‘But now I know that’s not possible. Not here. Not with people who enjoy watching someone fall, enjoy it even more when the person falling had been trying to climb. So that’s it. You don’t get to say you got rid of me because, right now, I’m ridding myself of you. And just to be really clear – I consented to every man I had sex with in exchange for money. I don’t regret any of them. But this’ – she casts her hand around the pavilion to indicate all of them – ‘trying to be a part of this community – that, that I do regret.’
Her hands shake as Abi clumsily passes the mic to the man closest to her, but with adrenaline, not fear. Everyone is staring; those closest move back to give her space to pass before a few hands reach out for her. Someone shouts, another laughs, someone else starts clapping, slow and rhythmic, their neighbours dumbly joining in so by the time Abi reaches the back of the pavilion it sounds like half the audience is with her, but all Abi can hear is the blood rushing in her ears. She does notice how Mrs Greene smiles as she opens the door for her, respectful, like Abi’s just done something Mrs Greene has wanted to do for a long, long time. She wonders, briefly, about the older woman’s story. And now Abi is outside and people start calling her name, start clamouring and reaching for her; she breathes in one deep, chill breath and she knows that at last she is truly free.
Chapter 26
It’s a week after the parent forum and Eddy is helping Anna pack. So often it has been the other way around, her carefully folding his shirts into a suitcase before a business trip, but now it’s Anna who is incapable of making any decision alone.
She is going to stay with her sister in the Lake District for an unspecified length of time. They are calling it a ‘few days’ but Eddy suspects – hopes, even – that she might take longer. Because whatever is happening to Anna, she needs time to heal properly. This is not a wound that can be plastered over. It needs air, it needs rest, it needs time.
It was Anna who suggested the trip. She’d come back from the parent forum too stunned to talk. Eddy didn’t know what the hell had happened until Blake showed him the video of Abi. He’d felt like punching the air watching her. As soon as it finished, he watched it again. Blake standing, his arm over his dad’s shoulders, grinning by his side.
‘What about Lily, is she …?’ Eddy asked his son, worrying about the repercussions, but Blake’s smile only got wider at the mention of her name.
‘She’s … yeah, well, she’s amazing,’ he said. Eddy got the impression that wasn’t the first time he’d used that adjective to describe his new girlfriend.
‘You really like her, don’t you?’
He looked away then, shy but still smiling. ‘Yeah, Dad, even more now.’
Lily’s refusal to be shamed had completely deflated the few bullies who taunted her online and at school. Her dignity made them seem ridiculous, isolated, sad.
Blake still wasn’t able to forgive Anna. He was still angry, still walked out of the room as soon as she appeared and would only talk to her if absolutely necessary. Normally this kind of thing would make Anna crazy with anger but mostly she just seemed fearful. She’d become paranoid that whoever had burnt Eva’s house down was now planning some kind of retribution against them. She dreamt of bricks flying through their window, her sons’ blood spilling through gaps in the floorboards. Eddy, who was sleeping in the spare room now, tried his best to keep her calm, would go upstairs and try to help her go back to sleep after a nightmare. But it was hard, almost impossible, when she was getting messages from disguised numbers telling her how dangerous and how fucking stupid she was. Eddy was still on enough community WhatsApp groups to know that Vita and Lotte had effectively absolved themselves of any wrongdoing, Lotte claiming and pointing out – as she’d said publicly in both a BBC interview and at the parents’ forum – that she’d always only had Abi’s best interests at heart. Vita’s defence had been harder, meaner. She’d said at the forum she’d merely been relaying Anna’s theory, that she was just the spokesperson and not the ringleader – she wasn’t, after all, the person who had started the witch-hunt, announcing what Seb had done on live radio. Vita didn’t say Anna’s name because she didn’t have to. Everyone was just relieved to have someone new to blame.
This morning Eddy had suggested to Blake in the kitchen that he take the day off school; he’d wanted to see if he could broker some kind of peace between Anna and Blake before Anna went away. Blake shook his head at Eddy’s hopeful suggestion. Instead, he looked directly at Anna, his gaze full of scorn. ‘No, Dad. I need to go to school. I want Uncle Seb to know he has my full support. Ethan and me – we made a poster.’
He went out of the back door, leaving it open so a few leaves from the sycamore tree in the garden blew into the kitchen, Anna staring, unseeing, after him.