He does it well. He says that we’ll never forget Ella and that our lives are better for having known her. He says that the way she died was tragic but we must remember the way she had lived and how she had brought light and laughter to the school. ‘As you start out on your journey through life,’ he says, ‘remember Miss Elphick and the values she represented.’ Next to me, Alan rolls his eyes at the word ‘values’ but a lot of the students are in tears and my own eyes are wet. As Years 9 to 11 file out, Alan says, ‘I’m so sick of everyone being on a fucking journey. Why does no one ever arrive these days?’
‘I thought it was OK,’ I say. ‘It’s a hard thing to do.’
Tony steps down from the hastily erected podium and comes towards us. He’s in his forties with a figure kept in check by constant exercise and dieting. Judging by the graffiti around the school, some of the students think he’s ‘hot’. There are also lots of plays on his surname ‘Sweetman’. But, for me, his eyes are too close together and he smiles too much. However, he’s not smiling now.
‘Well done,’ I say. ‘That must have been tough.’
Tony rubs his eyes. ‘It’s a nightmare. I haven’t slept for days. The police are coming in today. They want to talk to Ella’s tutor group. I’ve had to get the parents’ permission and a lot of them haven’t given it.’
‘Why not?’ I say.
‘You know what the parents round here are like. Some of them have first-hand experience with the police.’
He’s right. This is a middle-class area but most of the well-off families send their children to private schools like St Faith’s. Many of our students have what we call ‘complex issues’.
‘A lot of them have probably been victimised by the police,’ says Alan, rising to the bait. ‘Who can blame them for not wanting their children to be interviewed?’
‘It’s a murder investigation,’ says Tony. ‘You’d think they’d want to help.’
‘Why?’ says Alan. ‘Why should they want to prop up the system?’
‘Because their teacher has been killed.’ Tony’s voice rises and he looks round guiltily. ‘Spare me the student Marxism, Alan.’
‘It’s quite traumatic being interviewed,’ I say. ‘I was surprised how upsetting I found it.’
‘We’ve got counsellors standing by,’ says Tony.
‘For staff as well?’
Tony gives me a ‘don’t crack up now’ look. ‘Are you all right, Clare?’
‘I’m fine,’ I say. And I will be. I will have to be. ‘I’d better get to my lesson now.’
My first class is with a group of Year 10s in their first year of GCSE work. We should be discussing Of Mice and Men but, inevitably, we end up talking about Ella. It’s not fulfilling my lesson plan or learning objectives but it’s surely what the students want and need.
‘Miss Elphick was so nice to me when I first started at Talgarth.’
‘Do you remember when she dressed up as Wonder Woman for the staff v students netball match?’
‘Or when she sang Somewhere Over the Rainbow at the talent competition?’
‘She was so pretty.’
‘So kind.’
‘Her hair . . .’
‘Her voice . . .’
‘She was the best teacher in this school.’
Did you tell her that when she was alive, I wonder. But I know that, in their earnest teenage way, they are genuine. At this moment, they do love Ella, do miss her, do think of her with sadness. But, as Tony said, they are at the very start of their lives. This will pass, as it should do. The present is what’s important to this group of young men and women, red-eyed and sentimental as they are now. In a few years, maybe even a few months, they’ll have trouble remembering Ella’s name.
Eventually we get back to talking about Curley’s wife. She was murdered too, I think, and Steinbeck doesn’t even tell us her name.
‘What’s the significance of her red dress?’ I ask them.
‘Red for danger,’ says someone.
‘It’s the colour of passion,’ says someone else, earning them a few catcalls.
‘She’s all dressed up,’ says Josh Brown, an earnest boy with glasses. ‘Especially for someone who lives on a ranch. Maybe we’re meant to think she leads men on.’
‘What do you mean by “leads men on”, Josh?’ I say. I think of DS Kaur asking about Ella’s boyfriends. This is what happens; a woman is murdered and people imply that, by having a sex life or being in possession of a dangerous pair of breasts, she contributed in some way to her own death. I’m sure that Ella had plenty of red dresses in her wardrobe but this does not mean that she deserved to die. I prepare myself for a discussion about responsibility and consent but am almost relieved when the door opens and a Year 7 girl appears. She’s today’s ‘runner’, a scheme designed to help the new pupils get used to the layout of the school.
The runner is small and scared-looking, with her hair in plaits. ‘Isn’t she sweet?’ says one of the Year 10 girls, only three years older.
Plaits hands me a note.
‘Police want a word,’ it says. ‘Can you come to my office at break? T.’
I hand it back. ‘Tell Mr Sweetman I’ll be there.’
DS Kaur and DS Winston are waiting in Tony’s office, which they have clearly made their own. They have Styrofoam cups of coffee in front of them and there’s a box of doughnuts on the desk, just like in the films. Tony has obviously been banished to his secretary’s office. The connecting door is firmly shut.
‘Hallo, Clare,’ says Kaur. ‘Thank you for coming.’
‘As we’re on first name terms,’ I say, ‘what’s yours?’
She gives me a look. ‘Harbinder.’
‘Well, Harbinder, I haven’t got much time. I have a class in fifteen minutes.’
You can tell it’s break because the students are thundering up and down the corridors. They’re meant to be outside unless it’s raining, but discipline is obviously slack today.
‘We’ll be quick,’ says Harbinder. She pushes a plastic envelope towards me. ‘We’ve been looking at Ella’s social media profile,’ she says, ‘and there are a few questions I’d like to ask you.’
Whatever I was expecting, it isn’t this. What does she mean by ‘social media profile’? I’m on Facebook, but that’s it. I mainly use it for group chats — we even have an English department one. Georgie uses Snapchat and Instagram but I’d feel stupid sending pictures of my face (or my supper) out into the ether. I don’t use Twitter, either, because I’m not famous or mad.
‘In July, you and Ella went to a teacher training course in Hythe,’ says Harbinder. ‘Something happened there. We know that from her Facebook messages. What was it?’
So this is what Rick was talking about. The police know that something happened in Hythe. They might even know that Ella slept with someone but they don’t have a name. I think about Curley’s wife and the red dress. I’m not going to help them. This isn’t about Rick; it’s about Ella. ‘What do you mean?’
‘We know something happened in Hythe that disturbed Ella,’ says Harbinder. ‘You were there, you were her friend. I thought you might know what it was.’
‘No,’ I say. ‘It was just the usual training course stuff. You know.’
‘No, I don’t,’ says Harbinder, straight-faced. ‘Sussex police don’t run to residential courses. What happened at Hythe?’
I know that I can’t blink or look away. ‘Nothing,’ I say. ‘It was the usual thing. Lots of talks, group activities, drinks in the evening.’
‘Drinks?’
‘Yes.’ I keep my voice steady. ‘There’s a social side. People go out for drinks and meals.’
‘Who did you go for drinks with?’
‘Lots of different people.’
‘Ella?’
‘Yes.’
‘A
nd Rick? Your head of department?’
‘Yes, once or twice.’
‘Anyone else there from Talgarth High?’
‘Anoushka. She was an NQT then.’
‘NQT?’
‘Newly Qualified Teacher.’
‘In here,’ Harbinder taps the pages, ‘Ella mentions wanting to forget Hythe. What do you think she meant?’
I try to keep my face blank.
‘I’ve no idea,’ I say.
‘She talks about Doctor Jekyll and Mr Hythe,’ says Harbinder, still giving me the hard stare. ‘What do you think that means?’
‘A misspelling?’ I suggest. I’m willing to bet that neither Harbinder nor DS Winston has read the book.
Harbinder ignores this. ‘She says, “C knows”. Is C you?’
‘I don’t know.’ I have to look away now. I’m sweating and I hope they don’t notice. Harbinder would probably just assume that I’m menopausal anyway.
Neil Winston speaks and it’s almost a shock to hear his voice. He’s got a flat estuary accent that sucks the drama out of his words.
‘There was a note found by Ella’s body,’ he says.
I’m not expecting this. ‘What did it say?’
Neil reads from his phone. ‘ “Hell is empty”. Does that mean anything to you?’
‘It’s a quote,’ I say. ‘From The Tempest.’
‘What’s the next line?’ says Harbinder though I’m sure she’s looked it up.
‘Hell is empty,’ I say, ‘and all the devils are here.’
Chapter 7
It’s a frantic day so I can’t check Facebook until I’m home. I don’t want to, anyway. I wouldn’t have been able to concentrate with my colleagues around me, students knocking on the staffroom door, Vera asking earnest questions about coursework. But, as soon as I get in, I sit at the breakfast bar and open my laptop. Georgie is at Tash’s, supposedly doing homework, and Herbert is still at Doggy Day Care (it’s as expensive as childcare) and I don’t have to collect him until six. My designer kitchen hums silently in the background as I find the little blue Facebook app.
I haven’t looked at Ella’s page since that first time. Maybe it won’t be open anymore. Maybe there will just be a black square, RIP, nothingness. Maybe her parents will have done what Debra was suggesting and ‘memorialised’ it, so that her cyberself can live on although her corporeal body is dead. But, when I click on Ella’s name, she’s still there. Her profile picture was taken at last year’s English department Christmas meal. Her hair is loose and she’s wearing a paper hat that looks, in the light of Marini’s Italian restaurant, like a Tudor headdress, studded with jewels. She is smiling and looking directly at the camera, slightly challenging, eyes wide. Who took the picture? I can’t remember. In her ‘photos’ file, there’s one of me on the same occasion. I’m not smiling and look rather angry, as I often do in repose. I’ve got a small head and paper hats never stay on so I look like the spectre at the feast. Lay not that flattering unction to your soul, That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
There are no photos of Hythe and I don’t know how to scroll back as far as July on her timeline. Where did Harbinder find the comments she was mentioning? In Ella’s supposedly secure Messenger app? In private messages to other people? I go onto my own page. I haven’t posted since 2015 (‘Lovely day for Georgie’s 13th birthday. Suddenly I’m the mother of a teenager!’) but I regularly send private messages and contribute to chats. My last message to ‘When shall we three . . . ?’, my chat group with Ella and Debra, was on the Sunday that she died. It says, ‘Only four for that paso. Are they blind???’ I’ve no idea who was dancing the paso doble but a bitchy comment about low-brow TV is hardly going to impress DS Kaur. Three question marks, too. I won’t have written about Hythe on social media but I will have recorded it in my diary. I write almost every day and my journals fill a small, locked cupboard in my bedroom. I sometimes take the current book into work with me but the old volumes — the archives, I call them in my head — are locked away.
It’s only five o’clock. I don’t have to collect Herbert yet and Georgie won’t be back for hours. I go into my room and the cupboard. The books are all there, different sizes and colours, but neatly stacked according to date. I started the current one in August so Hythe will be in the one before. It’s a pale blue Moleskine, ‘Jan to August 2017’.
I flick through the pages. 20th July 2017. Term had ended the day before, on the Thursday. There had been an end-of-term feeling in the air, I remembered. It was a beautiful day, the sea striped blue and green and dotted with sailing boats. I had driven to Hythe with Ella, windows open, singing along to the radio. Georgie was with Simon — they were going on what he insisted on calling a ‘family holiday’ to Cornwall the next day. But even that couldn’t dent my spirits. Term was over and I had a weekend with my best friend and my favourite colleagues. The course interested me too, for all that it had a typical education-speak name that managed to mean nothing: Journaling for Writing. But I was enthusiastic. Next year the English department at Talgarth High would be a model of best practice.
At least that’s how I think I felt.
21st July 2017
I’ve got a good room this year. King-sized bed, view of the sea, even a sofa that makes it a sort of suite. Ella has just texted to say that she’s only got an ordinary double. ‘So the orgy had better be at your place.’ ‘Ha ha,’ I text back. Not much chance of an orgy but there’s a drinks reception at six before the first twilight session. I wonder whether Paul from Stockport will be here this year. Ella will say I fancy him (that was what she was like in the car — wide-eyed teenager crossed with woman of the world) but it’s just nice to have one male teacher who’s not married or gay. Anyway, I’ve got a few hours in my room first. I love being in hotels on my own. I can watch Antiques Roadshow, drink speciality tea and eat biscuits. Think this weekend is going to be a good one.
Later
Ella really got on my nerves this evening. The sixth-form high jinks mood turned into manic flirtation accompanied by barbs aimed in my direction. ‘Oh, Clare thinks we’re making too much noise.’ ‘Clare doesn’t approve of people having fun.’ She annexed Paul from Stockport early on, sat next to him at dinner. I could hear their laughter floating down to my duller end of the table. I sat next to Rick, who seemed sunk in gloom.
The twilight session was OK. It was called ‘Dear Diary’ and it was about how writing every day improves your literacy, even if what you write is complete rubbish. ‘Clare keeps a diary,’ piped up Ella. ‘Do you?’ said Paul. ‘I didn’t think anyone did that except in Victorian novels.’ Bloody cheek. I just smiled and said, ‘Oh, I’m full of surprises’, but inwardly I was seething.
Afterwards we walked along the promenade. Ella walked with Rick and I actually saw her take his arm at one point. I stopped to look at the sea and, by the time I turned round, they were almost back at the hotel. They hadn’t even noticed that I wasn’t there.
22nd July 2017
It’s nearly midnight. Ella has just left my room. I can’t quite believe what has just happened. She was manic again today but nicer to me this time. Too nice, in fact. Grabbing my arm, calling me her ‘best mate’, telling stories where we featured as the wild children of the English department. I was glad not to be in her working party when we split into small groups for the afternoon. Paul was in my group, as was Anoushka, and Louise and Beth, two nice teachers from Northern Ireland. We actually had a lot of fun and I was starting to enjoy myself again. Our group sat together at dinner and I saw Ella with Rick, a few tables away, talking very intently. Then they disappeared. I had a couple of drinks in the bar and went to bed. Ella tapped on my door a few minutes ago. Her hair was dishevelled and her eyes were twice their normal size. I wondered if she’d taken something.
Ella flung herself on my king-sized bed. ‘I think I’m going to sleep with Rick,’ sh
e said. I just stared at her. Ella started going on about how they’d snogged on the beach ‘like teenagers’ and how it would be ‘away-day sex’, something that didn’t count in the real world. ‘But he’s married,’ I said. Ella said that Rick was mad about her, ‘completely obsessed’. ‘He says he’s ill with me.’
It was him using the exact same words that did it for me. He’d said that to ME, only a few months earlier. ‘I’m mad about you, Clare. I think about you all the time. I’m ill with you.’ I remember thinking at the time what an ill-omened phrase that was. Ill with me. ‘If you’re ill, you need help,’ that’s what I told him. ‘You’re married,’ I said, ‘and I’m not going to sleep with a married man.’ But I had been tempted. God knows why, but I was seriously tempted. Maybe that’s why I got so angry with Ella. I shouted at her. Told her I thought she was behaving childishly and stupidly. She flung back that I was incapable of enjoying myself. ‘Why don’t you shag Paul? Or that barman who’s been giving you the glad eye all weekend? Because you’ve always got to be better than everyone else. But you’re not better. You’re just boring.’
I was shaking when she left. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive her.
Or Rick.
I’m shaking again when I stop reading. I remember Ella’s fling with Rick, of course I do. It only lasted for that weekend. Ella was bored with him by the end of it. I remember the long drive home through the rain, Ella laughing about Rick’s earnestness, his lack of humour, his penchant for the missionary position. It seemed to rain for the whole of August, although the pictures of Cornwall on Georgie’s Facebook page showed golden summer days, merry-go-rounds and kayaks, barbeques on the beach, and Georgie posing in a bikini with her half-brother Tiger in a fetching Boden beach robe.
Rick became a bit obsessed with Ella. Apparently he kept ringing her up, begging to see her, saying he’d leave his wife, the works. I despised Rick for that, remembering how only a few months earlier, he had been sitting outside my house, begging me to sleep with him. But what I didn’t remember was that in Hythe, I had been so angry, so uptight, so jealous. I had thought it was stupid of Ella to have an affair with her head of department. After all, wasn’t that what went wrong in her previous school? And I didn’t set much store by Rick’s declarations of undying love. But it was her business. Why the hell should I say that I’d never forgive her?
The Stranger Diaries Page 6