Chapter Eleven

CHAPTER ELEVEN

BEFORE PAULA LEFT the school, she'd gone to speak to Principal Kelly. His door was closed and the blinds were down and she wondered if he'd already gone. She tapped on his door, and he called out for her to enter.

He looked shattered. Graham Kelly was about fifty years of age and in reasonably good shape, but suddenly he looked older. His face was more creased and careworn than usual, and he was a man who looked harried at the best of times. But he seemed relieved to see that it was her. They are friends of sorts; they even confide in each other. She knows details about his problems with his children, things he doesn't share with the rest of the staff. He trusts her. Paula knows some of the other staff don't particularly like him and give him a hard time, but she has always found him good to work with.

‘How are you doing?' she asked sympathetically.

He shook his head. He didn't seem to have words.

‘You'll get through this,' she told him.

He nodded then and said, ‘Thank you, Paula.' He took a deep breath and said, ‘School will carry on as usual Monday. The flag will be at half-mast until further notice. There will be grief counsellors in the school for anyone who needs them. I'm not sure yet when the funeral will be, but the school will close for that so that everyone can attend. And we will do our best to support the police in their investigation.'

‘About that,' Paula said tentatively.

He gave her a sharp look. ‘I'm sorry, Paula, but I can't disclose anything that was said earlier today when the police were here. You know that.'

‘Of course I do,' she said. She continued to look at him, waiting for him to bring it up. The elephant in the room. He didn't. So she asked. ‘Did you tell them about Brad?'

He gave her a look that was almost cold. ‘No, I did not. You can't seriously think that he could have done this?'

She paused for an uncomfortable moment and said, ‘Don't you think you should tell them anyway?' He continued to stare back at her. She added, ‘For your own sake?'

Kelly had confided in her a few weeks ago – told her in strictest confidence – that Diana Brewer had come to him about Brad Turner, the gym teacher, suggesting that he had been inappropriate with her. Kelly had told Paula that he'd heard them both out and described the whole thing as a ‘misunderstanding', and told Paula that Diana hadn't wanted it to go any further. Kelly had seemed certain there was nothing to it, but the whole thing had made Paula uncomfortable. Kelly wouldn't provide any details. She wondered if he'd been too quick to dismiss Diana's concerns. She wished she'd been in the room; she might have handled it quite differently. Ever since, she'd been concerned about the possibility that her daughter – and the other students – might be treated inappropriately by their gym teacher. But Kelly said he'd handled it and told her she had nothing to worry about.

Now Kelly said, ‘If I tell the police about this, it will ruin his career, you know that. And quite unnecessarily. He didn't do anything wrong. His fiancée doesn't even know. How do you think he'd feel if she found out?'

Then Paula felt the heat rising in her face. ‘Maybe she should find out. Maybe she should know that the man she's going to marry has been accused of being inappropriate with one of the teenage girls he teaches.'

Kelly flung himself further back in his leather desk chair, which made a loud creak as if in protest. ‘There was nothing to it! I told you. It was all perfectly innocent on his part. He was upset that his actions would be interpreted that way. He was mortified.' Kelly flushed deeply, turned away, and said, ‘I think we should give him the benefit of the doubt.'

‘But what will you say,' Paula asked, ‘if the police find out and you've kept it from them?'

‘How will they find out?'

‘What if Diana told her mother about it?' Paula said.

‘She didn't want her mother to know.'

‘What if she confided in one of her friends?' She watched his face cloud over.

‘She said she didn't want anyone to know. I don't think she told anyone.' He sighed heavily and considered for a minute, clearly unhappy. ‘But I suppose she might have. All right. I guess I'd better tell them.' He looked deeply dismayed. ‘But if this gets out – and it probably will – his life will be ruined, and for nothing. There's no way he killed her, if that's what you're thinking.'

Paula left the school feeling uneasy. Kelly seemed certain that there was nothing to Diana's allegations, but maybe he wasn't the best judge. And Diana didn't seem like the kind of girl to make a complaint of that sort – of any sort – that was without foundation. But then, how well did Paula really know Diana? She was her student – bright, friendly, popular. But Paula really had no idea what was going on in Diana's private life. How would she? She doesn't even know what's going on in her own daughter's private life.

When Kelly had first told Paula about Diana's complaint, she'd asked Taylor, without naming Turner, if anyone at school, staff or student, ever made her feel uncomfortable. Taylor had avoided her eyes and said, ‘No, Mom,' in that half embarrassed, half rolling her eyes kind of way. But she'd made her daughter promise that if anything like that happened she would tell her, and it allayed her concerns.

Now Paula arrives home and parks in the driveway. She doesn't want to think the well-liked gym teacher had anything to do with what happened to Diana.

Taylor's home already, having walked home with some other girls on the street, at her mother's insistence when they texted earlier. Paula finds her daughter in the kitchen, cutting up an apple. She doesn't normally hug Taylor after school, but today she gives her a swift, firm embrace, and her daughter squirms away.

‘Are you okay?' Paula asks anxiously. She has no idea how her daughter will react to the murder of a girl at her school. Taylor has never faced anything like this before. None of them have.

‘I'm fine,' Taylor says, taking a bite of apple. ‘I didn't even know her, Mom.'

Paula is a little taken aback by her daughter's indifference. Maybe it's just a defence mechanism, an act. Some of the girls were openly weeping at school today. But it's true, Taylor didn't really know Diana; they were years apart. For Paula, a pall of fear seems to have been cast over everything. A girl has been murdered in their small town, and they don't know who did it. He's still out there, and it terrifies her. But Taylor seems unaffected.

‘I knew her,' Paula says. ‘She was in my class. I've taught her for years. I know her mother.' And she can't help it, she begins to cry, for the first time today, in front of her thirteen-year-old daughter.

‘Oh. I'm sorry, Mom. I didn't think—'

Paula says, ‘Remember, I don't want you going out alone until they get whoever did this.'