He’s listening, but the wind’s picked up again and around him everything’s creaking and rustling, too noisy to hear an anorak. There’s a CCTV camera on the gatehouse wall; he can just see yellow paint under the covering of snow.
He edges round the gatehouse and sees a police car skewed at an angle to the side of the drive. The windscreen has a bullet hole and around it are thousands of cracks, like dense spiders’ webs, clouding the glass, but he can just make out that the car is empty. The police officer is probably inside the gatehouse. It’s safe in the gatehouse, thick walls and no glass windows. Like the theatre. That would be the safest place to go to. Hannah would think to go there. She’s sensible, she’d think to do that. Benny was doing the dress rehearsal this morning.
He phones Benny. After two rings Benny answers.
‘Rafi? You okay, bro’?’ He hears the warmth in his best friend’s voice and then other people in the background and Benny saying, ‘It’s Rafi!’, and people are calling out to him, saying, ‘You on a boat, Rafi?’, ‘You’ll miss your cue, bro’!’, ‘Hey, Rafi, you’re missing the fucking dress rehearsal.’ But they all sound frightened.
‘While you’re on your boat trip, we’re rehearsing Macbeth,’ Benny says.
‘Is Hannah there?’ he asks, no time to explain about not getting on a boat.
But Benny can’t hear him over the wind and he has to shout, ‘Is Hannah there?’ and he’s afraid that the man after him, who isn’t even real, will hear him shout.
‘No, she’s not. Sorry.’
‘D’you know where she is?’
‘No. You okay?’
‘Yeah. Gotta go.’
She could still be on her way home. Who’d know? Her first lesson was English and Charlotte does English too and he has her number in his contacts so he texts Charlotte.
It’s Rafi, do u know where Hannah is?
Moments later Charlotte texts back.
Am in Mrs Kale’s classroom but she’s not here. Think in library w Ed Frank & other people
In Old School. In the library. Not safe. He sprints through the falling snow towards Old School.
Before his father and brother were murdered he didn’t think someone he loved could die, as if him loving them meant that couldn’t happen, even in Syria with bombs exploding and evil let loose, even there. After it happens, you know there’s a price tag attached that’s unpayable so you don’t love anyone new. But he’d thought in England it was safe to fall in love.
He reaches Old School and crouches down. The friendly building has turned hostile, the shuttered windows looking blankly back, the bricks rough against his cheek, a gargoyle mocking him as he stoops beneath it.
He hears a twig snap. Above him, brick dust falls with the snow so that the snow is turned orange. The wall has been shot at; he’s been shot at.
And his rational mind says, Fuck’s sake! It’s not a bullet hole, it’s just a crumbly old building is all, and you just imagined a twig snap because there are no fucking twigs here, just like there was no man in an anorak. You are highly stressed and hypervigilant and paranoid with delusions.
And his fearful, irrational PTSD self tells him to run again and already he’s running, around to the side of the building. There’s a PE equipment shed, next to the side wall of Old School; a gap just wide enough for him to hide.
* * *
Inside Matthew Marr’s head, a rising tide takes away memories and he is trapped on a spit of land. He knows that he recognized the gunman in the corridor, but his name has washed out to the encroaching sea, a sea that is blood or cerebral fluid, pieces of medals and bones on the sea floor.
The gunman spoke one word and that word explained everything but the sea has covered it over.
High above him, a kite without a string, is a single brightly coloured memory of the day with a china-blue sky, Old School bright with clematis, the call of a pied flycatcher, and the answer is here on this day but he cannot take hold of it.
The children in the pottery room are in danger, but he no longer knows the reason. He tries to ask Hannah, bending down close to him, but he cannot form the words. He thinks he hears a helicopter.
Through a gap in the shutters lights from a helicopter slice into the library, and Frank thinks that help must be coming, but then the lights go and they are in almost darkness again. As the sound of the helicopter fades they can hear the footsteps. Frank’s mobile is down to 3% charge and they’ve agreed to use it only for an emergency now.
At the back of the library Tobias has his earphones on, his hands held tightly over his earphones as if he can double-block out what’s going on as he rocks to and fro. Tobias is different from all of them, has been since Reception. They’re all protective of him. Esme puts her hand on Tobias’s to comfort him, but he flinches and she takes her hand away.
Mr Marr’s face is paper white and his eyes keep closing, like he’s finding it really hard to stay conscious, and then he forces them open again. Hannah and Ed are next to him. The ambulance people are emailing them what to do, but she isn’t sure it’s helping. Sometimes he makes sounds, like he’s trying to speak, but no one can understand.
Their friends in the English classroom along the corridor feel like they could be a mile away. They have three adults with them and no one is hurt and everyone has phones and Jacintha is reading them poetry. She has typed up poems and sent them to Frank’s laptop, as if poetry can help; maybe it can but not when your headmaster is so badly injured and so close to you, at least it can’t help Frank right at this moment. The people in the English classroom have desks to barricade the door, not tables that are fixed to the floor with old Victorian bolts.
His phone rings and he doesn’t recognize the number so he answers, in case it’s the police, in case it’s help on the way.
The wind in the background is really loud and it takes a few moments before Frank can hear Rafi talking to him. And he’s annoyed because Rafi is not the police and is using up charge and how did he even get his number? And then he hears what Rafi’s saying. He’s not on a boat being evacuated to safety, like everybody thought, but is at the back of Old School looking for Hannah; of course he is, all chivalrous in shining armour, winning his spurs in the stories of old, and Hannah will be so amazed and thrilled and he’s the person that has to tell her that her boyfriend is in fact a knight.
‘Hannah, it’s Rafi on the phone. He’s looking for you. He’s outside Old School.’
He said it all kind of deadpan but everyone turns, though it’s not him they’re looking at with amazement, it’s Rafi, who obviously can’t see them, but Frank can.
‘Tell him I’ve been evacuated,’ Hannah says. ‘Tell him I’m safe.’
Oh, it’s all too fucking selfless. No, untrue, unfair. He’s jealous, is all. Jealous, jealous, jealous; and it’s not just of Rafi making Hannah glow like that – seriously, she’s glowing like she could take off, like she’s got rocket fuel burning inside her – no, it’s jealousy that you could be brave like that, like Hannah and Rafi. Do people who are going to be heroic have a kind of radar for one another before they actually prove it, because what are the chances of the two of them being like this?