69236538256563

‘It’s the teaching assistant I wonder about,’ said Katrina.
‘He only started this term,’ I said. ‘I don’t know anything about him.’
‘Exactly,’ said Katrina. ‘That’s what bugs me. We don’t know who he is. He’s an unknown
quantity.’
‘Have you spoken to him?’ I asked John.
‘No. You?’
‘Not once, he’s never out in the playground.’
John shrugged. ‘The police will be talking to everybody,’ he said. ‘They’ve assured me of that. I
don’t see what we can do.’
‘Anybody else you’ve thought of?’ Nicky asked.
John had had enough. ‘Don’t you think I haven’t spent every second of every day going through this
in my mind? I can’t think of anything else that would help. God knows I wish I could!’
He slammed the flat of his hand down on the table and it juddered.
‘Of course,’ Nicky said. ‘I’m sorry.’
In the silence that followed, Katrina stood up and began tidying up mugs. My eyes roved round,
taking in John’s new home. Their kitchen was white and shiny, the granite surfaces immaculate. The
only sign of disorder in the room was a large pin board, covered with stuff. I stood up and went to
look at it, lured over there by one image in particular. It was a drawing, made by Ben.
The drawing was of three adults and a child. Each person was named underneath: Mummy, John,
Katrina and Ben. We all stood equidistant from each other. Ben stood between John and me. ‘My
family’ he’d written above it and on each of our faces was a smile.
And in that moment I realised that Ben had managed to do what I hadn’t done, couldn’t do: he’d
moved on. I began to cry.
I felt an arm around my shoulders. It was Katrina, and what she said next made me realise for the
first time that she had a heart, and feelings of her own.
‘Would you like to see his room?’ she asked me.
‘Yes.’
She took me upstairs. On the landing, the first door we came to had three colourful wooden letters
on it that spelled out: ‘BEN’. She opened it and I stepped inside. ‘Take as long as you like,’ she said.
She went back downstairs.
The room had been beautifully decorated. It was light, and fresh, with pale walls and striped
bedlinen. The bed was made up with care. The duvet had been smoothed and tucked in and somebody
had carefully arranged three or four soft toys against the pillows, which were plumped up and
welcoming.
The walls were hung with two framed pictures of Tintin book covers, Ben’s favourite ones, and a
Minecraft poster. There was a child’s desk in the corner, and on it a stack of scrap paper, a container
full of colouring pens and pencils and a lamp, bright red, in the shape of an elephant. A half-finished
drawing lay waiting to be completed beside the iPad that John had given me the day before he left us,
but which had ended up belonging to Ben. It had felt impossible for me to deny him that, in the
absence of his father, and he often left it at John and Katrina’s house so that he didn’t have to negotiate
with them over computer use, because there was only one in the house.
A large rug covered the floor and there was an electric railway set assembled on it, a train with
carriages attached, ready to depart. A light shade, patterned like the moon, hung in the centre of the
room, and from it, carefully suspended on a thread, one above the other, hung three home-made paper
aeroplanes.