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

by Jill Childs

  ‘So maybe a blank card?’ Elaine said. ‘Something simple on the front, like flowers. I’m sure I’ve got one. I’ll just write “best wishes” inside and get some people to sign it.’

  Olivia joined us, stirring a cup of instant soup. The smell of spicy tomato engulfed us all.

  Hilary looked up. ‘Is there any news – you know, on what happened to him?’

  ‘Nothing I’ve heard.’ Olivia shrugged. ‘They haven’t replaced him yet. Not permanently.’

  ‘That doesn’t mean anything,’ Hilary scoffed. ‘You know what they’re like. Sarah’s probably trying to save money.’

  ‘Anyway, we’re going to give Mrs Wilson a nice card. She’s coming in this afternoon. It’s a gesture, isn’t it?’ Elaine said brightly.

  It was a gesture, we all agreed.

  Twenty-Six

  I saw Helen take up her place on one of the settees in the school library. She settled the basket of reading books and diaries on the table at the side, then rifled through with neat, precise movements and drew one out as the first child, a girl with floppy bunches, ran in from a classroom to join her.

  I was standing at the photocopier, hidden away in an alcove at a distance from the library. I’d been in the middle of running off some worksheets and I paused when I realised it was her and stood there, peering round the wall.

  Helen’s head craned forward, her finger bobbing along the page, guiding the girl as she started, hesitantly, to read aloud. I watched for a while. She was calm and patient, murmuring now and then, offering encouragement. When the girl finished reading and closed her book, she looked up at Helen expectantly.

  Helen handed her a sheet of stickers and the girl spent time choosing one, while Helen wrote a line or two in the reading diary, then folded the reading book inside and filed them back in the basket.

  The girl, attaching the sticker with care to her school cardigan, jumped up and headed back to the classroom to fetch the next reader. And so it went on.

  Helen sat, waiting. She shuffled a little on the cushioned seat and crossed her legs at the knee, tapped the free foot in the air. Her hair was sharply cut as if she’d been recently to the hairdresser’s.

  It was hard to believe that it was the same woman who’d zipped her husband’s body into a surfboard cover nearly three months earlier and headed out onto a dark sea in a dinghy to tip it overboard.

  The next child, a stout boy, came sauntering out to join her, one hand in his trouser pocket and the other clutching his reading diary and book. Helen greeted him by name – she seemed to know all the children – patted the empty stretch of settee beside her and he perched there, opened his book and, prompted by her finger, he began, haltingly, to read.

  I turned back to the photocopier and focussed on my work. When I was finished, the papers stacked and clipped into bundles, I glanced over towards the library settee. The boy was leaving, pressing down the sticker on his school jumper as he ran off.

  ‘Mummy!’

  Anna came dashing out, hurtling towards her mother, all excitement. Helen smiled and opened her arms wide and Anna threw herself into them, bouncing beside her on the settee. I bit my lip. I had no business, looking. There was something so intense, so intimate in that fierce embrace. I blinked. Their arms were tight around each other, Helen slightly rocking the girl as she held her against her body. Helen’s face was tilted into Anna’s hair as if she were inhaling its smell. Her eyes closed. There was serenity, a softness in her face that I’d never seen before.

  I felt as if a veil had been lifted back and I’d seen for the first time something precious, something which, until then, I hadn’t wanted to admit, even to myself. Selflessness of a kind I would never know. I gathered up the papers and turned quickly away, the floor blurring. It had been there all this time, this love at the centre of their family, I saw that now. This family I’d been instrumental in breaking apart.

  Twenty-Seven

  I tried my best to keep an eye on Anna from afar. Ralph had adored her. I owed it to him to look out for her, at least at school, whatever her mother thought of me.

  I wanted Anna to like me, to realise she was precious to me because she was my last link to him. Those gorgeous brown eyes. That defiant tilt of the chin. The passing dreaminess in her face that mirrored his.

  I’d been disappointed that she’d clearly gone straight home after our little chat in the school library and repeated to her mother exactly what I’d said. That ‘secret friend’ jibe of Helen’s told me everything. It was hurtful. My attempt to reach out to that girl had been kindly meant. It was for Ralph’s sake, as much as anything.

  Since that awkward visit to her home, I pretended not to notice each time I saw Anna looking in my direction. I didn’t want to give her any reason to mention me to her mother. So I did what I could, covertly. I spoke well of Anna to other members of staff, I found her stray sports shirt in a corridor and returned it to her bag in the class cloakroom without even telling her, I pushed a chocolate once into her coat pocket before home-time and let her think it a present from Clara. They were anonymous kindnesses, carried out for Ralph.

  It was only natural to see her often, even if I hadn’t engineered it. The Lower School wasn’t such a big place. I still had playground duty on a regular basis. I couldn’t help but notice when she and Clara raced and chased round the kaleidoscope of the playground, often hand in hand. They had a close bond, those two. Everyone saw it. Inseparable.

  Clara was the one I decided to speak to next, in my quest to find out how Anna was coping with the loss of her father, if she needed any extra support. Whatever question I needed to ask, she was just as likely to have the answer and maybe more likely to share it.

  The opportunity came easily enough. I was on playground duty, as usual, when I saw Clara hanging around, sitting in a corner, on her haunches. It was something the two of them often did. But this time Clara was all alone. She had a bit of stick and was rubbing it back and forth on the tarmac.

  I headed over and crouched down low at her side.

  ‘Hey, Clara. How’s things?’

  She looked up to see who it was, then turned her eyes back to her stick. ‘Hello, Miss Dixon.’

  Her hair was shoulder-length and, although it was only morning break, her mother’s attempt to harness it into a plait was already beginning to unravel. It made me want to grab a brush, undo it and start again. More evidence, perhaps, that Bea – was that her name? – was an overwhelmed parent.

  ‘No Anna today?’

  She shrugged. ‘Off sick.’

  ‘Oh dear. I’m sorry to hear that.’

  No answer. Clara carried on drawing imaginary patterns with her stick. Without Anna, she seemed lost in the seething, bubbling mass of children.

  ‘Poor Anna. I do worry about her.’ I paused. Clara tilted her head to look up at me, listening. ‘She must miss her daddy terribly, I’m sure. She loved him very much.’

  She looked thoughtful, her eyes on my face.

  I carried on, ‘Does she talk to you about it?’

  She sucked her bottom lip. ‘Nope.’

  ‘No?’ I pulled a face. ‘But you’re such good friends, Clara! You and Anna.’

  She muttered under her breath, ‘Best friends.’

  ‘Well, then. Imagine how much you’d need a friend if something happened to your mummy?’

  She didn’t answer but I sensed her muscles tense.

  ‘You can tell me everything, Clara. I’m a teacher. What’s she said about how her mummy’s feeling? About missing her daddy?’

  She shook her head. ‘Nothing.’

  I shuffled closer, sensing her awkwardness, sensing she had something to say and was struggling to keep it hidden from me.

  ‘Sometimes, Clara, it’s okay to share secrets.’ I kept my voice low and friendly. ‘Especially important ones. Sometimes, that’s a really grown-up thing to do. A way of helping people we really care about.’

  She didn’t answer. Her cheeks flushed.r />
  I said, ‘I bet she tells you everything, doesn’t she, Clara? You’re such good friends. Does she tell you how sad she feels?’

  Her eyes widened. ‘She’s not sad.’

  I blinked. ‘Why do you say that?’

  She nodded. ‘She says the grown-ups are wrong.’

  She broke off and turned away, embarrassed by the scrutiny.

  My pulse quickened. ‘Why would she say that?’

  She shrugged, her mouth rigidly closed.

  ‘Clara! This is important. What do you think she means?’

  Her mouth started to crumple under the strain. She shook her head and her eyes watered.

  The five-minute bell rang out. Around us, a tidal wave of pounding children came shrieking across the playground towards the line-up doors, some gliding in with arms stiff as aeroplane wings, others flapping their sleeves and mittens like wild birds.

  I reached out and grabbed hold of Clara’s arm. She gazed at me with frightened eyes.

  ‘Clara, tell me.’

  She froze.

  ‘Why would she say that?’

  She gawped at me, then pulled away and ran off before I could stop her to join the cloud of children and find her place in the gathering lines.

  I stared after her.

  What was she talking about? Had Clara made it up, for something to say? Or was that how Anna was coping, missing her father so much that she was pretending with her best friend that everything was okay and he’d come home in the end, safe and well?

  I swallowed and shook my head. Something else struck me, winding me as forcefully as a blow to the stomach.

  I imagined Anna, not asleep after all, woken by the crash of her father’s flailing body as it bounced heavily down the cellar steps. And creeping down the stairs in her pyjamas, peering out, still half in a dream, and seeing me, standing there by the cellar door, eyes wide, stiff with shock.

  What if she knew that the story about her father simply going out one evening and never coming home couldn’t be true, because she’d seen what had really happened? And if that were the case, what if she told?

  Twenty-Eight

  We never had many arguments, Ralph and I. I wasn’t the sort of person who screamed and shouted if they were angry, not usually. I was a bottler. A sulker, at times, I had to admit, if something had really upset me.

  As the New Year rolled round and a new school term started, he never referred to the way I’d begged him to leave his wife that Christmas. I never mentioned it either. I gave myself a good talking to. I had to be smart, if I really cared about him. That’s what I told myself. I was in for the long haul.

  I tried to see this as a waiting game. My job was to make him happy. When he thought about me, and I was sure he must, I wanted the thoughts to be positive. He should imagine, first and foremost, a fun, lively woman with a smile on her face, a sexy woman who was excited to see him. I wanted to shine in his life, making a brilliant contrast with his wife and whatever problems they clearly had in their marriage. I had to attract him, not risk pushing him away from me with demands and complaints. Ralph and I had something special. I didn’t want to risk messing it up.

  So the few times I let myself down and we did row, I remember clearly. They stood out for me like sores. I’d berate myself and send apologetic messages, full of love hearts and promises to behave if he’d just give me a second chance. I’d barely sleep until he’d finally reply and I knew he was still going to see me again, that I hadn’t gone too far and been cast off, back into darkness.

  One of the biggest arguments came in late January. I hated that month. Cold, grey and dark. Christmas was already a distant memory and Spring still felt out of reach. It was a month of colds and flu, of rain and gales, a time at school when the children seemed particularly crazy because they weren’t spending enough hours outside in the fresh air, running off their energy.

  Ralph and I were seeing each other once or twice a week, as often as he could manage without making his wife suspicious. I never asked him what lies he told her. I thought it best not to know. He was only doing it, I told myself, because he belonged with me. He’d realise that, in time.

  Our dates were often at short notice. In the beginning, that had been part of the excitement. A delicious frisson when he suddenly messaged me without warning.

  You free? Can I come over?

  A nervous thrill, even on the evenings I climbed into bed without hearing from him. The hope that, even now, he might still text me or the front-door buzzer might ring to say he was unexpectedly here.

  But by late January, perhaps it was just me, but something between us seemed stale. The sudden appearances, the abrupt cancellations, were actually annoying, playing havoc with my nerves. I wanted him to myself. And I was also frightened in case, for him too, the initial excitement of our affair had worn off. I feared he was getting tired, even bored.

  He was acting too much like a husband with me. Most of the time, he just came round to the flat to see me and I cooked for him, poured him a glass of wine and tried to cheer him up. We might cuddle up together on the settee, rain lashing the windows, and watch my old TV together. At least once, I tilted up my head to meet his gaze at a particularly moving programme and saw, with horror, that his eyes were closed, his mouth gaping. I had to shuffle against him, pretending I was moving to get comfortable, to nudge him awake again. It worried me, afterwards. There was feeling relaxed with someone and there was downright boredom. I was on thin ice. If his time with me stopped being special, why would he bother?

  That evening, when we kissed a tired goodbye at the front door, I risked something I’d been building up to for a while.

  ‘Let’s go to the theatre next week.’

  He blinked, taken aback. ‘The theatre?’

  I forced a smile. ‘I’ll surprise you. You tell me which day. I’ll organise the tickets.’

  He looked ambushed. ‘Next week? Well…’

  I kissed the tip of his chin. ‘Come on, don’t be boring. We can’t stay in all the time.’

  ‘It’s just…’ He looked embarrassed, his eyes darting away from mine.

  ‘Just what?’ My disappointment made me sound cross. He used to love the theatre. I knew he did. He talked about it, about the fact that he’d gone all the time before he was married. It was one of those things he’d given up since Anna came along, out of fatherly duty.

  He took hold of my hands and lifted them gently off his shoulders. ‘It’s complicated. I’m sorry. I just can’t, not right now.’

  ‘Why not?’ I’d already looked into it. I’d chosen a play; a new one I was sure he’d love. It could be a pre-Valentine’s Day treat, I’d decided, because, of course, he’d spend the real Valentine’s Day with his wife.

  He didn’t even seem sorry. ‘Look, we’ll talk about it another time.’

  He twisted and reached his hand to the latch to open the door. I leaned against it, getting cross.

  ‘Don’t do that.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Just walk out like that. Just brush me off as if my feelings don’t even matter and go rushing back to—’ I could bring myself to say it. I didn’t need to. We both knew.

  He looked impatient. ‘Not now, all right? I’m tired. Another time.’

  ‘Another time?’ Something flared inside me, some part of the growing fear that I was starting to lose him and I didn’t know how to stop that happening. I snapped, ‘Tell me now. Right now, before you go anywhere. Why can’t we go and see a play?’

  His jaw set hard. ‘You know why. Because someone might see us together. And anyway, money’s tight. I can’t afford it, okay? Can I leave now?’

  He shoved me sideways and was thumping out and down the steps before I could answer.

  I stood at the window and watched him stride away towards the labyrinth of nearby side roads where he usually parked. My hands shook. What had I done? I’d ruined things. I’d risked everything. Just because I couldn’t learn to be quiet and stay patient.<
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  Soon enough, I was sitting on the edge of my bed, phone in hand, texting apologies.

  I’m so sorry. Really. Of course I understand. xxx

  Silence. I paced round the flat, tidying away the dinner dishes and washing up our wine glasses. I couldn’t believe how stupid I’d been. It was pride, that was all. Wanting to have too much of him for myself. Wanting to push for more, instead of appreciating what I had.

  I shut the dishwasher and ran back to find my phone. No answer. He’d be driving now, heading home.

  I texted again:

  Text when ur home. So I know ur safe. Love u xxx

  No reply.

  I spent the night worrying. Why had I gone for him like that? What if he was angry, really angry? What if he was getting tired of me? I was stupid, stupid, stupid. I lay, staring at the ceiling, trying to read the shadows.

  He had a lot of financial responsibility. I’d never thought about it before. But, of course, he was shouldering all the costs on his own. Helen didn’t work. Food, household bills, clothes, petrol, everything Anna needed. It must be a worry. How could I have been so selfish, so insensitive?

  The next day, I struggled to concentrate in the classroom, to keep my good humour with a restless gang of year threes. During breaks, I hurried to check my phone for messages. Nothing. At lunchtime, I considered making a dash up the hill to the Upper School to see if I could catch a word alone with him or even just give him a reassuring smile. There was simply no time.

  It wasn’t until the end of the Lower School day that a message finally came through.

  luv u 2 xxx

  Thank God. I could breathe again.

  Twenty-Nine

  It was a Friday. I’d already presided over a class assembly, taught fractions and then survived making a Viking long-boat.