Three Hours(15)
‘This building is very safe,’ Miss Kowalski said patiently. ‘No one can hurt Basi here.’
And even if he didn’t have PTSD, they would still find it hard to believe him because around them were books sorted out into reading age and coloured crayons in pots and small coats on pegs, each with a photo of the wearer above. It was so gentle and organized that it felt safe.
‘Perhaps you’d like to go home for the day,’ Mr Lorrimer said, not knowing their foster mother wasn’t there today. The house was in West Porlock, only three miles away, and if he could take Basi there he would, but to get there they’d have to go through the woods, on the drive or the path, and the woods weren’t safe.
‘I need to talk to Mr Marr,’ he said, sounding too loud in the quiet room.
They were silent, Miss Kowalski with that patient quietness of teachers, Mr Lorrimer with annoyance, and all the time they were patient and annoyed Basi was in danger. He’d just have to take Basi and run. But what about the photos above the small coats? He’d have to take all the children to the beach, but he didn’t know how he could do that.
Mr Lorrimer hadn’t picked up the phone on his desk so Rafi got out his mobile. Mr Marr always took his calls. Should’ve done that straight away; he’d wasted time.
*
Through his office’s large sash windows Matthew Marr saw that it had started to snow, the first time in years. Opposite him was his young deputy head, Neil Forbright, huddled into his chair, looking cold despite the fire Matthew had lit in the grate, and Matthew worried that Neil should have taken more time off, had again come back to work too soon; a pattern for the last year. His mobile vibrated, ‘Rafi’ displayed, and he picked it up.
‘There was an explosion in the woods, Mr Marr,’ Rafi said. ‘About fifteen minutes ago, maybe less.’
‘Has anyone been hurt?’ he asked.
And in the few moments before Rafi replied, fear blew inside him, a barely perceptible spasm in his face, a gust of adrenaline speeding his heart and breathing; and that physical reaction meant that he didn’t dismiss what Rafi told him, because he had felt a presage of something appalling.
‘No,’ Rafi said. ‘But I heard it and saw flames and smoke.’
Matthew put the phone on speaker so Neil could hear.
‘I found the remains of it,’ Rafi continued, ‘a burnt-out container bent out of shape, the size of a lunch box. And there was shrapnel in the trees.’
Rafi was trying to sound calm, but Matthew heard the boy’s fast breathing.
‘Did you see anyone near the explosion?’ he asked.
‘No, but I didn’t look, just ran to Basi.’
Matthew thought that Rafi’s explosion probably had an innocent explanation – a bonfire that had an aerosol can and a lunch box burnt inside it; bits of bonfire floating up and getting caught in the trees looking like shrapnel to Rafi. He suffered from severe PTSD, which would transmute a small bang with an innocent explanation into a bomb. He imagined Rafi hearing a loud noise and seeing flames and PTSD taking his mind away from the woods and back to Syria; the horrors there.
Tonya, his secretary, came in from her adjacent office, and he thought she must have heard some of their conversation.
‘Two teachers have phoned in,’ Tonya said. ‘Complaining about a loud noise in the woods. They think it’s kids messing around with firecrackers.’
That’s what Rafi’s explosion most likely was, firecrackers and a bonfire.
‘I’m at Junior School,’ Rafi said. ‘But they don’t believe me. I have to get Basi, all of them, to safety. They can’t stay here, Mr Marr.’
It could well be, most probably was, PTSD that had convinced Rafi it was a bomb, when in fact it was, as the teachers thought, kids fooling around. But what if Rafi was right? A thousand-to-one shot – but what if? At Columbine, teachers had thought it was firecrackers not bullets to start with; just a prank.
‘We have to get them out,’ Rafi said.
Matthew remembered the schoolroom in the Dunkirk camp, plastic crates on the mud floor as seats and desks, the other two volunteer teachers also in wellies and hats. Two filthy boys walking towards him, the older one looking angry, his dark eyes and mouth forming a surly expression, until he got closer and Matthew saw that he was fearful and defensive. One hand was holding tightly on to his little brother’s, his other holding a battered copy of Macbeth.
At fourteen Rafi had brought his six-year-old brother all the way from Syria to France. He’d told Matthew about their journey, fragment by fragment, over the last two and a half years; his love and responsibility for Basi gluing the fragments together. If Rafi thought Basi was in danger then Matthew had to help him, had to give him the benefit of the doubt. And Rafi did have first-hand experience of bombs; the only one of them that did.
He took the school’s emergency plan from his bottom right-hand desk drawer.
‘Can you ask Mr Lorrimer to speak to me, please, Rafi?’
He turned to Neil.
‘I’m grading the incident amber, instigating the school emergency plan and evacuating Junior School,’ he said, a little alarmed by what he was saying. ‘I want the rest of the school to stay inside school buildings and not go anywhere near the woods until the police give us the all-clear.’
Neil picked up the phone to call the police; under the emergency plan the deputy head was in charge of liaison with the emergency services.