Don’t get fooled again

Early evening drinks for Queensford’s junior school parents at the end of the summer term was a good opportunity for Hannah to see some of the work her two children had been producing that academic year. Alistair and Charlotte had settled quite well into their new school, both academically and socially, but as a parent teacher Hannah knew only too well the unprofessional mayhem which went on behind the scenes amongst the junior school teaching staff.
Second only in the chain of command to Terry Adams, the junior school’s headmaster was a short, rotund, rugby-loving northerner called Mr. Smallboy. Within just months of his appointment at Queensford, he became notorious for conducting important managerial affairs down The Carpenter’s Arms late of an evening, over several congenial pints of beer with his senior management team and other interested hangers-on. Unsurprisingly, as time went by, Smallboy’s handling of everyday situations involving the pupils in his care became worryingly suspect, particularly when he began to issue completely inappropriate and severe punishments to pupils for the pettiest of schoolyard and classroom crimes. With his unorthodox managerial skills, abrupt northern manner, and an ability to turn a blind eye to the bullying nature of some of his own male teaching staff, it came as no surprise to several parents when problems with adult bullying spilled out into the pupil population, particularly amongst the young boys at the school. With name-calling, racist comments and physical violence already commonplace events in the schoolyard, alarm bells started to ring when such behaviour went unnoticed in the classroom, behind teachers’ backs. The pre-adolescent, yellow-livered bully would time his physical blow or viperous comment to perfection so that the victim’s defensive retaliation would make him appear to be the perpetrator of the heinous crime. When finally apprehended and questioned about his behaviour, the bully would then cowardly, yet confidently, deny all knowledge of his indiscriminate behavior. With overly-rich and aggressively-demanding parents, it was to be expected that the boy would be well-versed in the ways and habits of a bully. Summonsed by Smallboy to account for their son’s behaviour, the parents would then succeed in bullying the man into believing their son was only but an innocent by-stander in the whole affair, with the result of an undeserved punishment for the victim and the lightest of reprieves for the bully. Rough justice and favouritism were the abiding laws of Queensford’s junior school. And everyone knew it.
Working relationships amongst the junior school teaching staff were not what one would have expected for such a high-profile school in the independent sector. Their penchant for developing sexual relationships with each other was infamous, married or otherwise, and this situation quite often incensed the fee-paying parents who, quite rightly, expected a little more professional decorum for their hard-earned money. With jealous and resentful tensions sometimes erupting into angry, verbally violent public exchanges between certain key members of the middle and senior management, Hannah ensured she kept a professional distance from them all, both as a mother and as a teacher in the senior section of the school.
Bernie Miles was one of Alistair’s teachers and, as a single and highly-opinionated man in his forties, was disliked and feared by all of the junior school pupils, especially the boys.
‘Your son causes a lot of problems in class,’ he curtly pointed out to Hannah that evening, as he approached her with a glass of wine in his hand. Immediately, she was lost for words. If anything had been amiss with her son’s behaviour she would have expected either his form teacher or housemaster to contact her to discuss the issue, but she had not heard a thing. Unlike many parents who packed their children off to boarding school, Hannah knew and understood her son only too well and although he could be difficult at times, she knew something would have triggered one of Alistair’s teachers to point out his failings.
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she faltered, looking directly at Justin for support whilst he stood by her side, motionless and silent.
‘Just exactly what I say. Your son is causing a lot of problems in class.’
With resentment quickly building inside, Hannah struggled to make any sensible reply to Bernie’s perplexing comments. All she wanted to do was to confront the man with the multitude of rumours which ran wild around the school of how he verbally abused his young, male pupils, making their lives a misery with his petty expectations, rules and punishments. But she bit her tongue.
When she brought the topic up later that evening at home, her main concern was Justin’s lack of support during Bernie’s verbal attack on her eleven-year old son.
‘It was nothing to do with me!’ he screamed uncontrollably, as if something had snapped inside. ‘He’s your son, not mine! What did you expect from me?’
‘Calm down, will you?’ she replied as her body recoiled in horror at the violent suddenness of his response. ‘I only wanted some support against that nasty man, that’s all! I thought you might have said something in Alistair’s defense. After all, Bernie’s got the reputation of being a bully, not Alistair. I don’t think I was asking for much from you.’
For quite some time now, she had been consciously ignoring the alarm bells about Justin’s behaviour on several fronts and this occasion would be no exception. It was true her emotional embroilment with the man was preventing her from rejecting him outright and she would have admitted to anyone she was living on the hope he would learn to change his unrefined ways without her intervention.
Bernie Miles finally left Queensford School at the end of the following academic year to take up the position of headmaster at a small preparatory school for boys. Although such a prominent elevation of Bernie’s professional status came as a complete surprise to his colleagues, everyone nonetheless wished him well in his new and exciting venture. There were, however, some unspoken reservations as people read his new address, which Bernie had optimistically posted on the staff notice board to encourage his old colleagues to write to him. No one had expected the Asian sub-continent. When he unexpectedly returned to England after just a short period of time in the searing heat of his new Asian home, Hannah was not surprised his daring undertaking had ended in failure.
‘So why did Bernie come back to England, then?’ she pointedly asked one of her more sociable junior school colleagues, mindful of the difficulties Bernie would have had in managing a school for the first time in his teaching career.
‘Because of boys,’ her all-knowing male colleague replied, the corners of his mouth turned downwards.
‘What do you mean ‘because of boys’? At the school?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, reticently.
‘Oh!’ she replied. There was no doubt what her colleague was implying. The rumours about Bernie over the years were turning out be true.
About his weakness for young boys.

The Leavers’ Ball at the end of the summer term was organized yet again at another magnificent country estate in the area and although the school had been permanently banned from the venue, Fat Boye had managed to persuade the owners to let it out on the premise that the leavers’ outrageous behaviour from previous years would not reoccur. It was a very familiar story.
When they returned to Hannah’s place that night, after a drink-fuelled evening of sharing memories with their sixth form pupils before they embarked on the rest of their future lives, the two lovers found themselves in the kitchen, embracing passionately. Justin carefully lifted up her dress to reveal her black stockings and suspenders, the ones she always wore for him.
‘Turn around,’ he ordered gently, forcing her to face the sink as he held her from behind. ‘Now bend over.’
Any passer-by on the embankment at the back of her garden would have had a ringside view of Justin as he slowly and gently entered her from behind.
‘Marry me,’ he demanded softly as the ardent moment melted his heart and obliterated his mind. ‘Let’s just do it.’
There was no doubt at this moment in time she was riding high on his emotional rollercoaster, the one which was stealthily taking her to the extremes of human feelings. In her innocence, she smiled at his weakness; it seemed to her she was the one still controlling the shots.
And so she ignored his third proposal of marriage. To keep his interest.

Once the summer term had finally ended, Justin disappeared off on his annual school trip to the cultural high spots of Europe with the classics department. The fact that he rang Hannah from all over Europe made her feel good inside, to know he had gone to so much trouble to contact her.
‘I can’t wait to see you,’ he admitted, telephoning her on the very last day of the trip. ‘Can I come over tonight when I get back?’
‘Yes, of course you can. Where are you ringing from?’
‘We’re just coming up to the Channel Tunnel. We should back early evening, about 6 o’clock.’
‘OK. It’ll be good to see you.’
‘And you,’ he replied, sincerely.
The pupils’ version of the holiday in the school magazine had it that he drove the minibus like a crazed madman, and little did the readers realise that in his desperation to get back to her for the promise of fervent sex he had jeopardized the safety of his young, unsuspecting charges. When he arrived bronzed and relaxed at her front door, she realised how much she had missed him.
‘How was the trip?’
‘Fantastic! We even made it to Rome this year. The trouble was the driving gave me a bad shoulder.’
‘How did you manage to drive, then? You must have been in a lot of pain.’
‘One of the sixth form girls gave me a back massage which really relaxed me,’ he admitted freely, Hannah’s look of instant surprise going unnoticed. ‘She had a superb touch and certainly made the driving a little less stressful. Anyway, I’ve got some plans for next summer which I’m not going to reveal to anyone until it’s all arranged.’
‘Am I allowed to know?’
‘Well, I’m hoping you’ll be involved.’
‘What is it, then?’
‘I’m going to cycle from John O’Groats to Land’s End for a cancer charity and I’d like you and the kids to follow and support me in my car.’
‘What? You mean camp, cook meals, that sort of thing?’
‘Yes. Do you fancy it?’
‘It sounds great and too good an opportunity to miss. Yes, you can count me on board. Why a cancer charity, though?’
‘I want to do something for the charity which supported my mother during her last few months of cancer. It’s the least I can do to repay their kindness.’
‘That sounds brilliant, Justin.’
‘Yes, I’m pretty pleased with the idea myself.’
Hannah did not have the heart to show her reservations about his well-meant intentions. He had never been much of a sportsman, being built very much on the small, weedy side. She wondered how he would manage to cycle up the challenging hillsides of Scotland and the North of England.
‘Anyway, that’s great for next summer but what else are you doing this summer?’
‘I’ve got one more week teaching at the Queensford summer school and then I’m off to my university summer school in Manchester, for my master’s degree.’
‘Then I’ll have to make the most of you while I’ve got the opportunity, won’t I?’ she smiled, forgetting he was away for so much of their long summer holiday.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll ring you when I’m away.’
It was so characteristic of him to ring her on a regular basis wherever he went but as much as she tried she could not get used to the idea of his keeping tabs on her. She had never known this watchful side of a relationship before, even after being with James, her ex-husband, for more than twenty years.
When he finally returned from the summer school in Manchester after what seemed an interminably long week without him, she found it hard to control her excitement as she opened the front door to greet him on his first night back. She looked at him momentarily, on the doorstep, his face pale and stressed as if something was amiss, but she kept her counsel and smiled in her usual cheerful manner.
‘Hi! How are you? Did your week go well?’
‘Fine,’ he said brusquely, as he stepped quickly and determinedly into the hallway. No hug; no kiss.
‘It sounded from your telephone calls that you were working very hard.’
‘Yes, we did,’ he replied briefly, walking into the kitchen to pour himself a glass of wine from the fridge.
He continued to ignore her whilst she struggled to keep the conversation on a light, even keel whilst she prepared their evening meal.
‘Are you going to do the washing up tonight?’ she asked after they had finished eating their meal in his virtual silence.
‘OK,’ was his brief reply with surprisingly little resistance. Usually, his delicate musician’s hands were cited as an excuse for ducking out of this post-dinner duty.
Must be tired, she thought. And something is wrong. But just keep going.
‘Justin! Come and listen to this,’ she encouraged, as she settled down to watch television amidst his crashing efforts in the kitchen sink. ‘It’s about the effects of sexual abuse on the sexuality of survivors.’
Nonchalantly, Justin sauntered into the living room, his soaking wet hands draped in a towel.
‘Well, I’m not surprised sexual abuse affects the sexuality of the survivors, are you?’ she declared innocently, as they listened to the graphic details of the personal stories of the programmes’ key characters. ‘This most probably means that you could be gay.’
He looked at her sharply choosing to ignore her contentious, throwaway comment whilst he continued to listen intently to the documentary. Hannah had always found it difficult to summons the courage to ask him about his childhood sexual abuse, the acute sense of embarrassment she always felt silencing any attempt on her behalf to delve into his predicament and the long term suffering brought on by such a shocking experience. At first, she naturally assumed the abuse had been committed by one of his parents or even a close relative but now was her opportunity to find out for certain, to draw the issue out into the open. She wanted, and needed, to know more.
‘Was it your mother or father who abused you?’ she asked in trepidation, as the programme drew to a close.
‘Neither,’ he replied calmly, not at all offended by her insinuation. ‘They never laid a finger on me. No, it was my organ teacher.’
‘Your organ teacher! My God! How did that happen?’
‘When my parents managed to get enough money together to pay for some organ lessons for me at the cathedral, it so happened they knew one of the organists there.’
‘How old were you at the time?’
‘Twelve.’
‘Twelve! What did your parents say when they found out what was going on?’
‘I never told them.’
‘You never told them! But why not?’
‘Because he was a family friend. In fact, a very close family friend so no one would have believed me,’ he replied, showing little emotion in his voice.
‘What? He was a close friend of your parents and he sexually abused you? Some family friend! And when did all of this happen?’
‘During my organ lessons.’
Hannah could barely bring herself to imagine the scene. She thought of her own son and how thankful she was he had never been placed in such a vulnerable position.
‘So, you see what I mean about how your abuse could lead to you being gay, then?’ she theorized gently, somehow sensing it was time to leave the topic there.
But it was too late. She had said too much.
‘What right have you got to make conclusions about my sexuality?’ he asked aggressively, standing up suddenly from his chair.
‘Well, I was only saying what the programme was suggesting,’ she replied, non-plussed. To her it was no more than an academic exercise, applying known theory to his situation.
‘But you have no right to do that!’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything.’
‘And I suppose you even think my school was not up to yours!’
‘What are you going on about?’ she asked, wondering where his aggression was leading to.
‘You’re always going on about how good your school was. I’m obviously not good enough for you. So I’m going home!’
Hannah stared at him, blankly. She had never implied those things at all but her descriptions of her happy childhood had obviously got under his otherwise thick skin. She fleetingly wondered whether his aggression and resentfulness were part of the long term effects of his sexual abuse.
‘Oh, please stay, Justin,’ she pleaded forcefully. She got up from the settee to embrace him, as recompense for her verbal clumsiness. ‘I said I was sorry for bringing up the topic.’
Despite the realisation she was on difficult ground, Hannah had no idea how far she was from it giving way completely. Mistakenly, she tried to continue the discussion in bed but she knew that no matter how much she tried to explain or justify her position, she could not put a foot right when he was in this sort of mood. He was just too angry and too sensitive.
‘Right! I’ve had enough of this. I’m going home!’ he finally declared, getting out of bed to get dressed.
‘Please stay,’ she begged, thinking they had not even had sex yet. ‘Please. For me?’
‘No!’
‘Go, then. See if I care!’ she flounced back at him, as he disappeared naked out of the bedroom door, clothes in hand.
‘Fucking go, then,’ she muttered bitterly under her breath just in case he heard her. ‘See if I care.’
She strained to hear his movements around the house. Finally, the front door slammed and he was gone. He had been looking for an excuse to go all along, right from the moment she had let him in.
After a couple of days had passed, Hannah was riding high on the feeling she had done the right thing in letting him go but on the third day of their separation, she found herself ringing him at home on several occasions, to check his state of mind. When there was no answer on his landline or on his mobile telephone, she started to panic. Where was he? Was he all right? She imagined he would stay with Fat Boye at his school flat, as he usually did when he was having a personal crisis, but she knew he couldn’t stay there forever. Sleeping on Fat Boye’s sofa would be adequate for a couple of nights after getting wasted at The Carpenter’s Arms but not as a long term solution to avoiding her. With a debilitating emptiness tearing at her insides as if she already knew her loss of him was permanent, she bundled the children into the car to drive them to Wales. It was ten o’clock in the evening.
When she arrived at her parents’ house in the early hours of the next morning, emotionally drained and fractious, her mother had waited up to greet her. Hannah’s tearful telephone call the previous evening had warned her that a major emotional crisis was looming on the horizon for her daughter.
‘I’ve already rung James to have the children for a while but I haven’t told him what’s going on,’ Hannah explained to her mother. In fact, Hannah had never even mentioned Justin to James, preferring to keep it from him.
‘I’m no angel but I really don’t know what’s happened between Justin and me. We had a conversation about his sexual abuse and how I thought it would have affected his sexuality and then he just went mad. He hasn’t answered any of my ‘phone calls and I just don’t know where he’s disappeared to. I’ve got to find him.’
‘But think of it, Hannah,’ Gwen began, her distress at her daughter’s upset beginning to show in her voice. ‘You were only thinking recently of marrying him. If you had done so, you would have been going through yet another divorce.’
‘Yes, I know but I love him and I can’t live without him,’ she added hysterically, realizing Gwen had enough problems of her own in dealing with her husband’s heavy drinking, despite his diabetes and obvious ill-health.
‘You’re certainly under his skin if he’s behaved like this,’ theorized her mother. ‘Your father used to do the same sort of thing to me and just like you I used to spin into a blind panic and go looking for him.’
This was certainly news to Hannah and she wondered whether her parents’ stormy behavioural trait had been lying dormant in her until the ‘right’ man came along to awaken it for the first time in her life, at the grand old age of 44. Justin had certainly answered what she had always been looking for in a man: good looks, talent, intelligence and excitement but the more she got involved with him, the more her vulnerabilities were exposed, vulnerabilities she never even knew she possessed. And to add insult to injury, whenever they argued, he brought to their relationship the demons of his own wrecked and unhappy childhood. Her own happy upbringing had left her unprepared for meeting such a person and certainly ill-equipped to recognize the signs and symptoms of a relationship that would almost nearly destroy her. The rot had only just begun to surface but, like an iceberg lying undetected beneath calm waters, Justin’s glossy exterior was but a mere fraction of the dysfunctional personality beneath.
Love indeed is blind, she thought, dejectedly.
The next day, Hannah was feeling too unsettled to remain with her parents in Wales. She had to go back to Queensford and begin looking for Justin, to find out what he was doing. And, more importantly, to determine who he was with.
Arriving back at his cottage later that same day, she quietly let herself into his dusty and deserted living room with the front door key he had given her a short while back. She anticipated he would have to come home sooner or later but when she awoke in his bed early the next morning and there was still no sign of him, her sense of helplessness wracked her mind constantly. He must have had an insightful understanding of how she hated being kept in a state of uncertainty even for the shortest periods of time, otherwise why hadn’t he contacted her, if only to tell her their affair was finally over?
From that morning onwards, she found it insufferably hard to resist the compulsive urge to search all of the haunts Justin usually frequented in the town and neighbouring villages, and by the time she finally returned home, she had found nothing: Justin had completely disappeared. She began to leave him long and desperately apologetic messages on his answering machine, one after the other, until the recording mechanism could store no more.
‘Justin, I hope you’re all right. Please ring me. I’m so worried about you. I know I’ve made mistakes. I used to keep my mouth closed when I was married and I never expressed my true feelings with my husband. Maybe that’s why I was married for so long. But this time, I was determined to air my feelings when I felt there was a need to. I now know this was a mistake and I’m so sorry I’ve hurt you but all I ever wanted was to make it good between us and to sort out our differences. I’ve always been able to walk away from relationships when they were over, always, but this time it’s different. I want to fight for this one. I know I can change. We could have had such a good life together. I have my faults, I know, but I’m a good woman. Please give me a ring to let me know you’re OK. Please. You know I love you and, if you still love me, then you’ll understand what I’m going through.’
When she was able to record new messages on his answering machine, she knew he had been picking up her old ones but when there was no response to her appeals to ring her, she tried other more desperate tactics to find him.
‘Hi, Fat Boye. It’s Hannah. I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Justin, have you?’ she asked, feeling slightly awkward she had to ring him in the first place.
‘No, I haven’t. Why? What’s the problem?’
‘He’s disappeared and I’ve no idea where he is.’
‘I’m sorry but I can’t help you,’ he chuckled annoyingly, as if he was already aware something
was wrong. ‘I haven’t heard from him at all.’
Back at Justin’s cottage, the telephone numbers she found scattered around the untidily kept rooms on scrappy pieces of paper, for people she did not even know, failed to reveal his whereabouts after she recklessly rang them all.
‘Disappeared? That doesn’t sound like Justin,’ declared one of his female friends from the past.
Hannah frowned as she put down the telephone to continue her search for clues. Why was the Justin she knew so different from the one everyone else knew or remembered? Before she could work out the answer to her question, she noticed a picture postcard of Cambridge on Justin’s small bedside table. Her stomach churned restlessly as she repeatedly read the message and the change of address details on the back of the card. She knew she had to find the sender of the card as soon as possible, even it involved searching for a needle in a haystack. What did she care if it led her to Justin?
‘Hello, Freda. I’m Hannah. I’m going out with Justin Rupert and he’s mysteriously disappeared. I was wondering whether he was here and if he was, could I please have a word with him?’
If Freda was shocked by Hannah’s door-step revelation and bizarre request, she did not display it one bit, as she quietly led her unexpected guest into the immaculately-kept sitting room of the small, newly-built terraced house on the leafy suburban outskirts of Cambridge. Amazingly, Hannah had found the address on the back of the postcard by pure chance, in spite of the descent of darkness which had made her mission near impossible.
So, this is the young girl whose love-making with Justin was interrupted by Fat Boye at that party, thought Hannah. One of his ex-pupils.
‘I’m so sorry about my intrusion but I’m just desperate to find Justin. I know he liked you because he always used to talk about you. Have you seen or heard anything from him lately?’
Hannah strained her head towards the door leading into the kitchen as she spoke, making a poor show of concealing her misplaced suspicion that Justin was hiding behind it.
‘I haven’t seen Justin for simply ages,’ Freda replied, calmly ignoring her guest’s behaviour, her pretty young features glowing radiantly in the lamp light. ‘Not since I went to see him for a job reference for a teaching post.’
Surprisingly, Justin had openly admitted to Hannah that Freda’s visit to his cottage had nothing to do with asking for a job reference and more to do with her wanting him back in her life; he had even refused her sexual advances, or so he said.
Hannah kept her silent thoughts to herself as she continued to unfold details of her personal tragedy to Freda.
‘I’m so sorry you’re upset Justin’s gone missing and I wish I could help you more but I have no idea where he could be. He’s never even mentioned your name to me.’
Hannah was momentarily stunned. She remembered Justin saying quite clearly he had told Freda about their relationship, as some sort of warning for the young girl to back away and leave him alone.
‘And besides,’ Freda continued quickly, sensing Hannah was slowly putting two and two together and coming up with the right answer, ‘I’ve recently met somebody else on holiday and we are very happy together.’
Too late! In just one sentence, Freda had unintentionally confirmed there really had been something in her advances towards Justin, and certainly more than he was prepared to admit to. It was becoming crystal clear that Freda was yet another one of Justin’s female visitors who knocked on his door for sexual favours. So why was Hannah here? In Freda’s home? She had never done
anything as foolish as this before! What was she thinking of?
When Hannah arrived back at Justin’s cottage, still no wiser as to his whereabouts, she decided to ring one of Justin’s music colleagues from Queensford.
‘Wallace? It’s me.’
‘How are you darling?’
‘Not too good, I’m afraid. Justin had disappeared and I’m trying to find him. You haven’t by any chance seen him, have you?’
‘No, I haven’t, darling. What’s going on?’
‘Wallace, forgive me for asking and appearing paranoid but I have to know. Is there anything going on between Justin and Heidi. Something passed between them at lunch during the summer school recently, at Queensford. It was just a look but it spoke volumes. I’m out of my mind with worry. You know what he’s like. Do you think he’s having an affair?’
‘I don’t think so, darling. We all know he’s a nightmare with women and Heidi is far too much of her own woman for him. I haven’t seen him at all. Sorry, darling.’
‘Thanks,’ Hannah replied dejectedly once she realized the scathing implication of her friend’s heartless words. It appeared she had been wrong about Justin’s possible involvement with both Heidi, the young and very attractive cellist from Queensford, and his ex-pupil, Freda.
After she had exhausted every possible avenue of where Justin might be hiding, something deep inside told her he was out of her reach, somewhere not even she could guess at. Once she recognised this, Hannah set about trying to get her life and feelings back together again but, try as she might, her inner agitation and mental anguish made it virtually impossible to concentrate on anything. She was drowning and her self-esteem nose-dived as she questioned what sort of a person could make a fully-grown man so unhappy as to make him run away from his friends, his family. And from her.
‘Maybe, I’m just not good enough for him,’ she finally reasoned.
Mistakenly thinking she had to improve herself in some way or another, to set the records right, she set about spring-cleaning some areas of her life: rediscovering her love for classical music, re-writing the battered address book she had kept for over twenty years, and throwing out old or unworn items of clothing from her tired-looking wardrobe. Whilst she listened to the sad second movement of Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2 in F Major over and over again, she began to read the ‘Mars and Venus’ series of books, to piece together the reasons of where she had gone wrong with Justin. Lying almost lifeless on the rattan settee in her kitchen, she read hungrily from dawn to dusk, intermittently crying and grieving for the man who had once asked her to marry him.
After a long week had passed since seeing him, her abandoned appetite and consequent weight loss were beginning to show. Suddenly, her misery was interrupted by the telephone ringing. It was Justin.
‘Hi, it’s me,’ he said, simply. He sounded relaxed. ‘I can’t talk too long.’
‘Justin, thank goodness!’ she cried, her distress clearly showing in her voice. ‘Where are you? Are you OK? Did you get my messages?’
‘Yes, I’m OK and I got your messages.’
‘Where are you? Are you at your dad’s?’
‘Please don’t worry about me. Everything will be OK.’
A doorbell sounded in the background.
‘I have to go now,’ he said urgently, dropping his voice to a barely audible whisper. ‘I’ll ring you soon to explain. I promise.’
Click. The telephone went dead.
Hannah breathed a sigh of relief. At least he was alive and well, enough so that she could get on with her life. For a little while, at least.
‘I knew there was something not quite right about him,’ her next-door neighbour declared, when Hannah related what had happened over a few drinks one Friday evening after work. ‘He always used to ignore me when he came out of the house and he never ever gave me eye contact.’ Hannah was hurt at her neighbour’s comments but she knew all too well what they meant. Justin was an oddball when it came to social interaction.
Three weeks after his disappearance, Justin rang once again, to arrange to see her at home. She showered and changed to greet him, just as she would have done before he had left her. When he arrived at the front door, smiling, she silently led him into the kitchen where they had had so much fun in the past. He sat down on the rattan settee where he had on so many occasions obsessively watched her whilst she prepared their evening meal. Some classical music was playing quietly in the background.
‘Turn that fucking music off!’ he suddenly shouted, leaning forward to place his head in his cupped hands. Hannah’s eyes widened in unspoken shock as she calmly turned off the stereo. She stared at him quietly, just a few feet away, fearing what he would do next. Suddenly, he looked up, pulled out a photograph from the top pocket of his shirt, and then sullenly replaced his head in his hands.
‘Who’s this?’ she asked gently, scrutinizing the young, attractive female in the picture. Another buxom blond. ‘She looks very attractive.’ Hannah was already coming to terms with the fact that his strange disappearance was over another woman. Nothing like this had ever happened to her before but she felt ready to accept her relationship was over and that she would have to get on with her life, without him.
‘She is,’ he replied emphatically, not caring for Hannah’s feelings.
‘What’s her name?’ she pressed, calmly.
‘That’s Anne.’
‘What’s she like?’
‘Gorgeous,’ he answered heartlessly, as if Hannah had never meant anything to him at all. ‘She’s a musician and a teacher. And she’s got 5,000 books. She’s very well read.’
5,000 books! Hannah was impressed. Maybe, she reasoned illogically, if I had a few more books then perhaps I’d be a little more attractive to him. But it’s too late now.
‘Well, looking at her photograph, she’s certainly got boobs,’ commented Hannah, knowing how short she was in that department.
‘Boobs?’ he replied, aggressively. ‘She’s certainly got those. And I’ve taken her to Lancashire to see dad and he loves her.’
Her heart sank. He had never offered to take her to the places where he had grown up; that had always hurt.
‘I still love you, Justin. You know that, don’t you?’ she appealed, as she leant towards him to try to kiss him but he slowly moved his head away from her advancing lips. She felt humiliated by his action but it was her own fault. ‘I know where I’ve gone wrong. It’s all to do with my childhood. Please, you have to listen to me.’
Naively oblivious to the message her few careless words conveyed, it was she who was going to take the blame for the failure of their relationship. It was her poor behaviour, and not his, which had been at the root of all their troubles. She could never have understood then how her rushed confession was music to his tainted way of thinking. Over the next couple of years, her avid reading would reveal it had everything to do with him and his upbringing, and not hers but, for the time being, if she wanted him back in her life then she would have to contend with taking the brunt of the blame. And be pleasant to him.
‘I’ve been a little stressed lately,’ he explained, appearing to calm down at last. ‘But I can’t talk now because I’ve got to go. I’ll come and see you again, soon.’
She wondered why he was so stressed if he had such a beautiful new woman in his life but when he came to see her the following week, he seemed to be in a more relaxed frame of mind, even to the point of giving her a hug and a kiss as he walked in through the front door.
‘So, how are you?’ she asked, once they had sat down in the garden.
‘Much better, thanks.’
‘Good, I’m glad,’ she replied, holding back her tears, not wishing to reveal the deep emotional attachment she still bore for him.
‘I’m sorry about all of this but I’m really happy at the moment,’ he began to explain. He did not need to. She could see it in his eyes.
‘As long as we can remain friends then that’s the main thing.’
‘I’m surprised you’re taking the news so well,’ he admitted, avoiding her stare as he nervously played with his hands.
What was the point of doing anything else, Hannah thought?
‘So how did you meet her?’
‘At the summer school, in Manchester. We were at the same lectures and tutorials. I was a bit of a star in the tutorials, always asking questions, keeping the discussions going, that sort of thing and Anne and I just clicked. One day, our eyes just met across the table in a tutorial and the rest is history.’
So your late night telephone calls to say you were working hard into the small hours of the morning were just a cover for your clandestine activities with Anne, were they, she thought?
‘So where does she live?’ she asked sweetly.
‘Buckinghamshire.’
‘Is that where you were during the week I couldn’t find you?’
‘Yes. At her flat.’
‘I remember a doorbell ringing in the background. Was that her?’
‘Yes, it was. She’d been out shopping. That’s why I couldn’t talk to you for very long on the telephone.’
‘So how are you going to see her?’ she asked, remembering how long-distance travelling had put an abrupt end to his relationship with Milly.
‘Oh, I am sure we can work something out. I’m determined to make this relationship work this time,’ he declared, clearly critical of their failed courtship.
By the time Justin left that evening, she was happy to see him go. Now that she knew he was safe, the remainder of her summer holiday could be spent in relative calm compared to the turmoil of the three painful weeks of his disappearance and, although it did not exactly stop her thinking of him, particularly as she hated not having him in bed beside her, at least she had a new resolve in life: to read more, live more, and take advantage of every opportunity which came her way to move herself forward. Luckily for her, the way she embraced her new lease of life sprang instinctively from her childhood school days. Rejection had always spurred her on to new and greater heights, as a sort of a self-preservation mechanism after a deadly personal blow.
When the cheese and wine party for new teaching staff loomed large at the beginning of the new academic year in September, Hannah decided to wear her short white dress. She had always been slim but, having lost a few pounds and gained a suntan over the summer, she now looked quite stunning. She knew Justin would be at the party and was looking forward to seeing him again but apart from the initial smile as they spotted each other across the crowded room, they ignored each other for the better part of the evening. Looking tanned and remarkably relaxed, Hannah noted how Justin’s new girlfriend obviously suited him.
‘Hi. How are you?’ she asked smilingly, as they finally gravitated towards each other at the end of the evening.
‘Fine, thanks. I knew it was you coming into the room earlier on because I saw your legs first. And you’ve got my favourite dress on.’
She laughed gaily. He had always liked her legs.
‘Will you come to the pub with me when it’s finished here?’
‘I can’t, I’m sorry. I have to get back to my babysitter, for the kids.’
‘Please?’
‘OK but only for a short while.’
As he led her out of the party, gently taking her by the hand to lead her across Lower Lawn towards The Maid Marian Pub, Hannah enjoyed the way his simple yet firm action made her feel. He’s never taken my hand like that before, she thought. It’s as if he really wanted to hold it. Suddenly, without any warning, he pulled her into the darkened driveway of a nearby house.
‘What are you doing? Where are we going?’ asked Hannah, puzzled. Was he going to kiss her?
‘Hannah. I need to tell you something.’
‘What is it?’ she replied, thinking it was going to involve the two of them getting back together again. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘I’m engaged to Anne,’ he explained, dropping his bombshell as gently as he could.
‘Engaged? I don’t believe it! Why did you do it, Justin? I loved you and I didn’t deserve this!’ she exclaimed, breaking free of his grasp. ‘You’ve only known Anne for three weeks! I’m going home!’
‘No please, don’t go home,’ he pleaded, trying to grab hold of her arm to restrain her. ‘Come and listen to what I have to say. Come to the pub with me.’
‘OK. I’ll listen,’ she agreed, reluctantly walking back towards him. What did she have to lose?
Having tired of The Carpenter’s Arms, The Maid Marian Pub was the new up-and-coming venue for the naughty boys at Queensford. Fat Boye and some of his bachelor colleagues were quenching their thirst in the pub that night, celebrating their last night of freedom before the start of the new term the following day. Justin bought Hannah a drink and the two of them separated themselves off from the crowd, to talk.
‘I really miss you. You know that, don’t you?’
‘I miss you as well,’ replied Hannah, keeping her delight of his admission carefully concealed from any prying eyes around them.
‘But my hands are tied at the moment.’
Hannah wondered what he meant.
‘It will take time to get out of this, but you’ll have to be patient.’
‘Why? Are you breaking off your engagement?’ she asked, hardly daring to breathe. ‘Are we going to get back together again?’
‘Yes,’ he replied, mysteriously.
‘Oh, Justin. I love you, you know that.’
‘Yes, I do know that. And I love you, too. But we are going to have to be careful about this.’ He looked cautiously over his shoulder in the direction of Fat Boye and Grunt who continued to drink at the bar. Grunt was another sad, bad bachelor who taught at Queensford and Justin would occasionally drink with him when he had nothing better to do. He was a little rough around the edges but harmless enough as a colleague.
‘Why do we have to be careful? How many people know of your engagement?’ she inquired, instinctively following his eyes around the room.
‘Only Fat Boye and Grunt.’
Which means everyone, she thought.
‘OK. It’ll be hard but I can wait.’
‘Well, you know how difficult Fat Boye can be when he’s angry or upset and I don’t want to give him any ammunition against me if I can avoid it.’
Hannah understood exactly what he meant. Justin did not always live his life for himself, often being at the behest of Fat Boye and his viperous tongue. Clearly, Justin was afraid of the overweight housemaster.
‘If you are engaged, when are you supposed to be getting married?’ she asked, impishly.
‘Next summer.’
‘My God! You’ve already set the date?’
‘Yes.’
Hannah looked at Justin’s handsome face in despair. She would certainly have to be patient with this one. But the next day at work, Justin unexpectedly ignored her as if she was totally responsible for his miserable position, stubbornly refusing to even turn his head towards her as she politely greeted him on her way to her classroom. Hannah was confused. It was as if everything they had discussed the previous evening had not been voiced at all.
But this is how it is, she reasoned with herself.
The Justin I have grown to know. And love.