Free Afterwards by Rosamund Lupton

continuing their urgent hunt for the person responsible for arson, and possibly a double murder.’
    Jenny and my deaths would add more cachet to her story.
    Directly opposite, on page 2, Tara’s just rehashed an article she’d written in March, adding a new intro.
Only four months ago, the Richmond Post reported on Silas Hyman, 30, a teacher at Sidley House Preparatory School who was fired after a child was seriously injured. The seven-year-old boy broke both his legs after plunging from an outside metal fire escape onto the playground below in an alleged ‘accident’.
    Just as she had the first time, she doesn’t say that Mr Hyman was
nowhere near the playground
at the time. And those quotation marks around the word ‘accident’ – saying that it wasn’t. But who’s going to sue her over quotation marks? Slippery as her patent leather Miu Miu bag.
    And still her bid for journalistic glory, measured in column inches, continues.
Situated in a leafy London suburb, the exclusive £12,500-a-year school, founded thirteen years ago, is marketed as a nurturing environment where ‘every child is celebrated and valued’. But even four months ago questions were being asked about its safety.
    I interviewed parents at the time.
    A mother of an eight-year-old girl told me, ‘This is supposed to be a caring school, but this man clearly didn’t look after the children. We are thinking about taking our daughter away.’
    Another parent told me, ‘I am very angry. An accident like this just shouldn’t be allowed to happen. It’s totally unacceptable.’
    In March Tara had titled her article ‘Playground Plunge!’ but now she’s changed it to ‘Teacher Fired!’
    So on the right-hand side of the newspaper is ‘Teacher Fired’ and on the left-hand side is ‘Fire Started Deliberately’. And the connection crackles between them, an invisible circuit of blame – the fired teacher exacting his fiery revenge.
    DI Baker’s mobile goes and he answers it.
    The
Richmond Post
lies on the table, like a challengethrown into the ring – your Silas Hyman contender for arsonist versus DI Baker’s hate-mailer.
    I know that you’ve never liked Mr Hyman. Before he was fired we’d had weeks of sniping over him. You thought I
totally over-exaggerated
Mr Hyman’s effect on Addie.
    ‘“Exaggerated” doesn’t need “totally” and “over” added to it,’ I said frostily.
    ‘Not all of us did an English degree,’ you replied, stung.
    ‘Only half of one , remember?’
    Mr Hyman made us fight. And we don’t normally fight.
    ‘Before Mr Hyman, Addie was miserable,’ I said. ‘Don’t you remember?’
    He was picked on, couldn’t do the work, had virtually no self-esteem.
    ‘So he’s come through that,’ you said.
    ‘Yes, because of Mr Hyman. He’s sorted out who he sits next to, worked out the boys who are likely to become his friends, and they are now. They’re asking him on playdates. He’s got a sleepover this weekend. When’s he ever had one of those? And he organises who the children sit next to on the coach when they go on trips. Addie used to dread no one sitting next to him. And he’s got him confident in Maths and English.’
    ‘He’s just doing his job.’
    ‘He calls Addie “Sir Covey”. That’s lovely, isn’t it? A knight’s name?’
    ‘It’ll probably make the other kids tease him.’
    ‘No, he’s got pet names for all of them.’
    Why didn’t you appreciate him more?
    An attractive young teacher with a sparkle in his eyes, I’d wondered if your antagonism towards him was because he’d kissed me on the cheek when we went to parents’evening in the first term. ‘
Totally inappropriate!
’ you’d said, not realising that Mr Hyman is just very physical – tousling the children’s hair as he passes them at their desks, a quick warm hug at going-home time. And yes, us mothers did smile a little about him, but not in a serious way.
    Then when Mr Hyman was fired and I came home that day