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“How are you?” he asked, taking the seat opposite her.
“Fine, thank you. Nervous about what I’m going to tell you,” she added.
“Please don’t be. What can I get you?”
He ordered a tea for Maggie and a coffee for himself and while they waited for it to arrive, he tried to put her at ease by asking if it was the first time she’d been back to Markham since leaving to work at St. Cuthbert’s.
“I used to drive over every couple of months to catch up with some of the mums whose children were friends of Charlie’s, and so had become my friends. But I haven’t been back since Charlie died. I think it would be a bit awkward.” She gave him a smile. “If you have a child who’s died, it’s hard to continue being part of friendship groups. Everyone feels they have to tiptoe around you and not mention theirchildren. It makes it unnatural because if you’re a mum, your main topic of conversation is often your family.” She paused as the waitress placed their drinks on the table. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me. I wanted to explain about last week.” She picked up her spoon and began to stir her tea. “That man, your gardener—I know him. He was employed by the company St. Cuthbert’s contracted to landscape the school grounds.” She looked up. “Does he know that you’re the person who found Charlie in the quarry?”
“Yes. Iris and I talked about it one day with some friends, and Joseph happened to be there.”
“Did he ever mention Charlie to you?”
“No. To be completely honest, when I heard he’d been sacked from Jarmans, I looked them up and saw that one of their projects had been landscaping the gardens at St. Cuthbert’s. So I asked him if he’d worked on that contract and he told me that he hadn’t. I suppose he had to lie because I would have found it strange that he hadn’t mentioned having worked there once he knew I was the person who had found Charlie.”
“Or he didn’t want you to know why he’d lost his job.” Maggie took a sip of her tea and sat back. “He was sacked because of me. One of the students came to see me in my role as head of pastoral care and told me she was concerned about her friend, who was completely in love with Joseph and had been corresponding with him about the two of them traveling around Thailand together this summer. I knew who Joseph was, I’d seen him working in the grounds, and I could see the effect he was having on some of the students, who were thrilled to have a good-looking man to say hello to on their way to and from their classes. Anyway, I went straight to the head and told him. The fact that Joseph had given one of our students his mobile number meant he’d already crossed a line. The head called Jarmans and Joseph was sacked immediately.” Her eyes filled with tears. “And then he took his revenge.”
“How?” Gabriel asked, simply to fill the silence while Maggie took a couple of deep breaths.
“He came to the staff cottage in the school grounds where Charlie and I lived. It didn’t occur to me that the head would name me as the person who had brought Joseph’s indiscretions to light—but then, I would never have expected Joseph to come to my door and begin shouting at me. He was making so much noise that I brought him inside. At first, I didn’t realize he was drunk; if he hadn’t been, I don’t think he would have been so cruel. He told me I should have come to him first, because he would have told me that the friendship between him and the student was exactly that, an innocent friendship, and that he had only given her his number because she said her parents wanted to speak to him about his offer to show her around Thailand if she happened to be there at the same time as him. There had been no question of them going there together, he said. The student had discovered, through the conversations they’d had in the school grounds—in full view of everyone, he’d added—that he went to Bangkok every August, and the student had said that she was also going to be there in August, and asked him if he would show her around. He had apparently said that he would, but only if her parents gave their permission.” She paused for breath. “I asked him if he knew that the student in question was in love with him and that she possibly thought, or hoped, that it might be reciprocated, and he dismissed it as me trying to cause trouble. I also pointed out that she was only seventeen, and that he was putting himself in a precarious position by engaging with her. But he couldn’t see that he’d done anything wrong.” She took a breath. “Anyway, Charlie was upstairs and he came rushing down to see what all the shouting was about. So Joseph told him that I had just lost him his job, that I was an interfering bitch, and asked him if he knew that I was having an affair with his chemistry teacher. Charlie laughed and waited for me to deny it. But I couldn’t, because it was true. When Charlie realized, he went completely white, and Joseph began taunting him, saying that everyone knew except him, and asking him how it felt to know that everyone was laughing at him behind his back, especially during chemistry lessons, and that if he was getting good grades in chemistry, well, now he knewwhy. That sort of thing. And then Charlie went for him, he knocked Joseph to the ground, and Joseph was swearing and calling me and Charlie all sorts of names. He was so threatening and frightening that I took out my mobile and said I was phoning the police. So he left, and then there was just Charlie and me.”
“I’m so sorry, Maggie.”
“I don’t know how Joseph found out about my relationship with Andrew. We’ve been seeing each other for about three years now, but we make sure that our paths never cross at school, or at least as little as possible. All I can think is that Joseph saw us together in Winchester one Saturday evening on one of our few evenings out. My marriage to Angus, Charlie’s dad, was over long ago but we agreed to stay together until Charlie went to university, because Charlie absolutely adored his father and it was easy to do with Angus being away for most of the year. Angus and I get on really well, so we have a lovely time whenever he’s here. A few years ago, he met someone and was upfront about it straightaway, and I was happy for him, just as he was for me when I started seeing Andrew.”
“Did you explain all that to Charlie?”
“I tried to, but he wouldn’t listen. He was shouting at me, asking how I could have betrayed his dad, and made him a laughing stock at school. I told him that I was sure that nobody knew, that nobody was laughing at him behind his back, but he was saying that he wouldn’t be able to go to classes the next day, and that he was going to have to leave St. Cuthbert’s. I tried to call Angus so that he could speak to Charlie and explain everything to him, but he was on a training exercise and by the time he phoned back, Charlie was gone. I’d tried to stop him from leaving, but he said he didn’t want to be anywhere near me.” She raised her eyes and Gabriel saw the anguish in them. “That’s why the message he gave you meant so much to me. It allowed me to carry on living.”
“I’m grateful that I was there,” Gabriel said quietly.
Maggie picked up her cup and he saw that her hand was trembling. “I went after him on my bike, but it was already dark and I couldn’t see which way he’d gone. I called his friends, including Gina, his girlfriend, but she hadn’t heard from him. I asked her, I had to, I asked her if she’d heard any rumors about me at school, and begged her to tell me if she had, telling her it had a bearing on Charlie storming off. But she assured me that she hadn’t, and I believed her because she seemed so surprised that I’d asked. When Charlie hadn’t come back by ten o’clock, I called the police.” She took a sip of tea and carefully placed the cup on its saucer. “You know the rest.”
“I understand why seeing Joseph had such an effect on you. I’m truly sorry, Maggie, for everything you’ve been through.”
“I know he was drunk, but he shouldn’t have told Charlie about me and Andrew. If he hadn’t, Charlie would still be here. The worst thing is, a few months later Angus and I would have told Charlie about our respective relationships; we’d planned to tell him during the summer holidays, before he went to university.” She gave a small smile. “It’s hard not to think that in seeking to protect him, we effectively killed him.”
“Please don’t think like that,” Gabriel said, shocked. “It’s not your fault, it’s Joseph’s. I wish I’d known; I would never have employed him and I don’t think our friends would have either. If he wasn’t leaving soon, I’d ask him to go immediately. I might anyway,” he added.
Maggie’s head jerked up. “Please don’t tell him that we’ve met. I know he doesn’t know where I live now, but he was so threatening that night. At one point I was afraid that he might physically attack me.”
“It’s a shame you didn’t call the police.”
“I was just glad that he’d left.”
“Thank you for telling me.” A headache had suddenly come on, and he had to resist rubbing his temples to ease the pain. The last of Charlie’s words—He shouldn’t have told me—made sense now. He’d been talking about Joseph.
He turned his attention back to Maggie and moved the conversation on to other things to take her mind off what she’d just told him. When they parted company forty-five minutes later, he told her she could call him if she ever needed to talk. And then he drove home, anger toward Joseph simmering inside him.
59
Iris had woken that morning feeling slightly more positive. It was Saturday, and she was going shopping with Beth.
This would be their third Saturday in a row. She treasured these mother-daughter outings and hoped they’d become a regular thing now that Beth was going to be around for another year. She enjoyed Beth’s company and Beth seemed to enjoy hers. They chattered away happily together, laughed together and talked about Gabriel and Esme and Hugh, but never unkindly. Saturdays had become the highlight of Iris’s week.
As she stood eating a bowl of muesli by the kitchen window, waiting for Beth to come down, she caught sight of Joseph, and her mood instantly soured. She resented that Gabriel had insisted he carried on working for them until the walled garden was finished, especially now that Beth wasn’t leaving. She resented that on Tuesdays, Fridays, and Saturdays, she had to avoid going into the garden for fear of bumping into him. Thank God he was leaving soon.
She wasn’t the only one who feared him, it seemed. Gabriel hadtold her about his meeting with Maggie, and how Joseph had verbally attacked her because she’d reported him to the head of the school for giving one of the students his personal telephone number.
