‘Don’t for one second try to pretend this is about finding Barney,’ I said. ‘You come here and make nasty allusions that make no sense. You don’t care about him or Jason. All you care about is yourself.’
He crooked his lips into a half-smirk.
‘Why are you so worried about one silly interview?’
‘What do I have to be worried about? I think we all know the worst thing that can happen to a person has already happened to me.’
He looked off into the distance.
‘What age are you now, Heidi? I’d have thought you’d need to get a move on if you and Jason are to start your own family together.’ He said the words as though he was making an observation about nothing more than the weather. ‘Is it because you can’t?’ He paused. ‘Or is it because he won’t?’
It was like he’d kicked me.
‘I feel sorry for you,’ I said, walking away before he could see my tears. ‘Make sure you’re off the premises before Jason’s class is over or I’ll call security.’
‘You have my number,’ he shouted after me. ‘If you ever change your mind.’
I waited until I was as far away from him as possible, out of sight, and crouched down against the nearest available wall. I reached in my bag for Lauren’s compass and squeezed my eyes shut. It took some time for my body to stop shaking.
Chapter Thirty
Back in the classroom, Jason was in full-throttle teaching mode. As I retook my seat, he caught my eye. Waving my phone in the air, I shook my head and mouthed the word ‘work’.
While I was gone, he’d moved on to the theory part of the course, the part for which he expected to come under particular scrutiny come his assessment in December.
‘So,’ he began, cueing up a DVD. ‘We all have different chances of survival in different situations. Our relative age, fitness and health can massively affect whether we live or die.’
He gestured at the TV screen. Paused on an American news bulletin, it showed a female newsreader about to speak. To the right of her head was a small picture of the next story: a snowy riverbank and the flashing red lights of an ambulance.
‘Children are massively resilient. With children, accident or disaster situations can be a whole different playing field.’
Jason waved the remote at the screen.
‘Take the case of Jake Schneider. He was only four years old when, while playing with friends, he slid down a bank and fell into a freezing lake in Canada. He couldn’t swim.’ Jason paused, letting the frightening reality of the situation sink in. Once he was satisfied that everyone was suitably anxious, he carried on. ‘It took twenty minutes for the fire services to get there and pull him out. Twenty minutes. So what do you think? Did he survive, or not?’
The woman in the pink poodle jumper raised her hand.
‘The human brain cannot survive any longer than four minutes without oxygen, so there would be no way he lived,’ she said.
Jason nodded.
‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? To argue otherwise would be daft, right? To argue that a four-year-old child who couldn’t swim would go on to live after twenty minutes under water in a freezing lake would be mad.’
He got to his feet.
‘Let me tell you what actually happened. As soon as Jake enters the water,’ – he mimed something going from a great height onto the ground – ‘he starts gulping in mouthfuls of liquid. But then, as his body submerges, the mammalian dive reflex kicks in, shutting off his windpipe and preventing any further water from entering his lungs or stomach.’
Jason let his hand sink to a spot just below his hips, symbolising Jake lying at the bottom of the lake.
‘Now Jake is under water and he is freezing. And, as would be the same for any of us here, his heart rate and brain function all shut down as a way of preserving his core body temperature.’ He motioned to his own chest, mouth and head to illustrate his words. ‘In its rapidly cooled state the brain doesn’t need very much oxygen and can remain undamaged much longer than the usual four minutes. In effect, the body goes into suspended animation. However, despite all of this, if any of us adults had been at the bottom of that lake, we would have died. But what happened to Jake?’
He looked around the room.
‘Anyone?’
The class was mute. He grinned in anticipation of the crescendo he was about