Three Hours(22)

It was snowing more heavily as Rafi sprinted up the path to get to Hannah, his feet sometimes slipping as he struggled to get purchase.

*

Matthew walked back towards Old School, his phone’s ringer switched on, bashing against branches, snow falling inside his collar and down his neck, wanting to draw the man after him, away from the pottery room – if it’s me you’re after, you bastard, then come and get me, but leave the children alone. No point shouting this in your head so he shouted it at the woods, ‘Come and get me! You bastard!’ The noise startled a flock of fieldfare thrushes that scattered into the sky. But then there was silence, no one behind him.

His phone rang,

‘Matthew? Are you okay?’ Neil asked.

‘I think the gunman was following me in the woods, almost to the pottery room.’

‘Can you see him now?’

‘No. If he comes back … They don’t even have a lock on their door, Neil, nothing. And no shutters.’

‘The police are treating this as a major incident and sending in armed officers and everyone else they think is needed. I’m sure they’ll make the pottery room a priority. Everyone in junior school has got to Fulmar beach and the coastguards have been alerted. We’ve accounted for everyone apart from Tobias Fern and Jamie Alton. The policeman who was shot at isn’t hurt, he’s in the gatehouse. I’ll wait by the front door for you.’

‘Thank you, Neil.’

He was grateful to Neil for rising to this crisis, for taking it so impressively in his stride, but not hugely surprised. He’d always seen Neil’s strength of character, had thought him a person who, if it came to it, would step up to the mark; thought too that Neil probably didn’t know this about himself nor that courage wasn’t the same thing as robust mental health.

He’d read that Winston Churchill suffered from depression. A historian suggested it was his depression that meant he saw the evil in Hitler, the true threat he posed, long before anyone else; as if depression had already adjusted his eyes to the darkness so that he could see the danger it contained; Neil’s drumming fingertips.

As he neared Old School he saw Tobias Fern on the lawn holding his flute, wearing his noise-cancelling headphones; he must have heard the siren even with the headphones, but it probably just terrified him, made him withdraw further into his private world.

‘Tobias?’ The boy startled. Matthew tried to take his hand but Tobias winced away from him; he hated being touched. So, instead, Matthew held his arm a little way from Tobias, as if holding the air around him, and Tobias understood and moved quickly with Matthew over the snow-covered grass in front of the school.

It was suddenly quiet; Neil must have switched off the siren – it had done its job in alerting everyone and its screech would just induce more panic. Shutters were pulled across all the windows, no lights shining out, the facade of the school no longer welcoming.

He knocked on the door. Neil quickly let them in.

‘You found Tobias,’ Neil said to him, his relief clear. ‘I’ve told Tonya to wait with Donna and Jacintha, she has her laptop and phone with her. Once the major incident response people arrive they’ll set up a command and control centre and organize things from there. I’ll see you in your office.’

Then he was leaving the reception area and striding briskly along the darkened corridor.

Matthew bolted the heavy door, glad of its heft. It took a little while for his eyes to become accustomed to the gloom. Tobias had visibly relaxed, his hands no longer covering his headphones, though he kept his headphones on.

‘Mr Marr?’

He hadn’t seen Hannah in the shadows by the door.

‘You should be in your classroom, Hannah.’

‘I heard something in the woods earlier, a really loud noise, and I saw smoke. It was an explosion, wasn’t it?’

‘Probably, yes.’

‘I’m sorry, I should have told you. If I had—’

‘Teachers heard it too and didn’t know what it was either. Mr Benson complained about some kind of rumpus in the woods – rumpus, like Where the Wild Things Are.’

‘I don’t know where Rafi is,’ she said. ‘I keep phoning him but he’s not answering.’

So that was the reason she was by the door – waiting for Rafi. Or perhaps she was on her way out to find him; he wouldn’t put it past her. ‘Cliff Heights School’s very own Romeo and Juliet’, staff called them, but the teasing epithet, the sarcasm implicit, was more about the adults and a certain wistfulness.

‘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.