The Friend Page 3

  8:05 a.m. I can’t believe it’s only been a week of this. It feels like I have been dragging myself from bed to do the school run for weeks and weeks. I feel that slow, creeping exhaustion that comes towards the end of term, when you’ve just got into the routine of it, remembering which bag, which uniform on which day, and then you’re at home with them all day again. Except, of course, it’s only week two of a new term.

  Frankie has been ahead of me on his scooter the whole way up here. I’m carrying his full – and blinking heavy – rucksack, as well as his book bag and his sports bag because he convinced me last night that he has a football match today. They don’t normally have matches on Mondays, but he’s nothing if not convincing, my son. And often he’s right. I almost went onto PPY3, the messaging group for Year Three, to ask about it. My fingers hovered over the keys, ready to type out the simple message, but I couldn’t. In the days after Yvonne … in the days after what happened, the messaging stream had been overflowing with shock and very real fear about it; people talking and worrying and sympathising. After the shock faded and the constant updates stopped, it all switched: worry was replaced by speculation. Not about what happened, but about what Trevor would do.

  ‘Will he pull the kids out, do you think?’

  ‘I’d pull them out straight away. Why wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Can’t imagine how they’d feel going past that playground every day.’

  ‘I think they should pull them out. It’s not fair on our kids to deal with that reminder every day.’

  On and on and on and on it went. All wrapped up in concern, all ‘just asking’. It was unsavoury, as though people were either asking to find out the latest piece of gossip, or asking because they wanted to know how his decision would impact them. Each time, when they asked a question, they would tag Anaya, Hazel and me. Her friends.

  I’d been close, had been itching, to call them a bunch of mawkish, two-faced bastards and then leave the messaging group. But I’d held my tongue (finger) because I had to see them every day, I had to bring Frankie up alongside their offspring. I had to do whatever I could to not stand out any more than we already do.

  Frankie moves like a green and purple needle, weaving himself in between the various mothers who stand on the pavement, zipping in and out of them, invisibly sewing their forms together. I have to keep moving left and right, rising sometimes to my tiptoes so that I can keep my eyes on him. ‘Hi, Maxie,’ someone says. I smile at her, pat her on the shoulder, and move on, without ever letting Frankie out of my sight. There’s another ‘hello’ hand on my shoulder; a smile; a wave; a half-shouted mention of coffee soon, the usual greetings to arriving at the gate, and I respond to them all appropriately – a smile, a pat on the back, an indication to text about coffee, a ‘call me’ sign – all the while I watch my son make his way to the school gates. I am expert at communicating with others but never taking my eyes off Frankie.

  He must feel like the most watched child on the planet because I rarely take my eyes off him. I know it’s normal to worry about your child, to briefly have scenarios flit through your head about what could happen and to pause and then bat them away. And I know it’s not normal to lie awake at 5 a.m. and stare into the brightening gloom, while scenario after terrifying scenario about how your child could be snatched away runs through your mind. For most people, though, the things I worry about amount to nothing more than urban legend, a good story to hear from friends, a great plot to watch on telly. For most people, what I worry about is fantasy, but I’ve lived it.

  Frankie does one of his well-practised fancy sliding stops, then hops off his scooter, treats Mrs Carpenter to a happy, toothy grin before he whips off his black helmet. I come up behind him and take the helmet.

  Among the faces I recognise there is a parent I’ve never seen before. She is casually dressed in jeans, T-shirt and teal-green leather jacket. Her skin is the same dark mocha of Mum’s complexion, her shoulder-length black hair is in large, rope-like twists, and with her large, expressive eyes, she is actually quite beautiful. She so doesn’t know it though. Not from the clothes she’s combined, the way her features are set as she power-walks behind two young boys – who look about Frankie’s age – carrying their rucksacks, book bags and school coats. One of the boys’ green and purple caps is perched on top of her head. She’s about to approach the gate, when an unearthly silence falls over everyone outside. Even the children in the playground stop for a moment when they notice that their adults are suddenly, brutally, mute.

  My heart almost turns itself inside out when I see him. He’s so much paler than normal, dark circles under his eyes, and a crumpled look about him. It’s clear from how they look that Yvonne did everything. I never worked out how she managed it: how she looked so good, ran the Parents’ Council – even before she was its official head – and managed to make sure her family were always in clean, ironed clothes. No, she didn’t have a job, but a lot of people don’t have jobs and still don’t manage to excel at homemaking like Yvonne did.

  My heart goes to my throat when I see Madison and Scarlett. They walk beside their father, straight-backed and apparently oblivious to the way those around them are behaving. Those poor girls. I should have been round. I should have offered to have them over. I should have done what Yvonne did if any of us had a crisis – stepped in to keep things as normal as possible for the children. If Yvonne were around, she would have drawn up a rota, she would have arranged food and laundry. She would make sure the person’s other half was never alone. I should have done that.

  I couldn’t, though. I just couldn’t.

  Trevor walks through the school gates, nods cordially to Mrs Carpenter, then lowers himself so he can hug his children in succession. I imagine he’s reassuring them that he’ll be there later, that they’ll be fine … that their mother will – eventually – be fine, too. She’s still in a coma three weeks later, but she will be fine. I can tell, even from where I’m standing, that he’s doing that thing that all parents have done at some point – making promises we can’t possibly know if we’re able to keep.

  Trevor turns and looks again at Mrs Carpenter. Obviously they have spoken on the phone, have planned this return and how it will be ‘managed’, but they don’t look like the conversation went well. Mrs Carpenter looks, in fact, like she wishes this wasn’t happening. Despite the way she’s greeted the girls so warmly, I wonder if she asked Trevor to consider keeping them at home a while longer, or if she suggested they leave? The whole thing has been the worst possible PR job for the school, and with the amount of parents who just pulled their children out – some simply saying ‘sue me for the term’s fees’ – I wonder if they would prefer if the Whidmores quietly faded away.

  But no one could be that cruel. No one could watch the tension that has made the girls’ bodies ramrod straight and feel anything other than guilty. Guilty that your family is still intact, still safe, still fully awake.

  After a brief exchange, Trevor turns and looks slowly at the crowd, stares at each and every person, probably silently cursing us. J’accuse, he says with his eyes. J’accuse. As his eyes trawl the people around him, his contempt for us clear, his gaze snags on the other side of the gates. He glares at a particular spot for just that little bit longer and then his eyes carry on until they reach me. We stare at each other, his anger at me, at what I’ve done, apparent.

  I hold my breath, the air painful and burning in my chest. Does he know? Has he found out? He can’t have. There is no way he could have.

  But his eyes: they pause, they remain and they continue to accuse me. Harder than how he cursed the others. Much harder. He’s upset, distressed about Yvonne, scared and hurt, too. There’s no way on Earth he can know. His damning gaze moves on, finishing its angry sweep of the crowd, and then he stomps away without a backward glance. I want to watch him go, but I don’t. I can’t.

  Frankie is wriggling against me; I’ve been holding him close, probably tighter than normal. He manag
es to break away from me. He holds out his arms for his bags, impatient enough to keep looking over his shoulder to where his mates are kicking a ball around in the playground. I suddenly can’t look at that playground, at where she was found behind the usually locked gates. I suddenly want to snatch Frankie away, take him to another school and pretend I never met Yvonne, or Hazel or Anaya for that matter.

  ‘Mum, see you later,’ he says, indicating he wants his stuff and I’m holding him up. Reluctantly, I hand over his belongings, bend to kiss him before he dashes away, leaving most of my kiss hanging like a falling leaf in the autumn air.

  Instead of turning away, I reach into my pocket, take out my phone. The atmosphere around the school hasn’t gone back to normal, like the waters closing after a parting, instead everyone is still here, talking in hushed tones. This isn’t what it used to be like. As well as the presence of a police car parked across the road, and the almost visible canopy of a heavy, crushing pall hanging over us, the daily reminder that something bad happened is the fact that the parents stay now for the whistle. All of us – even the drop’n’runners, the ones who work in London and other cities – hang around the gates, as though our presence alone will keep them safe. Into my mobile I type:

  We need to talk.

  and press send before I change my mind.

  Anaya

  8:15 a.m. ‘I swear, you two, why are we always doing this?’

  I turn into Plummer Place, and immediately know I’m not going to get a park. There are cars lined up on both sides of the street, and at the bottom of the road, near the school, I can see double-parked cars on the left and right hand sides. This wouldn’t be an issue if these two wouldn’t expend what feels like a lot of energy making sure we don’t leave the house on time. I sometimes think they work against me because it’s fun to see Mama, who at all other times is calm and sane, become a screaming monster. ‘We need to get ourselves out of the house earlier, OK? This isn’t good for any of us, this rushing.’

  As I talk, my eyes are scanning, searching for a gap, any space that will let me pull up and drop them off.

  ‘Do you hear me?’ I say to them.

  ‘Yes, Mama,’ they chorus, probably not even listening to me. Priya plunges back into explaining to Arjun how she dunked a hoop in the boys’ game of basketball last week and they were all jealous because they couldn’t jump like she could.

  There! A gap, a space between a Jeep and a BMW, the perfect size for this beast that Sanj bought for me. I push lightly on the brakes, start to slow the car and then realise it’s a driveway. Seriously, I’ve been doing this for five years, when am I not going to get fooled by that? I drive on, past Plummer Prep, which has a swarm of parents standing on the pavement outside. I turn left at the end of the road because no matter how late we are, I can’t do what other people are doing and double-park. It’s just not in me. I’ll have to find somewhere round here and we’ll have to do that run-walk we’re so good at first thing in the morning. I’m so tired of this. My day shouldn’t start like this. ‘I mean it, you two,’ I interrupt them. Even around here, a smaller road, it’s busy, because no one has left the school surrounds yet, no one has allowed me to get one of those latecomer spots. ‘We can’t keep doing this.’

  ‘We know,’ they say at the same time. Of course they know. This is the usual conversation when we get to this point in the school journey: I am craving caffeine at this point; they are wishing I would just accept that this is who we are, how we are, and stop going on about it. But I can’t let it go, I can’t allow us to become the perpetual late ones – I have to try to drum into them that we are in need of an extra five minutes. Just that extra bit of time so when we do park a little further away, we can walk to the gates. We can arrive calm and relaxed, instead of flustered and me feeling like I’m the one who the headmistress will take into her office to lecture on personal responsibility. Also, I want to get to that place where I can pretend that I am superwoman – able to wrangle two children with ease.

  I glance in the rear-view mirror at them to see if I have in any small way got through to them. Eight-year-old Priya sits tall in her seat, her shiny black hair parted perfectly in the middle and swept back into a low, plaited ponytail; ten-year-old Arjun is slouched in his car seat, his uniform already looking like he’s been at school all day, even though I made sure he was wearing ironed, clean clothes when we were getting ready. They aren’t listening. Of course they’re not.

  My eyes return to the road and a large figure is suddenly there, in front of the car. I have to slam on my brakes in an emergency stop, throwing all of us forwards, the children already complaining before any of us have time to sit back in our seats. ‘Are you OK?’ I ask them.

  ‘No,’ Arjun complains.

  ‘Why’d you do that, Mama?’ asks Priya.

  My eyes return to the person who caused me to brake, to see if they have any idea how they’ve put my children in danger, let alone themselves. ‘I didn’t mean—’

  It’s him. The figure standing in the road is him. I haven’t seen him since it happened. I haven’t seen him and, I suppose, I wasn’t expecting to see him. I was hoping to manage to avoid seeing him for as long as possible. He stands in the middle of the road and scowls at me. His gaze is a piercing blue glare that burns through the windscreen and carves his anger into my skin. With a sneer and a shake of his head, he turns away and continues to stalk across the road to his car.

  I’m shaking. Not just from the emergency stop, but also from what Trevor just did. He hates me. He absolutely hates me. I know why. I don’t blame him. But it’s horrible to see such a look on the face of someone with whom I have sat and eaten and drunk and danced and socialised. It’s heartbreaking to see that look on the face of a friend.

  My hands tremble as I move my foot from the brake onto the accelerator and move off again. I find somewhere to park and then immerse myself in getting the kids out of the car, grabbing bags and blazers, delivering them to the school gates, just in time for them to line up in their neat year-group lines to go inside.

  I don’t make eye contact with anyone, not even the mothers who usually just smile at me. I don’t want to see anyone, to have them look at me like Trevor just did. On my way back, I am still on edge until I reach the end of the road and I can breathe again. The crowd is dispersing now that the children are going in, and the further away I get from the gates, from the playground where she was found, the better I feel. The freer I feel.

  It was the same last week when we all went back to school. Every time I approached the place, my breathing would stall, my body would tense, I’d have to keep blinking to stop myself crying.

  The other two are waiting by my car with their arms folded across their huddled, tensed bodies. They’re not talking, they are standing there, looking how I feel: worried, scared, shivery. Hazel’s brown hair was probably a neat bun when she left the house this morning, but it is a frazzled mess now; Maxie has obviously been spinning her curls around her finger so her hair is in clumps rather than ringlets. Both of them have unfocused gazes that are fixed on the mid-distance.

  Since it happened, we haven’t been near each other. We haven’t messaged each other, we didn’t meet for coffee last Wednesday, didn’t stand together at pick-up and drop-off – it was like we barely knew each other. We didn’t plan it, we just instinctively kept our distance. Even after the police questioned us because we were the last people to see her conscious that night, we didn’t get on the phone to each other to compare notes, we didn’t rush to meet up. Now we’ve seen Trevor, though, it’s different. I’m deducing they have seen him. I’m thinking they must have had the same look from him. Why else would they look like I feel?

  I come to a stop in front of them.

  I’m guessing we really do need to talk about this now.

  Cece

  10 a.m. Sending the children to private schools goes against all my beliefs. Sol had tried to sell it to me as part of the moving down here package and I
hadn’t been interested. I believed in the state school system and that was pretty much that.

  Then when I started researching schools in the area we could afford to buy in, I discovered that we were in the so-called ‘dead zone’ when it came to state schools. There were none within walking distance and the other nearest ones that were a short drive away were full – I didn’t believe the woman I spoke to at the council so I rang them all and checked. My best bet would be going on the waiting list or driving half an hour every morning to get them to the one they would be originally allocated. Sol had helpfully piped up that maybe we should consider ‘independent’ education again (he’d changed the word ‘private’ to ‘independent’ to try to soften the impact of it) and were there any ‘independent’ schools within walking distance of our new home?

  Plummer Prep came up. Plummer Prep, with its long history and its outstanding OFSTED report and shiny new website, and green and purple uniform, and mother who was almost bludgeoned to death in the front playground three weeks ago.

  I’m hanging on the phone, waiting to speak to Sol. I left a million messages for him when I got back from school, managed a brief internet search, and he still hasn’t called me back. When his personal assistant had said to me with an embarrassed tone, the last time I called, that he’d ring me back as soon as possible, I decided to hang on the line.

  Plummer Prep. I’d liked the head teacher when I met her and when she’d shown me around I’d seen an array of happy girls and boys who reflected the multicultural world we lived in. I’d walked away, clutching my thick, shiny brochure and application forms, happy and, I’ll admit it, excited about the boys starting at the school. In the last few weeks, with all the craziness of moving, I’d barely had time to eat, let alone check the news headlines. In all of it, though, I’d been comforted that the school thing was sorted, and I didn’t have to worry about it.