Gary looked at Lauren, expression tight. Lauren knew what he meant. Scott was gone, floating someplace faraway, barely aware they were there.

“We’re here to talk about how we can end this,” Lauren said.

Scott finally looked at her. “Don’t say that unless you mean it.”

“Your settings are private on Facebook, right?”

Scott nodded.

“And your profile photo doesn’t show your face.”

“It’s a photo of the horizon, from…”

Lauren knew: the wedding.

“I need to be careful with social media. My job.” He laughed, and then it turned into a violent cough. He battered his chest with his fist, grinning manically. “My job, it’d be at risk if I put the wrong stuff out there on social media. Plus I don’t want the kids to be able to find me. My job. I’ve let her torture me for my job.”

“Mate.” Gary frowned. “It’s going to be all right. You know that, don’t you?”

Scott stared. “Do you want to see something?”

Before they could answer, Scott took his phone from his pocket, tapped a few times, and then slid it to the edge of the table so Lauren and Gary could watch at the same time. Beth Vaughn appeared and began to explain, in detail, how Scott had raped her.

“That’s what I’ll be,” Scott said, over the sound of Beth’s voice. “Not just a bloke whose nudes got leaked. Not just an embarrassment. I’ll be a rapist too, a child abuser. Even if there’s no proof, nobody will ever want me around their kids again. Casey told me she’s added it to her email draft. At midnight, poof, my life goes. Poof-poof-poof.”

With each word, he chipped at the table with his fingernail.

“We’ve got a way to make her stop,” Gary said. “But I didn’t want to go ahead without your permission.”

Lauren sensed Scott was searching for a way to exert control, and this was the only thing he had mastery over, his thumbnail scraping across the wood, pieces flaking away. Casey had stolen everything else. She’d even stolen his dignity, his fight. He didn’t look like the man Lauren had worked with at the school for so many months.

“Scott,” Gary snapped. “Did you hear me?”

“Why would you need my permission?”

Lauren rested her forearms on the table. “Because what we’re planning… it’s not exactly legal.”

42

SCOTT

“They’re going to get suspicious if I keep calling in sick.” Scott placed his phone on the bed, looking across the room. Casey was perched on the chair at the vanity unit, dabbing her face with a make-up brush. “I’ve worked there for years and only called in sick a couple of times.”

“I wonder what would make them angrier,” Casey said, brushing her thumb along her eyebrow and flicking something away, “pulling a sickie or raping one of your students.”

“Stop saying that.”

Casey grinned, looking at him. “Or…”

Scott hugged his hands tighter around his knees. He’d only woken because Casey had shouted at him. He’d wanted to sink into the mattress, into his dreams. It was difficult to remember, but he was almost certain Natalie had been there, that shy smile on her face, her eyes turned down; it was from the beginning.