All the Hidden Truths

by Claire Askew

  Abigail glanced up.

  ‘Jesus, Mother.’ She laughed. ‘You’re cranky this evening.’

  Ishbel pressed her back teeth together. She steered off Ferry Road and into Trinity. They’d be home soon: only a few more streets. She had to say something.

  ‘Where were you really, Abigail?’

  Her daughter’s head snapped up.

  ‘What do you mean?’ That moon-eyed face again.

  ‘Tonight,’ Ishbel said, pushing her voice into an even line. ‘Instead of going to practice. Where were you?’

  Abigail laughed again. It was a confident laugh, there were no cracks in it – but there was something else. A little edge of nastiness.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean. I went to practice. You dropped me off. You saw me walk in. You just saw me walk out again.’

  Ishbel soothed the car down to a lower speed.

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘What I saw was you getting off a bus on Comely Bank Road just now. What I saw was you sneaking in the side door of the school. Then I saw you walk out.’

  ‘What?’

  There it is, Ishbel thought. There’s the crack in the veneer.

  ‘I saw you, Abigail. You got off the bus, you sneaked in the side door, and then you walked out over the pitch to make it look like you’d been at practice the whole time.’

  Abigail said nothing. Her phone rested in her hands, its screen dark. She didn’t look down at it, just stared ahead through the windscreen.

  ‘Is it this boy?’ Ishbel kept her voice light, even as she tried to push out of her head the image of her daughter being bundled into some dim bedroom: some pungent male space full of pizza boxes, Playboy posters on the walls. ‘Dad told me you . . . might have a boyfriend.’

  Abigail rolled her eyes.

  ‘Dad can’t keep his mouth shut.’

  It was true, then: Abigail had sought her father’s confidence, but had deliberately kept this fact from Ishbel. Had Aidan always been so smug about things? She couldn’t, right then, remember.

  ‘Is it anyone I know?’ As she said it, Ishbel realised that she didn’t really know who Abigail socialised with these days. She knew of only one other person from the same high-school year who attended Three Rivers College – and he was a dark-haired boy.

  ‘Is it Ryan?’ she asked.

  Abigail still wasn’t looking at her.

  ‘Ryan?’

  There was a pause. Abigail wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Wait – you mean Ryan Summers? From high school?’

  ‘Summers,’ Ishbel said. ‘That’s it – that’s his name.’

  ‘Jesus,’ Abigail said. ‘Absolutely not. I mean – ew. Ryan Summers is a total creeper. I wouldn’t go out with him if he was the last straight man on this planet.’

  ‘Okay!’ Ishbel lifted her hands from the steering wheel for a second, then imagined the driver in front seeing the two white stars of her palms flashing in their rear-view. ‘I just wondered. You can’t blame me for being interested in this boy . . . especially if he’s good enough to miss football practice for.’

  She was trying to sound jokey, throwaway. It wasn’t working.

  ‘His name, for your information, is Jack. I’m surprised you don’t know that already, since Dad’s been blabbing. But I didn’t miss practice for him – I didn’t. I haven’t been anywhere near him tonight, okay?’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind if you told me you wanted to miss practice sometimes. I wouldn’t mind if you wanted to go to . . .’ Ishbel swallowed, and tasted acid. ‘To a friend’s, or something. But tell me. Just tell me, Abigail.’

  They’d reached the road-end for Primrose Bank: home, Ishbel thought. She turned right. Abigail was still staring straight ahead, but Ishbel could practically hear her daughter’s mental gears shifting.

  ‘I just want to make sure you’re . . . being careful,’ Ishbel said.

  Her daughter drew in a breath, as though to speak. As she pulled the car into the front drive, Ishbel thought maybe Abigail was about to own up – to admit what she’d been doing, and apologise.

  ‘Mother,’ she said instead, ‘you’re on fucking crack.’

  Ishbel blinked hard. A shudder ran through her. She’d never heard Abigail speak like that – not once, in almost twenty years. The engine was still running, and her foot was still on the brake, keeping the car from rolling back out of the drive and into the road. But Abigail grabbed the bag at her feet and shoved open the passenger door.

  ‘Don’t you think you can speak to me like that,’ Ishbel heard herself say. Abigail slammed the door on her words, and stomped around the front of the car. As she passed, the car’s headlights lit up the backs of her legs. There were grass-stains on her acid-wash jeans.

  Ishbel wrenched the handbrake on and turned the key in the ignition. Abigail had unlocked the front door and stormed through it – now it slammed behind her. Ishbel grabbed her bag and climbed down out of the car. When she reached the front door, she found that her daughter had slipped the security chain on, so she couldn’t get in.

  ‘We’re going to have serious words, madam!’ Ishbel yelled through the three-inch gap the chain allowed. She put her finger on the doorbell and left it there, listening as the non-stop trill filled up the house.

  ‘Darling.’ Aidan’s face appeared. ‘Please.’

  Ishbel let go of the bell, and the door handle, which she’d been clutching so hard that the lines of its brass octagon had sunk into her palm. She listened as Aidan fumbled the chain off from the other side. He let her in.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on,’ he said, ‘but can we think of the neighbours?’

  Ishbel dropped her handbag onto the stripped wooden floor of the hallway.

  ‘Never mind the neighbours, Aidan. Where has she gone?’

  Her husband put a hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Bel. What happened?’

  She flinched the hand away.

  ‘She’s been sneaking around somewhere. She was late getting out of football, then just after I texted you, I saw her get off a bus at Comely Bank. She let herself into the school and walked out again to make it look like she’d been there all along. She thinks I was born yesterday.’ Aidan opened his mouth to speak, but Ishbel went on: ‘Then she gets in the car and lies about it, to my face. Right to my face, Aidan. Smooth as anything.’

  Ishbel realised she was shaking. What was it – shock? Anger? Worry, she thought. But her husband was smiling at her.

  ‘That’s all?’

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘What do you mean, that’s all? Where has she been? Why is she lying to me? Why didn’t she tell me she’s got a boyfriend?’

  Aidan chuckled.

  ‘Come on, Bel. Did you never have secrets from your parents?’ He made that slap-worthy face again, and then added, ‘I mean, from your mother?’

  Ishbel paused, then waved her husband aside and stepped past him.

  ‘I can’t believe you’re saying this to me.’

  She started up the stairs. Behind her in the hall, Aidan was still talking.

  ‘Did you never sneak off anywhere on your own? Did you never want to have something that was just for you?’

  Ishbel whirled around, hand on the banister.

  ‘Do you know something else?’ she asked. ‘What else has she told you? Do you know what this is about?’

  Her husband frowned.

  ‘No,’ he said, and she could see he was telling the truth. Damn. Him being party to something else that she wasn’t would have stung, but at least she’d have had a chance at winkling it out of him. ‘I told you everything last week. But Bel, she’s nearly twenty years old. She’s an adult. What she does and where she goes isn’t really our business any more.’

  Ishbel smacked the flat of her hand off the banister. It hurt.

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Aidan,’ she said. ‘You know why I’m upset about this. It’s not the doing and the going – it’s the lying. I mean, why lie to me? Why swear at me, why be abu
sive? She’s not just coming and going as she pleases. There’s something going on here.’

  Her husband threw up his hands: a whatever, you win gesture. It irritated her. Why wasn’t he angry, too? What was this?

  ‘No.’ She brought her hand down again. ‘You don’t get to just surrender! For once, just for once, Aidan, I need you to be on my side. I need you to feel the way I feel, or at least acknowledge it. She still lives under our roof, she still eats our food, I still sit in that godforsaken car park every week waiting for her to come out of football. When none of those things are true any more, then she can come and go as she pleases. When I’m no longer washing her jeans for her, then she can roll them around in the dirt. But while she lives here I have the right to know what the hell’s going on!’

  In the quiet that followed, Ishbel realised she was breathing hard. The staircase and its landings rang with the harmonics of her outburst. But she didn’t feel any better. Something was still pent up inside her.

  ‘You hear that, missy?’ She tilted her head up, sending the yell in the vague direction of her daughter’s bedroom. Her voice was beginning to get hoarse. ‘We’re not done here, you know. You’re not going to lie to my face and get away with it, not while you live in this house!’

  There was no answer. No sound came from above her head. Ishbel wondered if her daughter had even heard her – she could have put on her noise-cancelling headphones. She could be watching a TV show right now, oblivious. Down in the hall, Aidan’s hands were still in the air, as though someone were pointing a gun at him. Ishbel could see him on the edge of her vision. She felt as though all the life were ebbing out of her.

  ‘Well,’ Aidan brought his arms down by his sides. ‘Now that we’ve all had chapter and verse, can you please calm down?’

  Ishbel glared at him, but the fight in her was dying.

  ‘I don’t know what’s going on with you, Aidan,’ she said. ‘This really isn’t like you at all.’

  He shrugged.

  ‘You’re just being melodramatic,’ he said. ‘And I think you know that.’

  They stood looking at one another for a long time. Aidan in the hall, his shirtsleeves rolled up, a hole in one sock. Ishbel five stairs above him, her feet sore in her high-heeled shoes, and her heart thudding in her ears. Of course, she thought. He wouldn’t care about our daughter disappearing at all hours of the day and night. He does it himself, all the time. She tried to push the thought away.

  ‘Did you buy dishwasher tablets?’ Aidan said.

  Ishbel brought both hands to her face, to shut him out.

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said, speaking into her own palms. When Aidan said nothing, she added, ‘In the spare room.’

  But a moment later, when she dropped her hands, he’d already walked away.

  Three Rivers College shooting

  From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

  (Redirected from Ryan Summers)

  Location

  Three Rivers College, UK

  Date

  14 May c.8.30–9.00 a.m. (GMT)

  Target

  Students at Three Rivers College

  Attack type

  School shooting, murder-suicide, mass murder, spree shooting

  Weapons

  Bruni Olympic .380 BBM modified blank firing revolver (x3)

  Deaths

  14 (including perpetrator)

  Non-fatal injuries

  2

  Perpetrator

  Ryan Andrew Summers

  The Three Rivers College shooting occurred at the Tweed Campus at Three Rivers College, a further- and higher-education college. 20-year-old gunman Ryan Summers fatally shot 13 fellow students, all female [1][2][10][37], and then committed suicide at the scene [1][10]. This incident joins the 1987 Hungerford massacre, the 1989 Monkseaton shootings, the 1996 Dunblane school massacre and the 2010 Cumbria shootings as one of the deadliest criminal acts involving firearms in the history of the United Kingdom.

  The shooting has prompted debate over gun control laws in the United Kingdom [3], where firearms ownership is already strictly regulated [4]. Following the Dunblane school massacre, the Firearms (Amendment) Act 1997 and the Firearms (Amendment) (No. 2) Act 1997 were enacted, effectively making private ownership of handguns illegal in the United Kingdom. Following the incident, the UK police launched a public safety campaign detailing the dangers of gun modification [48]. The shooting also led to the publication of new police guidelines on the most effective ways to contact emergency services [22].

  Background

  At the time the shooting took place, there were 26,708 fully matriculated students enrolled at Three Rivers College, though some of these were enrolled as online or distance-learning students [5]. The college consists of three separate campuses: the main Tweed Campus, the Esk Campus and the Forth Campus.

  That day

  14 May, 8.20 a.m.

  ‘All right, Sarge. Looking gorgeous today, as ever.’

  Birch blinked. She’d been staring down into the chiller cabinet, trying to decide if she wanted fruit toast – a good start to the week – or a cinnamon swirl, decidedly bad. With breakfast less than half an hour behind her, she wasn’t at all hungry, but it seemed to be station policy that everyone arrived with a pastry. She had to at least try and fit in.

  ‘Sorry, Danny. I was miles away.’

  Around her, the coffee shop crashed and rang. It was nearing eight thirty, and every commuter in town was cramming into their favourite warm, well-lit queue. Birch was brand loyal – she’d been coming to this little place just off Leith Walk for years, and was determined to carry on, new station or no new station. Danny was her favourite barista. He was maybe seventeen, a recent college dropout, clearly thrilled by his ability to make money that belonged to him alone. That early work-life excitement: if she tried hard, she could just about remember it. She always tipped him well.

  ‘Just paying you a compliment, Sarge,’ Danny winked, already scribbling her usual order onto the side of a cardboard cup. ‘It’s only a matter of life and death.’

  Birch swallowed. She’d been putting off telling people – afraid it might seem like a brag – but watching Danny ink Sgt Birch in marker pen felt like being demoted.

  ‘Actually,’ she said, ‘it isn’t Sarge any more.’

  ‘Shit.’ Danny flipped the cup over his shoulder, not looking: knowing it would be deftly caught by his colleague at the coffee machine. ‘You been fired?’

  He’d said it to make her laugh: her station lanyard was clearly visible at the neck of her blouse. She obliged, showing him her teeth, and he beamed back.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Danny.’ She was flirting with him – flirting in that safe, meaningless way that’s allowed when the man is twenty years your junior. ‘No, I got myself promoted. These days I’m a DI. Detective inspector, if you can believe it.’

  ‘I believe it fine.’ Danny put out his hand for the money she owed. ‘Just want to know what took them so long, really.’

  As she slid a ten-pound note from her purse and watched him count out the change, Birch realised she felt proud of herself for the very first time. In the weeks since she’d heard, her primary feeling had been dread: at leaving Gayfield Square and her team, at moving to Fettes, working right under the DCI’s nose. At being the only woman all over again. But Danny admired her – she could see it in his face as he palmed the cap over the coffee and passed it across the counter with both hands. The work she did was admirable.

  ‘Oh, and a cinnamon swirl,’ she said. ‘To go. You keep the change.’

  Outside, the last of the night’s chill was starting to lift. A few bolts of purple cloud hung above the Leith tenements, the sky a kind of Disney princess pink. Red sky in the morning, Birch thought, and shivered. A warning. She’d parked the big, black Mondeo, her new CID car, across a road that was suddenly stacked with buses. She waited for the crossing in the chug of exhaust, enjoying the hot bite of the cup in her hand, catching its burne
d-sugar smell.

  As she unlocked the car, she could hear the police radio talking to itself inside. A male dispatcher: a voice she didn’t know. She plopped the coffee cup into its holder, her brain racing to catch up with the chatter. The guy sounded frazzled. Bit early for that, she thought.

  Then she heard him say ‘college shooting’.

  She found the receiver in her hand almost before the thought was fully complete.

  ‘Charlie Alpha, this is CA38, DI Birch. Did I hear you right just then? A college shooting, over.’

  The line crackled.

  ‘This is Charlie Alpha. You did, ma’am.’ He hadn’t expected her and she practically heard him flinch. ‘Shots reportedly fired at a campus of Three Rivers College, but we believe it’s a hoax. Two units have been dispatched to the scene, over.’

  ‘Who’s decided it’s a hoax? This should be strategic command tier, shouldn’t it? Over.’

  Birch could have sworn she heard the dispatcher sigh.

  ‘Our SO isn’t in yet, so we’re not talking about Gold command. It’s some teenager’s phoned it in. With a mass shooting, we’d expect a second call.’ He made a kind of snorting sound. ‘We’d expect a hundred calls, over.’

  Birch looked at her watch. Eight forty.

  ‘The two units, are they armed? Over.’

  ‘No ma’am, over.’

  Fear began to rise from somewhere inside her. It started in the diaphragm, and seemed to seep up through her throat, like swallowing hot liquid in reverse.

  ‘Are they CID units? Unmarked cars, yes? Over.’

  ‘No ma’am.’ By now, she could tell the dispatcher was annoyed. He wanted rid of her, and to get on with his day. ‘Both cars were in the area. I’m expecting the report any minute, over.’

  Birch fired up the Mondeo.

  ‘Give me the location, please. Over.’

  The Tweed Campus was a way out of town. Birch had been there once, for some work event or other: in summer, while the students were away, they hired the place out as a conference venue. It was pretty swish, fairly new-built. She remembered a lot of glass, a lot of steel. A cafeteria with bright red walls.