Private Lives

Chapter 24

Saturday is crisp and sunny. It’s the kind of weekend when Seb would get everyone out. ‘Family bike ride!’ he’d call upstairs, or, ‘Come on, we’re going to the woods!’ But Seb doesn’t leave the house. They don’t talk about it but there’s a tacit agreement between the three adults that Seb should never open the front door, just in case it’s not a well-wisher but a reporter, or worse. Rosie, often with a child or two coiling around her, leaps up whenever it rings. Which it seems to every few minutes with some ashen-faced neighbour. When they’ve run out of vases and jam jars and there’s no fridge or freezer space left, Rosie heaps their offerings on the kitchen table. By the afternoon, the table looks like one of the kids’ games of shop. Flowers propped up, nestled against each other in their plastic cones. Lasagnes and home-made bread and cakes. There are clothes for Eva, and not just ones destined for the charity shop – angora jumpers, jeans that fit her perfectly – and one of Eva’s old walking friends passes Rosie a discreet bag that is full of new cotton underwear, socks and bras.

They all say a variation of the same thing, these friends and neighbours, these ex-colleagues and choir members.

‘We’re so sorry. How is she, dear Eva?’ Before, more quietly, like they’re not sure they should say his name at all, ‘And Seb? How’s everything with his situation?’

Seb hangs back from all of them, freezing even though they wouldn’t be able to see him from the doorstep.

While she’s waiting for the kettle to boil, Rosie silently hands Seb her phone. It’s open on the front page of a local newspaper website which reads:

Head teacher Sebastian Kent: how yesterday’s villain became today’s victim.

Rosie touches Seb’s arm briefly before she takes a mug upstairs for Eva, who is once again waiting on hold with her insurance company. Alone in the kitchen, Seb scrolls down to the comments section of the article. The comments reflect the headline, how quickly the tide of public opinion can change. Where once there was only vitriol, now some comments seem genuinely sympathetic:

‘That poor, poor family.’

While others are still completely delusional:

‘A nurse friend said he was so badly burnt saving Rosie – he’s going to be permanently disfigured!’

There are still many that laugh:

‘Ha ha! He got what was coming to him!’

And:

‘How do you feel now your precious family are the vulnerable ones, sir?’

Seb types the truth:

‘Helpless …’

But then he hears his kids laughing in the den they’ve built in Heath’s bedroom and he deletes the word and goes upstairs to hide with them.

Eva spends all Saturday either on the phone or in bed. Seb sits with her, and the kids bring her home-made cards and snuggle into bed with her, but for most of the day she keeps her face towards the window and when she needs to be alone she says, ‘I think I’ll have a little sleep now.’

She doesn’t sleep, she cries. Sometimes Seb cries with her and sometimes, knowing she wants to be alone, he just listens to her crying behind the door. The saddest tears he’s ever known.

During the afternoon Rosie takes the kids to a beach an hour’s drive from Waverly; they’re less likely to bump into any one they know there. When they get back, cheeks pink and smelling like new air, the opposite of smoke, Rosie tells Seb the kids want to go back to Eva’s, that they want to see for themselves what the fire has left.

‘Do you think we should?’ Rosie asks, taking a biscuit from a tin delivered by someone Seb didn’t recognize.

Seb wants to say no. He pictures his children picking over the crunchy charcoal, like children from a war zone. Imagines Heath rummaging through the mess for any sign of his favourite football cards, the ones he kept at Granny’s. Or Greer just standing bleakly, alone in the desolation.

He turns to Rosie and nods. ‘If that’s what they want. It might help them get their heads around it.’

Rosie sighs.

‘OK,’ she says, ‘OK. I think you’re right. I’ll take them.’

He reaches for her good hand then and she lets him hold it. Somehow she seems to know that Seb wants to fall to his knees in front of her, that he wants to tell her over and over how sorry he is. Sorry for all this mess, all this destruction, and sorry for not loving her better. Because he does: love her, so very much. She knows he wants to say these things, but she shakes her head at him. ‘No, Seb. Now is not the time.’

She gently lets go of his hand before going to tell the kids to put their wellies on and walking them over to Eva’s.

While they’re gone, Seb finds Rosie’s iPad. He felt strangely compelled to see pictures of what is left, after the fire, to see what his kids are going to see. But as he turns it on something else automatically fills the screen.

Students’ petition to keep Mr Kent as head teacher at Waverly Community.

The words wobble in front of Seb as he reads.

We, the students of Waverly Community, are writing this petition to voice our complete support of Mr Kent. We know many parents and other adults think they know what is best for us. But none of them have asked us or bothered to listen to what we think. So, we’re telling them here.

Mr Kent did something wrong. There’s no getting away from that and we’re not pretending it didn’t happen. But that doesn’t mean he is all bad. We want to learn from someone who is willing to admit they get things wrong. We want to learn from someone who is willing to try and gain back the trust our parents keep saying he’s broken. We’re told that it’s OK to make mistakes, that everyone does from time to time. Well, now it’s time to prove it.

It’s our school, our education, and it should be our choice. We want Mr Kent to stay!

It’s been signed 120 times. The first signature is Blake’s and the last is Rosie’s.

Rosie and the kids come back about an hour later, wide-eyed and quiet, their hair flecked with ash. Heath leaves a small, sad tray of blackened things they rescued outside on the doorstep along with their wellies, soles stained black. The kids watch a film while Rosie tells Seb that the homes next to Eva’s have also been badly damaged by smoke and water from the hoses. That the people who live there have been moved into hotels. She tells him that she spoke with Detective Sergeant Sarah Wilcox who said they haven’t found any camera evidence of who might be responsible or any other clues. She intimated that she thought they were probably local, that they seemed to know which residential roads to stick to in order to avoid cameras. No witnesses have come forward.

‘It’s strange,’ Rosie says, ‘I thought I’d be angrier, like, want to find them more, but …’ She shrugs.

Seb gets it – it isn’t about retribution. All he wants is for his family to be safe. What he doesn’t tell Rosie is that Sarah Wilcox and her colleagues are looking in the wrong places because the person who did this isn’t out there, walking the streets. He might not have lit the fuse but still, the person responsible is right here. In front of Rosie, inside him. Inescapable.

Rosie and Seb put Heath and Greer to bed together and as soon as the younger two are asleep they go to Sylvie and sit side by side on her bed.

‘You’re OK again, aren’t you?’ Sylvie asks. Seb looks at Rosie, who glances briefly back at him. She’s confused too. ‘You guys, I mean.’

Seb sits on the edge of his daughter’s bed and feels a tug, deep, towards the old ways, a desire to tell Sylvie that of course they’re fine. But he looks at his girl and sees for the first time that she’s not OK.

Seb experiments with the truth again. ‘We’re getting there, Sylv. I think we’re getting there.’

Sylvie nods seriously before smiling, satisfied, as she snuggles down in bed, and both Rosie and Seb kiss her forehead again and tell her they love her. Sylvie’s asleep before they’ve even tiptoed out of her room.

Seb follows Rosie downstairs and finds Eva, in one of Rosie’s nightshirts, stirring something in a pan on the stove.

‘Oh good, they’re asleep,’ she says when she sees them, before turning back to the pan. Still stirring, she asks, ‘Now, have you got any cinnamon?’

‘Eva,’ Rosie says, ‘we’ve had so much food brought over, you shouldn’t be …’

Eva shakes her head. ‘I needed to do something. And besides, I really fancy a dhal.’

They eat together quietly. Eva was right: the dhal is perfect. Seb can practically feel the spicy goodness of it warming his cells. When they’ve finished, Rosie stacks their bowls by the sink and sits back at the table.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Seb starts, quietly, but his voice clots in his throat so he clears it and tries again. ‘I’ve been thinking, Ro. I’m worried something else might happen, that it’s not safe here …’

‘You think we should go away somewhere?’

Seb nods.

‘Where? Where could we go?’

Seb looks away.

‘Center Parcs?’ Rosie asks, sarcastic, the thought of a holiday now totally absurd, before adding, ‘We’re staying here, Seb. The kids want to be here. I think they want, need, things to be as normal as possible, to go to school …’

‘Well, I’ll go away. For a few days. It’s me they …’

Rosie is shaking her head again and Eva says, ‘Rosie’s right, Sebastian: you need to stay here.’

He looks at them, the bravest people he knows. They can tell he needs them to explain.

‘There’s the parent forum on Monday. If you leave Waverly, it’ll be like you’re running away,’ Rosie says and Eva nods, agreeing.

‘She’s right. The fire didn’t burn all that stuff away. You still have to face everyone; you still have a responsibility to the kids.’

‘No, no, I’m resigning. There’s no way …’

‘If you resign now then you’re right, Sebastian.’ Eva’s voice is steady but firm. ‘You are in danger. In danger of all of this being for absolutely nothing. Of going through so much and buckling anyway. The kids’ petition is all the proof we need. They need you to hold on.’

She puts her warm palm on top of his before adding more gently, ‘And don’t forget what your dad always said. Chaos often precedes change. That’s the way of things.’

Her voice cracks and Seb wonders whether she too is thinking about everything they’ve lost. They only have a small handful of photos of Seb’s dad now, just one or two from Seb’s childhood and none of Eva’s family or her own youth. A young police officer had brought them over in a small tray, along with a bronze dolphin figurine and a couple of bits of pottery they’d been able to save from the wreckage.

‘I don’t know how …’ he stumbles, feeling the full impact of his weakness, the rush of his helplessness.

‘None of us do. It’s OK not to know and it’s OK not to succeed but it’s not OK, when you’ve come so far, to just give up.’

How many times has Seb delivered a similar speech to his students over the years? Twenty? Fifty? A hundred?

He still doesn’t know if it’s the right thing but, then again, he doesn’t even know if there’s any such thing as ‘the right thing’ any more. Was there ever? It seems to Seb that all there is, all there ever was, is trying. Trying. The rest is out of their control.

He nods and says, ‘If it’s what you both want.’

‘I don’t think either of us wants any of this, Seb,’ Rosie replies, a little sharp, before adding, more gently, ‘But there’s no avoiding it’s where we are.’

Eva goes back up to bed after supper. Seb and Rosie sit next to each other on the sofa in the sitting room. It’s dark but neither of them makes a move to turn on the lights and a part of Seb wishes they could stay like that, just the two of them, in the darkness and silence. Just sit like they did before Anna’s radio appearance. But he knows he might not get another chance to say the things he’s not sure she’ll believe.

‘I don’t know if I can ever tell you how sorry I am, Ro.’

Rosie turns to him, her face calm. ‘I don’t know if you can ever make it better,’ she says, before adding, ‘Tell me something, Seb. Would you do it again? Pay a woman for sex, I mean.’

Before, he’d have acted shocked, probably have said, ‘No! Of course not!’

He’s different now. They both are. So, he says, ‘If we weren’t together any more? Maybe.’

She doesn’t seem either sad or angry. If anything, she seems relieved. Like she can feel on a subtle, pheromonal level that he’s telling the truth.

‘But what I can tell you,’ he says, his voice almost a whisper, ‘is that for as long as we’re married, I will never betray you again.’

Rosie’s crying now, her tears silent and silvery in the evening light. ‘I thought we weren’t making promises any more.’

‘That’s not a promise, it’s just something I know.’

Rosie looks away from him for a moment, before turning back again. ‘How can we know that we won’t just end up in the same place, Seb? I can’t just make my body do things I … I’m worried we’ll follow the same patterns, lying to ourselves, to each other again …’

‘We won’t because neither of us wants it to go back to how it was. We’ll make a new agreement. Not one based on promises that might destroy us and each other in our efforts to keep them, but an agreement based on an intention to always be truthful.’

Rosie breathes out, squirms next to him with embarrassment. ‘You make it sound easy.’

‘I don’t mean to.’

‘I think I need help figuring out who I am now beyond, you know, being a wife and mother. And I guess that means physically, too. I need to know who I am inside this body, and I think that’ll help me know how I want to experience this body. Does that make sense?’

Seb nods. It makes sense, but still, his mind reels. What they’d both been experiencing all along were different manifestations of the same thing. They’d both been trapped, alone, trying to keep an inordinately complicated show on the road. The weight of it had been too much, struggling as they were, separately. It was never sex that he craved, not really. It was this. It was honesty. It was connection. It was believing he could still be loved in all his ugliness. That his most hidden, shameful parts, the parts that quaked with fear and loneliness, could still be welcome, still be loved. Shame, he realizes now, loses its power when it’s not hidden away but brought out, into the light.

They’re suddenly interrupted, both turning towards the porch light as it flickers on, the sensor disturbed by someone walking up the steps. Next to him, Seb feels Rosie brace; he reaches for her. But it’s not someone with a brick for the window – it’s Anna, her hand clamped at her sternum, carrying a small plant in a pot. She sees them, through the window, at the same time as they see her. For a moment, Seb thinks she’s going to say something to them, mouth through the glass. She doesn’t. Instead they all just stare, surprised, observing the shapes of each other. Anna looks away first and they see her stoop to place the pot down, by the front door, and, without looking at either of them again, she turns and disappears, back into the night.

It’s Rosie who stands first, walks quickly to the front door, runs down the three stone steps, Seb following behind, and calls into the crisp darkness, ‘Anna!’

Anna stops but doesn’t turn around right away, until Rosie moves closer to her and says her name again like she’s trying to wake her old friend up. ‘Anna.’

The street lights are bright but Anna’s face is still full of shadows. They stare at each other and Seb senses that now Rosie has Anna’s attention she isn’t sure what to do with it. In the end it’s Anna who steps forward and, speaking directly to Rosie, says, ‘I just wanted to keep us all safe, to stop history repeating itself. That’s all.’

Seb watches Rosie nod; she knows. They stand there for a few seconds longer, the three of them, and it feels like they all know this isn’t an apology and neither is it forgiveness. This is a goodbye.

He moves a step closer to his wife but doesn’t touch her as Anna turns and walks away from them for the last time.