The other son, p.18
The Other Son, page 18
‘Oh!’ she cried. ‘Who is it?’
Even as she spoke, she knew the chances of it being her boys, or even Jojo’s, were minimal. Three kids out of hundreds. What would the odds be?
‘They’re stuck!’ Jojo surged forward along with the rest of the group that had congregated outside the gates. ‘The doors won’t open!’
He was right. The double doors, which opened outwards, would only give a few inches. It was enough for the screams and shouts to reach the onlookers’ ears.
‘They’re chained! They can’t get out!’ The cry came from Kathy, Sara noted.
She looked over at the woman with distaste. The other parents who called and wailed sounded hysterical with fear. To Sara, Kathy simply sounded excited. She felt her fists curl with a barely concealed anger. It wasn’t Kathy’s child in there; to her, this was simply a high-octane thriller movie that she was watching in real time.
But her fists uncurled, thoughts of Kathy diminished, as the sound of thumping and the subsequent shouts from those trapped within increased in volume.
‘Do something,’ she whimpered. ‘Oh please, someone do something.’
A hand on her arm; her mother’s, she saw. ‘They’re going in,’ Mary said, still quiet, still calm.
She was right. The police streamed from nowhere. Not the officers who had been trying to control the cluster of parents at the gate, but men and women with vests and caps and earpieces that looped behind their heads to hidden radios. In their hands they carried guns and canisters.
They didn’t speak to each other or anyone else as they moved in. The ones at the front talked with their hands, signals that Sara had only ever seen in American movies. They positioned themselves at points en route to the doors, fanning out, gesturing, raising their weapons.
Other officers came from the rear, slipping down the protective pathway those in front had created. They held tools, Sara saw now. Battering rams and actual tool bags.
Those previously waiting in a crouch reconvened at a signal so discreet, Sara didn’t even see it. A semicircle now, poised in synchronicity as a single black-clad man ran in a crouch to the double doors.
The whine of what sounded like a circular saw hushed the crowd immediately.
Only when the chain sagged and snapped and the doors flew open did the armed officers move. The formation changed like a well-rehearsed dance. The semicircle turned into a line, a barricade between the school doors and the gate as the first pupils shoved their way out of their prison.
Not just one kid, a handful… no, a dozen. Even more!
The parents at the gate surged, their children in tantalising reach yet still denied to them as the officers sent them in the opposite direction.
‘Where are they taking them?’ Kathy’s voice again, disappointed, as though she’d wanted to witness the reunions.
Or perhaps she wanted to witness the children who didn’t come back, thought Sara. Whatever her motives, she very definitely needed to shut up.
‘She’s driving me crazy,’ said Sara to nobody.
‘Yes, not just you.’ The voice at her ear was her mother’s.
‘I-I can’t see if any of the children are… mine.’ She swallowed, realising belatedly that she had been about to say Ryan.
The hand fell from her arm. The sudden absence of support put Sara off balance. She faced front, caught sight of Jojo crushed against the locked gates, pulling himself up by his strong arms. Some of the other parents followed his lead, until the small area by the gates looked like a pitch invasion at a football match.
The police, the non-armed ones who only had batons at their disposal, attempted to calm the situation. They didn’t pluck the batons from their belts, however, and for that Sara was grateful. You couldn’t punish people for this reaction.
It was purely human nature.
Finally, the men atop the gates were talked down. The formation of armed officers had broken and dispersed.
The children were gone.
An officer on the outside of the gate waved his walkie-talkie in the air.
He was young-looking, thought Sara. Another one who was too young for this job, for this scene. Pale and pasty and seemingly on the verge of throwing up, he seemed momentarily stunned when everyone looked to him, as though he’d imagined he would have to shout for their attention.
‘The students who came out are being checked over by the paramedics.’ He ran an eye over the crowd. ‘Please don’t attempt to enter the grounds to find them.’
A voice piped up, a red-headed man who had his arm clamped around a tiny woman next to him. ‘Where do we go, then?’
The officer, just for a single moment, looked like a deer caught in headlights. In an instant, he regained his composure. ‘Wait,’ he instructed.
He turned his back, curled around his police radio now, bursts of static bouncing along the sound waves.
‘The community centre!’ the officer called. ‘But please, we need to do this in an orderly fashion, we need to remain calm…’ His words trailed off as the crowd of parents turned and began a fast walk back to where they’d originally come from.
Sara, anchorless without Jojo, without her mother, watched them go.
There was no stampede, which she would have expected. The crying and the random shouts of anger and frustration had died away. All that followed them up the street was silence.
When they had gone, the quiet enveloped Sara as she stood alone at the gates, feeling like she was the last person remaining on earth.
35
Travis
Now
He wasn’t sure what to do. Should he check that she’d gone home, or would that be too much?
Nobody liked a needy person, and he didn’t want to come off as such. Sara was the one with the need for him. At least that was how it had to be portrayed.
He buckled up his jeans and flopped into the chair in front of the computer.
His gaze wandered to the window, to the black, starless night.
Maybe she was happy. Maybe he’d done his duty for tonight. It couldn’t have been easy for her, giving herself up to another man, a man who wasn’t her dead husband.
Husband!
Travis sat up straight, recalling the article he’d seen about Ryan’s death. He’d wanted to read more, to find out more about this family, but she’d been outside, drinking. He’d been jittery, not wanting her to walk in and find her dead son’s name on his computer screen.
She was gone now. She wouldn’t be back tonight.
Just in case, he got up and locked the front door, something he rarely did.
Tonight, he would find out all he could about Ryan, the dead husband, the widowed Sara and her one surviving son.
Tomorrow morning, he would make his way along the track with fresh croissants for Sara and Scott. He would be friendly, but he wouldn’t be pushy. He would assess the lie of the land when he was there.
Feeling better now he had a plan in place, he switched on his computer and got to work.
It was dire reading. He recalled how at the time, he’d heard snatches and snippets of what was happening. The heartbreaking days that followed as sadness turned to anger. Protests, placards held aloft as Farenden High Street had become a march.
This is not America! proclaimed one of them. As though it was expected in the States, as if because it happened on an almost weekly basis it was fast becoming normal.
But here, it hadn’t been for lack of laws. Those gun laws were in place, and for almost twenty years they had worked. Marches and protests would not change anything. This was a terrible tragedy that had occurred because a boy had stolen his father’s legally owned firearms and gone off the deep end.
That led Travis on another path, a road that excited and intrigued him in equal measure.
The boy. Noah Miller. What caused a fifteen-year-old kid from a seemingly good home, with both parents around, to kill nineteen people?
Another memory flashed back at him. The first weeks had centred on the victims, the survivors, the funerals and the memorials. Only afterwards, later, would questions arise about Noah Miller.
There had been talk of a second shooter, an accomplice. Kids who had got out mentioned Noah communicating with someone over a radio. He himself had spoken about his friend in another part of the school causing the same kind of carnage.
They hadn’t run, the kids said, they hadn’t rushed him, because he wasn’t alone. He had a partner – he might have had three or four or a dozen in his team – and they could be anywhere.
Nobody knew.
And to this day, still nobody knew.
Travis moved on to the comments left at the bottom of the original piece, falling down rabbit-hole links that led him to other news articles, essays, support groups and chat rooms. Every so often he came back to the comments, hundreds of them, some from strangers, some from left-wing groups, proposing that all guns should be banned. One name jumped out at him, repeatedly commenting, imparting information again and again.
Kathy Driver, aka KDmum.
She had a kid at the school, a daughter, but by some stroke of luck or fate her girl had been off sick that day. Kathy, however, concerned for her community, had gone down to the school the instant she heard, and had stayed almost until the bitter end.
It was Kathy Driver who made the only mention of Sara’s name that Travis could find.
KDmum: I was assaulted while the school was locked down. While all those people were standing at the gates, not knowing if their kids were alive or dead, and one person was still acting like nothing was happening. #BitchInHeat
SuziSue: OMG, KDmum, what happened? Who assaulted you?
KDmum: Sara Fuller. She had a go at me for being there to support my friends, said I should be at home with my Louise. She said I was just there for the gossip! She hit me.
MumOfTash: Like you weren’t just there for the drama, KD! ;)
SuziSue: Shut up MumOfTash. KD, do you reckon the rumours about her and Jojo were true?
KDmum: Darling, I KNOW they’re true. I caught them at the Palais in Hammersmith. He was holding her face, stroking her like she was a bloody cat. I could never work out what he saw in her. She told him to stay away from her and walked out of the restaurant. I reckon Mack had found out, given her an ultimatum. And Mack was dying, she had no choice but to stay with him.
SuziSue: OMFG!
Working_Mum: Jojo didn’t leave her side at Farenden. Even when her mum turned up, he stayed with her. Maybe the affair never actually ended?
KDmum: All those years Mack thought that boy was his own.
SuziSue: You think Scott was Jojo’s kid? Poor Mack, he was a really nice guy, didn’t deserve her.
Comments for this post have been switched off
He pushed himself away from his desk and moved across to the kitchen. The coffee was still there, hours old and cold now, but he poured it into a mug and swallowed it anyway.
Sara had committed adultery with another man.
One of her children was rumoured to be the son of a man called Jojo.
He sniffed his disappointment and looked out of the window into blackness. It didn’t sound like the Sara he knew. His Sara was a classy lady; surely affairs were… beneath her? It was far more likely that this man, this Jojo, had forced her. What was it that KDmum had said? He scrolled back, found the passage.
She told him to stay away from her and walked out of the restaurant.
To Travis, it seemed that Sara, like Kathy Driver, had been the victim of an assault.
And the son who was not Sara’s husband’s was Scott.
He felt his eyes widen.
It would explain so much. The distance between Scott and Sara. Her wariness of him, her discomfort when in his presence.
Suddenly revived now that he had more to go on, Travis tipped the dregs of the coffee down the sink and rushed back to the computer.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. It was nearing four a.m. Three hours until the bakery up near the Co-op opened. Three hours to find out as much about Sara, Scott and the savage, hideous Jojo as he could.
He had no surname to go on, but the man wasn’t hard to locate. He’d had a son, Jaden, and a wife, Amelia. He was from Ireland, which made sense, thought Travis, going by that name. But he had lived in London for a lot of his adult life. He and his wife had divorced before the school shooting.
His presence was heavy on social media, this Jojo. His face smiling, usually a pint of beer in hand. A masculine vibe pulsated from him, a Jack-the-lad. Travis wrinkled his nose with distaste. Sara was far too good for a man like this.
He paused on a Facebook photo Jojo had been tagged in. This time, he held aloft an oversized bottle of champagne. With the other hand he gave the ‘up yours’ gesture to whoever was taking the picture.
Travis scowled. Jojo was a yob, a thug. A guy who thought he was a geezer. A bully, an attacker of women. A walking erection; the type of man Travis couldn’t stand.
Was this why Sara had run? On top of the death of her younger son, she was still being harassed by the thug who had impregnated her against her will?
He clicked back to the comments, the one left by Working_Mum. Jojo didn’t leave her side at Farenden. Even when her mum turned up, he stayed with her.
By the looks of the comments made by the other mums, they were jealous.
Poor Sara.
His heart ached, thinking of her persecution by such a heathen. And then to be victimised by those… those… witch-hunters.
He moved on, clicking on to Jojo’s own Facebook page now. He scrolled down, landing on one year ago, all the RIP messages giving him pause for thought.
His hand hovered over a post, tags galore, thousands of likes, hundreds of comments.
RIP Jaden Walsh.
Travis’s breath caught in his throat.
The awful man had lost his own son in the tragedy.
Horrible, terrible; not a single one of those kids had deserved to die, not even Jojo Walsh’s boy. Just because blood and DNA were involved, it didn’t mean the lad would have turned out anything like his father.
Uneasily, Travis twisted in his chair and once again stared outside.
The pit cave. The strange moment when he had thought that Scott could kill him. Scott’s words when Travis had chastised him for starting a fire in the cave.
Travis: ‘Fumes from fires can be poisonous, deadly even.’
Scott’s reply: ‘I know.’
If Scott was on the cusp of sociopathy, or something equally dangerous or deadly, where did that leave Sara?
He moved up the page, tired suddenly, weariness covering him like the black sky concealed the forest outside.
He had to keep going. If he stopped now, if he slept, he would miss the bakery opening time. All the fresh stuff would be gone, and he needed to carry on with Project Sara.
She was familiar with being used and discarded, he understood that now. He had to show her that he was nothing like the man who had stolen her joy and left her with the burden of an unplanned child. He would step up. He would love her and show her that there was life after tragedy. But first he had to check on this Jojo, see what he was up to now. If he was as enamoured with Sara as the comments on the newspaper article suggested, it explained why she kept such a low profile. He would not betray her whereabouts; Kielder could forever become her foxhole.
He scrolled up the page, right up to the most recent activity, and frowned.
The last post had been just under a year ago. One week after the Farenden shooting. It hadn’t been left by Jojo himself, but by somebody – a relative, if the surname was anything to go by – who had tagged him.
Be with your son, my darling, and fly high together.
We love you.
We will miss you forever.
Rest in peace, Jojo
Travis’s breath caught in his throat.
Jojo Walsh was dead.
36
Scott
Before
‘What happened to the people?’ Scott asked as they walked the silent hallways.
‘Who?’ Noah was distracted, kicking open classroom doors at random, giving a single glance inside before exiting and walking on.
‘The… the people who were in the hall.’ Scott swallowed. ‘How did they get out?’
Noah’s face slid into a frown, his thin lips matching his narrow eyes.
He didn’t know, couldn’t work it out, saw Scott.
Eventually, Noah shrugged. ‘Doesn’t matter, I got some of them.’ He stopped, darted back to Scott and grabbed his arm. ‘Look, through there, see?’
They had emerged into a glass-lined corridor that bordered a tiny courtyard. Across the courtyard, in the hallway that ran parallel, was the exit route that the fugitives from the hall had streamed down. The main doors were at the far end. The pathway leading to them was littered with inert human forms. The floor and the edges of the smashed glass wall were sprayed red.
Four or five of them, culled at different points. Random shots by Noah as he chased them while Scott was on the phone to his nan.
‘Look, through here. Get a better view.’ Noah stepped back, raised his right arm and fired off a round at the glass wall that separated them from the courtyard.
No silencer on the silver gun. It sounded like fireworks. Behind him, beyond a closed door somewhere, Scott was sure he heard a voice. He glanced at Noah, but he was already kicking out at the shattered glass, the racket concealing the sound of what might or might not have been a scream.
He followed Noah, his shoes crunching on the glass-strewn floor. Outside, it was hot, London basking in the summer heat.
‘Here, see?’ Noah had moved to the other side of the courtyard, was tapping on the glass with the barrel of the silver gun.
With one last look at the blue sky, Scott joined him. Four bodies: two girls, one boy, and an adult he didn’t recognise. He knew the boy, though; not to speak to, just to look at, one he had actually looked at mere minutes ago.
