frequently than usual, opened up the site and saw the post. Like Shirley, her immediate reaction was to seize a telephone.
The Walls were breakfasting without their son, who was still asleep upstairs. When Tessa picked up, Parminder cut across her friend’s greeting.
‘There’s a post about Colin on the council website. Don’t let him see it, whatever you do.’
Tessa’s frightened eyes swivelled to her husband, but he was a mere three feet from the receiver and had already heard every word that Parminder had spoken so loudly and clearly.
‘I’ll call you back,’ said Tessa urgently. ‘Colin,’ she said, fumbling to replace the receiver, ‘Colin, wait—’
But he had already stalked out of the room, bobbing up and down, his arms stiff by his side, and Tessa had to jog to catch him up.
‘Perhaps it’s better not to look,’ she urged him, as his big, knobble-knuckled hand moved the mouse across the desk, ‘or I can read it and—’
Fantasies of a Deputy Headmaster
One of the men hoping to represent the community at Parish Council level is Colin Wall, Deputy Headmaster at Winterdown Comprehensive School. Voters might be interested to know that Wall, a strict disciplinarian, has a very unusual fantasy life. Mr Wall is so frightened that a pupil might accuse him of inappropriate sexual behaviour that he has often needed time off work to calm himself down again. Whether Mr Wall has actually fondled a first year, the Ghost can only guess. The fervour of his feverish fantasies suggests that, even if he hasn’t, he would like to.
Stuart wrote that, thought Tessa, at once.
Colin’s face was ghastly in the light pouring out of the monitor. It was how she imagined he would look if he had had a stroke.
‘Colin—’
‘I suppose Fiona Shawcross has told people,’ he whispered.
The catastrophe he had always feared was upon him. It was the end of everything. He had always imagined taking sleeping tablets. He wondered whether they had enough in the house.
Tessa, who had been momentarily thrown by the mention of the headmistress, said, ‘Fiona wouldn’t — anyway, she doesn’t know—’
‘She knows I’ve got OCD.’
‘Yes, but she doesn’t know what you — what you’re afraid of—’
‘She does,’ said Colin. ‘I told her, before the last time I needed sick leave.’
‘Why?’ Tessa burst out. ‘What on earth did you tell her for?’
‘I wanted to explain why it was so important I had time off,’ said Colin, almost humbly. ‘I thought she needed to know how serious it was.’
Tessa fought down a powerful desire to shout at him. The tinge of distaste with which Fiona treated him and talked about him was explained; Tessa had never liked her, always thought her hard and unsympathetic.
‘Be that as it may,’ she said, ‘I don’t think Fiona’s got anything to do—’
‘Not directly,’ said Colin, pressing a trembling hand to his sweating upper lip. ‘But Mollison’s heard gossip from somewhere.’
It wasn’t Mollison. Stuart wrote that, I know he did. Tessa recognized her son in every line. She was even astonished that Colin could not see it, that he had not connected the message with yesterday’s row, with hitting his son. He couldn’t even resist a bit of alliteration. He must have done all of them — Simon Price. Parminder. Tessa was horror-struck.
But Colin was not thinking about Stuart. He was recalling thoughts that were as vivid as memories, as sensory impressions, violent, vile ideas: a hand seizing and squeezing as he passed through densely packed young bodies; a cry of pain, a child’s face contorted. And then asking himself, again and again: had he done it? Had he enjoyed it? He could not remember. He only knew that he kept thinking about it, seeing it happen, feeling it happen. Soft flesh through a thin cotton blouse; seize, squeeze, pain and shock; a violation. How many times? He did not know. He had spent hours wondering how many of the children knew he did it, whether they had spoken to each other, how long it would be until he was exposed.
Not knowing how many times he had offended, and unable to trust himself, he burdened himself with so many papers and files that he had no hands free to attack as he moved through the corridors. He shouted at the swarming children to get out of the way, to stand clear, as he passed. None of it helped. There were always stragglers, running past him, up against him, and with his hands burdened he imagined other ways to have improper contact with them: a