Three Hours(7)
He looks up at the shuttered windows, too narrow for a person to get through and too high up. Even if they could fit, it wouldn’t do any good. There were gunshots earlier near the gatehouse – back when it was all dramatic and exciting and not frightening, before it really began – so there’s another gunman out there, maybe more than one, and no cover on the lawn. Frank thinks of deer running and a sniper picking them off, and hunches down, as if he can make himself even smaller, as if that will help.
Hannah is with Ed and David; they’re helping Mr Marr and talking to the ambulance people and piling up books against the door. He hates himself for not being brave like them. A nerd, he says to himself, a computer nerd, what do you expect? Furious with himself. Hannah is splattered in blood and just wearing a bra and he’s never seen anyone so impressive in his life before. He’s had a crush on her since Year 7, something delicate and gentle and secret. Other boys wouldn’t understand, they don’t think she’s pretty. Rafi does though; Rafi thinks she’s gorgeous. Lucky Rafi.
Hannah checks Mr Marr’s head wound. It’s not bleeding as much but he’s getting paler.
The footsteps have stopped for almost a minute, he’s just standing still in the corridor. What is he waiting for?
On her phone David is saying ‘but how soon?’ and ‘he needs help right away’, like he doesn’t trust them to get an ambulance here as fast as they can.
She hardly has any charge left and all the time David talks to the 999 people the percentage left for Dad and Rafi ticks down, which sounds a bit ‘last dance on the Titanic’ but on this ordinary school morning is true; she’d called goodbye up the stairs to Dad, didn’t kiss him, didn’t even see him.
In the corridor, he’s started moving again, coming closer towards them: click-click click-click. Why couldn’t he have worn trainers and been stealthy? She’d choose stealthy over this, like some deadly kind of tinnitus. He must’ve bought boots with metal in the heels specially. Must’ve known it would make people feel like she does. Arsehole.
David hands her back her phone. ‘Sorry,’ he says because there’s no charge left. ‘They didn’t say when the ambulance will get here.’
There’s a mobile being handed round at the back of the library and maybe they should take it but surely the ambulance will get to them as quickly as possible, surely you don’t need to chase up an ambulance when your headmaster’s been shot; and people also really need to talk to their parents.
She doesn’t notice Frank coming over until he’s crouching down next to them. He has a laptop with him; she’d never had him down as a law-breaker.
‘There might be something on the news that’ll tell us what’s happening,’ he says. ‘Maybe about help coming.’
‘Brilliant,’ she says to him.
Tap-tap go Frank’s fingers, confident once he’s at a keyboard, a different person. He must have 4G on his laptop because there’s no Wi-Fi in here, part of Mr Marr’s drive to get them all to read books in the library.
He brings up BBC News 24 with the sound muted, as if the gunman in the corridor might forget about them if they make no noise. Hannah can see from the screen that all the news is about their school. Even the bit at the bottom, running like a tickertape, which normally has other news, is just about them.
… shots in the school grounds … 47 secondary school children and 7 members of staff known to be still in the school … 140 junior school children and their teachers are unaccounted for … unconfirmed reports of an explosion at 8.20 this morning … police not giving more information …
‘Junior school’s okay though, right?’ Ed says.
‘They’re a mile away from the road,’ Frank says. ‘And surrounded by woods. So the gunmen probably don’t even know they’re there.’
Frank seems newly bold to Hannah, crouching close to her and Mr Marr.
‘Anything about a rescue?’ David asks. ‘An ambulance?’
‘No,’ Frank says. Hannah thinks he sees her disappointment. ‘But I was being stupid before. I mean, the police aren’t going to say on telly, are they? They’ll keep it secret.’
‘What about the man in our corridor?’ Ed asks.
‘Not yet. But it’ll be the same thing; they won’t say.’
An aerial picture of their school comes up on the screen.
‘Must have a drone with a camera,’ Ed says. ‘A local journalist maybe. Or someone’s sent it to them.’
It’s weird to see school from above, blurry with snow, and to know that they’re there, right now, inside a news photo. The photo of the school has arrows and captions. At the bottom of the photo is NEW SCHOOL, by far the largest of all the buildings, with ROAD next to it; lucky people in New School, they had an escape route. Further up the photo, half a mile away from the road and an escape route, through the woods, is where they are: OLD SCHOOL. A little away from OLD SCHOOL they’ve marked THEATRE. Even further up the map, deep into the woods, POTTERY ROOM. And at the top of the photo, almost in the sea, a mile from the road, is JUNIOR SCHOOL. A dotted red line shows the private drive that links up all the buildings.
Hannah hopes that if Frank’s right about the gunmen not knowing where Junior School is that they’re not watching TV, but it’s general information, it’s on the school prospectus even. Hopefully they haven’t done their research. Hopefully they just grabbed a gun on the spur of the moment. And on the spur of the moment will just fuck off again.