83. Before

‘Are you sure about this?' I stood with my back to the kitchen sink while Jenna and Rose sank their teeth into sandwiches at the table. We were at Oakridge. My dad was in the living room, watching Amadeus, again.

The police would be looking at Lydia's and mine. Rose wouldn't let Jenna go anywhere alone. So here we were.

‘Thanks for letting us stay,' said Rose.

I wanted to say, Tell me where the tape is, or I'll sear off the soles of your feet.

And yes, I was aware I was a teacher who had helped a sixteen-year-old student run away. But the knowledge that the tape existed was more important than anything else.

So instead, I said, ‘You're sure? This is quite…' Contrived, manipulative, but then who was I to talk? ‘I think you're underestimating how worried your mum will be.'

I looked at Jenna's bandages. Lydia had cleaned the wounds and used butterfly strips.

I wanted to punish Tristan and Frances, but to me that meant handing in the tape. Jenna disappearing for a few more hours wouldn't make a difference to what I really wanted.

‘Miss Smith, trust me. If you'd watched that tape, you'd think they all the Beaufort-Bradleys deserved to die.' Rose's words, not mine.

‘Why all of them?'

Rose opened her mouth but then looked at Jenna, worried.

‘Will you please just tell me where the tape is?' I snapped.

Rose glared.

‘Okay,' I sighed. ‘But you can't be here at eight in the morning because of the carers. You know the way to the bus stop?'

They nodded.

I looked at my watch: almost eight thirty. ‘I have to get home. Keep your phones off. I don't know – maybe take out the batteries – the SIMs maybe? If I need to, I'll call the landline.'

I went to say bye to my dad. The way his eyes glittered as he laughed at the film made me sure there was more in there than it seemed.

I had worried all the way here about how to explain this to him, but in the end I'd said, ‘Dad, these girls are staying here tonight,' and he'd told me I looked pretty and made us all tea. He hadn't even asked their names.

Why had I waited so long to reconcile with him? He was my dad. Failure is human.

I kissed him on the forehead and he smiled. ‘I'm glad you've made some new friends,' he said, meaning Jenna and Rose. In his head, was I still the same age as them?

‘Thanks, Dad.'

He squeezed my hand. ‘I never liked the boy, Tristan, and those girls running around after him. But I was sad about Frances. She seemed nice.'

I sat next to him. ‘She was nice.'

‘What happened?'

I shook my head. ‘I don't know.'

He put an arm around me. ‘My little blackbird.'

Was he stuck in that moment? I needed to go, but there were so many things about that time I wanted to understand.

‘Did you ever love her?' I asked, my voice cracking.

‘I've loved your mother from the moment I first saw her.'

They met at three. He came in clinging to his mother's leg. She was naked, dancing around her garden with a watering can. He had run forward, stripped off and joined her.

She had told me the story so many times.

I watched my dad's eyes, milky now, flickering in the TV light. ‘Just, perhaps, not the way she wants me to love her. Not the way youneed me to.' He swallowed. ‘I'm trying, Gee.'

I closed my eyes but tears fell anyway.

So much pain caused by trying to do the right thing. If he had just walked away, admitted he didn't want to be with my mum, maybe we could all have been happy.

I squeezed his hand and promised myself I'd take care of him. I wouldn't waste his last years hating him.

I got backin my car and as I was driving home, Neil called. I wanted desperately to pick up, but that would have been pure idiocy. I put the phone on silent. If I spoke to him now without saying anything, and then later…

My God, what if someone called my old school, Redmoor? What a mess. I had pulled that poor girl Meadow up from the other poor girl she'd been attacking, and Meadow had sprained her wrist. The mother had put it in a sling and threatened legal action, and because I'd been trying to get them to engage about Meadow's issues – so many emails – it looked a bit OTT. I had done nothing wrong but the college was scared of bad publicity and it would all be murky now and it was going to look as though…

I pulled over and started crying again. The sun hadn't quite set yet and dust from the road hung in the hot air.

I was going to lose him.

Even if Neil never found out, if Jenna followed the plan and went home and told everyone she and Rose had just been wandering around all night, I would lose him. Because I would know. I've done lots of things teachers aren't supposed to do. But this really took the biscuit. It was so far beyond the biscuit, they hadn't even covered it in teacher training.

In three decades, I hadn't been honest with a single person. But I couldn't lie to Neil about this. And if I told him, well, it was just too utterly batshit for a normal human to get over. And Neil was normal. That's what I loved about him.