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a pair of handcuffs on him. I swallowed my annoyance, because I wanted to press him some more on
Ben’s possible contacts.
‘Is there any adult at school who you feel that Ben might have formed an attachment to?’
‘Miss May?’ asked the Head. ‘You’ll know best.’
‘Well, there’s me,’ she said. The palm of her hand was on her chest, rising and falling with her
breathing. ‘I’ve been his teacher for just over a year now, I had him last year too; and I work with a
teaching assistant called Lucas Grantham who comes in part-time. He’s new this year. The children
like him; Ben likes him. We’re the ones with the most contact with him.’
‘We’ll definitely need to speak to Mr Grantham,’ I said.
‘He’s here today if you’d like to meet him.’
‘That would be useful. Anybody else?’
She shook her head.
‘Nobody springs to mind, but there are lots of other people Ben comes into contact with on a daily
basis.’
‘And, can I ask, have you noticed anything unusual about Ben’s behaviour lately?’
‘No. If anything I’d say he’s been having a good year. Last year was much harder for him, after his
parents split up.’
‘In what way?’
‘He didn’t know how to react to the separation. We talked about it sometimes at school. He’s not
the only one in my class going through it of course, but it’s a sad and confusing situation for any child
and I think parents sometimes don’t understand how hard the children take it.’
‘It often falls to school to deal with the emotional fallout in these situations,’ said the Head.
‘Do you think Ben was more affected than you might expect?’
‘I couldn’t say,’ said the Head. ‘I’d be lying if I said I knew him well because I’ve only been here a
few weeks, as I said.’
I wasn’t directing the question at him, but I let it go. The man had an ego. Miss May answered.
‘No,’ she said. ‘He was affected quite badly, but he’s a very sensitive boy so that’s what you might
expect if you knew him.’
The Head cleared his throat. ‘There’s one thing on file we thought we should mention. Last spring,
when Ben was in Year Four, he had a fall as he arrived in the playground with his mother. It was
before school. He came off his scooter and landed badly on his arm. Do you want to tell it from there,
Miss May, as you were there?’
‘I wasn’t actually there when he fell. One of the other teachers saw it happen,’ she said.
‘Apparently Ms Jenner helped Ben up and put him back on his feet and brushed him off. He was
crying a bit, because his arm hurt, but she was talking to him and he did calm down.’
She paused and looked anxiously at the Head.
‘And?’ I said.
He took over. ‘And the file says that Ms Jenner left Benedict at school even though he was
complaining of pain in his arm. It turned out that it was fractured.’
‘So this was when he was in your class?’ I asked Miss May.
She nodded. ‘I’ve got to say I took one look at him when I was doing registration and I could see
there was something very wrong. He was white as a sheet. As soon as he said what had happened I
called an ambulance immediately.’
‘Was he in obvious distress at that point, or when his mother left him?’
‘Not obvious distress; he was being very brave.’