The Mistress - Jill Childs Page 0,21

at the end of a full row of Lower School staff. I ran my eye along the row. Elaine Abbott, too. Hilary Prior. Everyone’s clothes were unnaturally muted. Brown. Grey. Black.

Then I saw them. Off to one side, watching us all from their seats at the back, tucked away in the corner shadows. Detective Inspector Johns and a man – another detective, for sure. They sat very still, backs straight, heads slowly pivoting, observing everyone.

I stopped. A young woman in a black jacket, her face professionally sympathetic, stepped forward and handed me a thin paper booklet, mistaking my hesitation perhaps for grief or nerves. She gestured to the side.

‘More seats upstairs,’ she whispered, as if it were a sad secret.

I took her advice and turned, climbed a short flight of steep, winding stairs and emerged to find a small balcony six rows deep, the organ ranged behind it, overlooking the chapel. I found a place at the front and leaned forward, forearms resting on the polished wood lip. From here, in the cheap seats, I could see without being seen.

It was a comforting building. The far window was dominated by a vast cross, splintered into glassy fragments and buried within multiple shades of green and brown. It was a symbol which was vivid enough to signal its intent to churchgoers, but discreet enough not to offend those who didn’t believe in any world after this one and preferred to see nothing but nature; grass and leaves and branches in the shapes and hues.

A bulky middle-aged man squeezed in beside me, a woman settling on his far side. He handed her a memorial booklet and leafed through his own in a flutter of pages. I looked at the one in my hand, already marked by my warm, sweaty fingers.

Ralph Edward Wilson. His photograph was printed on the front, inside a black border. The same portrait as the one at the entrance, glued to a board.

My eyes ran over the hymns and readings printed inside. Keats. Shakespeare. T. S. Eliot. Sarah Baldini was doing the Shakespeare. Poor choice. She might be a head teacher but she had a high, reedy voice. John Wilson was giving the tribute. John Wilson? I shook my head. Ralph’s father was already dead. He didn’t have a brother. Some cousin, perhaps? He’d never mentioned one. I closed the booklet and Ralph’s eyes found me again.

Hey, they said. Is this for real? All this fuss for me? I hope there’s a chance of a drink afterwards. A good stiff one.

I could almost hear him laughing.

Below, music started. A slow jazz number. The blues.

The final stragglers hurried to take their seats, forcing others to bunch up, to lift up coats and bags and lay them across their knees. The women in black jackets found spaces, here and there, and led people to them.

Helen. I took a moment to recognise her as she came into view underneath us and shuffled down the aisle towards the empty front row. Her head was bowed. Her shoulders sagged. She was wearing a long grey coat which flapped round her knees and leaning heavily on the arm of a stout, broad-shouldered man. The falling shafts of sunlight, thick with dancing dust, picked out strands of silver in his dark hair. They were a grotesque parody of a bride and father, walking down the aisle to a husband on their wedding day, their friends and family gathered to bear witness.

My breath caught in my throat. It was Helen, of course, but she looked so utterly different from the woman I’d known before. She looked, from the way she walked, the way the man supported her, the way people on the ends of rows glanced at her then looked quickly away, as if she’d aged a decade in a matter of weeks, desiccated by shock and sorrow. She was a widow. A grieving widow. And it was all because of me.

She reached the front and the man lowered her into a seat as if she were incapable of bearing her weight without him. The mournful music stopped and there was a general shuffling and coughing as a man in simple clerical robes – someone I’d never seen before and suspected Ralph, atheist to the core, would never have met either – appeared at the front of the congregation, opened his arms in a gesture of both welcome and blessing, smiled sadly and began to speak.

I closed my eyes and tried not to hear. I had no