When She Was Bad (28 page)

Except it was all a lie.

Throughout that whole day, the thoughts she normally managed to keep at bay came flooding out, unchecked, thoughts she’d believed she’d left behind in childhood. She was useless. Bad. No one in their right mind would trust her, or like her, much less love her. Why had she ever believed she was good at anything?

If Rachel got rid of her, she’d have three months’ money and that would be it. Rachel would call it a ‘restructuring’. Paula already knew that much. Her exact job title would be scrapped, but whoever replaced her – Charlie or Amira, those snakes in the grass – would get a different title that would say much the same thing. Three months’ money. That’s all there would be to show for her decade of loyalty, all those mornings she’d got in early and the evenings she’d worked on long after the others had left. She’d never been ambitious, just imagined living out her working life in the office, the stabilizing centre while everyone else came and went around her.

Now who would employ her? She was fifty-five, and she both looked and felt it. Not one of those ‘stay in shape, fifty-is-the-new-thirty’ types. Everyone wanted the new thing, the latest model. Who would take on a dinosaur who’d been chucked out by her old department like so much rubbish?

‘Are you even listening?’ Amy demanded at dinner after recounting a long story about a customer at the pub where she worked who’d insisted that two separate bottles of wine were corked, only to be met with blank silence from her mother.

‘Sorry,’ Paula said. ‘I’m not feeling myself.’

But if not herself, who even was she?

She didn’t tell Ian about what she’d overheard in the office kitchen. They’d got well beyond the stage where they could give any comfort to each other. Instead, she went to bed early, shutting herself away with only her own destructive thoughts for company. Round and round they went like a washing-machine cycle of self-doubt.

Throughout that long, sleepless night, the pounding in her ears never left her – the noise of all her old insecurities whooshing around in her brain.

33
Anne

It had to happen sooner or later and now it has. Some UK journalist or other. They have no rules over there. There’s nowhere their gutter press won’t go. They uncovered the details of the adoption all those years ago. Traced it back to La Luz City and found a story bigger than they could have ever believed.

The first I heard of it was when the new departmental secretary knocked on the door of my office this morning.

‘Sorry to disturb you, Professor Cater, but there’s a journalist on the phone. He’s asking lots of questions about a Professor Korsky who used to work here.’

‘Do you mean Kowalsky?’

‘Yes, that’s the one. He’s very insistent. Says it’s in connection with some big case in England.’

‘I’ll talk to him. Put him through.’

As I listened to the secretary’s heels clicking on the floor down the corridor, past the framed faculty photographs, I took a deep breath in and then held it, counting in my head, trying to control my thoughts. When the phone started ringing, I expelled the breath in a long, steady exhalation.

‘Professor Cater? This is Derek Walsh from the
Sun
newspaper in London.’

‘Hello, Mr Walsh. What can I do for you?’ I aimed for warm but professional. If you smile while you’re talking on the phone the listener can hear it in your voice.

He explained about the terrible thing that had happened in London and I pretended it was news to me.

‘We tend to be very insular over here, Mr Walsh.’

He said that didn’t surprise him, having spent a year in Massachusetts as part of his college degree. He sounded touchingly proud of that fact.

‘The thing is,’ he said, and there was no disguising the excitement in his voice, ‘we did some digging and found out about the adoption and then we did some more digging and found there were rather sensational circumstances, and your Professor Kowalsky was the shrink who oversaw the adoption process. Looks like he rubberstamped the whole thing, said there was no lasting damage. So in effect he might be held partly accountable for what happened. Him and his assistant, I forget the name now. Hold on.’

The line clicked a few times as if someone was setting down a handset on a hard surface. I closed my eyes and breathed in slowly. Then came the sound of papers rustling and then the handset clicked back into life.

‘Ah right. Here it is – knew I had it. Yes, Professor Kowalsky’s sidekick was . . .’ a sound like a biro tapping against a page, time slowing to a standstill . . . ‘a Dr Oppenheimer. Ring any bells?’

Relief made my muscles weak. I had been given a reprieve.

At the time it was all taking place though, all those years ago, it hadn’t been relief but pure fury that had flowed through my veins when my nemesis, Dan Oppenheimer, first encroached on what had been, up to then, my assessment, my territory.

I hadn’t slept well in the days following the meeting at the Child Welfare Department. I was young and inexperienced when it came to judging personal interactions. (I still struggle. In fact, a shrink I was seeing a few years ago asked me if I’d ever considered whether I might be on the autistic spectrum. ‘Most of us are,’ he said glibly.) I could tell that something had been damaged between me and Ed Kowalsky, but not what or how deep the damage went.

We were due to meet with Laurie again. This time we were visiting the preschool she’d been attending two days a week. The idea was we’d chat to staff about her progress and observe her interacting with the other kids and then take her out for ice cream with Jana. We’d agreed it would be low-key and informal, so I was taken aback to arrive at the tiny school office to find that Ed had brought someone else with him. Daniel Oppenheimer. The two of them filled the cramped room.

‘Ah, Anne. You know Dan, I take it?’ said Ed casually.

I nodded, unable to look at my classroom rival – which was a tricky feat considering Oppenheimer’s freakish height.

‘He’s going to be joining our sessions from now on. I felt we’d now reached a point in the proceedings with Laurie where a fresh pair of eyes would be a boon, and of course Dan knows the case inside out from his involvement with David’s assessment.’

‘But what about cross-overs? I thought you decided the two cases needed to be kept completely separate, to avoid the possibility of us influencing one another?’

Ed was nodding before I’d even finished, as if he’d anticipated the question.

‘Quite so. Quite so. But now that the preliminaries are over and we’ve had time to, ah, get the measure of each child’s needs, I think that danger is past. I’ll level with you, Anne. I believe we’ve reached a critical stage with Laurie. Her age now makes it imperative that we reach a decision on her future quickly, and I think Dan is ideally placed to help us arrive at that decision.’

My heart was pounding so hard I thought it must be obvious, even through the sweater I’d put on against the sudden chill. After a mild September which had failed to distinguish itself fully from the sweltering months which preceded it, fall had finally arrived over the last couple of days, bringing cool winds which I welcomed wholeheartedly.

‘Right. Of course. The more the merrier.’

My own jolly voice grated in my ears, but what else could I have done? It was obvious that, when faced with the choice between potential competition and potential dissent, Ed had chosen the former. Dan Oppenheimer would aim to build his career out of this case in a way I’d never dare to. I’d always suspected this was probably the real reason Ed had only allowed him to see half the picture. But now I’d proved less biddable than he’d imagined, he was going into damage limitation. If there were three of us, the majority view would hold. Oppenheimer would back up Kowalsky if it was strategically advantageous for him to do so. I was effectively being sidelined.

The women who ran the preschool buzzed around Dan and Ed. They kept calling Dan ‘Professor’, although he did try to correct them. To me they addressed all the practical questions – would we be wanting coffee, lemonade? – and the more domestic details about Laurie’s life. So in the middle of an anecdote about how Laurie had helped another, younger child, the woman relating it turned to me to mouth ‘to the toilet’ before turning back to the others to continue her story.

And all the time, as I sat awkwardly on the tiny chair that was the only choice after the men had been offered the two spare full-size ones, anxiety was churning my insides. Should I have kept my opinions to myself? Followed Ed Kowalsky’s lead? Stayed quiet for the sake of my career? I thought about Harvard and Yale and Cornell, the office I’d envisaged for myself in a redbrick building with ivy growing up the walls and a view out over the treetops as they turned from green to orange before shedding completely. Now, from my vantage point across the years, I call out to my younger self wedged into that little chair with her ungainly knees up under her chin. ‘Toe the line,’ I say to her. ‘Nod when he speaks and agree when it’s your turn. There’ll be time enough to find your voice when you’re out of there.’ But, miserable and agitated, my younger self doesn’t hear.

‘Would you say that on the whole Laurie knows the difference between right and wrong?’

Dan’s first question of the process caught all of us by surprise.

The Head of the preschool, a small blonde woman in a knee-length dress with a bow at the collar and flat white shoes with just the tiniest splatter of red paint on the sole to give away her vocation, bit down on her bottom lip in concentration before replying.

‘Obviously she’s very young still and there’s a debate about how much of a moral framework any child of four really has, but on the whole I would say she has a fairly good idea of what behaviour is and isn’t acceptable. I believe someone must have taught her the basics of right and wrong, although coming from that home it’s impossible to imagine they knew the difference.’

If she was hoping to invite some broader confidences relating to Laurie’s past life, she was to be disappointed.

‘And there haven’t been any incidents to give you cause for concern?’ asked Ed, smartly closing the door on conjecture and bringing the conversation back to the here and the now.

The Head frowned.

‘There have been minor issues, just as you’d expect with any child of that age. She reacts badly to being told off – sometimes running away to hide, other times getting angry or upset.’

‘And if other children are being told off?’ I asked her.

The Head swung round to face me with a look of surprise, as if she’d only now noticed I was there.

‘She doesn’t always respond well in those situations either,’ she said at last. ‘We have had occasions where we have had to gently remind her that
we
are in charge and the disciplining of other students isn’t her responsibility.’

‘Tell them about the Wendy house,’ said a young woman with long brown braids, who’d been standing by the doorway clearly waiting for a chance to get involved.

‘I’m not sure it’s what you’re looking for,’ said the Head after another pause. ‘But the other day – when we had that sudden scorcher, do you remember – anyway, the kids were all outside in the playground and, well, there’s been some trouble between two of the little girls. You know how small children can be,’ she said directly to me, before continuing.

‘I’m afraid one of the two has been bullying the other a bit. We’ve been trying to deal with it, but such behaviour isn’t uncommon. Laurie hasn’t initiated any of the trouble but she’s clearly been agitated by it, sometimes reporting back to us about what’s been going on, other times joining in with some not-very-pleasant behaviour, like refusing to let the girl play a game the rest of them are playing or repeating some of the meaner things being said. All perfectly normal.

‘On this particular occasion all the children were playing outside as I said. We were having a little staff conference over here on the porch about the afternoon’s activities. We had a good view of the playground and we gradually realized there was something going on down at the far end, near the Wendy house – a disturbance. I went over there as quickly as I could and all the children were standing around outside. Some of them were laughing in a kind of nervous way but a couple of the girls were crying. The girl who’d been doing the bullying was outside the door, and as soon as she saw me she said, “It wasn’t me.” Just like that. So I knew something had happened.

‘When I got closer, there was just Laurie in the Wendy house and the other little girl, Sandy, who she’d tied up with a skipping rope.’

‘Well, that doesn’t sound too bad,’ said Ed. ‘I mean, not ideal certainly but not entirely aberrant either.’

‘Sandy was naked,’ said the braided young woman in the doorway, seizing her opportunity to take centre stage. ‘Well, near enough. Laurie had taken off her clothes before she tied her up.’

‘Not
all
her clothes,’ said the Head reprovingly. ‘But yes, it was . . . unfortunate. The child told her parents and we had to call all the girls and parents together for a meeting.’

‘When was this?’ I asked, wondering why Jana hadn’t mentioned anything the last time we’d met.

‘Just a couple of days ago,’ said the Head. ‘To be honest, it probably sounds more serious than it actually was. Aside from the skipping rope and the clothes, Laurie hadn’t done anything to hurt her. And as I said, she wasn’t the instigator of the bullying campaign. In fact, the little girl’s parents were far more concerned about the girl who’d started the whole thing.’

‘Did you notice anything about Laurie’s state of mind when you found her in the Wendy house?’ I asked. From the corner of my eye, I saw Ed Kowalsky stiffen and straighten, as if he’d thought the questioning was over.

‘Well, she certainly wasn’t angry or agitated, if that’s what you were hoping to hear,’ said the Head tartly. She glanced over towards Ed and Dan, and I wondered if she’d picked up on the tension between us.

‘In fact, she was unusually calm, almost like she was in a trance.’