‘Well, Rose was a beautiful woman and still young. She could have passed for a girl in her early twenties. Maybe some of the older students were attracted to her. Perhaps she was flattered. She could have crossed a line and things got out of hand.’
Nicholson sighs heavily. Suddenly he looks much older. ‘Sorry, but no. Really, just no. I won’t have that kind of talk about her. Her students cared about her very much. That could easily be misinterpreted, but I know what she was like. Maybe some of the younger boys had crushes on her. But just normal harmless stuff. She was a private person and kept to herself but she was very principled. She had nothing to hide.’
He abruptly lurches to the side and grabs some tissues, dropping his head behind the desk. I look away as he makes little retching sounds.
Felix stands and goes to him, patting him roughly on the back. ‘Can I call someone for you?’
Nicholson sits up, looking dazed. His face is puffy and perspiration begins to trail down his forehead. ‘No, I need to get ready to … talk to everyone. I’m sorry, this is just very hard.’
I nod and Felix keeps patting his back.
‘We will need to gather a lot of information,’ I tell Nicholson. ‘Interview teachers, students and admin staff. We don’t know exactly what we’re looking for yet so we need to cover everything.’
Nicholson moves his head up and down slowly. His eyes are fixed on the desk.
‘I’ll get you some water,’ says Felix, leaving the room.
I stare at my old principal. I remember being in this office after Mum died. Probably sitting in this exact chair while Nicholson talked to Dad and me about the support available and the strategies that would be adopted to make sure things could stay as normal as possible at school. Nicholson has always had kind eyes. They look at me now—two dark brown smudges.
‘Did you go on Friday night, Mr Nicholson?’ I ask.
His breathing is slowly returning to normal. ‘Ah, no. I didn’t, no.’
Felix reappears and places a large glass of water in front of him, catching our conversation. ‘You didn’t go to the opening night of the school play?’
Nicholson fidgets and takes a gulp of water. ‘No, I didn’t.’
‘Why not? It would have been one of the biggest events of the year for the school, surely?’ Felix’s voice is light but I can tell he is homing in on what he thinks is an anomaly. ‘Did you have other plans?’
Nicholson looks back and forth between us, his eyes slightly desperate. ‘No, but you see it was all a bit political.’
‘Political?’
‘Well, maybe not political, that makes it sound too serious. But it was a bit awkward.’
‘Tell us what you mean,’ I say.
‘Well, you see it was Rosalind’s idea. To have the play. She was so passionate about putting on a production and last year we couldn’t make it work—there were issues with funding and the head drama teacher had taken ill, so it never happened.’ He pauses and looks at me. ‘You remember, Gemma—the plays were always a winter highlight. Good for the students but also good for the whole community. I wanted to put on a show too, but being principal you have to make sacrifices. Recently sport has kind of won out over the arts.’
‘Right, so this year Rosalind pushed to have the play?’
‘Yes, it was very important to her. The head drama teacher had left and Rose was at me about it as soon as the year started and I said I was sure it would be fine. But then a major camp was scheduled for the year elevens in July, which clashed with the auditions. And some of the other teachers felt like the play created too much competition between the kids. It became controversial.’
‘Okay. So Rosalind was angry?’
Nicholson looks up as if to disagree and then slumps back again. ‘More frustrated, I think. She mentioned bureaucracy more than once and I know she was disappointed in me for not trying harder to make it happen.’
‘Was anyone angry with her about it?’
Nicholson looks confused. ‘Like annoyed? Well, maybe a bit. But not enough to do something like this. No way.’
‘Were you angry at her?’ I ask.
Nicholson doesn’t move. Outside the door the phone rings again. ‘No. I was frustrated for her. I wanted her to have her play and I was glad she finally got to put it on.’
‘So why didn’t you go to the opening night?’ Felix presses.
‘I felt it would be best if I didn’t make an overt show of support. I had planned to go this Friday. It was going to run for seven nights, you see.’
‘I heard it was very good,’ I say.
Nicholson nods. ‘Yes, yes. I knew it would be. She had a wonderful ability. So much insight. So talented. A great actress too, I think.’
‘Too talented to be teaching students at Smithson High?’
Nicholson looks at Felix, an unreadable expression on his face. He checks his watch and as he stands I notice his hands are shaking. ‘Well, that is a hard thing to measure, isn’t it? All I know is that she was determined. She rallied those kids, wrote that play, checked with the education department to see if she could have the year twelves use their analysis of modernising the script to count towards their final marks. She did all that.’
We stand and step aside so that Nicholson can show us out. ‘I think she was happy here. Especially lately. She was thrilled with the play. Proud of the students. She was happy.’
Felix smiles tightly at him. ‘Yes, well. Thank you for your time. We may need to speak with you again but for now we’re done.’
‘Thank you. Now listen, you do what you need to do, but please be careful with everyone. We are hurting very badly. We loved her, you know.’
Something about the way he says this is unsettling and Felix gives me a pointed look as we walk out past the frazzled receptionist into the white-hot sunlight and smack bang into a ghost.
My future is a slippery elusive thing that I have spent half my life trying not to think about too much. When Mum died it felt like everything stopped. I was surprised every time I woke up to a new day. It seemed unfathomable that out there in the world people were falling in love, having babies, studying, laughing. I struggled to think. To see. To breathe. Then somehow, one day, it was better. I started to make plans again and experienced moments of clarity where my dreams seemed possible. I met Jacob and my passion returned. I loved hard and fiercely. And then he died and I was catapulted all the way back into the relentless pain of breathing through every minute. I think, before he died, I had allowed myself to picture a future again. Just a vague one, with cloudy edges, but I’d glimpsed a life beyond school. I’d imagined uni, travel. Maybe even us getting a little place. But after he was gone there was no light in my black hole. Nothing made sense. The guilt was suffocating. I only kept going out of sheer determination to avoid drowning in my own thoughts because that was the one thing I dreaded more than trying to live a normal life. Sometimes I’m not actually sure that I ever came out of my hole. Not really.