Chapter Thirteen
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THREE handbag fans were left in the hall after today’s end-of-year assembly. Please call at the school office to collect.
‘So, you’re a friend of Victoria?’ said Dreamy Pete Powell. ‘And you’re some sort of detective?’
‘I’m not any sort of detective,’ said Pat rather hotly, thinking yet again she really needed to be careful what she told her old friend.
Detectivating! It wasn’t even a proper word!
Perched between a box crammed full of carrier bags and a table littered with various forms and lists, she regarded the former Ofsted inspector turned food bank operative.
Dreamy? She wasn’t so sure about that. He was a slight, wiry man who could have been anything between fifty and seventy, one of those people who gave the impression of being someone younger, dressed up as someone older; the bright eyes made mockery of the lines on his brow and jaw; the wiry, white curls could have been a wig.
‘I’m a former colleague of Neville Hilton’s first wife,’ said Pat. ‘And she’s wanting to find out a bit more about what happened to him before his death. Which,’ she added hastily, ‘was a natural death, so the police say.’
‘But you think it might be something to do with what happened at Pity Me school?’ Those bright eyes fixed her with a shrewd look.
‘Somebody was overheard shouting the name of the school at Neville not long before he died.’
Peter Powell nodded slowly. He appeared to be making up his mind about something. ‘Of course, there’s only so much I can say – and all of it off the record. But, well, if what you say is right – I can’t say I’m at all surprised.’
‘I heard it was rather a brutal inspection,’ said Pat.
Peter nodded slowly. ‘It’s the main reason I stopped working as an Ofsted inspector,’ he said.
Crossing the sun-baked playground, a voice – clear and angry – stopped Liz and Thelma in their tracks.
‘Excuse me,’ it said.
Liz and Thelma turned to find themselves facing the blonde teacher, Chloe, who had turned her back on them earlier.
‘Excuse me,’ said Chloe again. ‘Can I just say, what you people are doing is disgusting.’ She was only short, barely five feet, but what she lacked in size, she more than compensated for in attitude. Visible on her upper arm was a black, spiky-looking tattoo of some fierce Celtic design.
‘Pardon me?’ said Liz, feeling a panicked sneeze building.
‘How you people can sleep at night is beyond me.’
‘I’m sorry?’ said Thelma.
‘Rona Middleton.’ Chloe fired the words out with scornful power.
‘Ro. My classroom assistant. I think it’s terrible you’re not giving her a job in your school.
Okay, she’s got a record, but it’s only shoplifting and that was years ago.
I am telling you she is an excellent classroom assistant; the kids all love her to bits. ’
Standing there, face bright with righteous anger, silver-blonde hair blazing in the sun Chloe would, Thelma thought, make an excellent Viking goddess – a true Valkyrie.
Liz opened her mouth to speak but Chloe had not finished, not by a long chalk.
‘All that crap about Wearside Academy welcoming the Pity Me family into your trust – absolute bullshit, with you picking and choosing staff like you are doing. And don’t give me any of that guff about not having enough money because you know what, that’s absolute bullshit as well.
I’ve seen the money being splashed around by you people left, right and centre. ’
‘I think,’ Thelma began.
‘I know what it is,’ drove on Chloe. ‘You don’t want someone with a criminal record. But that was years ago, and at the end of the day it was a nicked Mars bar. It should not debar you from working in a school. I’ve checked.’
‘I think there’s some crossed wires going on here,’ said Thelma gently.
‘How?’ said Chloe angrily.
‘We’re not from Wearside Academy,’ said Liz, voice muffled through a balsam tissue.
‘We’re acquaintances of Caro Miranda,’ said Thelma.
Chloe frowned, her face dark and stormy. ‘So why are you here then?’ she said suspiciously. ‘I were told some people from Wearside Academy were coming over.’
‘I’m sure they are,’ said Thelma. ‘But we were asked here by Reverend Miranda.’
‘Why?’
Liz and Thelma exchanged glances without actually appearing to do so, in the way that comes naturally to most primary school teachers.
The simplest thing – perhaps the most sensible thing – would be to make up some excuse.
But tempting as that was, Thelma realised it wouldn’t help them in the purpose if their visit.
She felt Liz tense beside her and knew her friend was reluctantly coming to the same conclusion.
‘We’re here,’ said Thelma, ‘because we’re friends of Neville Hilton’s first wife.’
Chloe frowned at them uncomprehendingly. ‘Neville?’
‘The man who ran your school’s inspection last November,’ said Thelma. She couldn’t see Liz but knew her friend’s hands would be clenched in a tight, nervous ball.
‘Neville Hilton.’ Chloe stared at them. Her face was blank but, in that blankness, both Liz and Thelma could sense a whole lava flow of emotion.
‘He died suddenly,’ said Liz nervously.
‘Good.’ The word was hoarse, almost a whisper, but behind it was an anger that was white-hot and frightening. ‘Good.’ She turned to go, but paused, frowning. ‘Wait a minute – you think someone from here killed him?’
‘The police are very clear that he died of natural causes,’ said Thelma.
‘So why are you here?’
Again. Liz and Thelma exchanged that look that wasn’t a look. ‘We think,’ said Liz, ‘maybe someone from here saw him before he died. And wondered if they could maybe tell us a bit about how he died.’
‘Slowly and painfully, I hope,’ said Chloe sharply. She turned on her heel and walked back into the school.
‘As a system Ofsted isn’t at all bad – ninety-nine times out of a hundred.
’ Pete Powell spoke in clipped, energetic tones, as he spooned coffee into a chipped Doctor Who mug.
Pat, mindful of her thirty-mile drive back home, had refused his offer.
‘You need some system of accountability – some of the shitshows I’ve seen going on, you wouldn’t believe.
’ They had relocated to a side room marked ‘Office’ which seemed to contain little beyond coffee-making equipment and an inordinate number of plastic bags.
‘But it’s a blunt tool.’ Peter poured water into the mug.
‘A hefty blunt tool. The proverbial sledgehammer to crack the nut. And, granted, sometimes you need that sledgehammer, but in most cases a tap from a fingernail will do.’ He turned and fixed her with those piercing blue eyes in a way that made her want to adjust her top.
Maybe ‘dreamy’ wasn’t so far from the mark after all …
‘You mean Pity Me school?’ she said, hoping he wouldn’t detect any sort of blush on her face.
Peter nodded. ‘What you have to remember about Ofsted,’ he said, ‘is that it’s a series of guidelines – not a list of rules. Prompts for conversations, if you like. Only of course in practice they’re treated exactly as a list of rules – especially by less experienced inspectors.’
‘Like Neville Hilton?’ said Pat.
‘He was your prime culprit. To the Neville Hiltons of this world, the guidelines are a list of things to be ticked or crossed – no conversational prompts going on in any shape or form.’
At that moment the door opened firmly, pushed by a determined bottom and an elderly woman in a sari, the most gorgeous shade of sky blue, advanced towards Peter Powell with a cup and plate.
‘Coffee, Mr Peter,’ she said firmly, totally ignoring Pat.
‘I have one thanks, Tania.’
Tania took one look at the strong brew, tutted in despair and tipped it down the sink, replacing it with one the colour of pale caramel.
‘Cake,’ she said setting down the plate with an unassailable clatter.
On it sat two, glistening lokma fritters.
‘You eat this, make sure you do. I shall look in the bins and ask the other ladies.’
‘Bless you, Tania,’ said Peter Powell, giving her a brilliant smile. Pat decided to have this man turning up in her classroom in search of conversational prompts would actually be no bad thing.
‘God love her,’ said Peter after the sky-blue figure had retreated. ‘My diabetic consultant would have me sectioned if I so much as sniffed that. Where were we?’
‘Neville Hilton and Ofsted guidelines,’ said Pat.
Peter Powell nodded. ‘With Nev, guidelines were rules – and he couldn’t see beyond those rules.
And with that school, Pity Me Infants, there were some pretty amazing things going on.
Okay, there were some things wrong with the place – as there are in most places – but ultimately it was the sort of school consultants like Bun Widdup or Alison Phillipson would send people to as a model of good practice.
But that said – there were some safeguarding concerns and Nev was absolutely right to raise them.
There’s some right evil bastards out there and you have got to be one hundred per cent watertight. ’
He sighed, took a sip of the coffee Tania had made and pulled a face.
‘If only the head teacher had been there,’ he said.
‘By all accounts she was one amazing woman – but she was off sick and her deputy was acting head. Nervy chap. From the get-go he got very defensive with Nev, really butting heads with him. How dare Nev be questioning their practice.’ He shook his head.
‘The staff – the governors – they lined up right behind him – and the more they kicked back, the more stubborn Nev became.’
Pat nodded; she could well imagine it. ‘Could you not have intervened?’ she asked. ‘You were one of the inspectors.’
‘But not the lead inspector.’ He sighed despondently into his coffee.
‘I tried,’ he said. ‘Believe you me, I tried – but at the end of the day, Nev was the lead inspector and there’s some pretty hefty protocols around these things.
I tried talking to Nev – but he wasn’t for listening to me, or anyone for that matter. ’
‘It all got quite heated I heard?’ prompted Pat.
Peter Powell nodded. ‘I reckon,’ he said, ‘we were lucky not to get our tyres let down.’
‘Was there anyone in particular,’ started Pat.
‘—who might go after Neville eight months later, driving him to an early grave?’ finished Peter.
Again, those eyes met Pat’s. They really were a gorgeous shade of blue.
He shrugged. ‘Everyone was angry the Leadership was given that judgement of Inadequate. The chair of governors – well, I remember thinking it was a good job she was a woman of the cloth. At one point I thought she was going to go for our throats. One of the teachers, young lass – the one whose paperwork hadn’t been there – she had a right go at us during the feedback.
Stormed out in tears.’ He shook his head sadly.
‘It shouldn’t ever need to be like that. ’
‘And the deputy’s partner?’
Peter Powell’s face broke into a sudden, sunny grin. ‘I’d forgotten him,’ he said. ‘Do forgive me. I wouldn’t say he confronted Neville so much as reasoned with him. Collared him by his car, asked him to find his inner peace and karma.’ The grin broadened. ‘He even asked Nev to hug it out.’
Pat, remembering Neville Hilton, found herself grinning too.
Peter’s face grew sombre. ‘I heard about the lad – the deputy who died,’ he said.
‘I felt very bad about that. He was in a terrible state by the time we left. And yes, I do feel responsible.’ He took an absent-minded sip of Tania’s coffee and again pulled a face.
‘Teaching’s so personal,’ he said. ‘Running a school – it’s not about rules and spreadsheets, no matter how much the powers that be think it should be. ’
Pat nodded, remembering her own years in school – so many memories, so many emotions, none of them boring.
Noisy shouts made them both look outside.
The end of the school day, nearly the end of the school year, children charging out of the doors, eager for whatever the summer afternoon had in store, followed more slowly by parents and grandparents fanning themselves and calling their charges to slow down.
Peter watched them, eyes far away. ‘You take your energy and you use it to connect with others. That’s what education is about.
That’s why I love coming to places like here – meeting people like Victoria.
And that’s why after the whole Pity Me inspection fiasco I decided that was it.
I came home and said, “Sandy: that’s me done.
” Which is why I find myself in places like this, manhandling the pasta sauce and the disposable nappies.
’ Again, the grin broke out, a rueful, reflective grin.
Looking at this passionate, wiry and definitely dreamy man, Pat found herself wondering if Sandy – whoever she was – knew how lucky she was.
Thelma and Liz exchanged glances as Chloe stalked back into the school. ‘That is one very angry young lady,’ said Liz, shaking her head.
Thelma nodded. ‘There seems to have been something about Neville Hilton that brought out that side of people,’ she said.
Liz nodded her head again as she shaded her eyes, looking in her bag for more tissues and car keys. ‘It seems to be my week for facing angry people,’ she said, unlocking the white Fiat.
Thelma nodded. Watching the terraced houses of Pity Me slide by she reflected on the two angry people she’d encountered that day: Caro Miranda, bitter and outraged; Chloe Lord, hot and explosive.
But for all that there’d been a common element underlying their anger.
Rage. The rage, Thelma thought, that comes with grief.
As they approached the roundabout at the start of the Durham bypass, Thelma said, ‘There’s the road Davey Fletcher was taking when he crashed that day.’
Both thought of that smiling man from Chloe’s memorial board, his fateful winter journey over the moor’s road. On a day such as today it was almost impossible to conceive of any such thing as a blizzard. Liz looked at the road sign: A171 Whitby and Scarborough.
The A171.
‘How very odd,’ she said frowning.
‘What?’ said Thelma.
‘That road – the A171. When I was looking through Neville’s complaints file, that’s one of the things he was complaining about … the dangerous state of the A171.’