WATTYS WINNER 2020
Two interconnected murders, 64 years apart. One woman's search for truth and identity.
Readers' comments: 'a masterpiece', 'impeccably written', 'amazing', 'superbly crafted page-turner', 'hauntingly beautiful', 'tremendous plot a...
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Image: Altar of the Henllan POW camp near Llandysul in Wales, created by Italian prisoners.
~~~~~
'The only sin is the sin of being born' Samuel Beckett
~~~~~
I was to learn of my mother's passing three days after the event, Monday 12th of June, 2007. She and I had had a tacit agreement: I would phone no more than once a week, and never at the weekends or at any other time outside working hours. I usually called from my office during whichever lunchtime wasn't cluttered by urgent mounds of paperwork or appointments with the parents of havoc-wreaking under-twelves.
Rather than her half-faded Liverpudlian lilt, it was a shock that particular day to hear instead a male voice on the other end of the line.
"Hello?" His tone was subdued yet curious.
It took me a moment to gather myself. "I was, er... I was hoping to speak to Irene actually."
There was a pause - a telling one, my heart already beginning to ominously thud.
"I'm afraid she... She passed on. Friday afternoon." It was clear from the slight tremor in his voice that his grief was genuine. "Fell asleep in front of the TV, never woke up again. Next door neighbour heard Ginger whining for her tea. Funeral's tomorrow." Then, his curiosity growing: "Who am I speaking to please?"
But I was already clicking receiver back into cradle.
*
I have never been what you might call the most emotionally immediate of women. Only anger rises quickly with me. Sadness, the much rarer experience of happiness, are like expelled bubbles floating their sluggish journey from diver's mouthpiece to surface. I knew full well what everyone called me behind my back, teachers and pupils alike. That dropped initial 'R' from my surname. Not Miss Rice but Miss Ice.
Indeed, anyone throwing a glance in my direction that Monday lunchtime as I sought out my deputy in the school canteen probably wouldn't have discerned any marked difference in my demeanour. The grief was internalised, put to one side. Something to be considered at a later date like a problem deemed slightly less urgent than others.
The voice on the other end of the line must have been Irene's son-in-law, I reasoned. Roger. Already starting to sort out her things perhaps, flick those sad little broom strokes at the flotsam and jetsam of a human life.
I eventually found Griffiths over at the hot plates consoling a tearful Year 3 pupil who'd dropped his tray of fishfingers and chips to the floor.
"Going to need you to cover me tomorrow," I informed him.
"Sure Mary, no problem." The accompanying smile, no doubt intended as reassuring, had completely the opposite effect. The parent-teacher committee must have been suffering some kind of cognitive malfunction the day they elected him deputy. The chap was just too lily-livered, too brainwashed by all that modern pedagogical claptrap, to be in any way effective in a leadership role. Five to eleven-year-olds didn't need drama therapy, self-evaluation, a stake in the decision-making process of their own educational paths. What they needed was discipline. Spelling tests. Times tables learnt by rote.
