By bedtime on Saturday he had decided that it would be too difficult to try to get to the phone box to ring Miss Girling in the morning so instead he would go down to the bus stop at the end of the lane and wait for her to turn up. After all, she had said she would collect him and they would go together on the bus. Perhaps she had forgotten that she hadn’t mentioned a time. After breakfast he made his way cautiously to the bus stop and waited. But though several buses came past, there was no sign of Miss Girling, and after two hours he gave up. He was very cold and very sad; she must have forgotten.
At lights-out time in the dormitory, most boys went to sleep right away. But there was a small group of older boys who chatted. That night Thomma was worried and uneasy and he stayed awake listening.
He heard a voice a few bunks away say, ‘Did you hear that the old bag’s died?’
Thomma tensed up. They called any of the older female staff ‘old bags’, and this included Miss Girling. Had something happened to her?
‘Really? You sure?’ Another voice whispered in the dark.
‘I’m sure. I heard Cicero talking to Miss Looms in the office. They were yakking about sending flowers.’
‘What did she die of?’
‘She strung herself up.’
‘What? You mean she killed herself?’
‘That’s what Miss Looms told Cicero. They found her hanging in her kitchen, and Miss Looms said the police had to cut her down. Why would she go and do that?’
‘If I had a face like Miss Girling, I’d kill myself too.’ Both laughed loudly for a minute. Then they started talking about football.
Thomma lay stunned. Miss Girling was dead. To him she’d seemed to be a kind of saviour in this miserable place where he wasn’t even allowed to practise his religion. But now even this ray of light in his life had been extinguished. How could it have happened?
That boy had said she’d killed herself. Thomma didn’t believe it. She went to church and was going to take him with her. Why would she kill herself? She must have had a heart attack or something. Then he realised this couldn’t be – not if they’d had to cut the old lady down. Someone had harmed Miss Girling, he realised with a start. Miss Girling must have been murdered.
But why would anyone hurt her? Could it have anything to do with him? He tried to dismiss the thought – why would you kill someone for helping a boy go to church? Still, there was something very odd about her death – and about this place.
He shivered slightly, wondering what he should do. He felt a need to tell someone what was going on. He was worried about what they were being taught by Mr Gottingen. He had planned to tell Miss Girling about it when she took him to church. But now she was dead and he had no one to tell. He felt helpless and alone, and as the night slowly passed, increasingly afraid.
But then – he couldn’t have said what time it was, only that it was still pitch black outside – he remembered the slip of paper Miss Girling had given him. She’d written her number on it but that wasn’t going to be any use if she was dead. But there was another number on it. She’d said, If for some reason you can’t reach me and you need some help, ring this number.
It was still dark when he slipped out of the dormitory, closing the door silently behind him. He was clutching the paper Miss Girling had given him and the coins he had hidden in the beam. He skirted the perimeter of the yard outside the accommodation building and slipped out on to the road through a gap between two farm buildings. The boys all knew this way in and out of the farm.
At night there was a security guard on duty, but everyone knew he usually spent the night in the office in the farmhouse, dozing and watching TV rather than policing the grounds or monitoring the CCTV cameras.
When the boy reached the main road, he turned right. The village was a mile or so away, and he knew that on its small green sat an old-fashioned red telephone box. He thought it was still working because the boy with the aunt in France had lifted the handset and heard the ringing tone. He hadn’t been able to use it then because he had no money.
There was almost no traffic at this hour, just the occasional van or agricultural lorry, and Thomma was able to see their headlights from quite far away so he could get off the road into the trees and bushes before the vehicle reached him.
He had almost got to the village when behind him he heard a different engine sound. It was a car and quite a high-powered one by the sound of it. He’d reached a part of the road where there was a deep ditch between him and some heavy undergrowth and he was tempted to take a chance and stay on the road. It seemed unlikely that he had been spotted if the security guard was just watching TV in the warm office as usual.
But the car seemed to be going surprisingly slowly. This struck him as odd, so at the last possible moment he jumped down into the ditch, which was mercifully dry, and crouched down while the car passed by. As it moved away he cautiously lifted his head and looked as its back light faded into the distance. It was just starting to get light, a milky paleness suffusing the sky, and he could see quite clearly not only the car’s make, but its colour. It was a bright blue Mini and the driver was looking from side to side. It must be Cicero – the blue Mini stood outside the school all day and every day and the only person who drove it was Cicero. Someone must have been monitoring the CCTV cameras after all and spotted him leaving. He couldn’t go back now.
When the Mini had disappeared, Thomma waited for a moment, then climbed out of the ditch back on to the grassy verge. He was frightened but walked on, his eyes focused now on the traffic coming towards him for any sign of the Mini returning. In a few minutes he reached the village green and was about to cross the road to the red telephone box when he saw the Mini parked on the other side of the green. Walking away from it, towards the phone box, was Cicero.
Thomma drew back into the trees and watched. Cicero stopped beside the phone box, looking round in all directions as though he was waiting for someone. There were a few people about now; the village shop was just opening and a car stopped outside it. A few minutes later its driver emerged with a newspaper and a shopping bag. He didn’t take any notice of Cicero, who went on standing outside the phone box for a few minutes, then walked across the road and into the shop. He came out a few minutes later empty-handed, walked back to the Mini and drove off in the direction of the school.
Thomma guessed he had been asking if anyone had seen a boy. He stayed in the safety of the trees, watching the comings and goings on the green and at the shop, trying to summon up the courage to emerge into the open and cross the road to the phone box.
He was glad he waited because in a couple of minutes he saw the Mini coming back along the road from the school. It was clear that Cicero was leaving nothing to chance. But having circled the green without stopping, he drove away again. Thomma was shaking, partly with cold and partly with nerves. He knew he had to make a break for it; he couldn’t stay hidden in the trees all day. Finally, he ran across the road and into the telephone box where he quickly put in his money and dialled Miss Kingly’s number, realising as he did so that it wasn’t a local number – it looked quite different from Miss Girling’s number written above it.
As he watched anxiously to see if the Mini was coming back, a man answered. ‘Hello.’
‘I want to speak to Miss Kingly, please,’ said Thomma, reading the name Miss Girling had written down.
‘She’s not here at the moment but I can get a message to her. Can you tell me what it’s about?’
‘My name is Thomma,’ the boy said hesitantly. ‘Please tell her Miss Girling gave me her number. They said she killed herself but she can’t have because she was going to take me to church. I have escaped from the school. They’re looking for me and I’m scared. Please can she help me.’