The Mistress: A gripping and emotional page turner with a killer twist

by Jill Childs

  Naturally, our thoughts and prayers are with Mrs Wilson and their daughter, Anna, at this difficult time.

  Miss Abbott has arranged for a counsellor, specialising in loss, to be on call throughout the week. Please feel free to refer to her any child who seems distressed by these events or indeed to contact her if you also feel in need of particular support.

  This information is shared with you in the strictest confidence. The heads of Lower and Upper School have been authorised by the board of governors to speak to the media. Please refer any inquiries to me or to Miss Baldini.

  I was on outside duty at morning break. I read the email in haste on my phone as I put my coat on.

  As soon as I stepped out into the playground, swallowed up at once by the shrieks and cries of Lower School children, Olivia Fry, her coat unbuttoned, a scarf loose around her neck, came across to me, a young child attached to each hand.

  Her face was ashen, her voice a whisper. ‘Have you seen?’

  I didn’t need to ask what she meant. The email, of course. It was the only topic of conversation.

  ‘Terrible.’

  ‘His poor wife.’ She slid her eyes away from mine as she spoke, gazing out across the throng of teeming, screaming children, running, tugging at each other’s coats, swinging each other round.

  Something in her tone, in her pallor, in the way she avoided looking directly at me made me pause. What was it that made me suddenly suspicious of her? Had she also…? Olivia? I shuddered, remembering her at the writing group. The long princess hair. The round eyes. Her voice, shy and slightly hesitant, as she started to read her children’s story to the group and Ralph, sitting forward in his chair, his eyes on her face, encouraging her.

  I turned my back to her, trying to find space. A small child, Emma Something in reception, barrelled into my legs and flung her arms around my thighs, hugging me for a moment’s comfort before turning and spinning off again into the chaos of whirling children.

  If I was right, was Olivia before or after me? Or during, even? Did she know, then, about Ralph and me? My mouth felt unnaturally dry. What if she told people? What if she told the police?

  She stepped forward into the fray to separate two fighting year one boys and sent them off in different directions, on warning.

  When she came back into range, I whispered, ‘What’s the latest?’

  I meant, have they found him, that floating, bloating, rotting corpse which once made love to me and perhaps to you too? It was too horrible to mention.

  She whispered back, ‘They’re searching the heath. He used to take long walks there, apparently.’

  The heath? I blinked. I’d never known Ralph to walk anywhere, if he could help it. Then I thought, that’s Helen’s lie. She’s plotting to throw them off the scent.

  Bile rose in my throat.

  Twelve

  The police came, heralded by a second staff memo.

  To all staff, Upper and Lower School

  Police officers investigating the disappearance of our colleague, Mr Ralph Wilson, will attend school today to conduct interviews. They have requested any member of staff who feels able to share information about Mr Wilson – however trivial – to access the link below to select an interview time. Please endeavour to timetable these interviews in non-teaching time but, if a clash proves unavoidable, please contact Jayne (Lower School) or Matilda (Upper School) to arrange temporary cover. The police emphasise that even minor observations about Mr Wilson’s recent behaviour and state of mind may prove valuable. I’m sure we will all be keen to assist them in whatever way we can at this difficult time.

  Olivia Fry pushed me into it. She booked a slot with a Lower School teaching assistant who’d also attended some of Ralph’s writing group meetings and suggested I should come too. No, not suggested, insisted.

  ‘What if there was something, some snippet of information, that helped?’ she said, cornering me in the Lower School playground when we were both on lunch duty. Her large eyes were earnest and moist with emotion. ‘It would be awful if we didn’t. Think of his poor wife.’

  I wriggled and squirmed. She had no idea how much I thought of his poor wife. Her face, stony and set, haunted me almost as much as the memory of her dead husband.

  I shrugged. ‘I’d be wasting their time, though. I hardly knew him.’

  She pursed her lips. ‘I know. I’m the same. But we must. We’ll go together, get it over with.’

  One of the girls came running over, unbuttoned coat flying, face blotchy with angry crying, demanding justice in some squabble with another girl. Olivia turned away from me to stoop to her and sort it out.

  I broke the rules and strode quickly across the playground towards the school building and the staff toilets. The swirl of dodging, swerving children, the shrieks and screams blurred and shook. I was hot with fear. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t sit in the same room as an investigating officer and feel their eyes on my face. I couldn’t hold it together and answer questions. They’d know. I’d give myself away. Guilt would radiate from me in waves. How could they not feel it?

  But how could I refuse to go along with the others without looking suspicious?

  The night before the interview, I didn’t sleep. I paced, numb, up and down the flat, frightened of closing my eyes. Sleep wouldn’t come. All I saw that night was the knowing face of a detective, his eyes on mine, reading my mind.

  Thirteen

  They let the police officers borrow Sarah Baldini’s interview room, annexed to her office.

  Three of us – Olivia, a plump, motherly teaching assistant and I – sat in a line on a row of chairs along the wall outside Sarah’s office, hands on our knees, waiting for our slot.

  My palms itched with sweat. I wiped them off inside my pocket every now and then on a clean handkerchief, fearful of giving myself away. Olivia too looked pale and tense.

  The teaching assistant, who liked to chatter, made nervous jokes. ‘I feel as if we’ve been sent for, stuck here, like this.’ Awkward silence. ‘This must be what the naughty boys feel like.’

  The door opened and an Upper School teacher came out, the bearded science teacher who also attended the writing groups and always went cheerily to the pub afterwards. Now, he looked unusually solemn.

  The teaching assistant whispered, ‘How’d it go? What’re they like?’

  He shrugged. ‘Good luck.’

  Already a young constable with a clipboard had emerged from behind him and stood in front of us, checking our names and contact details on her list. She looked barely twenty, younger even than Olivia. Her hair was twisted into a tight bun at the back of her head, held with a dark net and about a hundred clips.

  As we got to our feet and made to follow her in, my stomach fell away. My knees buckled and I dropped back down to my chair with a bump.

  The teaching assistant, all mother, bent over me. ‘You all right?’

  I couldn’t answer. My heart raced. My hands, gripping the sides of the chair for support, felt cold and slippery.

  ‘You’re white as a ghost.’ The teaching assistant hesitated. ‘Shall I tell them you’re not well?’

  She started to turn towards the office which had already swallowed up Olivia and the young constable. I shot out a hand to grab her arm and struggled to my feet.

  ‘I’m fine. Sorry. Just got up too quickly.’ I lowered my voice and managed to whisper. ‘Time of the month, you know.’

  She nodded and smiled and I managed to follow her in, my legs wobbling beneath me.

  I saw at once, as soon as we entered the office, that it wasn’t at all what I’d expected. My mind, playing tricks during the night, had conjured up a TV detective, a hard-bitten, all-knowing middle-aged man with a trilby hat and shabby suit and a cigarette in the corner of his mouth, a man who leaned forward, eyes appraising, perched on one buttock on the corner of his desk.

  In fact, the office had most recently been used by the visiting trauma counsellor and was still set up as a sanctu
ary. The straight-backed chairs had padded seats and were arranged in a friendly circle around a low table which offered a box of tissues, a large jug of water with a tower of paper cups and a small vase of yellow carnations.

  I almost laughed, thinking how scathing Ralph would be. How petit bourgeois. How touchy-feely. For a moment, I imagined how we’d chat about it, compare notes over a glass of Shiraz about the detective, standing there now, hand outstretched, to greet us. She was wearing a cheap navy blue trouser suit that shone with too much polyester. Marks and Spencer, probably. A plain white blouse. A discreet silver necklace. She was middle-aged but seemed already world-weary. Her face was carefully made up. Powder had settled in the creases which fanned outwards from the corners of her eyes and striped her forehead. Her lipstick, an oddly bright shade of red, needed freshening up. I felt the heady dizziness of relief.

  ‘Detective Inspector Johns – Eileen Johns.’

  She gestured to us to sit and there was a general scraping of chairs and awkward arranging of legs until we were all settled, we four, drawing a tight circle round the table. The young constable took a seat behind her boss and picked up a pad and pen to resume notetaking.

  ‘Thank you so much for coming forward.’ Her eyes darted from one face to the next.

  My hands, loose in my lap, reached for each other.

  ‘I understand you’ve requested an interview because you knew Mr Wilson and might have something to share with us. So, where shall we start?’

  Olivia, of course. Sitting primly there, her hair cascading around her shoulders, her back straight. She started to explain to the detective about the writing group, about the fact we had chosen to come together because we’d been the three members of staff from the Lower School to attend and had much the same information to share. She spoke about his poetry, his talent, his natural charisma.

  The detective nodded, listening, giving nothing away. The constable’s pen scratched its way across the page.

  Olivia seemed determined to take the lead, jumping in to answer the detective’s questions as if we’d agreed that she would speak on behalf of us all. News to me.

  The detective’s eyes were bright. Clever, that much was clear. Taking it all in.

  ‘How much did he disclose about his personal life?’

  ‘Nothing directly. I mean, we were colleagues. We didn’t share confidences.’ She paused, as if she were searching for the words. Her hand reached for her hair, falling forward now over her left shoulder, and flicked it back with a practised movement. ‘But you learn a lot about a person when they share their writing, especially poetry. It’s very intimate. I’d say he was clearly a romantic. He seemed to adore his wife. And Anna, of course. His daughter.’

  ‘Any hint of tension in his marriage, as far as you were aware?’

  ‘Oh, no.’ She looked shocked. ‘Quite the opposite. Mrs Wilson comes into school regularly to listen to the children read. We have a lot of parent volunteers, all police checked, of course. It really helps. She’s a lovely lady. Very friendly. I didn’t know them well but they both seemed, well, very lovely people.’

  The detective nodded and let the silence stretch a few beats longer than felt comfortable.

  ‘And Anna’s a delightful girl. Very sweet-natured.’

  I thought about Olivia’s dig in the staffroom, about Ralph being a charmer. No sense of that here, in front of this audience. She made him sound as pious as a choirboy.

  As I watched her, listening to her childlike, rather earnest voice and the glow of admiration for Ralph which shone through her description of him, I curled with dislike. There was something artificial in the way she spoke. A performance. What was she up to? I didn’t know. The detective’s face gave away nothing.

  Behind her, the constable scratched away, to and fro across the page, her bun immaculate. I wondered how long it took her, with all those pins.

  The teaching assistant, sitting between Olivia and me, nodded with enthusiasm as Olivia spoke and breathed ‘oh yes’ and ‘absolutely’ from time to time.

  When Olivia finally finished, the teaching assistant leaned forward earnestly and said, ‘I agree. Such a lovely man. I mean, I didn’t know him well, of course. I went along to meetings too, when I could – not to read my own work, I don’t have the gift, but just to enjoy. And just listening to him read his poetry, well, you could see he was a tender soul.’

  I tried not to snort. A tender soul? Something else to make Ralph laugh.

  The detective shifted her attention to me. Her eyes, meeting mine, froze me to the core. They were exactly as I’d feared, after all, just not in the body I’d imagined. They saw everything. They knew.

  ‘Miss Dixon? What exactly was your relationship with Mr Wilson?’

  I stared, transfixed, unable to speak. The constable’s pen stopped scratching and she lifted her head to look at me. Everyone looked at me. My legs, planted squarely on the carpet, started to tremble.

  ‘Miss Dixon?’

  I opened and closed my mouth, but nothing came out. I was stricken. All I could see was Ralph’s body, crumpled at the bottom of the steps. And Helen, crouched beside him in the gloom, her face pressed into his side, her sobs echoing round the bare, cold cellar.

  Fourteen

  I licked my lips and tried to clear my throat. ‘I hardly knew him. Really.’

  My voice squeaked in my ears. She would know, if she didn’t already. My thin little voice oozed guilt. She must smell it coming off me, as rancid as sour cream.

  ‘I went to a few meetings, that’s all. He was very friendly. He made everyone welcome.’

  The detective didn’t blink. Silence. The room seemed suddenly airless.

  The teaching assistant jumped forward just as I reached out a hand and started to sway. She grabbed hold of my arm and threaded her other arm around my shoulders, sturdy and comforting.

  ‘You’re not well, are you?’ She appealed to the detective. ‘She’s very hot.’

  She lowered me to the floor and poured me a glass of water, then fanned me with one of the trauma counsellor’s leaflets. Yellow letters on a blue background flashed in front of my face, back and forth as she flapped. Having trouble sleeping? Feeling sad or depressed?

  ‘I’ll be fine.’ I sipped the cool water, focussed on the swirly carpet and concentrated on breathing. In, out. In, out. Gradually, I managed to recover myself. I scrambled back onto my chair, hoisted in part by the stout teaching assistant. ‘I’m so sorry. I think I must be coming down with something.’ I paused, gathered myself together. ‘It’s just so sad, wondering what’s happened to him. And his poor little girl. Anna. I can’t imagine—’

  The detective nodded to the constable and she jumped up and handed round small printed cards. Detective Inspector Eileen Johns. Investigating officer. A list of phone numbers to call, including a hotline, a police email address.

  ‘If anything else occurs to you, anything at all.’

  The detective got to her feet and nodded, her eyes weary.

  Outside, a young man was waiting, a new Upper School teaching assistant. He looked up, face anxious, as we came out of the office.

  Cool air in the corridor found my clammy neck, face, hands.

  Once we’d turned the corner and were out of earshot, the teaching assistant blew out her cheeks and said, ‘Well! There we are then!’

  I didn’t answer. I wanted to quicken my pace and get away from them, to recover on my own, but my legs didn’t have the strength to hurry.

  The three of us walked down the corridor in step.

  The teaching assistant said, ‘You ought to have a sit down before you go back to class.’ Her eyes were concerned. ‘I’ve got aspirin, if you need some.’

  Beyond her, Olivia was watching me, her eyes sharp.

  Fifteen

  Eventually, after an extended absence, Anna came back to school.

  Hilary was full of it.

  ‘I told the class she might be feeling a bit S-A-D.’ She did a good jo
b of looking stricken, but I sensed how pleased she was to have a leading role in this tragedy. ‘I’m not sure how much they really understand, you see. About grief. I mean, they’re only seven.’

  Olivia nodded. ‘One or two may have lost grandparents.’

  ‘Or family pets,’ put in Elaine. ‘The loss of an animal can be deeply traumatic for a young child.’

  I tried not to roll my eyes. I could imagine how Ralph would feel about his loss being compared to a dead gerbil.

  ‘John called her into his office this morning for a little chat,’ Hilary went on. ‘So thoughtful. She’s very close to Clara Higgins. I’ve asked Clara to move tables so they can be together for a while.’

  Elaine nodded. ‘Clara’s a sweet girl.’

  ‘She goes home with Anna a lot, doesn’t she?’ Olivia said.

  ‘All the time,’ Hilary said. ‘She’s a single parent, Clara’s mum. Works long hours.’

  Elaine said, ‘Wasn’t there another Higgins girl?’

  Hilary nodded. ‘Isn’t there one in Upper School? Or is she Hopkins?’

  ‘I suppose Helen Wilson is a single parent too now, isn’t she?’ Olivia looked thoughtful. ‘Wonder how she’ll manage.’ Elaine scraped back her chair and got to her feet. ‘So sad.’

  Olivia picked up her coffee mug, ready to wash in the staff sink before we all headed back for afternoon classes. ‘Poor Anna. Who’d have thought.’

  ‘We’ll all look out for her. Of course we will.’ Elaine reached across and patted Hilary’s arm. ‘And she’s in safe hands here.’

  I’d only become aware of Anna’s presence at school recently, since the shock of discovering she was Ralph’s daughter. She was only in year two and seemed a quiet kid. Thin and wiry. I sensed the same romantic dreaminess as her father.