Never be discouraged from blowing the whistle – just do it quietly

That same day, Iain came to her flat.
‘Look, I’m doing this because you’re a friend but I have to tell you what Fat Boye and Justin are saying behind your back.’
Hannah looked at her friend, dismayed.
‘What are they saying now?’
‘They’re saying if you say anything more then they’ll dish the dirt on you.’
‘What dirt?’ exclaimed Hannah, blankly. ‘They haven’t got anything on me!’
‘Well, whatever. I’ve already spoken with Adams, Fat Boye and Justin to say that you’re not saying anything to anyone. Just take care, that’s all.’
‘Look, Iain. Whatever happens, don’t get involved,’ she advised, trying to keep events close to her chest.
Although Hannah had stupidly warned Justin she would go and see Adams about his flirtation with Sissie, there was no guarantee from Justin’s point of view she had actually carried out her threat. So, when she heard from Brunhilde that Fat Boye and Flirt were telling members of the common room that the rumours about Sissie and Justin were simply untrue, whether their colleagues were aware of the gossip or not, there was only one feasible source for the leaked information: Norma. It was the sort of manipulative thing she would do out of some sort of misplaced loyalty to the members of The Games Group and their immediate friends. She couldn’t imagine that Justin had said anything to anyone whether he was guilty or not because it would have been to his advantage to quietly resolve the situation directly with Adams. Lorna, Bertie and Iain also wouldn’t have said anything as the information was given to them in the strictest of confidence. But despite all of this, whoever had spilled the beans now chose to over-react and involve the whole common room, which only proved that Justin’s friends were all shooting themselves in the foot and exacerbating his unsavoury reputation of meddling with his female pupils. There could only be one conclusion from their curious behaviour.
That the rumours about Justin and Sissie were true. And Justin was scared.
Left alone with her thoughts, Hannah had a terrible feeling everything was going to get far worse before it got any better and though it was her natural instinct to steer away from arguments, she nevertheless wished she possessed the strength to confront her enemies for the sly way in which they gossiped about her behind her back. Right from her early childhood, she had found it almost impossible to tolerate the pain of people not liking her and this prevented her from confronting the likes of Fat Boye and Justin, fearful of what they might say to her face. She too, like Justin, was paying a painful price.
For her childhood demons.

‘Brunhilde. Would it be possible to have a quick word with you?’ Hannah asked after lunch one day.
‘Yes, of course. What’s the problem?’
‘It’s about the dirt some of the bachelors are threatening to divulge about me.’
‘Which bachelors?’ she replied, her answer conveying she had already heard.
‘Justin, Flirt and Andrew Boye.’
‘So what’s going on, Hannah?’ the senior manager asked once they reached the relative safety of her office.
‘It’s difficult to say this but I had a fling with a fifteen-year old boy at a party, given by a parent from the junior school a few months ago. Nothing happened between the two of us as far as sex was concerned but we did kiss. He told me he was 22 and I believed him. I thought I’d tell you just in case they tried to discredit me with it.’
‘Well, as there wasn’t anything untoward between the two of you and it was a private party, I can’t see what you’re worrying about but the timing isn’t good, Hannah. This is not the time you want something like this to go around the common room about yourself.’
‘Yes, I realize that but I couldn’t do anything about it. He really did look 22 years old and I took him at his word. If I’d have known any different, I would never have gone anywhere near him, I can assure you!’
Hannah hoped Brunhilde’s reassuring words about her involvement with Ben would hold water.
But life for Hannah never ever turned out as simple as that.

After Brunhilde had written Terry Adams a note about her recent conversations with Hannah, Adams knew the situation concerning Sissie Singer had worsened. There was no time like the present to get to the root of what was happening, so he arranged an emergency meeting to see Hannah. In the meantime, Hannah had time to confirm that Lorna, Iain and Bertie, whom she had taken into her confidence, had not been responsible for leaking any contentious information concerning Sissie to their colleagues.
‘I don’t want to talk now, Hannah,’ explained Adams when she arrived in his study for their meeting, ’so I’ve arranged a meeting for us later on this afternoon at four o’clock. I’m particularly concerned with what you have been saying about the Justin Rupert situation and I need to talk to you about this. I would also like someone else to be there with us and I was rather hoping you wouldn’t mind if that someone was Brunhilde.’
‘Yes, I think Brunhilde would be the best choice, Mr Adams, particularly as she knows quite a lot of what has been going on recently. The situation seems to have escalated lately and I think it needs sorting out.’
‘Yes, I agree. So who have you told about this latest situation with Sissie Singer?’
‘Only Norma Shezakowsky, Brunhilde and yourself,’ she lied, wanting to avoid a widening of the net of clandestine meetings Adams would have insisted upon having with Lorna, Iain and Bertie had she divulged their names; there was enough trouble going on without that.
‘After our meeting together a few days ago, I told Norma about some of the unhealthy situations I’d been party to between Sissie Singer and Justin Rupert so that she was kept informed as Sissie’s housemistress. However, I suspect she’s breached my confidentiality because the information seems to have got out into the common room.’
‘Yes, I am aware of that.’
‘And there’s something else I want you to know about as well, something which Justin, Andrew Boye and Flirt have been threatening to do against me?’
‘And what is that, Hannah?’
‘They are threatening to tell you about an intimate relationship I had with a fifteen-year old boy whom I met at a party given by one of the parents in the junior school. I’ve already seen Brunhilde about it and I’d like you to know about it as well. The young man told me he was 22 and he certainly looked it as he was smartly dressed in a suit.’ She omitted telling him they had only kissed and that as soon as Ben had touched her breasts she had taken her leave of him.
‘Right. I think we need to talk more later this afternoon during our meeting with Brunhilde, Hannah,’ Adams replied, sensing immediately he wanted all of the details of their conversation recorded on paper.
‘Yes, OK.’
And with that Hannah went to her lessons.
To try and teach.

‘I hope you don’t mind, Hannah,’ said Adams, once the newly scheduled meeting that afternoon had begun, ‘but I’ve also asked my secretary to make notes if that’s alright by you?’
Hannah sensed the serious tone of his voice.
‘Yes, of course,’ she replied, feeling more like a criminal than a harmless observer. ‘I’ve got nothing to hide.’
But Hannah, this isn’t about you! It’s about Justin! We suspect he’s a paedophile, thought Brunhilde!
But I can’t see the wood for the trees, thought Hannah! Doesn’t anybody recognize that?
‘I am very concerned at the moment with the atmosphere in the senior common room and what I would like to know, Hannah, is what you have been saying about the Justin Rupert situation.’
He wants to silence me, she thought. He views me as a threat! To the name of the school! But he’s making me feel as if I’m the guilty one, just because I’m spilling the beans and telling the truth! As it should be!
As Hannah began to explain all that had happened to her over the last few days – her conversation with Senna about the flirting at the summer camp, reporting the information about Sissie Singer to Norma, Brunhilde and himself, and the way in which the information had finally seeped out into the common room – she began to feel trapped by the seriousness and unfairness of her predicament. Whilst she reeled off the situations she had witnessed between Justin and Sissie so that she would be blameless if anything untoward had been going on in Justin’s mind, she felt more like an undercover informant than a professional carrying out her professional duty. She rather had the impression that Adams was only mildly interested in what she had to say about the incidents involving Justin and Sissie, whereas to her the gravity of the situation was quite apparent – the trouble behind the scenes with Natasha Hudson during the school musical, Justin blushing when Sissie poked her head in through the window of The Maid Marian pub, and the looks Sissie gave him during her speech in chapel at the end of term when she described to the whole school how she and others had decorated his room. And then, of course, there was Justin’s punishing anger whenever Hannah joked about how much she thought Sissie fancied him.
‘So, it was only when I heard about their flirtation around the campfire that all of these other situations seemed to acquire a significance,’ continued Hannah. ‘And because their behaviour seemed to be unhealthy, I knew it was my duty to report what I’d witnessed in case anything happens in the future.’
‘But it seems you have discussed this with a large number of people?’ Adams interjected, accusingly.
‘No, I haven’t done that at all,’ she assured him. ‘I have, however, told my close friends who I am entitled to tell and they have confirmed to me they’ve kept the confidentiality I’d asked of them. In fact, I believe there’s been a breach of confidentiality from Norma Shezakowsky, particularly as she is a member of The Games Group and a friend of Andrew Boye’s. There is, otherwise, no way to explain the whole scenario.’
Adams looked down at the papers on his desk as she spoke. He knew how the land lay with the members of The Games Group but had always been too weak to deal with them.
‘Well, I can confirm that there was a flirtation between Justin and Sissie,’ he unexpectedly announced, ignoring the point she had made about the housemistress as if he himself suspected the same thing.
‘You can?’ exclaimed Hannah, the relief of having her voice finally heard hitting her like a runaway train. Her shoulders suddenly dropped from their tense, raised position and her chin fell to her chest, as if she had lost all muscular control in her neck.
‘I have been emotionally abused by this man!’ she sobbed uncontrollably. ‘Now at least someone will understand what I’ve been through!’
‘I asked Brunhilde to ring Senna in Germany,’ Adams continued quickly, clearly embarrassed by Hannah’s upset. ‘And she confirmed everything you reported to me at our last meeting. There has been some inappropriate behaviour here and, in fact, on other occasions as well.’
Other occasions as well?
Hannah’s head swooned. Who did it involve? Did she know about them?
Momentarily, everyone in the room fell silent. Hannah began to feel faint and her breathing became shallow as the tears continued to roll down her face. She had not imagined anything at all; her female intuition had not let her down. She wondered whether the ‘other occasions’ referred to Phoebe and Brian Tarten’s daughter, Gail, but she dare not ask Adams to qualify his statement. And was Freda included in the list as well? And now Sissie? And were there even more girls involved than that? And then she remembered how Justin had looked at her own daughter as she moved into the early stages of adolescence at the tender age of eleven. Fleeting though it was, his eyes had settled longer than they should have done on her daughter’s young developing breasts.
Constantly pushing things to the back of her mind, throughout their relationship. What had she been thinking of?
‘Because Sissie is in the middle of her GCSE examinations,’ Adams continued, breaking off Hannah’s train of thoughts, ‘we have to take the welfare of the girl into consideration. I would therefore like to suggest that, given the delicacy of the situation, nothing is to be said to her. Are we all agreed?’
Everyone in the room, except the secretary, nodded their heads in agreement, although Hannah thought it bizarre her own opinion mattered in such an important child protection issue.
‘Thank you,’ Adams said. ‘Is there anything else you wish to say, Hannah?’
‘Yes, there is. I don’t want to be assassinated by Andrew Boye in the same way as he’s done to other members of staff before.’
‘What others?’ he asked, as if he had no idea what she was referring to and was genuinely interested to find out.
‘Well, there was Fraser and Davina Campbell, Gordon Chester and his wife, Penelope, Tom and Amelia, Libby the swimming coach…just to name the ones I know about because they are my friends,’ she listed with ease. She started to sob again. ‘I’m also afraid for Justin!’
‘Why’s that?’
‘I’m afraid he may commit suicide over this. He’s threatened suicide before.’
‘I’m sure Justin won’t do that,’ Adams assured her kindly.
She wiped the tears from her face.
‘Do you need to see a counsellor, Hannah? To talk things over?’
‘No, I don’t need counselling, thank you, Mr Adams. It’s Justin who needs the counselling, not me,’ she replied, indignant he had asked her in the first place.
‘Well, thank you for coming to see me and well done,’ he announced cheerfully, getting up from his chair to open his study door for her. ‘I know it was hard for you to come here and see me.’
‘Yes, it was,’ she agreed.
Once the door to his office closed noiselessly behind her, Hannah walked out of the building into the early evening breeze. Her load was feeling much lighter now that she had dispensed with her duty of reporting her suspicions. But with Sissie’s bizarre personal questions about both Justin and herself and the looks between Justin and Sissie continuing during chapel, Hannah was convinced Justin had been grooming the girl for when she left school, in the same manner as he had done with Freda. It was likely that Sissie’s problems at home had made her more susceptible to Justin’s attentiveness whereas most other fifteen-year old girls would have ignored the advances of a disreputable middle-aged man. With her father soon to go down for several years for fraudulently stashing away millions of pounds of other people’s money, Sissie’s search for a surrogate father figure had indeed gone badly wrong.
But the most bizarre situation Hannah had failed to bring to Adams’s attention that day during their meeting was the one Justin related to her late one evening after supper. It concerned one of their modern language colleagues who had become angry with Sissie over a poor piece of work she had produced.
‘I wanted to tell our colleague exactly what I thought of her when I heard!’ he angrily shouted at a stunned Hannah. ‘But I eventually thought the better of it in case I lost my temper!’
Running to Justin in tears to relate her tale of woe, Sissie had quickly found the sympathy that she craved but Justin’s interest in the girl’s welfare was a little more than would have been expected for his position at the school. It seemed he could not help himself.
It was definitely inappropriate behaviour.

There were several burning questions on Hannah’s turbulent mind that evening.
If Justin had been disciplined with the other bachelors after last summer’s expedition camp as Davina confirmed, then why didn’t Adams interview Senna at the same time, when he knew there was a problem? Could it be that Adams did not know the full extent of the campfire flirtation because Justin had lied about the role he had played in it? Or was Adams even at that point in time trying to cover up the state of affairs as much as he could?
Was it therefore also the case that Brunhilde’s telephone call to Senna in Germany had nothing at all to do with Adams disbelieving Hannah’s word about the incident but more to do with the need to confirm that there was more to Justin’s behaviour than just a silly flirtation across a campfire? Did this therefore mean that Adams was trying to build a watertight dossier of evidence against Justin, especially as he was aware Justin had been sexually abused as a child? But for what purpose? It was not in Adams’s nature to inform the authorities of affairs of this nature, although he was legally bound to do so! Look how he had failed in his duty to inform the authorities about Wally Timpson and Wyatt Lowe!
Whatever the answers to her complex questions, Hannah was convinced that finally, in some way or another, she had played a crucial part.
In forcing Adams’s hand.

After Hannah’s meeting with Adams, Lorna rang her at home. She sounded very concerned.
‘Listen, mate, if you’re back home, I’ll come over and see you. Something important happened earlier on and you’ll need to know about it.’
My God! What now, Hannah thought?
When Lorna arrived, Hannah could see Lorna was visibly shaken about something.
‘I saw Adams deep in conversation with Fat Boye at lunchtime today. Fat Boye was obviously upset about something because his face was visibly pale.’
‘What time was this?’
‘About one-thirty, at the end of lunch.’
‘I saw the two of them together as well, leaning over the railings outside the dining hall, deep in conversation. You’d think if they had anything important to say to each other they would have done it out of view of my kitchen window!’
At the time, Hannah had wondered whether the two men were discussing what she had divulged to Adams earlier on that morning about how Justin, Fat Boye and Flirt were threatening to dish the dirt on her kissing session with Ben. Or was Adams disciplining his wayward housemaster for meddling in Justin’s affairs by discussing Sissie Singer with innocent members of the senior common room? Or was he informing Fat Boye that Justin’s flirtation with Sissie Singer had actually taken place and that Justin was in deep trouble as a result?
‘I tell you what else Adams did,’ Lorna continued, disturbing Hannah’s private thoughts. ‘He pulled Norma out of lunch to have a word with her, in front of everyone. We all knew something serious was up.’
‘What!’ exclaimed Hannah, astounded all this activity and intrigue had been going on around her. ‘How did you know all of this was going on?’
‘I was there, in the dining hall, having lunch.’
‘So what happened next?’
‘I couldn’t see much more after that as Adams and Norma walked up the road together, talking.’
‘I’d love to know what he said to her,’ mused Hannah, although she had a fair idea it probably involved her suggestion that Norma had breached Hannah’s confidentiality concerning her anxiety for Sissie. It seemed Adams was quickly putting two and two together and getting the right answer.
‘But that’s not the end of it,’ continued Lorna.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Well, at about three-fifteen, just before your meeting with the headmaster, I could see Fat Boye sitting down with Norma near the tennis courts, talking.’
‘What? And I suppose they were talking about all of this!’
‘Of course they must have been.’
‘How long were they talking for?’
‘At least twenty minutes.’
‘Did you see all of this from your office window?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’d have thought they would have gone somewhere more private than the tennis courts!’ exclaimed Hannah. ‘They must have wanted you to see them so that you would report back to me. They were both probably checking their stories coincided so that they didn’t get into any deeper shit than they’re in already.’
‘Very probably so.’
So, it seems Norma had fallen for my bait – hook, line and sinker, thought Hannah! And then allowed Fat Boye and his big mouth to let the whole common room know about Justin’s flirtation with Sissie. Her plan had worked!
‘So how did your meeting go with Adams?’
‘As well as a meeting of this nature can go, I suppose. Adams was very supportive, particularly when he confirmed that the flirtation with Sissie had actually happened.’
Hannah was more than a little wary of Lorna’s eagerness to find out what had gone on in her meeting so she kept her account to the barest minimum. It was as if Lorna was afraid something awful would happen.
Not to her friend, Hannah.
But to herself.
After all, Lorna was high on Hannah’s list of suspects as someone who might have had good reason to write the anonymous letter which started this whole crazy business in the first place.
Of trying to get rid of yet another paedophile from Queensford School.

When Hannah turned up for her games commitment a couple of days later, she apologized profusely to her games colleague.
‘I’m sorry I didn’t arrive for games on Tuesday afternoon but I had an important meeting with the headmaster,’ she explained, not intending to give away any other information than was necessary.
‘I know,’ her colleague replied. ‘Norma told me at break time that day.’
‘At break time?’ asked Hannah. Even she didn’t know about her afternoon meeting with the headmaster at that point! ‘So what did Norma say to you?’
‘She said you had to see the headmaster and would probably spend the whole afternoon slagging her off. And then she said she didn’t want me to take sides.’
Hannah just stared. There was no point in putting her games colleague right on the subject as she had no idea what had been going on behind the scenes and Hannah preferred to keep it that way. But now, it was becoming abundantly clear that Adams had confronted Norma about Hannah’s allegation of a breach of confidentiality involving Justin and Sissie and had, in a blind panic, vented her spleen with her games colleague.
How could anyone work with someone like Norma, she thought? Always ready to get the knife in first! There was no doubt Norma Shezakowsky was worried about her behaviour.
Being the dangerous bitch that she was.

To take her mind off recent events, Hannah volunteered to accompany a school trip to France during the summer half term. She had just survived the most stressful week of her whole life and she needed the break, and by the end of the holiday, she was feeling much calmer. She did not relish being controlled by Fat Boye’s gossip and she made a resolution to stay well clear of him. It seemed Justin had not called him an old woman for nothing.
‘He’s not only a gossip and can’t keep a secret,’ he had confided in her, ‘but he’s also boring and only ever wants to talk about rugby.’ But Justin’s objections were just words because he could never resist staying away from the obvious dynamism of the overweight housemaster.
On her return to school after the break, Hannah was feeling more self-confident. She had heard nothing from Adams after their recent meeting and she made the assumption that not only were her accusations against Norma and Fat Boye taken seriously but also she had done the right thing in reporting them.
There was no smoke without fire, she thought.
She was also feeling confident enough to tell Fat Boye what she thought of him, at the first opportunity of seeing the man.
‘I didn’t like what you did to me before half term,’ she declared assertively, referring to his visit to Iain’s flat and the series of events which followed. ‘And I don’t want you to do that to me again.’
Fat Boye glared at her, the big wart on the end of his nose glistening in the sunlight. To him, this was a criticism and he hated it.
‘I’ve talked to two people who say you’ve told them what’s going on,’ he spat back.
‘No, it wasn’t me,’ she replied confidently, covering up for her untruths. She had a right to spill the beans and Justin deserved it anyway.
‘Yes, it was.’
‘No, it wasn’t. Look to your own!’ she said finally, implying his circle of friends had breached the code of silence with their gossiping and backbiting.
But for all her attempts to stick up for herself against what was an injustice, she was the one who had been made to feel at fault, not Justin. After all, it was he who had been having sex or grooming his pupils, not her! His misbehaviour even in those days constituted gross misconduct within the teaching profession, way before child abuse and child protection became such high profile issues just a couple of years later. But here was a man who was, to all intensive purposes, threatening her and covering up for the sexual offences of his friend. Fat Boye knew Justin was in trouble and this was the only way he could protect him: by attacking her.
‘Well, just keep your mouth shut, then,’ he finally relented, pushing past her in the direction of the pub.
To get pissed as usual, she thought, as she watched the bully pass by.
After thinking about their chance conversation, Hannah was in a quandary. Should she report Fat Boye’s comments to Adams or should she drop the matter all together? There was enough to worry about without stirring up any more trouble. When she finally decided to report him, a fortnight had elapsed.
‘What did he mean by ‘Just keep your mouth closed, then’?’ wondered Brunhilde, frowning.
‘I don’t know,’ replied Hannah shaking her head, wondering with dread what else lay undiscovered behind Justin’s devious facade. ‘I just don’t know.’
After recent events, Hannah decided to cut off all contact with Justin, no matter how painful that would be in the short term. The occasional telephone call had already become more strained of late and she was left wondering whether her efforts were worth it, especially as he had begun to talk to her as if she was a complete stranger. But it was the increasing frostiness of his bachelor friends which remained a more painful and immediate reminder of the trouble she was in.
‘Why are they treating me like this, as if I’m the one who sent that letter?’ she complained to Lorna.
‘I know it must be difficult for you, Hannah, but you’ve just got to stick it out and keep out of their way. Justin will be gone from here soon and then things will settle down again.’
But things did not settle down fast enough and she was left with the feeling that colleagues were speculating behind her back about her involvement in sending the anonymous letter and this made her feel very marginalized.
And very unhappy.

‘You look very smart today, Burper,’ Hannah innocently called out to him one day across the senior common room.
‘Going to a funeral?’ piped up somebody else.
‘There’s something going on here,’ she thought instinctively, noticing Burper’s lack of reply or eye contact with those around him as he sifted through the post in his pigeon hole. The bachelors had become particularly cold and off-hand towards everyone of late, not just her, and she had no idea why. Until, that is, she decided to look into Burper’s pigeonhole a few days later.
Keeping ahead of the pack had become a near-obsession.
Picking up an envelope marked ‘private and confidential’, her heart started to quickly pump adrenalin around her body. Almost immediately her vision became tunneled. Would this be the clue as to what was going on? She quickly opened the letter, her hands trembling with fear in case someone came along and discovered her. She began to read the first few words typed on the three-page document. Then, panic gripped her like a vice, making her shake all the more. She bolted to the safety of the female toilet to digest what she had just read. She was now really afraid.
Burper was undergoing an investigation into his sexual relationships.
With female pupils at the school!

She was finding it almost impossible to overcome the shock of her chance find of the letter in Burper’s pigeonhole. The letter itself had consisted of notes taken down by Burper’s union representative, recording Burper’s short, sometime monosyllabic responses to Adams’s questions concerning his drinking and inappropriate relationships with his female pupils.
And Burper had simply denied everything.
The liar, she thought! The liar!
What about his text messaging to one of the year 11 girls? Many of the pupils in her year group knew it was going on and even openly discussed it in class, within earshot of their teachers! Brandy was her name, wasn’t it? And what about the rumours of his relationship with Germaine? When she was in Year 11?
If Burper was being investigated, she wondered whether the police were trawling through the rest of the bachelors, one by one, interviewing them and taking notes. On quiet reflection, she had no idea then that criticisms of police record-keeping in child sex abuse allegations would become the focus of the famous Bichard Enquiry just a couple of years later but as far as she was concerned at that point in time, she expected police records of their investigations would be kept safe, for ever.
Deeply immersed in the subterranean world of spying on her enemies, Hannah thereafter recognized an urgent requirement to keep Burper’s dreadful secret to herself and to avoid divulging her meddlesome action in opening his mail to anyone.
Not even to her closest friends and family.

‘You caused so much upset to such a lot of people,’ she accused him, referring to his affair with Phoebe after she rang him at home, again. All she really wanted was for him to admit his misdemeanours, time and time again.
‘I know I have and I’m sorry for that. I’ve only done that sort of thing once, never before and never since.’
He was in one of those moods when he would admit anything and everything but Hannah disbelieved his reassurances about Phoebe. She had a feeling he must have been well practiced in the art of abusing young girls in his care.
‘I haven’t told Fat Boye yet that I won’t be staying at his flat anymore. I’m going to make my social life in my village or even somewhere else.’
He had thought hard about his predicament and his decision to socialize elsewhere was a subconscious admission of his guilt: he was running away. He also realised that to recover from the effects of Fat Boye’s gossip and to stem any future continuance, he would urgently need to get away from the housemaster’s negative influence.
So where are you going to socialize, she thought? You certainly don’t have many friends or even make them easily! But when she realized he was just being contentious and self-possessed, she resisted the temptation on this occasion to put in a few deep-rooted hurts of her own.
That weekend, Tom and Amelia suggested they go out for a meal.
‘Come on,’ said Amelia, cheerfully. ‘Let’s go and have some fun but we’ll go somewhere where there’ll be nobody from school.’
‘Sounds great,’ agreed Hannah. They all deserved a break in one way or another.
‘Oh, look,’ exclaimed Amelia, when they were settled in a small bar tucked away in a quiet side street in the middle of town. ‘There’s Keely James.’
‘Ah, yes,’ replied Hannah, with interest. ‘She’s looking well. She’s seen us, she’s coming over.’
Keely was a talented ex-pupil studying physics at university and, like many other pupils at the school, knew what was going on in any situation well before any of the staff ever found out. Hannah took the opportunity to do some fishing about Justin and to spread around the rumour of his resignation.
‘Have you heard that Justin Rupert has been forced to leave Queensford?’ Amelia asked Keely, taking the burden of asking away from Hannah.
‘I’m not surprised!’ Keely replied, immediately.
‘So why do you think he’s been sacked, then?’ asked Hannah, sensing the ‘I’ve already heard’ tone in her voice.
‘Sixth formers?’ came the all-knowing reply.
Amelia and Hannah looked at each other and grinned.
‘Justin Rupert always was a main player,’ Keely freely revealed.
It seemed the man Hannah had been going out with on an on-and-off basis for the last few years had gained quite a reputation.
Amongst the pupils of Queensford School.

‘Did you hear about Justin Rupert at PJ’s nightclub last Friday night?’ asked Janice one lunch time in the school dining hall. ‘He had three bottles of lager between his fingers, sipping from each one in turn, staggering all over the place, absolutely wasted out of his tree! All his mates were buying him drinks. I felt a little sorry for him, actually.’
Janice had been one of Hannah’s friends for a long time and although she knew little of her relationship with Justin, she sensed Hannah would have wanted to know what he was up to now he was away from her careful eye. Hannah looked up from her food, her stomach churning at the thought of Justin drowning his sorrows in alcohol.
”Got enough to drink then, have you?’ I asked him and he gave me one of his grim smiles,’ continued Janice. ‘Apparently, he’d gone there with the bachelors so they could cheer him up.’
His support network, thought Hannah, and one of the reasons why the bad behaviour at the school continued to thrive: all of the bachelors together, without a single idea of decent behaviour amongst them. Whilst she finished the remains of her lunch, she remembered how Justin had also been seen at the other local nightclub in the town, the one where over the years many a sexual encounter had taken place between the bachelors and their female pupils from Queensford School.
God help the woman who picks up with that, she thought sadly of her ex-partner.

A telephone call: from her classroom, to his office. Her frustration at his cool, arrogant strutting around the place had started to boil over.
‘You’ll be remembered like Wally Timpson!’ she ranted down the telephone at his refusal to speak to her. ‘And don’t you forget it!’
She slammed down the telephone in response to his defiant silence.
And I’m going to be the one who’s going to do it, she vowed.
‘I know I was subtly warned, by lots of people,’ she said one day to Brunhilde in one of their brief chats, which kept Hannah sane. ‘But it’s only now that I understand why they had to be careful in what they told me about him.’
Otherwise, Justin or one of his cronies would have challenged her colleagues had anything they said crept out. Justin could be pretty nasty when riled, and so could his friends, particularly Fat Boye.
It seemed that Queensford, like any other boarding school, was a gossip’s paradise where nothing stayed secret for long and where the adage ‘the mat sat on the cat’ ruled the day.
Every day.

Walking around the school, his head held high as if life was going on as normal fascinated Hannah. He appeared so strong, although everything around him was falling apart in a tissue of lies. And one of his biggest was the way he misled his choir in the town.
Oh, Justin! I loved you so much and look at you now. You are so pathetic, she thought, when she heard.
That summer, he told them, he was going to make a special CD of their singing instead of holding their usual annual concert; it would be something different for them to do, he convinced them. So his choir rehearsed and rehearsed for their CD recording, copies were sold to families and friends, and everyone was seemingly happy, despite the choir members secretly thinking it was a poor substitute for the real thing.
But it was all a lie, a thinly veiled reluctance to stand up in front of a concert audience – in case anyone had discovered what he had been up to.
At Queensford School.
With the girls.

And then she wondered whether the CD was his way of leaving his choir with a cherished memory, upon his resignation, of a conductor to be eulogized forever, in song; so that even after word eventually seeped out why he had lost his teaching job, his choir would remember him in a melancholic, fond light.
‘I would love to know what’s going on inside his head’ Hannah said one day after lunch, thinking of the CD scam.
‘No you wouldn’t,’ insisted Lorna, as they both watched him saunter past the large picture window which stretched the full length of the side of the dining hall.
‘But I’m going to miss him,’ Hannah said wistfully.
‘No, you are not,’ Lorna stated firmly, looking directly at Hannah.
‘He was a bastard! And don’t you ever forget it!’

Gordon Chester must have felt the time was the right to fill Hannah in on some of Queensford’s sordid history, as if it had gained significance given Justin’s recent precarious predicament.
‘You know there’s a history of paedophiles at Queensford School, don’t you?’ he asked brazenly, once they’d stopped to talk on Middle Lawn one sunny summer’s morning. The school always did look beautiful on such a day.
‘Well, I remember something being mentioned in the past but I can’t recall the exact details of the people involved,’ she replied, desperate to hear the details once again so that she could log them in her brain, forever.
‘Have you heard of the name Nicholas Bandit?’
‘Yes, vaguely.’
‘Well, he was at the school before Justin arrived. In fact, Justin was his replacement. Nicholas was a very good-looking and talented musician and none of us ever thought he liked boys because the girls used to constantly throw themselves at him. Well, it transpired Nicholas was inviting young boys into his school flat of an evening on the premise of helping them with their work and then, having plied them with alcohol, had his evil way with them.’
‘My goodness! That’s awful! And he got away with it?’
‘For a few years, yes. It seemed the boys who were involved were quite happy to go along with the arrangement until something else happened which resulted in him being found him out.’
‘And what was that?’
‘Well, at the time, we had a chaplain known as Reverend Tinker. He seemed a nice enough chap but it wasn’t until he got reported by an ex-pupil that we realized something was very wrong.’
‘What do you mean he got reported?’
‘Well, the Reverend told this ex-pupil that he used to fancy him whilst he was at school, probably hoping the two of them could get together once the boy had left. The next thing the Reverend knew he was disciplined by the headmaster and given the push but not until he’d revealed he wasn’t the only one with an interest in boys: Nicholas Bandit was doing the same thing as well. So eventually, Nicholas found himself doing time inside for paedophilia as a result of the Reverend spilling the beans.’
‘And so now we have the situation with Justin?’
‘Yes.’
‘Messing around with girls rather than boys?’
‘Yes.’
So, were those who had been at the school for a long time and had witnessed these sorts of events before also viewing Justin as a paedophile? With her friends expressing the same sort of sentiment in line with her own growing fears, Gordon’s message was abundantly clear.
Stay away from Justin. In case he does time.

‘Is it possible to have a private word with you about something very confidential?’ asked Hannah.
‘Yes, of course,’ replied Queensford’s head of information technology, taking her into one of the computer rooms in the senior common room. As chief of the Internet police, he carried out his duties and responsibilities de rigueur.
‘It’s about Justin Rupert. You know he’s in trouble, don’t you?’
The man nodded, without saying a word.
‘Well, I would never have reported this but I’m off-loading everything I know because I don’t want to be blamed later on for not having said anything.’
She paused before she went on. It all seemed so false, against her true self, to be here, doing what she was doing: spilling the beans. On someone she used to love, passionately. Someone she was still having a relationship with, in some sort of perverted way, albeit in this fashion: as whistle-blower.
‘I’ve seen evidence that Justin was looking at porn on the Internet whilst he was in work, in his office more than likely, or even in Boris Arnold’s office next door.’ She explained how she had found the picture of the young girl in the tartan mini-skirt at Justin’s cottage. ‘You may need to put a search on his computer.’
‘I’ll check it out. The computers in the music department are due for a service anyway, so it’ll be a good excuse to have a look.’
Rumour had it, the man had originally found it hard to believe the stories about Justin’s misdemeanours with female pupils at the school but now he seemed more than willing to accept Hannah’s motives for splitting on her ex-lover, without question.
‘Thanks for your understanding and please keep this confidential,’ she said unsmilingly, thinking of the recent stressful events that had enveloped her life. ‘I don’t want it spread around that I’ve reported this.’
After parting to go to their separate lessons, Hannah was left with a distinct impression about her colleague.
That he already knew of the extent of Justin surfing the Internet.

Apart from the Justin Rupert scandal rocking all quarters of school life, there were other issues which became the signature of Adams’s headship in those days. Many a boat had been rocked unnecessarily since his arrival and consequently many of his staff found it almost impossible to respect him, either as a professional or as a person.
Ever since Fraser Campbell had been forced to leave his housemaster’s post at the school, his secondary role as chemistry teacher had been difficult to fill. With a national shortage of chemists, Adams had relied on a recommendation here and a recommendation there to fill the position but with little success. Having employed and then sacked one unsuitable replacement, Adams finally settled on a recommendation from Maggie, Hannah’s friend, although if the truth be known Maggie would have died rather than introduce Pinky Potter to the science department at Queensford School.
The controversy surrounding Pinky Potter, a single, ageing chemistry teacher of little repute, was no different in its outcome to any other appointment Adams made: grief for the teacher concerned and unending gossip in its wake. Hannah had heard from Lorna that something was amiss ever since Pinky had arrived, causing more than a few waves in the chemistry department where he clashed with colleagues over his bizarre and unreasonable demands. As his obvious gay nature came to light, so did his friendship with Gustav, a young German teaching assistant who had arrived at the school as Senna’s replacement at the same time as Pinky. Strangely enough, it had been a refreshing change to have a male German assistant after the long succession of female ones, who no matter what their looks, had managed to get sexually embroiled with one or another of the bachelors at the school, including Justin.
‘Did you have a good half term, Pinky?’ Hannah asked politely, whilst they stood talking in the science prep room together one day.
‘Yes, thank you, we did.’
Hannah noted the use of the word ‘we’. Maybe he had gone on holiday with a friend or even his mother with whom he still lived.
‘Did you go anywhere nice?’ she continued innocently, as Lorna carried on with some paperwork at her desk. She was always disinterested in what Pinky had to say for himself.
‘Yes, Gustav and I went to Switzerland for a few days and we stayed in a fabulous room in a 5-star hotel together. It was all very romantic.’
Pinky’s poppy eyes swooned in their sockets as he thought back to his recent holiday. Hannah could not help but look sideways at Lorna to check her reaction. Initially, few people seemed to take any notice of the eccentric chemistry teacher whilst he sat side-by-side with the German assistant at lunchtime or in the common room. But, as with all controversial situations involving staff, the pupils were the first to be aware something was going on. So when their speculative comments and questions began to increase, it was only a question of time before everyone realised there was more than just a little frisson going on between the two men.
‘So are things as bad as you make out, then?’ Hannah asked Lorna one morning just before Pinky arrived for work. Rutherford answered for her. As Pinky’s colleague in the chemistry department, the situation was getting him down.
‘He’s doing my head in! See his gown on that peg?’ he asked, pointing to Pinky’s black undergraduate academic gown hanging on a coat hook by the door. ‘Well, every time he passes by, he rubs his hand down it, for some bizarre reason!’
Hannah laughed.
‘Don’t laugh!’ said Rutherford, seriously. ‘It’s not funny! And see that coat hook next to it? He hangs his umbrella there and whenever he passes by, guess what?’
‘What?’ laughed Hannah, half expecting the reply.
‘He rubs his hand down it!’ exclaimed Lorna and Rutherford in unison, both demonstrating the bizarre behaviour of their colleague by rubbing their hands down Pinky’s academic gown.
Hannah instantly clocked Pinky’s obsessive-compulsive behavior. Suddenly, Lorna looked at her wrist watch.
‘Ah, it’s time for him to arrive,’ she announced in a military manner. ‘Come over here and take a look at this.’
True to her word, Pinky was just arriving in his car as Lorna drew Hannah to the window overlooking the car park.
‘I know every single one of his movements,’ she declared impressively, peering through the window to watch Pinky climb out from his car.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Just watch this. Right, when he’s out of the car, he’ll lock it and then go around to the other side to check the passenger door, and then he’ll return to the driver’s door and check it again to see if it’s locked. Just watch.’
Hannah watched in amazement whilst Pinky carried out every one of the things Lorna had described and before he had finished Lorna’s list, she continued to describe what he would do next.
‘Now, he’ll flick the car aerial…’
Hannah let out a muffled giggle as she watched Pinky flick the car aerial.
‘And now, it’ll take him exactly 20 seconds to come up the stairs,’ she said, starting to count on her watch. ‘And then he’ll say ‘Good morning, everyone!’ but to no one in particular…’
‘Good morning, everyone!’ called Pinky to no one in particular as he came in through the prep room door, quickly disappearing out of earshot into his laboratory.
‘And then he’ll burst back in through the prep room door once again, place his umbrella, which he carries even when it’s not raining, on the coat hook next to his gown, rub his hand down his gown and his umbrella, and then disappear back into his classroom!’
When Pinky had carried out every single thing Lorna had described, Hannah was appalled. It was clear Pinky’s clockwork movements had got right under his colleagues’ skin, enough for them to spend their precious time mapping out every single one of his obsessive moves. Rutherford had even made it into some sort of sport, checking the sequence of his movements on a daily basis to ensure they had not changed. For one reason or another, an obsessive-compulsive of this severity would never survive long at Queensford and whilst the three of them continued to spy on their outlandish colleague, Pinky’s daily routine continued in his classroom. With his back to his smirking colleagues, Pinky commenced to walk back and fore between several neat piles of his pupils’ exercise books.
Touching and checking.
Touching and checking.
In sequence, time and time again.
Touching and checking the piles of books, oblivious to all around him.
He never opened the books to look at them, not once. Neither did he intend to mark them.
Just touching and checking.
Touching and checking.
Though Hannah was stifling her glee at such an entertaining spectacle, she nevertheless recognized the man was quite ill and in need of some help.
‘My God!’ she exclaimed, once she had seen enough. ‘Does Adams know about all of this?’
‘Well, I’ve been to tell him I can’t work with him anymore. In fact, I was so upset by the whole affair I was in tears in front of him,’ admitted Rutherford.
‘So what’s going to happen now?’
‘We’re not sure yet, but we’re hoping he may be got rid of,’ admitted Lorna, crossing the index and middle fingers on her right hand in the air.
Within a short space of time, the news accidentally slipped out via Adams’s secretary that Pinky Potter was in fact to leave: he had been sacked. No one dared breathe a word of the scandal in open forum: that was left to small friendship circles because no one could trust anyone since Adams’s arrival at the school. With little warning or discussion as to how he could improve or make amends for his misdeeds, Pinky had been treated with the same heartless sweep of Adams’s pen and look of disdain as others before him. Adams was indeed a heartless bastard and the episode yet another sad reflection of his inability to grasp and understand the very basics of the delicate human condition.
Pinky’s affair with Gustav didn’t last very long after his sacking, although Gustav kindly stuck up for his friend when the news broke he was leaving. He also never made it to the end of the academic year, rumour having it that he managed to get another teaching job, nobody knew where, by calling in some favour or another from an old friend. With the hope that Pinky would learn something from his experience and that Gustav was returning to Germany to continue with his university degree, yet another of the sexual controversies at Queensford School was at an end.
For the time being at least, thought Hannah.

‘May I please have a word with you in private?’
‘Yes, sure,’ Vamona replied, all sweetness and light.
‘Look, Vamona,’ Hannah began once the two colleagues had reached the solitude of the female toilet in the common room. Vamona’s continuing negative body language towards Hannah was getting under her skin. ‘This business with Justin has made me feel quite marginalized. I didn’t write that anonymous letter and I’m not going to be treated as if I did any more. Of all the people in the common room who’s been through a similar experience, I would have thought you’d have more understanding of my position more than anyone.’
Vamona looked silently at Hannah with feigned innocence. Inside, she was trying frantically to come to terms with the alarming fact that her colleagues had known of her secret affair with Lionel all along.
‘Justin said you didn’t write the letter and I believe him,’ she replied, calmly.
We’ll see, thought Hannah.

The last staff meeting of the academic year was held in the splendour of the old library a week before the end of term and Hannah was painfully aware it would be Justin’s last. Vamona and Danny were also leaving, much to the relief of many, particularly Brunhilde who smiled with glee at the prospect of saying goodbye to the two-faced Vamona.
When the time came for Adams to bid goodbye to Justin at the end of the meeting, the gift he was to receive from the common room was only ever going to represent a sad and paltry reminder of his eleven years at the school. His humiliation was now complete. Although there was genuine applause for him and he appeared to have got through the experience without emotionally breaking down, many of the staff present privately knew there was only one way forward for him.
Out through the front door, forever.

‘So did you find anything on Justin Rupert’s computer? Hannah asked the head of information technology, keeping a holier-than-thou flavour to her question. She was dying to know.
‘There were no fingerprints, if that’s what you mean. Anyway, he’s leaving the school at the end of term, but thanks for letting me know.’
That smacks of ‘we found something but we’re not going to make an issue of it’, mused Hannah intuitively.
She would have loved to have seen Justin roasted for that indiscretion as well.
Shame, she thought, in one of her hate-filled moments for him.

The sixth form leavers that summer excelled themselves in the inventiveness of their traditional end of year prank. In the past, they had dug up trees, running lanes and trenches on the sports field, painted the chapel pillars a bright red, and even driven a mini car up the steps and into the chapel to park it between the aisles of chairs. On another occasion, the chapel had been filled with dozens of happy, clucking chickens whilst many others were left outside to merrily peck away at a generous mound of corn seeds widely scattered across Middle Lawn. Despite several appeals to pupils to claim back the chickens or to staff to adopt them, Adams was compelled to look after the abandoned animals in the confines of the large garden of his school-owned house for several months after the incident, until a more suitable and deserving home could be found for them.
Any leavers’ prank was always a closely guarded secret, even from other pupils at the school and it was no surprise that summer when the chapel once again was chosen as the focus of their eagerly-awaited misbehaviour.
When Hannah reached the confines of the chapel for the usual morning assembly, an empty shell unexpectedly greeted her eyes. Her immediate thought was that the chapel had been cleared for some sort of gathering or party but then she reasoned that in her role of housemistress that someone would have informed her that the chapel was out of bounds that morning.
‘What’s happened to the chairs in the chapel?’ she asked a fellow housemaster, descending the chapel steps to meet him.
‘I’ve no idea!’ he replied, frowning.
‘My goodness!’ she exclaimed, as the two colleagues rounded the corner of the chapel in their search for the pupils who they knew had gone ahead of them to assembly. ‘Look what’s happened!’
They were greeted with the most pleasant of sights. During the dead of night, the leavers had removed every single chair, the altar, the piano and other such chapel trappings to reconstruct an exact replica of the chapel in the glorious setting of Middle Lawn. With the early morning sun streaming down on them, pupils and staff took up their normal places with smiles on their faces, just as if they were inside. All of a sudden, everyone went silent and Adams appeared, walking purposefully through the two aisles of chairs to assume his position at the front of the assembled school. His face was like thunder: he did not appreciate the stunt at all! To him, it was a blatant affront to his authority. But when the piano struck up the chords for the daily hymn, smirks broke out onto everyone’s faces: Adams was still growling at the whole school.
No one dared to imagine his response had it been raining that day!
The night before the very last day of term, Hannah rang Justin at home. She could not let him leave without seeing him for one last time.
‘Come and have coffee with me so I can say goodbye to you and wish you good luck,’ she suggested, gently.
‘I’d like that,’ he replied, offering no resistance at all to her suggestion.
‘I’ll leave the sitting room door open as usual.’
‘OK. What time?’
‘About 11 o’clock, just before final assembly?’
When he arrived via the old route, through the back door into her sitting room, they immediately hugged, no attempt being made by either of them to disguise the fact to the outside world they were meeting.
My God, she thought, he feels so thin! His wrists were skeletal.
‘How are you?’ she asked, lovingly.
‘Not very well.’
‘Have you been eating?’
‘Not much,’ came his pathetic reply.
Their conversation began as usual on neutral ground, relaying what each had got up to in the intervening time between their infrequent meetings.
‘I arranged a quiz and a party at home over half term,’ he boasted, trying to gain her attention once they had warmed to each other. ‘There were at least a hundred people there.’
Hannah frowned. He’s trying to make me jealous again, she thought. He never made an effort to entertain at home apart from his party when I was in Amsterdam. He wants me to feel as if I’m missing out on something but I’m not going to take the bait.
‘And I haven’t been with anybody since you,’ he suddenly confessed, catching Hannah off-guard.
‘What? Not even with Phoebe?’
‘No. You know my feelings about her and why we split up last year.’
He looked at her for a few moments before continuing.
‘At least life was interesting when we were together.’
He was being melancholic about their relationship, already.
Well, it’s too late now, she thought resolutely, pushing back the lyrics of Cher’s ‘If I could turn back time’ from her mind. She had played the song often during her own times of melancholy when they were together as a warring couple.
‘Are you going to Speech Day tomorrow?’
‘No, I’m not, because of the circumstances.’
‘I’m sure no one will hold it against you if you do turn up. Why don’t you come?’
‘I can’t. I’ve already told Gordon Chester I won’t be going and he said Adams would understand.’
He looked at his watch.
‘I’ve got to go now. It’s time for the final assembly.’
‘Ok. I’m going as well. Well, thank you for the good times we had together,’ she said, finally. ‘When I hear classical music, I will always think of you.’
He smiled. And as they hugged, they gave each other a kiss on the lips. Hannah wanted more but she knew it would only bring more upset and heartache. She choked back her emotion, remembering some of the lyrics from Cold Play’s ‘Scientist’.
‘Oh, take me back to the start.’
‘Please don’t stay behind at the end of assembly to listen to me play, will you?’
‘OK, if that’s what you want.’
‘There’s no point. I don’t even know what I’m going to play because I’ve packed all of my music.’
They both looked lovingly at each other, holding each other tightly.
‘Good luck with your cycling trip across America. I hope it all goes well for you.’
‘Thank you.’
‘I loved you so much,’ she said gently, meaning what she said.
‘So did I,’ he replied, with a hint of regret. He smiled his old smile.
‘But not enough, Justin. You always gave the impression you just didn’t care.’
And that was her last word.
And his irrevocable downfall.

Final assembly in the chapel was only ever going to be an emotional one and Hannah knew she would have to be particularly strong, both in front of her friends who knew and understood her, and her enemies who did not know her at all. They would never in a million years accept or understand what she had been through for the love of her man. As usual, Adams began his assembly by bidding a farewell to those staff leaving the school but when he got to Justin, his glowing words came as a shock to those who had been party to the events of the last few months.
Eulogizing at length his achievements at the school.
For the sake of face.
For the sake of the school.
For the sake of Adam’s career.
Hannah had expected something to be said about Justin’s work at the school but she did not expect this.
But it’s the order of things, an inner voice was telling her.
Of how controversies in public schools are dealt with.
In England’s green and pleasant land.
In the land of freedom and justice.
And cover-ups.
With assembly over, Justin struck up the chords to his final organ piece whilst pupils and staff began to leave the chapel in house order. Initially, Hannah failed to notice anything unusual as she walked down the aisle behind the members of her house towards the exit at the back of the chapel until she became aware that several houses had remained behind in their seats. She could not understand what was going on. Did they have a meeting?
When she got outside and saw Lorna, she smiled. She had managed to get through Justin’s last assembly without breaking down but as she walked down the steps of the chapel feeling more than relieved it was all over, the houses inside started to clap. Hannah looked quickly at Lorna.
‘My God, Lorna! Look what’s happening! All of his friends! They’ve stayed behind to listen to him play!’
Lorna instinctively knew, like Hannah, it had all been carefully staged.
For Justin.
Grunt, Flirt and Burper were all there. So were Ewan Hogg, Norma Shezakowsky and Fat Boye.
All of his disaffected cronies. And The Games Group.
And all of the pupils from Fat Boye’s house, Hogg’s house, and Norma’s house, all rigid in their seats, looking forward, totally silent, out of respect, listening to the organ playing, and its player.
The Main Player.
Immediately, Hannah felt sad: she had once been such a part of his life and now she was nothing to him at all. Iain was waiting outside the chapel with everyone else, red-faced as ever from his excessive consumption of wine the previous night.
‘They must have instructed the kids to keep it an absolute secret because the kids from my house knew nothing about it at all!’ he said, realizing he never did quite fit in with Justin’s circle of friends.
‘I’ve got to go back inside!’ Hannah suddenly exclaimed fumbling with the camera she had used to capture the moments when the boys from her house received their school awards. ‘I’ve got to take some photographs!’
‘Don’t you dare!’ hissed Natasha Hudson directly behind her, when she saw Hannah getting upset. Even though Natasha knew very little of Hannah’s relationship with Justin, her female intuition told her Justin was not a man to lose anything else over, particularly one’s dignity. With a husband who often drank with Justin against her personal wishes, she knew more than enough of Justin’s drunken escapades.
‘Don’t you dare take any photographs!’
‘But I’ve got to, Natasha!’ Hannah replied frantically, pushing past Natasha to go back into the chapel. ‘He’s leaving and I’ll never see him again!’
‘Well, if you’re going back in then I’m coming in with you,’ insisted Lorna, with the intention of protecting Hannah rather than for any other reason. When they took up their seats once again at the back of the chapel, Hannah noticed Adams unashamedly sitting a few rows in front of them.
How two-faced can you get, she thought?
But it became obvious from Adams’s seating position and body language that he too had been kept in the dark of the impromptu concert and, to save face on his way out through the chapel at the end of his assembly, had chosen to sit at the back and listen to the music with everyone else. Even he, as headmaster, had been shown a distinct lack of respect by the members of his own staff who had orchestrated the moment.
A conspiracy! Between housemasters! And all for a man who had disgraced himself!
As the music continued, with one ovation after another, the emotion of the moment proved too much for Hannah to control.
‘Don’t you dare!’ Lorna hissed, when she noticed the tears well up in Hannah’s eyes. Hannah nodded. She would try and hold it in.
When the last piece of music had been played, the audience clapped and rose to their feet. Justin looked at her and smiled through the cacophony of sound on his exit from the chapel. She realized then he knew this was going to happen and that he had tried to warn her against staying. Returning his smile, she knew he had only wanted one thing.
To protect her.

At Speech Day the following day, Adams continued his eulogy of Justin in front of hundreds of parents, innocently unaware of the nature of his enforced resignation. The fact Adams was overtly proactive in papering over the bad behaviour of his male staff made Hannah sick to the bottom of her stomach.
All for the sake of marketing, she thought.
Plain and simple spin.
Invented and perfected by men.
To protect themselves.
There were even glowing comments written about him in a few of the house newsletters which were sent out to parents at the end of that summer term. Fat Boye’s, of course, was the most inappropriately gushing.
Earlier that morning, Hannah had been making some last minute catering arrangements to entertain the parents and boys in her house before speeches, when she noticed Phoebe talking to Fat Boye, outside the dining hall. Though their controversial sexual encounters with the same man could have pushed them apart, Hannah felt no ill against Phoebe but as she looked over towards the young blond to acknowledge her, Hannah realized Phoebe did not intend to return the compliment at all. Her overly excited and animated body language betrayed something was up.
Very early the following morning, after the school had broken up for the long summer break, Fat Boye and Justin left for their cycle tour of America but it wasn’t until a few days had passed did Hannah discover a familiar-looking car parked outside Fat Boye’s flat. When the car remained there parked in its spot, day after day, week after week, it suddenly dawned on her what was happening: the car belonged to Phoebe and her excitement on Speech Day had been intended to rub salt into Hannah’s wounds.
Justin and Fat Boye must have taken her with them! To America!