Three Hours(17)
A knock on the door and Donna, Old School’s receptionist, came in.
‘I’ve locked the doors securely. There’s something you should know. I’m so sorry, I was going to say, to tell you, but I phoned maintenance first instead … It’s the CCTV camera. The one on the gatehouse, that connects to my monitor so I can see who’s coming up the drive? The thing is, it wasn’t working this morning. I went and had a look just before eight, just after I got here, and someone’s splattered yellow paint all over it, the camera. I thought it was just kids with a paintball.’
‘Well, that’s the most likely explanation,’ Matthew said. ‘It’s probably nothing.’
And it probably wasn’t anything. It could easily have been kids with a paintball gun, besides which the drive going past the gatehouse and camera wasn’t the only way into the school. Because as Matthew knew, but hadn’t fully appreciated until now, the school’s border was insecure. The extensive school grounds, mainly woodland, only had a post-and-rail fence separating them from the road and neighbouring land. On foot, anyone could simply climb over the fence. So the paint-splattered camera wasn’t necessarily significant; but he felt a frisson of anxiety shift inside him as a weight was added to the side that said he wasn’t being paranoid.
*
In the pottery room, the children were making acorns from clay, small fingers patting and moulding the cupule shape, and Camille was pleased to see that although each of them kept glancing through the windows at the wondrous snow, checking it was still really there, they were working with quiet concentration, the feeling of the clay on their fingertips absorbing.
Coming here was mining something precious from a timetabled day, a sanctuary from hectic technological demands, where important quieter things had a chance to be noticed. In here there was no Wi-Fi or whiteboards or computers, not even any phones as the younger children weren’t allowed them at school and hers was switched off in her jacket pocket.
Despite the huge windows, she’d had to turn on the overhead lights. When it had first been built the trees would have been further away, but over the last century the woods had crept steadily closer.
A little while ago, she’d smelt bonfire smoke, not the lovely tangy earthy smell of wood burning, but something with a chemical bite in it. She looked out of the window and saw a line of black smoke moving between the trees.
5.
8.38 a.m.
Rafi said they were all going to play a game outside and they put on their coats, not one class at a time like normal, but all squashed together. Rafi got things out of the big cupboard and put them into black bin bags and Mr Lorrimer looked even crosser and said it was a fool’s errand, but Basi didn’t know what that meant.
Some of the Reception children and Year Ones were crying because Mr Lorrimer was cross and because some of the teachers looked really worried and they were missing circle time.
Rafi called out, ‘Who likes playing hide-and-seek in the snow?’ and he held Basi’s hand tightly as he said that, because he knew Basi was frightened of snow; and the little children stopped crying because everyone liked playing hide-and-seek and everyone liked playing in snow, apart from Basi.
‘Who’s the seekers?’ Mani asked, and Rafi said, ‘The sixth-formers!’ Everyone thought it super-cool the sixth-formers were playing with them. And then Rafi said, ‘We’re going to win because we’re going to the beach where they won’t be able to find us and we’re going to go quickly so we get a good head start.’
‘Which beach?’ Mani asked.
‘Fulmar beach,’ Rafi said and people were excited because no one had been there before, because it was out-of-bounds.
Basi and Rafi had played hide and seek lots of times on the Journey and they always hid together.
Some people started putting on their welly boots, but Rafi said they didn’t have time if they wanted to get hidden, so they went outside in the snow just wearing their indoor shoes, even Samantha in her Lelli Kellys. Rafi asked teachers and the older, stronger children to carry the big black bin bags and they all said yes, but Rafi didn’t ask Mr Lorrimer.
In the car park, there were just the teachers’ cars because all the parents had gone. On the other side of the car park was the gate at the top of the path that went down to the beach. They weren’t allowed through the gate. Mr Lorrimer had to unlock it. Some of the boys heard him swearing.
When they got through the gate, Rafi knelt down so Basi could get on his shoulders for a piggyback ride, which they also played a lot on the Journey, because he got tired and because his shoes had holes in the bottom. Rafi’s did too, but he said his feet were toughened up. It was still snowing but Basi was okay because Rafi was with him, holding tightly on to his legs, and he could bend down and put his face against Rafi’s hair.
‘How long till the seekers come?’ Sofia asked.
‘Not long,’ Rafi said. ‘But if we hurry we can get hidden.’
‘But where can we hide on a beach?’ Mani asked and Basi had been wondering that too.
‘We could bury ourselves in sand,’ Sofia said but Basi thought that was a silly idea, nobody had brought a spade or anything.
Rafi stopped walking and shouted out really loudly so everyone could hear, ‘The cliffs jut out so we’re going to hide in the overhang. It’s a great place because when the seekers come searching for us, they’ll look down at the beach from the top of the cliff and won’t be able to see any of us.’