The Lake Louise Sharland (each kindness read aloud txt) 📖

old swimming coach?’ Siobhan gives a chortle of disbelief. ‘You’re kidding me, right?’

‘Just a photocopy. Or screenshots,’ I confirm. ‘Whatever’s easier.’

‘But it’s against the law.’

I can see her struggling with her conscience; but not too hard.

‘It’ll just be between you and me. No one else needs to know.’

We leave the pub without speaking. I watch as Siobhan slips the envelope into her handbag and clips it shut with a heartening determination.

‘I’ll just pop back and say I left my mobile in the office,’ she says, sliding elegantly into the front seat of her Fiat. ‘The hall porter won’t care. He’ll be too busy watching online porn. I’ll be back here in an hour. Wait for me in the car park.’

I drive a few miles west and, spotting a lay-by with a scenic view, spend the next hour gazing out at the sea. For so long, I’ve doubted myself: first as a daughter, then as a mother, and most recently during my marriage to Adam. Now, however, I feel a new and fresh power in my bones; a vitality and assurance that I have never experienced before. I check my mobile. Siobhan was supposed to text me when she was ready to meet. It’s nearly seven and I still haven’t heard anything. Has she lost her nerve?

I hear a ping and, checking my messages, smile and start the engine. I might just make a decent private detective after all.

Pulling into the pub car park, I quickly spot the Fiat. Siobhan steps out of the car, an A4-sized envelope in her hand. I feel my heart soar. I’m getting closer.

‘It was as easy as could be,’ she says, handing me the envelope. ‘The porter couldn’t have cared less, and I know most of the CCTV cameras don’t work because of the shit electrics in the older buildings.’ She tuts self-righteously. ‘If only the parents who fork out thirty-five grand a year knew what really went on.’ I hand Siobhan a second white envelope. She slips it into her handbag without bothering to examine the contents. ‘I think it might be best, Mrs Hardy, if you don’t contact me again.’

‘Of course,’ I reply, surprised but impressed.

Without another word Siobhan gets into her car and drives off, the glint of excitement at the prospect of six months in Australia still in her eyes.

20

I sit in my car, the white A4 envelope on my lap. Inside are photocopied pages of Susan O’Neill’s job description, health questionnaire and permanent contract with Edgecombe Hall School and Sixth Form College. I scan the pages. She had been twenty-six and at Edgecombe for nearly three years when Michael started. She had had an exemplary record. Few absences; comments on her great rapport with her students; accolades from her peers. The woman was a saint. I continue searching through her peer reviews and teaching observations, and I am just about to give up when I spot it.

A document, dated just a week after Michael’s death, signed by the Head of HR agreeing to Susan O’Neill ending her contract early without giving the standard term’s notice. Her last day of employment was less than a month after Michael died.

I examine the documents for any indication of where she might be living now. The address listed is a staff flat on the school grounds. Clearly, she would have had to give that up when she left. The mobile number given is different to the one on Michael’s pay-as-you-go phone. I won’t be surprised if that one is dead too. There is no forwarding address, no next of kin. It appears that Susan O’Neill has disappeared without a trace.

Sleep that night is elusive: a wave that drifts in, hovers, then just as quickly withdraws. Tired of watching the shifting shadows, I get up and make myself a cup of tea and then spread all the documents out on the bedroom floor in front of me. The HR files; the photograph; my research documents from home. I turn on the laptop and log into my emails, scrolling through the messages I received from Michael before his death. There are a few initial ones reporting on the school’s poor catering and lack of central heating, but after that he seems to have settled in well. He wrote of his housemates in their special boarding house for elite swimmers; their quirks and eccentricities: My roommate likes peanut butter and ketchup sandwiches! and of the rigorous training regime: ball busting! There are two mentions of his introduction to writing poetry as part of his English GCSE: I always thought I hated poetry, but I guess it’s sort of okay after all, and then a little later, something more subtle, more private. I actually kind of like writing poetry.

‘He seemed happy,’ I mutter. I scroll through the pictures saved on his laptop, but there’s nothing to connect him to Lisa or Diving Fish, not even the photo from the scholarship meeting. In an age where young people keep a digital record of almost every aspect of their lives – Michael had countless photographs of him and his mates doing nothing – I am surprised that there is so little evidence.

I do yet another Google search on Susan O’Neill. Aside from a few postings from Edgecombe Hall about her coaching successes and something about a creative arts club, there’s nothing. I check the time and wish away the hours until I can take Lisa to the police station and expose the truth about Michael’s death once and for all. I am tempted to call Grace and tell her about my meeting with Lisa: tell her that I, the hysterical, grief-stricken fantasist, have been right all along. I make my way to Michael’s bedroom, eager for tomorrow to begin.

I wake to a chaos of paperwork all around me. It’s another stormy day, but nothing can deaden the feeling of triumph I hold in my heart. I shower, eat a proper breakfast, and spend the rest of the morning