Up until now, she didn’t mind the idea of dying at all. If there was a heaven, an afterlife, which Jemima believed in, then they’d be reunited. She’d imagined Elysian fields. Or their first kiss, played over and over, the joy of it repeating. But it would be too much. She’d need to take a quiet calm walk in those Elysian fields, which hopefully would be English like Jemima, with bluebells and cabbage whites, and then return to Jemima’s kiss. And then she’d imagined just reliving the bits she loved and misses the most now, tea in bed together, the feel of her softly warm against her back when she woke up, the smell of Jemima’s perfume as she came in through the front door; the sound of her voice saying Camille’s name with more love and affection than either of her parents had ever used. And if there weren’t any Elysian fields, a heaven, an afterlife, then that would be okay too because she wouldn’t have to buckle under the weight of grief any more; the loss would stop eating at her. She wouldn’t have to hold it together all day until she could get into the house and crumple next to the front door, arms round her knees.
But the children.
Clearly, obviously, they have to live and that means she must too, because it’s up to her to keep them safe.
She bends down under the tables. ‘Do you think your house should have pets?’ she asks, giving them each more clay.
The children will not die. That simply cannot happen. And she will make sure they’re not afraid.
9.
9.49 a.m.
Neil Forbright, the deputy head, stands at the locked door of the headmaster’s office. The fire has gone out in the grate and the large Victorian room is cold as well as dark. An email comes in on his phone from Frank in the library, sent to him and Jacintha: Matthew is still conscious. He’s only realized today that Matthew is like a father to him, that he relies on his kindness and belief in him. His actual father would say Neil looks for a top dog, because he is not. His father believes that humans are pack animals. For a moment, he thinks absurdly about Elsie, his elderly Labrador rescued from the pound, and wonders who’ll feed her and let her out this evening.
His phone rings. ‘Mr Forbright? It’s PC Beard.’
‘Do you know if the children in the pottery room are safe? If—’
‘Sorry, I’m still stuck here in your gatehouse and don’t know anything, but the high-powered lot running this will be doing everything they can to help them. Your school secretary, Tonya, told me your head teacher was shot?’
‘Yes.’
‘And the gunman, he’s still in the corridor?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve been to your school before with my wife, watched your plays when you open them up to the public. Les Mis, last year. Point is, I’ve been in your theatre and it’s very secure. So we need to get you all to the theatre.’
‘It’s not possible.’
‘Can you describe how you’d normally get to the theatre?’
‘It’s really not possible.’
‘Please, can you just tell me?’
He’s clearly not going to give up.
‘To the left of Matthew’s office, the end of our corridor has doors, and they open on to a glass corridor which goes to the theatre.’
‘Matthew’s office is where you are?’
‘Yes.’
‘And what about Tonya? She said she’s in Old School.’
‘Yes, in Jacintha’s classroom. It’s to the right of Matthew’s office.’
‘How many other people are in Jackie’s classroom?’
‘Jacintha.’
It’s important Jacintha’s name is said properly because if she dies, then the last few times people speak her name they have to use the right one, the one that she is loved by. At the moment, her A-level English class are reading poems, the beautiful ones, she says, that are soothing in cadence and imagery; and for a short while she’d put her phone on speaker and he’d listened to her reading aloud:
‘I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine …’
He can see how poetry might help. His thoughts are daisy-chaining, one to the next, to get away from the gunman in the corridor; mindfulness, which he’s been told to practise, is the opposite of daisy-chaining and is about physically inhabiting the present moment, actually remarkably easy to do with a gunman outside your door; every hair on your arm, every breath, every sound and smell is magnified and it’s appalling, hateful, shocking, and he’d rather daisy-chain to Jacintha’s bank of wild thyme for a little while, for a reprieve. Be a man, his father says to him.
And all this takes place inside his head in a second, his thoughts absurdly fast, not daisy chains but fibre optics, because that’s the other thing that happens when you’re in a building with a gunman, time changes, so that your inner self moves too quickly, an insect trapped in a jar, frantically battering wings against the glass.
‘There’s twelve sixth-form students and three members of staff,’ he says. ‘Tonya, Jacintha and Donna, the school receptionist.’
‘And the head teacher is in the library?’
‘Yes. With thirteen teenagers.’
‘And the library is where exactly?’
‘The other side of the corridor, opposite Matthew’s office, Tonya’s office and Jacintha’s classroom, running almost the whole length of our part of the corridor.’
‘That’s everyone?’
‘Yes.’
‘Righty-ho, I’ll let you know when I’ve got a plan to get you all out.’
He hangs up. Righty-ho, he actually said that, and for a moment Neil thinks of the photos of the boy soldiers and imagines PC Beard rowing a little boat to the beaches of Dunkirk; a leaky bathtub, because there’s not a snowball in hell’s chance of getting to the safety of the theatre.
He listens to the footsteps again; they are outside the library and coming back towards him. When his phone rings, he thinks it’s PC Beard again, back with more nonsensical optimism, but it’s a woman’s voice, young and serious, part of the ‘high-powered lot’, he guesses.
‘Mr Forbright? My name’s Detective Inspector Rose Polstein.’
‘Are the children in the pottery room safe?’
He thinks there’s a pause before she speaks, a fumbling.
‘We are doing everything we can,’ she says.
‘And junior school?’
‘Boats are on their way, we’ll evacuate them as quickly as we can.’
‘What about Rafi Bukhari and Jamie Alton?’
Lorrimer had phoned Tonya from Fulmar beach, his voice chastened, to pass on the information that Rafi had left. It was just before Matthew was shot and he’s glad that Matthew doesn’t know.
‘I’m afraid we don’t yet know the whereabouts of either boy,’ Rose says. ‘Has the school received any threats?’
PC Beard hadn’t asked about who might be doing this, just focused on his nonsensical plan to rescue them; he likes PC Beard for that.
‘No, at least none that I’ve been told about,’ he says. ‘But I’ve been away, off sick. I’m sorry.’