‘Sorry, Sarah.’ Mrs Rushby returned. ‘So, tell me, how’s your husband? I remember him from the television piece. He seemed like a very talented man.’
I checked over my shoulder one last time, just as the person in the khaki mac did the same. It was me he was looking at. It was definitely me. But after a split second he turned back and walked off the school grounds.
An electric bus whined past on the main road. Slender planks of sun splintered out from between clouds, and something moved uneasily in my abdomen. Who was that ?
I watched Mrs Rushby’s face drop as I told her Reuben and I had recently separated. This, I thought, would take some getting used to. ‘We’re still running the company together, though. It’s all very amicable and grown-up!’
‘I’m sorry.’ She frowned, folding her arms self-consciously. ‘I shouldn’t have asked.’
‘Not at all.’ I wished I could explain to her how easy it was – how embarrassingly easy – for me to talk about Reuben. Why had a person in a hood been watching me? That’s what I wanted to know.
‘Well, Sarah, I’m quite sure you’ll find happiness with someone else.’
‘I hope so!’ I said. And then, to my horror: ‘Actually, there is a someone else, but . . . it’s difficult.’
Mrs Rushby was clearly taken aback. ‘Right,’ she said, after a pause. ‘Oh dear.’
What was wrong with me? This had been my first shot at a normal conversation in two weeks! ‘I’m sorry,’ I sighed. ‘I sound like one of your GCSE students.’
She smiled. ‘One is never too old to yearn,’ she said kindly. ‘I can’t remember who said that, but I endorse it wholeheartedly.’
I couldn’t think of a single thing to say, so I apologized again.
‘Sarah, if we didn’t have thousands of years’ writings on the pain of love – not to mention the questioning of faith, the loss of self it precipitates – I’d be out of a job.’
Yes , I thought miserably. That was it. The loss of self. How could I ever admit that I preferred the idea of Eddie being dead than I did that he’d simply changed his mind? I was a monster.
I missed Sarah Mackey. She’d been so regular . She’d—
‘ARGHHHH! ’
I whipped round. Rudi must have tackled the too-high hurdle. He was curled on the ground, clutching his leg.
‘Oh fuck,’ Jo hissed, right into the silence that followed. She ran over to him, and all the parents and the teachers and the local journalists, all of Matthew Martyn’s junior sports troupe – not to mention Matthew himself – turned as one, sending javelins of disapproval across the field. Who was this woman who’d turned up with Tommy? Why wasn’t her child in school? And why was she using the F-word?
‘Charming,’ I heard a woman say. It was Mandy Lee. I’d know that voice anywhere.
I hurried over to the screaming heap of Rudi and helped Jo inspect his leg. ‘Mummy,’ he wailed, a word I hadn’t heard him use in years. Jo caved herself around him, kissing him, telling him he was safe. A tall man with a pointed face marched up to Jo and announced that he was the designated first-aider.
‘Let me take a look at him, please,’ he said, and Rudi’s wails increased to siren pitch. He never did accidents by halves.
After Jo had taken Rudi off in a taxi to the minor injuries unit at Stroud Hospital, I slunk off to the toilet with the vague notion of collecting myself.
I ran my hand over the brick cubicle wall, knowing that, under layers of paint, my name was scratched alongside Mandy’s and Claire’s and some fierce words about how nobody would ever come between us. Ironic, really, given that a few days after we had committed our indestructibility to the toilet wall, they had decided to eject me from their block of desks for the day and I’d ended up having to eat my lunch in the very same cubicle. It had been raining outside; I’d had nowhere else to go. I recalled the burst of misery as my crisp packet had rustled and someone – some girl who’d never identified herself – had peered under the door to see what I was up to.
I flushed the loo, thinking about the unidentifiable person watching me from under the hood of his coat earlier. Who even knew I was in Stroud today, beyond Eddie? Could he – or she – really have been looking at me? And if so, why?
I checked Messenger before leaving the cubicle, but there was nothing from Eddie. He still hadn’t been online since the day we met. Maybe Jo was right, I thought. Maybe I should write a public post on his wall. The only thing stopping me, after all, would be fear of what people might think. What Eddie might think. And if I was as certain as I said I was that something bad had happened, that should be the least of my worries.
The idea pitched around me like a bird trapped in a room.
But then: No! came the answer. It’s not as simple as that. The reason I haven’t written on his page is that . . .
Is that what ?
I was going to have to write something. If Eddie really had been wasting away in a ditch, if he really had drowned in the Strait of Gibraltar, I was being pretty damned casual.
I opened up his Facebook page and took a long breath.
Has anyone seen Eddie recently? I typed. Have been trying to get in touch with him. A bit worried. Let me know if you’ve heard from him. Ta. And before I had a chance to stop myself, I pressed ‘Post’.
Suddenly the loo was filled with sounds I remembered. High-pitched chatter, make-up bags being unzipped, mascara wands being pumped. Several women talking through curved mouths as they smeared on lipstick. They shrieked with laughter about how they were still doing their make-up in the toilet mirrors after all these years, and I smiled despite myself.
Then: ‘Have you seen Sarah Harrington?’ someone asked. ‘That was a surprise.’
And then Mandy’s voice: ‘I know! Pretty brave to just turn up like that.’
Murmurs of agreement. ‘Can I borrow your mascara? Mine’s gone clumpy.’ Taps being turned on and off; the useless sigh of the hand dryer that had never worked.
‘If I’m honest, I was a bit disappointed to see her,’ Claire said. The other women went silent. ‘I just wanted to have a nice afternoon, support Matt – know what I mean?’
Know what I mean? I’d said it for a while, to fit in.
‘Yes,’ Mandy said. ‘And of course she’s got as much right to be here as anyone else, but it’s . . . well, difficult. For us, at least.’
Claire agreed that it was.
‘She pretended not to have seen me earlier,’ Mandy said. ‘So I’m afraid I did the same. And so should you, Claire, if it’s going to stress you out.’ This was the kind of leadership that had made her popular at school. Let’s ignore Claire tomorrow. Let’s make some fake IDs. Although not for you, Sarah – you don’t look old enough. ‘I’ve got too much on my plate at the moment – I haven’t the mental space for Sarah Harrington.’
Further murmurs of agreement.
Then: ‘Tommy Stenham’s looking well,’ Claire said lightly. ‘Don’t you think?’
Oh, she’d been deadly at that! Drop some poor person into the conversation – tone innocuous, intentions murderous – and wait, quivering, for Mandy to take the lead.
‘Looking very well indeed,’ Mandy agreed, ‘although I was a little confused by his girlfriend.’ Her voice just skirted laughter.
I tried to breathe quietly.
‘Oh, that’s not his girlfriend,’ Claire said. ‘His girlfriend’s a lawyer. Matt’s seen a photo of her. Apparently she’s much better-looking than the woman with the kid.’
Mandy said, ‘I suppose the real surprise is that he has a girlfriend at all.’
Witchy cackling. More taps. More towels. And then they started recounting, voices thick with guilty pleasure, all the things the boys used to say about Tommy. Through gales of laughter they agreed it had been very cruel . On a roll, now, they moved on to the length and appropriateness of Jo’s dress, the generous proportions of her body, the embarrassing spectacle Rudi had made, and I began to boil. Hearing them talk about me had been bad enough, but it was nothing I hadn’t spent years imagining them saying. Tommy, though? Jo? No.