As I walked the short distance to Pauline’s office, I thought how, if I hated my flat, at least I loved the school. In the small vestibule there was a pool of water made out of bricks with big fat fish in it. I dipped my fingers in it for luck, as I always did when I passed. The school was by the side of another of London’s arterial roads. It was shaken all day by lorries making their way up toward East Anglia or down across the river to Kent and the south coast. To get to the nearest bit of scrubby park, you had to lead a crocodile of children along the road and across two dangerous junctions. But that was what I loved about it. It was something from another world, like a monastery, in the middle of the noise and dust. Even when the children were running around screaming it felt like a refuge.
Maybe it was just those stupid fish that made me feel like that, and I’d probably got it all wrong anyway. I remembered some book of facts I’d read as a child on how water conducted sound better than air. The fish probably spent their entire lives moaning about the noise of the traffic and wishing they were somewhere more desirable. I tried to remember what it was like when I lay submerged in the bath rinsing my hair. Could I hear the lorries hurtling past outside? I didn’t remember.
Pauline was standing by the half-open door with a woman I recognized. They weren’t speaking or doing anything. They had obviously just been waiting in silence for me to arrive. I saw the woman every day at the end of school, hovering at the door of the class. Elinor’s mother. I nodded a greeting at her, but she didn’t catch my eye. I tried to picture Elinor this morning. Had she been upset? I didn’t think so. I tried to picture the girl in the class I had just left behind. Nothing unusual occurred to me.
“Shut the door behind you,” Pauline said, leading me in. The mother stayed outside. She waved me to a chair in front of her desk. “That was Gillian Tite, the mother of Elinor.”
“Yes, I know.”
I noticed that Pauline was white-faced, trembling. She was either deeply upset or so angry that she could barely control herself.
“Did you give the class homework last week?”
“Yes. If you can call it homework.”
“What was it?”
“It was just for fun. We’d been talking about stories and I asked them to draw a picture of one of their favorite stories in their art book.”
“What did you do with the homework?”
“I’m trying to get them used to doing homework on time and giving it in. So I collected the books up on Wednesday-I think it was Wednesday. I’m pretty sure. I looked through them immediately.” I remembered doing it-sitting there while that peculiar man who came to view the flat went through my knicker drawer. That was the day I’d found the letter on the doormat. “I wrote nice comments on them and gave them back on the next morning. I don’t know if Elinor’s mother expected a mark out of ten. They’re too young for that sort of homework.”
Pauline ignored me.
“Do you remember what Elinor drew?”
“No.”
“Does that mean you didn’t look at the drawings?”
“Of course I looked at them. I checked when they began them in class and I wrote a title for each one at the bottom of the page. Then I looked at them all when they were finished. I took them home. I didn’t exactly spend hours on each picture, but I looked at them all and wrote something.”
“Elinor’s mother came in to see me in tears,” said Pauline. “This is Elinor’s drawing. Take a look.”
She pushed a familiar large-format exercise book across her desk. It was open and I recognized my writing at the bottom of the page. Sleeping Beauty. Elinor had made a pretty dismal attempt at copying the words herself. The p was the wrong way round and the second word dribbled away as if it had run out of energy. The drawing was different, though. It wasn’t like a toddler’s drawing. Actually there were traces of Elinor’s scratchy drawing here and there, but it had been embellished and drawn over and filled out. The girl was now lying in a carefully rendered room. More than that, I could see what Pauline couldn’t. It was my room. My bedroom. At least bits of it were. There was the picture of the cow on the wall that I had lived with all my life and the mirror with a string bag hanging from its edge. I’d always meant to put it away and hadn’t got around to it.
On the bed, Sleeping Beauty wasn’t asleep and she wasn’t Sleeping Beauty. She was me. At least she had my glasses on. The bed looked more like a mortuary slab. I mean that there were huge incisions in the body, with bits of internal organ, guts, trailing out. Parts of the body, especially around the vagina-my vagina-were so mutilated as not to be recognizable. Suddenly I started to be sick; bitter bile came up in my mouth, and I managed to hold it down, swallow it. But it burned the back of my throat and made me cough. I took a tissue from my pocket and wiped my mouth. I pushed the book back to Pauline. She looked at me earnestly.
“If you have done this as some very strange kind of joke, then you’d better tell me straightaway. Just tell me: Did you do this?”
I didn’t speak. I couldn’t speak. Pauline rapped on the table as if trying to awaken me.
“Zoe. Do you realize the position you’re in? What do you expect me to do?”
My eyes were burning. I had to stop myself from crying. I had to be strong, not collapse.
“Call the police,” I said.
ELEVEN
Pauline was dubious and reluctant at first, but I insisted. I wasn’t going to leave her office without something being done. Carthy had given me his card, but my hands were shaking so much that I had to fumble in my purse to get it out. Pauline looked visibly surprised as I laboriously dialed the number while looking at the card. I suppose she thought I was going to dial 999 in some hysterical way.
“It’s happened before,” I said to her in explanation. “In a way.”
I asked for Carthy. He was away. So I was put through to Aldham as a pretty poor second best. I was wild on the phone. I said he had to come over now, here, to the school, right away. Aldham was reluctant but I said if he didn’t come then I would make an official complaint and added to this any threat that came into my mind. He agreed and I gave him the address of the school and quickly put the phone down. I lit a cigarette. Pauline started to say something about no smoking being allowed except in the staff room, but I said that I was very sorry but this was an emergency.
“Are you going back to your class?” she asked.
“It’s not a good time,” I said. “I’d better talk to the police. I need to see what they say. I’ll wait for them here.”
There was quite a long silence. Pauline stared at me as if I were an unpredictable wild animal that needed careful handling. At least that’s what I felt she was doing. I felt I would bristle at the slightest touch. Finally she gave a shrug.
“I’ll talk to Mrs. Tite outside,” she said quietly.
“Yeah,” I said, hardly taking in what she was saying.
Pauline stopped at the door.
“Are you saying that someone else did that? That picture?”
I stubbed out my cigarette and started to light another.
“Yeah,” I said. “Something horrible’s going on. Horrible. I’ve got to get it sorted out.”
Pauline started to say something, then stopped and left me alone in her office. I was hardly aware of the time. I smoked cigarettes one after another. I picked up a newspaper from Pauline’s desk but I wasn’t able to concentrate on it. It must have been half an hour later that I heard voices outside and Aldham came in, escorted by Pauline. She had already told him as much as she knew. I didn’t bother with any greeting.
“Look,” I said, pointing at the art book, which was still open where I had left it. “That’s me. That’s a fucking exact copy of my bedroom. You can’t see that from the fucking pub.”