Dark Place to Hide by A J Waines Page B

see her to talk to. Not properly.’
    ‘And the day before the miscarriage – your Thursday yoga class? Dee said it was cancelled.’
    ‘Yeah – that’s right.’ Tara picks up the board rubber, reaches up and starts sweeping smooth arcs into the chalky remains on the old-style blackboard. ‘The tutor sent round a text to say she had a stomach bug.’
    Tara tells me you’d made plans to meet up for yoga, as usual, the day after you didn’t come home. ‘Was she vague or definite about that?’ I ask.
    Tara continues to caress the board with the felt rubber even though it’s now clean. ‘She said she’d be there, but there was something about needing a new yoga mat – I think the dog had got to hers.’
    I remember now. For some reason Frank took an instant dislike to it when you rolled it out one evening. He’d started chewing it and had ripped off one of the corners.
    ‘So, she was intending to turn up?’
    ‘Certainly sounded like it.’
    ‘And before the end of term, had she still been doing contact sports – hockey at lunchtime with the kids and so on?’
    ‘Oh, yeah. No change there.’ She knows why I’m asking. ‘She wasn’t avoiding exercise. She didn’t know she was pregnant, I’m certain. We’ve talked about having kids a lot – she would have told me.’
    What I really want to ask is,
What about an affair – would she have told you about that?
Did
she tell you about that?
But I can’t bring myself to ask. I don’t feel ready to hear the reply.
    Tara’s phone rings and she looks at the screen. ‘Listen, I’ll be back in tick – I just need to take this.’
    For a second my heart leaps and I get to my feet, but she shakes her head when she sees my expectant stare. She leaves me in silence. Not even the clock on the wall makes a sound. Itfeels unnerving for a schoolroom to be this quiet. I feel surrounded by the spirits of past pupils. I take my mind back to that Christmas party, purely to distract myself.
    You were late and I was being chatty and friendly, largely killing time before you turned up. Tara had been working the room with a plate of vol-au-vents, but stalled when she got to me. She offered me a glass of wine.
    ‘You’re tapping your foot,’ she observed. ‘Do you like the track?’ It was Lady Gaga,
Born this Way.
    ‘Too disco for me,’ I said. ‘Her videos are amazing, though.’
    ‘I know – I love her,’ she exclaimed. ‘I
made
them put it on.’ She turned to the ancient hi-fi in the corner. She’d had a bit to drink and wobbled on her high heels. ‘I did a show once with one of her dancers.’ She handed me her glass and instantly broke into a series of dance moves. My mouth fell open as I marvelled at the way her body melted into the rhythm.
    ‘I’m never dancing with you,’ I said.
    ‘Aw – spoil sport.’
    She reclaimed her glass and went on to tell me about her life before teaching. How her father was a theatre director in Copenhagen, but she’d been born in Epsom – how she’d been a pole dancer in Soho before finding her true vocation in the classroom.
    ‘It’s a big step from nightclubs to this,’ I said.
    She sighed. ‘It’s true. Sometimes I wonder if it’s really me.’
    I didn’t know you’d arrived, but Tara must have spotted you and left me for a moment. You told me afterwards that Tara had pulled you to one side and whispered a few words in your ear.
    ‘I’m going to be terribly mean and ignore you most of the night,’ she’d told you. ‘You don’t mind do you? Only I’ve been chatting to this gorgeous guy in the corner and there’s a real spark. He doesn’t seem to be with anyone. I don’t want to miss the chance – if there is one.’
    You’d patted her on the arm and sent her on her way, not looking my way.
    It was highly embarrassing after that.
    Tara made a beeline back to me to carry on the conversation we’d started. Time went by. I checked my phone thinking you’d call about being delayed. I didn’t know