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

by Jill Childs

  Now, I was sitting on my own in a corner of the staffroom with a cup of tea, reading, when James Deacon, one of the young sports teachers, came over, a sheaf of papers in his hand. He stopped right in front of me.

  I purposefully didn’t look up at first. He was one of the so-called cool crowd – the young, recently qualified teachers who shouted across the staffroom to each other using silly nicknames and even played pranks when the rest of us were trying our best to have a break from childlike behaviour. They went out together socially at the weekends and made sure, from their loud conversations about it, that we all were aware of their antics. Olivia joined them on occasion.

  ‘Laura?’

  I let my eyes slide up from my page, hoping I didn’t flush.

  He was smiling at me, all politeness. ‘I’m afraid I’ve stolen your mail again. So sorry.’

  ‘That’s okay.’ I reached for the white envelope he was offering me. He’d started to tear open the corner by mistake, that was all. We were the only Lower School teachers with a surname beginning with ‘D’ and our post was often wrongly pushed into each other’s pigeonholes, thanks to the fact that our school secretary, Jayne, wasn’t as careful as she should be.

  ‘Hope it hasn’t been sitting there too long.’ He grinned as he turned away with the rest of his envelopes. ‘I’m a bit behind with all this paperwork. I’d rather be teaching.’

  I nodded after him, then slid a fingertip under the seal, ripped open the envelope and drew out the papers inside. A printed form from the photographic company, inviting me to place orders for everything from large mounted prints to coasters and mugs. I shook my head. I didn’t blame them for trying, but still.

  I turned over the adverts and flyers and finally reached the sample copy of the full school photograph itself. I never ordered actual pictures, but the proofs were good to keep, just as a souvenir of the passing years. Especially now. Maybe this would be my last here.

  I inclined it to catch the light and ran my eye along the glossy surface, covered with the word SAMPLE in giant lettering, just in case I was tempted to run off a few copies of my own and sell them on the side.

  I found myself first, standing neatly to one side, close to the end of the year ones, my body angled towards the camera, my hands hidden by Hilary, standing just ahead and to one side of me. I liked the dress I’d chosen. It had a flattering neckline, good for photos, but even at this distance, I could see how tired I looked. There was something in the slump of my shoulders, the tightness of my face that suggested how haunted I was. I wondered if the police had a copy, if they’d be scanning it for signs of stress and guilt.

  My eye ran across the very front row and the reception children sitting on the grass, some beaming, some shy, one or two pulling silly faces. Sarah Baldini wouldn’t like that. There she was, sitting neatly in her starched blouse and calf-length skirt, her make-up immaculate, front and centre of it all, a queen ruling over her subjects.

  I tipped the photo further into the light to have a better look at the other teachers who were arranged down the sides, rising with each tier of pupils until they formed their own line right along the very back. Then my eyes strayed, rising to the edge of the Upper School building in the background.

  My hand shook. My breath stuck in my throat. I pulled the picture closer and stared, feeling my heart bang so hard in my chest that it hurt. My eyes strained. It wasn’t possible. Was that what I thought it was? Were my eyes playing tricks on me?

  I looked up sharply, my lips dry, expecting to see someone sniggering from across the staffroom, looking over at me. No one paid me the slightest attention. Fridays always brought a relaxed, anticipatory mood, even here in the staffroom. All I saw were other teachers standing idly around in small groups, chatting, their backs to me. Some sat at tables with cups of tea and coffee, sharing snacks. Others, here and there, had heads bent low as they tapped and swiped on their phones. No one seemed aware that I existed.

  I hunched forward again over the photograph and stared. That shadowy figure standing by the window, looking down at the rest of the school below from a second-floor classroom. Wasn’t that Ralph? His face was a darkened blur. Impossible to make out his features. But something struck me with force, something about the angle of his head, the haircut, his shape of his shoulders and upper body. Why did I think it was him? I blinked. It was impossible. What was wrong with me? Was I going mad?

  The photograph swam and blurred and I wiped my eyes, struggling to focus again on the indistinct, shadowy figure hiding in the shadows, looking down on the assembled school.

  How could I even imagine that? How could I think the man I’d killed had come back from the dead?

  Thirty

  I sat there for some time, struggling to steady myself. Finally, I opened my eyes and looked again at the photograph in my hand.

  Could someone have doctored it, just this one copy? I looked again at the printed name label on the front of the large envelope. My name. My staff details. This was meant for me.

  I examined with my fingertip the flap that I’d torn open. It was one of those commercial, self-sealing flaps. My brain whirred. Surely it was possible that someone had altered a copy of the photograph, then prised open the envelope in my pigeon-hole and swapped the faked image for the original one. Wasn’t it? Someone who had access to school during the working day, who could pop along to the ranks of pigeon-holes outside the staffroom without attracting attention. Someone who knew too much about what happened and wanted to scare me witless.

  I looked at my hands, still shaking. If that was the case, they were doing a pretty good job.

  I pushed the picture and the other papers back into the envelope, shoved it all into the depths of my bag and fled for the door. I almost bumped into Hilary who was just coming in.

  ‘Where’s the fire?’ Her teeth gleamed but her smile didn’t reach her eyes. I hesitated, staring at her. What did she know? What did any of them know?

  I pushed past, muttering an apology and took the stairs two at a time, then ran out of the side door of the building and down to the Lower School car park, fumbling for my car keys as I went. I yanked open the driver’s door of my car and fell inside, then pulled out my phone and the flyer with the photographer’s details. I leaned forward against the hard rim of the steering wheel and stared wildly at the screen of my phone as I punched in the website address, then the code for the school’s shoot and finally the staff password to give me access.

  I sat, heart pounding, palms clammy, and stared at my phone, waiting an eternity for the photograph to load. Go on, for heaven’s sake. Please. Help me out, here.

  Finally, the pixels fell into place and the picture formed. I tapped on the screen and splayed my fingertips to zoom in as closely as I could on the Upper School building in the background. There he was. That shadow of a man, a step or two back from the window, concealing himself as he watched. I only realised how tightly I’d been holding my breath when it came rushing out again like air from a punctured balloon. He reminded me of Ralph. He really did.

  The slightly turned head. That hairline I’d so often stroked, the soft skin along that neck. It was him. I couldn’t prove it. It was too blurry, breaking up already into nothing but pixels. But I felt it.

  I fumbled in my bag for tablets and swallowed a couple down. I didn’t know quite how I was getting through them so fast, but I was running out. I’d need to go online for more.

  I sat back and closed my eyes, seeing pulses of multi-coloured light floating across blackness. Chemicals coursed through my veins, calming my racing heart. What, then? It wasn’t just my copy. It was on the original photograph.

  But what did it mean? Had he been there? Of course not. It was nonsense. It was madness. I was starting to doubt my own senses, my own sanity. It was a coincidence. Just like the random text messages from that unknown number. Just like the strange feeling I’d had inside my flat.

  That evening, I couldn’t eat. I sat in silence in the sitt
ing room with the school photograph propped up against an open book on the table in front of me and stared at the tiny, half-obscured figure. It burned into my eyes.

  Suddenly, I felt a rush of hopelessness, of self-pity for the person I’d become. So shy and constrained, all the more so in the years since I moved to this city. My life had become so inward-looking. I’d been so focussed on Matthew and our life together, so determined to please him, to make it work, that I’d suffocated him. Then, when he tore a ragged, bleeding hole in my life, I’d withdrawn and focussed just on myself, nursing my own quietness and awkwardness.

  Then Ralph came to rescue me from myself. And what had I done to him?

  I thought again about the strange shadow in the photograph, the figure which looked so very like him that it tormented me, about the trace of his own, unique smell inside my flat. There was only one person I could imagine who would try so carefully to hurt me, to drive me to destruction.

  Helen.

  I grabbed my coat and car keys and drove, as fast as I could, to Ralph’s house.

  The light was mellow and starting to fade by the time I’d parked in my usual place and rounded the corner. Usually, I crept like a burglar along the pavement to their home. This time, I strode. I pushed open the gate and marched boldly to the front door, then pressed the buzzer. My heart was hard in my chest. I felt giddy, out of control, gripped by some determination that was strange to me. Silence. I rapped loudly on the shiny wood with tight knuckles. Waited. Listened for footsteps which didn’t come.

  The curtains hung open and I crossed to stand on the gravel, a low tangle of rose bushes grasping for my socks and trouser legs, and peered in. I pitched forward and put my hands on the white wood windowsill to steady myself. It was dingy inside, shadows creeping through the sitting room and slowly engulfing it. The television was dark. A streak of light gleamed on the large darkening mirror hanging over the fireplace.

  I cupped my hands to my face, nose close to the glass, and strained to see further. The sitting room led through to the kitchen and the small downstairs toilet, I knew the layout only too well. But that too lay in darkness. I pulled back, leaving a wet smear on the window where my hot breath had condensed. I returned to the path and backed to the gate, then stared up at the windows on the first floor.

  The curtains stood open. Ralph and Helen’s bedroom lay over the sitting room, Anna’s next to it on the same landing. No sign of life from either.

  I frowned. It was too early for them to be asleep in bed but too late surely for them to be still out. I stood at the gate, thinking. The adrenalin rush which had propelled me to dash over here and confront Helen had ebbed away now into exhaustion. My legs felt suddenly a dead weight. All I wanted really was to feel peaceful, to go home and curl up in bed, take a couple more tablets to calm my nerves and sleep. But I couldn’t go home, not yet. My mind was too agitated.

  An engine throbbed into life, close by. I turned to look. A parked car, across the road from their house and further down the street, flashed its headlights. At me? I looked round, warily. The street was deserted.

  I moved cautiously down towards it, watching. As I approached, the lights and engine clicked off and the car, a crimson saloon, sat again in darkness. I crept towards it.

  He was sitting inside, in the driver’s seat, looking right at me. It was the man I’d seen before, reading his newspaper at the bus stop near my flat and here in this road, parked watchfully in this same car. I stopped, pinned by his gaze. This was the nearest I’d been to him and, instinctively, I was afraid.

  He was about fifty. His face was tight and weather-beaten as if he were used to an active, outdoor life. He looked almost entirely bald. Whatever hair still grew must be close-shaven. Without hair, his ears jutted out, one more than the other, which gave his head a lopsided look. His chin and upper lip were dark with stubble. But all this hit me as secondary. I was transfixed by his eyes, hooded and dark and regarding me with a calm, unflinching gaze. They were eyes which looked as if they’d seen sights he could never share.

  I couldn’t move. I didn’t want to get any closer. I expected him to turn the key in the ignition at any moment and drive off, leaving me staring after him.

  He didn’t. Instead, he pressed a button to disarm the central locking system and gestured to me to come to the passenger door.

  I hesitated. His eyes bore into mine.

  A moment later, he lowered the electric window.

  ‘You getting in, or what?’ His voice was low and rasping.

  I couldn’t move. I was frightened now, wondering why I didn’t turn and simply run back to the safety of my car in the next street.

  ‘Offer’s there.’ He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

  The window rose again and he shifted in his seat, turned his eyes down to the book which was open in his large, meaty hands, resting on the steering wheel. The moment his eyes left my face, I felt a sense of release. I breathed again, then looked round. No one.

  I crept toward him, reached for the handle, opened the car door and climbed cautiously into the seat beside him, carefully leaving the door ajar, my hand now on the inside handle, so he couldn’t lock it and seal off my escape.

  He put down his book again and the eyes slid round to me. His tone was weary. ‘Go on, then.’

  The car smelled of old chip fat and stale, greasy meat. A dirty coffee cup sat in the cup holder. A nodding plastic unicorn was stuck to the dashboard, its flank decorated with a glittery rainbow. A St Christopher hung from the rear-view mirror, dangling on a chain. I had the sense that I’d entered not just his car but his hideout, his world.

  I moistened my lips and tried to decide how to start. I felt uneasy and far out of my depth. I didn’t understand who he was, why he was here, why I needed to talk to him. There was a latent power in him that frightened and attracted me at the same time. This was a man I wanted on my side, whatever that meant. This was a man who would know the answers to the questions in my head. I sensed his impatience. He seemed to be making a supreme effort to restrain himself.

  I took a deep breath. ‘What are you doing here?’

  He lifted his book. ‘Reading.’

  I narrowed my eyes. ‘But why are you here? I keep seeing you. Hanging around. Waiting in the street. Spying.’

  He pulled a face, as if to suggest that what I’d just said really wasn’t very polite.

  ‘Believe me,’ he said, ‘if I hadn’t wanted you to see me, you wouldn’t have.’

  I frowned. ‘What does that mean?’

  ‘Just that.’

  He looked at me levelly. His eyes were a cool grey with streaks of blue and green radiating from the pupils. This close, he looked older than I’d first thought. Sixty, maybe. His skin was heavily creased and although he was lean and muscular, the flesh under his eyes gathered in dark pouches.

  ‘Why though?’

  He pulled a face. ‘It’s my job. That’s all.’

  I blinked. ‘Spying on me?’

  He looked back, unruffled. ‘On you. On her.’

  I hesitated. Everything in his manner was direct. It was impossible not to believe him. But the car, the way he was sitting here all alone, hour after hour, it didn’t make sense to me. ‘Are you a detective?’

  He raised an eyebrow. ‘Not really. Put it this way. What they do is all about justice. I respect that. I used to do that once. But not now. Now I’m about cash. See?’

  I said, ‘A private detective?’

  ‘If you like. Your words, not mine.’

  I bit my lip. There was something about him. An edge. A darkness.

  I nodded across towards the house. ‘Where are they?’

  ‘Not there.’

  I narrowed my eyes, thinking about Anna. ‘They’re okay, though? Safe?’

  He nodded. ‘Safe enough. They won’t be back tonight. Friday. Sleepover. With that little pal of hers.’

  ‘Clara?’

  ‘Pigtails. Thin kid. Comes home for tea after school every
afternoon till her mum comes for her.’

  ‘That’s Clara. Clara Higgins.’

  ‘Right.’ He seemed to make a mental note, slotting away another fact. ‘Well, Friday night, it’s pay-back time. See? Once the mum’s home from work, they troop round to her place. Free wine, free pizza, free film to soak up some of that free babysitting.’

  I bristled. ‘I’m sure they don’t think of it like that.’

  He said, ‘Well, they ought to. Everything’s got a price. Even friendship. Don’t make that mistake.’

  I blinked, considering. ‘So why are you here, then? What’re you waiting for?’

  ‘You.’

  Thirty-One

  Silence.

  His eyes seemed to take in my confusion. There was no movement there, just absorption. How would he know I’d come here tonight? I hadn’t known myself. Was he making fun of me? I didn’t know.

  After a while, he adjusted his weight in his seat and said, ‘So, are you done? Is it my turn to ask the questions now?’

  I pushed the car door with my foot and it opened another few inches.

  ‘What sort of questions?’

  ‘What was the score? With you and Wilson?’

  ‘Nothing.’ I said it too forcefully. Too obvious. I felt myself flush. ‘We were colleagues, that’s all.’

  ‘Just colleagues.’ His manner was cool. What did he know? ‘Right.’

  I hesitated, stammered, ‘Well, and friends, I suppose. I went to his writing group now and then. We’d go out for drinks occasionally.’

  He shook his head and there was a sadness in his look, as if he were trying very hard to be nice to me and I was disappointing him.

  ‘Miss Dixon.’

  I started. I hadn’t expected him to use my name.

  ‘I’m not the morality police, here. You and Wilson fancying the pants off each other, the two of you having an affair, to be honest, I couldn’t care less. Life is for living, okay? So let’s get that out of the way. Adultery isn’t a criminal offence, not the last time I looked. We’re all grown-ups. Just don’t tell the missus I said so, okay?’ His lips twitched in the faintest suggestion of a smile.