‘He’s been keeping me behind in class a lot,’ Effie said, slowly and quietly.
‘Speak up, darling,’ I said. ‘You’re safe now.’
‘He takes me into that office at the back of his class where nobody else can see us, and he talks to me like we’re friends. It was nice at first. He really seemed to care about me.’
‘Right,’ said Mr Atkinson. ‘He probably shouldn’t have been alone with a pupil—’
‘Then recently, when he gave me a lift home in his car, he told me he wanted to have sex with me and started rubbing his hand up and down my leg and touching himself. As he started to pull the zip down on his trousers, I managed to open the door and escape.’
I swelled with pride, a little surprised that she’d embellished the story so convincingly. She looked to me for approval and I nodded.
‘And this happened in his car, you say?’
Effie nodded. ‘I was terrified.’ Now she was crying. They looked like real tears, too.
Mr Atkinson scratched his chin, as if trying to recall what to do to set in motion an investigation. He knew he had a duty of care to all his students, even one branded a troublemaker.
‘This explains why Effie has been acting out in class,’ I added. ‘Her marks only started going downhill when Mr Smith returned to school. Look at her records and you’ll see how the dates line up. It appears to me that Mr Smith has been – oh, I hate this word – “grooming” my daughter.’
‘This is quite an accusation, Mrs Morris, which of course I will be taking seriously. Effie, do you have anything you can give me to back this up? Any eyewitnesses or any evidence at all?’
She nodded. Now it was her turn to remove her mobile phone from her pocket. She opened an app on the screen, and pressed play. A minute later the colour had drained from Mr Atkinson’s face.
‘Would it be possible get a copy of the recording . . . ?’ he said.
I passed him a memory stick. ‘I’ve put the sound file on here for you. So what do you intend to do about this? I wanted to come to you first rather than go to the police or local education authority.’
‘No, no,’ he replied quickly. ‘You did the right thing.’
Half an hour later, Effie and I were driving towards her father’s house.
‘Did I do okay, Mum?’ she asked.
‘You did brilliantly.’
‘How much trouble will Mr Smith be in?’
‘I won’t lie to you. He’ll probably lose his job.’
She paused for a moment to process the magnitude of her accusations. ‘But he didn’t actually touch me, like I told Mr Atkinson . . .’
‘Darling, what Mr Smith did to you was just as bad as what he didn’t do. He led you on, he brainwashed you and he left you humiliated, didn’t he? He let you believe he was interested in you physically. He might not have said it, but the implication was certainly there. What if he’d gone further with the next girl he picked? What if he’d raped her? How would you feel knowing you could have prevented it if only you’d spoken up? We have bent the rules a little but sometimes that’s what needs to be done for the sake of others. I don’t expect you to understand just how serious Mr Smith’s behaviour is, but when you get older, you’ll look back and realise that we have done the right thing.’
‘What you told Mr Atkinson about Mr Smith’s wife and End of the Line . . . was that true? Did you ever speak to her?’
‘I speak to a lot of people, so possibly, yes. But quite why he singled me out, I don’t know. He’s also been harassing my manager for weeks now. I don’t think you’ve ever met Janine, have you?’
Effie’s eyes fixed on the road ahead. She didn’t know whether to tell me Janine was her father’s girlfriend or remain silent. For now, I let her off the hook.
‘Well, Mr Smith has been bothering her too. She even met with him face to face in the office to explain his wife’s death was not our fault.’
I parked close to Effie’s new house, but not so close as to be seen. I noted Janine’s green Astra parked a little further down the road.
‘Okay, well, why don’t I talk to your dad in the next few days to see if I can take you and Alice out to Nando’s one weekend?’
She nodded. ‘Mum,’ she asked hesitantly, ‘are you, you know, okay now?’
‘In what way?’
‘After Henry.’ She looked away, unsure whether to have brought up the subject.
‘Yes, I’m fine. And Henry’s doing very well. I know he’d love to see you again.’
‘Dad said we aren’t allowed.’
‘You are your mother’s daughter, Effie. When has not being allowed to do something ever stopped you?’
She grinned and gave me a peck on the cheek before leaving the car. When she turned around to wave, I felt my heart skip a beat. I had one child back. Now there were just two more and a husband to go.
CHAPTER TWENTY
RYAN
I locked my car and hitched up my trousers.
I hadn’t put the weight back on that I’d lost after Charlotte’s death, so my belt was cinched to the tightest hole. The stress of the past few days had nulled my appetite further. I caught my reflection in the car window and I looked drawn. I patted down a stray clump of hair sticking out from my crown that resembled an antenna.
Fake flu or no fake flu, Bruce Atkinson had left me several voicemail messages urging me to return to school for an important meeting as soon as possible. He must have been told about my arrest for threatening a pupil’s parent. Whatever he was about to say wasn’t going to be good.
I’d left messages for Janine. She had a smoking gun in her hands with my Dictaphone, and I still didn’t know for sure if she’d put it to good use yet. If not, what was she waiting for?
I made my way into the school foyer and glanced at my watch. I was a little early but he was already waiting for me in the staffroom. The other teachers watched as he led me into his office, where Bruce’s deputy Sadie Marks and Dave Proudlock from Human Resources sat. Both looked as uncomfortable as each other.
‘I’ve asked Sadie and Dave to join us as witnesses,’ Bruce began. ‘I’ll get straight to the point, Ryan. An accusation has been made by a parent and student about inappropriate behaviour.’
‘Who?’ I asked, but I already knew the answer. Laura had got to him, too.
‘Effie Morris and her mother.’
‘What have they told you?’
‘They accuse you of behaving in an unprofessional manner towards Effie. Mrs Morris used the word “grooming”.’
The bitch. So that was her game now – she was trying to brand me a paedophile. She wasn’t going to tar me with that brush and get away with it.
‘It’s rubbish,’ I replied. ‘I’ve gone to great effort to try to help Effie and improve her grades, even using my own time to counsel her.’
‘Behind closed doors in your office.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘But you know school rules discourage being alone with any pupil for precisely this reason.’
I nodded. ‘But I can categorically say that I never behaved inappropriately with Effie, let alone “groomed” her.’
‘Were you ever alone with her in your car?’
‘My car? No, of course not.’ I hoped my flushed cheeks wouldn’t expose my lie.