It’s October half-term and, with no pupils around, and spending all my time in the Old Building, it’s easy to imagine that I’m teaching at a university, somewhere ancient and hallowed. There are parts of Holland House that look almost like an Oxford college, if you ignore the New Building and the smell of the gymnasium. I like having this time to myself. Georgie is with Simon and Herbert is in kennels. There’s nothing for me to worry about and, when I get home, there’s nothing to stop me writing all night. I’m working on a biography of R.M. Holland. He’s always interested me, ever since I read The Stranger in a ghost story anthology as a teenager. I didn’t know about his connection to the school when I first applied here. It wasn’t mentioned in the advertisement and the interview was in the New Building. When I found out, it seemed like a sign. I would teach English by day and, in the evenings, inspired by my surroundings, I would write about Holland; about his strange, reclusive life, the mysterious death of his wife, his missing daughter. I made a good start; I was even interviewed for a news item on local TV, walking awkwardly through the Old Building and talking about its previous occupant. But, recently — I don’t know why — the words have dried up. Write every day, that’s what I tell my students. Don’t wait for inspiration, that might not come until the end. The muse always finds you working. Look into your heart and write. But, like most teachers, I’m not brilliant at taking my own advice. I write in my diary every day, but that doesn’t count because no one else is ever going to read it.
I suppose I should go downstairs and get a coffee while I still can. As I get up I look out of the window. It’s getting dark and the trees are blowing in a sudden squall of wind. Leaves gust across the car park and, following their progress, I see what I should have noticed earlier: a strange car with two people sitting inside it. There’s nothing particularly odd about this. This is a school, after all, despite it being half-term. Visitors are not entirely unexpected. They could even be staff members, coming in to prepare their classrooms and complete their planning for next week. But there’s something about the car, and the people inside it, that makes me feel uneasy. It’s an unremarkable grey vehicle — I’m useless at cars but Simon would know the make — something solid and workmanlike, the sort of thing a mini-cab driver would use. But why are its occupants just sitting there? I can’t see their faces but they are both dressed in dark clothes and look, like the car itself, somehow both prosaic and menacing.
It’s almost as if I am expecting a summons of some kind, so I’m not really surprised when my phone buzzes. I see it’s Rick Lewis, my head of department.
‘Clare,’ he says, ‘I’ve got some terrible news.’
Clare’s diary
Monday 23rd October 2017
Ella is dead. I didn’t believe it when Rick told me. And, as the words began to sink in, I thought: a car crash, an accident, even an overdose of some kind. But when Rick said ‘murdered’, it was as if he was talking a different language.
‘Murdered?’ I repeated the word stupidly.
‘The police said that someone broke into her house last night,’ said Rick. ‘They turned up on my doorstep this morning. Daisy thought I was about to be arrested.’
I still couldn’t put the pieces together. Ella. My friend. My colleague. My ally in the English department. Murdered. Rick said that Tony already knew. He was going to write to all the parents tonight.
‘It’ll be in the papers,’ said Rick. ‘Thank God it’s half-term.’
I’d thought the same thing. Thank God it’s half-term, thank God Georgie’s with Simon. But then I felt guilty. Rick must have realised that he’d got the tone wrong because he said, ‘I’m sorry, Clare’, as if he meant it.
He’s sorry. Jesus.
And then I had to go back to my class and teach them about ghost stories. It wasn’t one of my best teaching sessions. But The Stranger always does its bit, especially as it was dark by the time I’d finished. Una actually screamed at the end. I set them a writing task for the last hour: ‘write about receiving bad news’. I looked at their bent heads as they scribbled their masterpieces (‘The telegram arrived at half-past two . . .’) and thought: if only they knew.
As soon as I got home, I rang Debra. She’d been out with the family and hadn’t heard. She cried, said she didn’t believe it, etc., etc. To think that the three of us had only been together on Friday night. Rick said that Ella was killed some time on Sunday. I remember I’d texted her about the Strictly results and hadn’t had an answer. Was she already dead by then?
It wasn’t so bad when I was teaching or talking to Debra, but now I’m alone, I feel such a sense of . . . well, dread . . . that I’m almost rigid with fear. I’m sitting here with my diary on the bed and I don’t want to turn the light off. Where is Ella? Have they taken her body away? Have her parents had to identify her? Rick didn’t give me any of these details and, right now, they seem incredibly important.
I just can’t believe that I’ll never see her again.
Chapter 2
I’m at school early. I didn’t really sleep. Horrible dreams, not actually about Ella, but searching for Georgie in war-ravaged cities, Herbert going missing, my dead grandfather calling from a room just out of sight. Herbert was at Doggy Day Care for the night — which was probably part of the reason for the anxiety dreams — but I didn’t need him to wake me up demanding food, walkies and dancing girls. I was up at six and at Talgarth by eight. There were already a few people here, drinking coffee in the dining hall and attempting to start conversations. They always run a few courses here at half-term and I like to try to identify the participants: women with unusual jewellery tend to be doing tapestry or pottery, men with sandals and long fingernails are usually making stringed musical instruments. My students are always the hardest to spot. That’s one of the nice things about teaching creative writing — you get retired teachers and solicitors, women who have brought up their families and now fancy doing something for themselves, twenty-somethings convinced that they are the next J.K. Rowling. My favourites are often the people who have done all the other courses and just take mine because it’s next on the list after Candle Making. Those students always surprise you — and themselves.
I get a black coffee from the machine and take it to the very end of one of the tables. It feels strange to be eating and drinking, going through the usual routine, thinking about the day’s teaching. I still can’t get used to the thought that I’m living in a world without Ella. Although I’d probably describe Jen and Cathy from university as my best friends, there’s no doubt that I saw Ella more than I saw either of them — I saw her every day during term time. We shared our frustrations about Rick and Tony, the students, our occasional triumphs, juicy gossip about the pastoral leader and one of the lab technicians. Even now, ridiculously, I want to text her. ‘You’ll never believe what’s happened.’