s voice was cold but unafraid.

  “I want to know why you’re doing it. I know what you’re doing to the kids here, that you’ve been medicating them for years, you and Narveng, but I just don’t get why. What’s in it for you? At first I thought it must be money. But you live in an average house, drive an average car, don’t own any property. You haven’t even had a holiday in eight years.”

  “What are you – some sort of journalist?” said Mrs Ivory in a tone of deepest disgust. “The thing with journal
ists is that you’re so corrupt you imagine everyone else has the same grubby morals.”

  “You’re very self-righteous for someone who’s been deliberately poisoning children.”

  “That’s a lie. Do you think I would risk a hair of these children’s heads?”

  “There are risks in any drug. Especially one that’s untested.”

  “It wasn’t untested. I took it myself for three years. I was one of the first volunteers.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I had nothing to lose. You’ve never had a child, have you, Helen?” She went on without pausing for a reply, “Well I have. And I lost her. She took her own life at fifteen. I tried everything to keep her, but she wouldn’t stay.”

  “I didn’t know that. I’m sorry.”

  “She’d tried every pill for depression you can name, but they made her paranoid or dopey or fat or sick, so she stopped taking them. If Compound K had been around ten years ago she might still be alive. And if what I’ve done here saves just one young life, then it will be worth it.”

  “But you can’t go round drugging healthy people without their consent!” Helen protested. “One of them might have had a violent reaction to it. Someone could have died.”

  “That’s why I took it myself first. And I’m still taking it. About six months after Hilly died I read an advert in a science journal asking for volunteers for a drug trial, and I thought: what have I got to lose? If it kills me, so much the better. But it didn’t kill me. It saved me.”

  “And Narveng never paid you a penny for any of this?”

  “They paid me for that initial trial – like all the volunteers. I gave it to The Samaritans. I told you, I’m not interested in money. I’ve got no one in the world to spend it on. I don’t even spend the money I earn.”

  “And then, after that, you decided to test it out on a whole school? Was that your idea or Narveng’s?”

  “Mine. The school wasn’t like it is now. The buildings were crumbling, there was vandalism and graffiti, the children weren’t achieving. They were miserable. And there were so many teenagers like Hilly, at the mercy of their emotions. You know how vulnerable teenagers are; tormented by their hormones. Like that new girl at The Brow – what’s her name – Louie.”

  Daniel, who had been listening with a growing sense of amazement, nearly stopped breathing.

  “She reminds me so much of my Hilly. She’s got scars all the way up her arms from stubbing out cigarettes on her own skin – can you imagine that? But that’s what they’re like: they can’t handle these violent changes of mood. I thought if we can just get them through that brief dangerous time, think of the benefits to themselves, their families, the whole community . . . ”

  “But Emma,” Helen’s voice was incredulous. “Most people navigate those years without any serious problems. You can’t medicate them all on the off-chance that you might save a few.”

  “Why not? You’ve seen them. They’re happy. They love school, they love home. They love the island. They don’t want to leave.”

  “But it’s not real happiness. It’s a chemical happiness,” Helen protested. “And you say there are no side effects, but there are. They’ve got no feelings. They can’t appreciate music or art or beauty, because they can’t feel the sadness in it.”

  “You want them to feel sad? That’s perverse.”

  “And they’ve got no ambition. They’re happy to sit around all day smiling and eating that bloody Leaf ! You know, at first I thought Leaf was the drug, but when I started researching I realised it was just another side effect. Compound K screws up your sense of taste – it makes sweet things taste bitter and bitter things addictively sweet.” Daniel gave such a jolt of surprise at this that for an awful moment he thought he had given himself away. But the women’s voices flowed on, uninterrupted.

  “I admit it takes away your appetite for sugar, but that’s surely a good thing. Leaf is actually very nutritious.” Daniel could hear the smile in Mrs Ivory’s voice. As he listened to these revelations, he kept remembering things that had struck him as bizarre in his early days on the island: dozens of students crawling around the field scavenging for Leaf; the café that sold only coffee and a bitter lemon drink; the woman at the cinema who said they were the first young people to buy ice cream in years. All these details had seemed odd at the time, but he’d never worked out the connection.

  “In fact Leaf has turned out to be very useful,” Mrs Ivory was saying. “Because all the time the students keep eating Leaf, I know the drug is still working, and they are still taking it.”

  “Maybe I can accept that you haven’t done this for personal gain. But it’s still wrong. It’s still an assault against every single one of those kids,” replied Helen.

  “I love the students at this school. You just want a good story – you don’t care what happens to them as a result. What we’ve got on this island is special. It’s a perfect society; people are contented and fulfilled and safe. Everyone looks after everyone else. There’s no poverty, no crime—”

  “There is crime!” Helen said, her voice rising in frustration. “You’re the criminal!”

  Mrs Ivory ignored this interruption. “If you run this story, and turn the island into a media circus, it will destroy this community. You want to take me down, but if you do, you’ll bring everyone else with me. All I’m asking for is two months. By then the trial will have been running for five years and will be complete.”

  “You must be insane. I’m not inclined to give you two more minutes in charge of this school. And what exactly have you got to bargain with?”

  “You’re not in a strong position yourself, Helen. You don’t have any actual evidence against me. If we called the police out now, it would be you they’d arrest, not me. The most senior police officer on Wragge is a governor of the school. Do you think he’s likely to believe the ravings of someone he already knows has used fake references to obtain a job? After your hasty departure, I’ve got to tell you your reputation took a bit of a bashing around here.”

  “I’m not interested in involving the police. All I ever wanted to do was uncover the truth.”

  “We’re more alike than you think, Helen. We’re both on a kind of crusade.”

  “There’s no comparison.”

  “Except, of course, you intend to make money by selling your story.”

  “You may not have been paid yourself,” Helen retorted, “but I bet it was Narveng who put up the millions for the swimming pool and the pavilion and all the other new buildings over the last few years.”

  There was the silence of a remark hitting its target.

  “Just two months. And then I’ll tell you whatever you need to know about Narveng.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of what they might do to shut you up?”

  “Helen, I’m not afraid of anyone or anything. I told you before: the worst thing that can happen to a person has already happened to me. I’ve nothing left to lose.”

  Hearing this, Daniel felt his sympathies oddly divided. He was supposed to be on the side of Helen, and exposing the truth, and yet it was hard not to feel sorry for Mrs Ivory too. Helen herself must have felt something similar as when she spoke the hardness had gone from her voice. “There’s still one thing I can’t work out. How did you get the drug into them, day after day?”

  “Come with me,” said Mrs Ivory. There was a scrape of metal as she swept her bunch of keys off the table. “I’ll show you.”

  The door swung closed on their receding footsteps and at last Daniel was alone.

  He tottered out of the wardrobe, racked by cramp and dazzled by the daylight. He collapsed on to one of the visitors’ chairs and massaged his knotted muscles. His head ached and he had a rampant thirst. Helen’s here now; let her deal with it, he told himself. But in another corner of his mind lurked the uneasy thought that it wasn’t over yet.

  As if to confirm this, fire alarms began to wail all over the school, ripping into the silence of morning le
ssons. Within seconds there was a rumble of feet as students began to stream along the corridors, down the stairs and out on to the field.

  Chapter 38

  DANIEL WATCHED THE evacuation through the window, as the alarm continued to peal through the empty building. The students were milling about and staring back at the school with a mixture of excitement and panic. Teachers were herding them away from the building towards the ruined pavilion, barking instructions, and marshalling classes into orderly lines so that registers could be taken. The lab technicians and support staff stood in a huddle, shivering without their coats. The deputy head appeared with a megaphone and, through a storm of feedback, began to tell everyone to leave the premises without re-entering the building. There was no sign of Mrs Ivory.

  Daniel opened the study door, half expecting to smell smoke, but there was instead the musty smell of damp. He walked towards reception, wondering whether to make his escape through the car park or try and find Helen. The carpet felt strangely wet and mossy underfoot, and as he reached the lobby he almost slipped on the thin film of water covering the polished floor. He looked up at the ceiling for a leak, but there was nothing dripping from above, and beyond the windows the sky was blue. A distant sound of footsteps made him glance down the corridor leading past the science labs. One of the doors opened and Mrs Ivory emerged. In one hand she was holding a small sharp knife, which she wiped casually on the sleeve of her jacket before disappearing into the next room. Daniel shrank back against the wall to avoid being seen, his mind whirling in confusion and fear.