Are you sure this isn’t all a bit too fast? My sister Leanne, though she liked Alex by now, was still a tad wary. My
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mother, who was in good health back then, ahead of
her lung disease diagnosis, was for her part surprisingly
relaxed about our haste. She, after all, had been pregnant
when she married my father and that had worked out just
fine, she said.
We planned to marry the following spring and, as I
kept telling anyone who would listen, I didn’t feel rushed; I felt lucky. I was enjoying my new career and I had a fiancé
who turned heads everywhere he went and who actually
wrote songs for me. What was not to love about my life?
Next came a small shift in routine which at first I
hardly noticed. Alex asked if it would be OK for me to
act, in effect, as the ‘chaperone’ for younger pupils whose
parents were unable to stay for the lesson. This would be
for occasional evening and weekend tuition. I remember
him saying that it was wholly understandable for parents
to want child-protection issues to be watertight, and he
was also keen to guard his reputation.
I remember asking him whether this would involve
me staying in the music room for the duration of each
lesson. Would I need to actually sit in there with a book
or something? Alex said – and I had to share this very
carefully with the police later – that it would be fine for
me to be in the adjoining sitting room, which was the
routine chosen by the parents who did stay for lessons.
The door to the music room would be left open so this
protected everyone.
So that’s what happened. Occasionally a pupil would
be dropped off alone and I would read or watch a film
on my iPad, with a clear view into the music room. I
trusted Alex completely and felt this was purely for his
protection, not the child’s. I was actually worried that
someone might make a false accusation if we weren’t
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careful, especially as some of the girl pupils clearly had
crushes on him.
It was probably two, maybe three months into this
routine that something happened just once to unsettle
me. It was the only thing I shared with police that I felt,
with hindsight, I should have acted upon.
One cold October morning, just ahead of Alex’s birth-
day, I walked into our sitting room after a shopping trip to
find him pacing on his mobile, raking his fingers through
his hair, clearly handling a difficult phone call. You are not to do that. Now, come on, we’ve talked about this. You have everything going for you. You have a bright future. You have so many people who care about you…
Alex glanced up at me and signalled with his expres-
sion that he was in a fix. I tilted my head to ask if I could help. He shook his head and continued, in a gentle voice
to reassure the caller.
I moved into the kitchen, all the while listening to
his end of the conversation. It alarmed me, as it sounded
from Alex’s side as if his caller was desperate; maybe even
suicidal. Alex was patient and kind and reassuring, urging
the caller to speak to someone; to get professional help.
To remember that there was everything to live for. Over and over he kept saying that everything was going to be
all right. That the caller had to look forward, not back.
The conversation lasted a long time and I found myself
pacing the kitchen, feeling more and more unsettled. It
was not only the worry that some young pupil was on
the line with some kind of mental health crisis – clearly
crossing the line – but that Alex was using a tone which was a bit odd. Sort of overly gentle. Borderline intimate.
When the call finally finished, he came into the kitchen
looking drained.
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‘What the hell was all that, Alex?’
‘One of my teenage pupils having a crisis. A complete
meltdown. I suspected she might be self-harming because
of marks on her arms. They show when she plays. But I
had no idea quite how bad things were at home. I made
the mistake of asking about it. The conversation got out
of hand.’
I was stunned. Why the hell hadn’t he mentioned her
to me before?
‘What pupil?’
‘You don’t know her. She’s fifteen. Comes Tuesday
mornings.’
‘What. On her own?’
‘Yes. On her own.’
‘But I thought we had this chaperone rule. Parents
or me.’
‘For the younger pupils – yes. And when the parents
are worried. But she’s fifteen, Jenny. Practically grown-
up. She doesn’t need a chaperone. To be frank, what she
really needs is a friend. Her parents sound a complete
nightmare.’
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.
‘Have you gone mad, Alex? It’s you that needs the
chaperone if she’s fifteen. And unstable. Self-harming.
We need to phone her parents right this minute. Or the
Samaritans or something. We can’t just let this go.’
‘It’s all in hand now. She’s talking to her mum. Anyway,
she’s not truly unstable. She’s just very unhappy.’
‘So is that why you sounded so intimate on the phone?’
‘I was not being intimate. I was being kind, Jenny.’
His tone was now changing; he looked at me as if I had
no heart. ‘What would you rather I did? Tell her to piss
off and kill herself?’
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I began pacing. My mind was in overdrive. I felt deeply
unsettled, and yet Alex was now making me feel guilty.
‘So she’s suicidal? Threatening to hurt herself? Well,
I’m right; we need to call her parents. Social services.
Her doctor, even. There are protocols for this, surely?’
‘Of course. Yes. That’s absolutely what I planned at
first. But as I said, her mum’s with her now. She saw her
on the phone, crying. So she’s in adult care. She’s promised
to speak properly to her mum. To get support.’
‘But what if she doesn’t? What if she made that up
about talking to her mum? What if she hurts herself, Alex,
and you’re the last person she spoke to?’
‘I’m pretty sure it was just a teenage girl being a bit
melodramatic. I think she’s fine. As I said, her mum is with
her now. I was just worried when she was on her own.
To be honest, you’re the one being melodramatic now.’
‘Me? Melodramatic? Jeez, Alex…’
We then had a full-blown barney. Our biggest and
most unpleasant argument, in which he accused me of
being heartless while I accused him of being naive and
irresponsible. In the end, he agreed to phone the girl’s
mother right back to make sure she was in the loop. I
listened in to the call and at last felt just a little easier.
Later I would have to share the full details of this
episode and our row over it with the police. Unbeknown
to
me, the girl on the phone was the first fifteen-year-old
that Alex had seduced and then dumped. Her mother,
in reality, knew nothing of the girl’s trauma. She was at
work the whole time and received no phone call from
Alex. He must have pretended to ring her.
But in my panic and rage at the time, I genuinely
saw none of that. I saw Alex being supremely stupid. I
worried that the girl might have a crush and that there
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was a real danger that Alex could come unstuck. That he
would be in trouble for providing a shoulder for the girl
and that she might wrongly accuse him of something.
Or hurt herself.
I told him in no uncertain terms that he was not to
teach her anymore.
He agreed immediately and promised to be more care-
ful. Later, I would feel mortified by my own gullibility.
But the whole episode was one tiny blip in this context
where Alex seemed one hundred per cent solid, sensible,
loyal and in love with me. I had no reason to suspect him
of playing away, and never in my wildest dreams did I
imagine he would do so with someone underage.
Looking back and sharing the details of that row with
the police, I felt ridiculous. But it was the only fluttering of a red flag in all of our time together. And somehow
Alex managed to manipulate our argument so that, in the
end, I felt like the one in the wrong for being heartless.
The truth – though it sounds bonkers now – is that at
the time I was worried about his reputation. I was furious because I was afraid the girl might become a problem, and
that Alex was being too kind and naive for his own good.
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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Him – before
It is the Wednesday after the scene with Stan at the Daisy
Lawn Nursing Home. The school day seems to go on
and on and on – but the thing is, he doesn’t mind this.
He doesn’t want the day to end.
He keeps staring out of the window at the clouds. In
maths, during the afternoon, he finds that he is daydream-
ing for so long that his teacher becomes cross. He can
hear her voice saying his name and he turns back to the
room. Miss Henderley is asking him to answer a ques-
tion but the problem is he did not hear the question. He’s still sitting up on a cloud wishing that his mum wasn’t
dead – wishing that he had a normal mum and dad like
Jim and Helena.
‘I don’t know,’ he says. Everyone in the room is look-
ing at him and the other pupils are laughing, saying that
if he doesn’t know then nobody will know. He normally
gets all the sums right first.
‘That’s enough,’ Miss Henderley says. ‘Try to pay at-
tention, all of you. You need to listen.’
When the final bell goes for end of school, his stomach
feels bad and he dawdles in the cloakroom, putting on
his coat ever so slowly. He thinks again of the clouds and
wishes that he could fly. He doesn’t want to go home. He
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doesn’t want to have tea. He doesn’t want the Wednesday
treat of fish fingers and beans and ice cream. He doesn’t
want to get into his pyjamas nice and early. He wants to fly around the world. Zoom, zoom. Like the rockets on
his duvet cover.
He is one of the last to leave the cloakroom and he
sees his gran across the playground in her blue mac and
her pink scarf. On the days when she is on day shift and
he stays in the after-school club, he likes the first sight of his gran. It makes him happy. But not on a Wednesday
when she picks him up right after school and they have
to hurry, hurry. It’s raining and so he puts up his hood. He likes it when the hood stops all the noise around him. He
often uses it as an excuse. I can’t hear you.
His gran takes his hand and asks if he had a good day.
‘I’m sorry, I can’t hear you.’
She squeezes his hand and gives up with the ques-
tions, leading him through the gate and down the path
past the line of oak trees. He knows they’re oaks because
they studied the different kinds of leaves in art last week.
They had to collect leaves and dip them in paint and make
pictures. He splashed them hard on the paper. Splash,
splash, splash – squirting paint on Suzie, who was sitting
next to him. The teacher told him not to use so much
paint but he pretended not to hear then too.
It doesn’t take very long to walk home from school
and he wishes it were a lot further, like the journey to
the home where Gran works.
She says she’s trying very, very hard to find another
job without night work but she’s really too old and not
very good at many things. He says he thinks she’s bril-
liant at lots of things. She should be a dinner lady at his
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school but his gran says, ‘Life doesn’t work like that.’ They already have enough dinner ladies at his school.
He sits at the table in the kitchen later, staring at his
fish fingers and beans.
‘Can’t you stay home? Please stay home.’
Her eyes get all weird again as if she might cry, and
she sits down on the chair right next to him. ‘I know it’s
hard, sweetheart, but I wouldn’t do this unless I absolutely
had to. I’ve told you lots of times. I can’t afford the rent
here and all the bills unless I do my job. And Stan will
report me if I don’t do the night shift.’
She pushes his hair back from his forehead. ‘Remember
what I told you about when I was little on the farm and
my dad had to go out lambing and leave me. I didn’t like
it either. I didn’t have a mummy either, remember. She left
us when I was very small. Just a baby. But it was always
OK when my dad went out lambing. And we lived in
the middle of nowhere. You’re safe here. So long as you
follow the rules. It’s just sleeping.’
He digs his knife into his fish finger and cuts it up
into two pieces. Then four. Then eight.
He thinks of his maths lessons and his teacher. She’s
nice.
‘We could ask Miss Henderley to look after me on
Wednesday nights. She’d do it.’ He has suggested this
lots of times before and doesn’t understand why it’s not
a good idea. Miss Henderley looks after loads of them
all day long. How hard could it be to look after one boy
one night?
His gran suddenly looks very worried. ‘We’ve talked
about this, lovely, and it’s way too dangerous to tell people, especially at school. Because they may tell social services
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I’m not managing. And they might take you away from
me again. You don’t want that, do you?’
He shakes his head. It’s true; he doesn’t want that again.
‘So you’ll be brave? Yes? Just until I can find another
job? Now, eat up. Ice cream for pudding. Your favourite.’
* * *
Two hours later and she is back in her
blue mac and her
pink scarf. He’s in his pyjamas even though it’s quite
early. Six o’clock.
She goes over the rules. No touching the cooker or
any electrical things. No answering the door or the tele-
phone. No matches or candles or anything to do with
fire. He can watch telly until the small hand is on the
eight, and then he must switch off the television and go
to bed. Lights out in the sitting room and kitchen area
but he can keep the little lamp on in his room.
‘Can we get walkie-talkies?’ He’s looking right into
her face.
‘I can’t afford things like that, love. And I don’t think
walkie-talkies would work.’
‘In the army they work.’
‘We’re not in the army. You’ll be fine. If you stick to
the rules, you’ll be fine. The only time you’re allowed
to leave the flat is if there’s a fire. Then you get out and
run. But there won’t be a fire if you’re a good boy and
follow the rules, so you don’t need to worry about that.
You’re safe in here with the door locked.’
She looks at her watch. ‘Look, I’m sorry but I have to
go. You’re a good boy. Gran’s little soldier. Remember,
I’m not…’ She stops.
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She normally says that she’s not far away but he knows now that isn’t true. He remembers the bus ride and all
the walking. He can feel tears in his eyes and she takes
a deep breath. She kisses him on the forehead, squeezes
him tight and then she is gone.
* * *
He watches telly but it’s not good. Boring programmes.
He drinks his juice and eats the biscuits his gran always
leaves out for him. He can hear some kind of music in
the flat below them and he likes that. It’s later, when all
the noises stop, that he doesn’t like it.
It’s a bit cold and so he puts on his dressing gown and
climbs into his bed with his books. He can read some
of the words but not all of them. It’s why he’s working
so hard in school – so that he can read on Wednesdays
when he’s on his own. Sometimes, when he reads a book,
he sort of drifts off right into the pages and completely
forgets where he is. That would be good now.
He looks around his room and hopes there are no
spiders. One Wednesday, there was a huge spider in the
corner and so he had to go and take his duvet into the
sitting room and lie on the sofa. He shut the door and
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