‘He’s fine, Hannah, he just doesn’t have any reception. He evacuated everyone in Junior School down to the beach, coastguards will be on their way to pick them up.’
She smiled, eyes shining, her relief luminous in the darkened space.
‘Love is the most powerful thing there is,’ he said. ‘The only thing that really matters.’
Was it appropriate for a head teacher to be saying this kind of thing to a student? Yes, he thought, this was exactly the time and place for it to be appropriate. And he loved Rafi Bukhari too and his relief that he and his little brother were safe, while not making him glow, was none the less something light inside him.
‘Let’s get going,’ he said and they started walking along the shadowy corridor, Tobias lagging a little behind. He was thinking about love, that it was such a vital thing, like gravity or breathing.
His phone rang and he answered it.
‘Mr Marr? PC Beard here. The copper who got shot at.’
‘Are you all right?’
‘Fortunately, the bugger missed. I’m in your gatehouse. I phoned the main school number, spoke to someone called Tonya. She gave me your numbers. Mr Forbright said you went to warn the teacher in the pottery room?’
‘Yes.’
‘You mustn’t go putting yourself at risk like that. You have a police officer here. So, it’s my job not yours to do anything like that.’
‘But you’re not armed either and—’
‘It’s my job and besides it’s much more exciting than dishing out speeding fines to tourists and there aren’t many of those in November.’
Matthew guessed him to be in his fifties; imagined a bit of a paunch from evenings with mates in the pub. He liked him.
‘Mr Forbright said you thought the gunman was following you. Probably the same nasty bugger who shot at me. Any idea where he went?’
‘No.’
He walked round the bend in the corridor with Hannah and Tobias, towards the library, English classroom and his office.
The sound of something behind them. Matthew hung up the phone and listened.
A door being closed.
Which door? A classroom door? No classrooms behind them. It must have been the door to the drawing room, which was empty. Surely to God the drawing room had been empty.
Tobias, with his headphones on, hadn’t noticed but he saw Hannah stiffen, afraid.
Someone had been hiding all this time, locked with them inside Old School.
Footsteps behind them.
‘Go into the library, quick as you can,’ he said.
Hannah hurried into the library but Tobias either hadn’t heard him or wouldn’t be hurried. He put his arm around Tobias, trying to get him to hurry, but Tobias flinched at being touched and stood stock-still.
The footsteps continued, getting closer.
A click. The cock of a gun.
He put himself between the gun and Tobias.
He pushed Tobias’s earphones away from his ears and whispered to him, ‘Go into the library now.’
Tobias walked through the open library door; he wasn’t sure if Tobias was doing what he was told or just getting away from being touched and having his headphones removed.
He turned to face the man behind him, because going into the library might draw the man into the library too.
A black balaclava covered his face, eyes looking out of slits. He was pointing a rifle, another gun strapped to his chest. The guns rigid and inhuman, the man rigid too, as if his guns and his body and his hate were all the same terrible thing.
Matthew took a step backwards, against the wall now; his head by the display case of medals.
‘Please …’ Matthew said, dropping his mobile on the floor, betraying his fear. ‘Talk to me. Tell me why you’re doing this.’
The man looked back at him and said one word.
Matthew recognized his voice.
And the one word explained everything.
A moment of stillness, as if time itself was waiting.
He thought he saw his finger move, maybe imagined it moving.
The bullet travelling faster than its own sound.
Those boys dying so that this wouldn’t happen.
Their medals turning to shrapnel.
The benevolent order of things destroyed.
Another shot. Hannah was pulling him inside the library, she must have waited by the door; a habit of waiting by doors. Brave girl. Why didn’t he know about this courage of his students?
She’s bending over him now and time must have passed, but how much time? He doesn’t know. Can’t tell. She’s saying to him that help is on the way and he can tell that she’s lying, that she’s being brave for him and Jesus Christ it should be him being brave for her. He should be brave for her. She’s by the door; the most dangerous place. He must tell her to move away from him and the door. And he must tell her the gunman’s name, he must warn all of them. And he must find out about the children in the pottery room and if the junior school children have been rescued. Again and again he tries to speak; Hannah bends down closer to him, trying to understand, but it’s no good, he can’t make the words and he feels part of his consciousness fragmenting into blackness, forgetting who the gunman is and the word he said, knowing only that it is all his fault.
7.
9.34 a.m.
Beth Alton arrives on the outskirts of Minehead; country lanes have given way to roads and traffic lights. Her mobile vibrates and she grabs it. But it’s a PTA group message, not Jamie:
Matthew Marr shot, wounded in library. No children hurt.
The word yet hovers there. Yet. Yet. Yet. And she feels guilt that she can only think about yet and not about Matthew Marr, not until she knows Jamie is safe.
She parks on the snowy pavement by The Pines Leisure Centre, other cars parked erratically in front of her. As she opens her car door, another PTA message buzzes on her phone.
New School evacuated!!
So, that mother’s child is safe. What about other people’s children? Is there a terrified emoji, for Christ’s sake? These women, these women. She’s never understood them, never been an insider and now especially not.
Parents are running through the open glass doors of the large modern leisure centre. Beth doesn’t run because she feels too far from Jamie as it is, five miles away through the snow.
You worry too much about me, Mum.
Not any more. I don’t care if you flunk your A levels or go to university, none of that matters.
She says after we’ve all traipsed off to St Andrews.
And I don’t mind that you’re not outgoing and not very confident.
Jeez, thanks, Mum.
Sorry.
I’ll phone you when I go off to university.
More than you do at the moment?
I live with you, why should I phone you?
She’s imagining his voice, of course she is, but she’s using old conversations between them, his words and phrases just rejigged to fit.
She remembers how when he was born he simply took up a different place inside her, everyone and everything else making room for him, shifting around him, so that he is always with her, even when he’s physically not here.
Inside the glass doorways of the leisure-centre foyer a group of parents have phones open showing messages from their children, evacuated from New School.
‘In the coach, they were sitting on each other’s laps.’