Page 69 of The Headmistress

“After a while, as you made Headmistress, I understood. You needed him to become who you should have been all along. So I forgave you.”

“You forgave me?” The whisper was still quiet, but the note of melancholy was gone from it. It had a scary quality behind it now, a panther coiling for a strike, and Sam thought that George must not even care anymore.

“You had to do what you needed to do. You had a long journey to get to the position you told me you dreamed to achieve, and any means were appropriate. I forgave you. I love you, of course, I forgave you.”

George’s eyes were unseeing now, just glistening with unshed tears, seemingly looking into the past.

“But he didn’t love you! There wasn’t a skirt he wouldn’t chase. You were so consumed with reforming Rodante, with making a name for yourself, you never saw that he wasn’t close to being good enough for you. And so I set him up with that girl. His PA was so smitten with him, it didn’t take much to persuade her to climb into Timothy’s bed that night. I gave her a spare key. Said it was from Timothy. And you took my advice to come home early—”

“You set Timothy up?” Again the whisper came, steeped in a deep calm, but Sam knew the chilling steadiness of her voice hid a heart that was rending for the past horrors.

“He deserved it. He’d have cheated on you regardless, sooner or later. So I made sure it happened sooner.”

“You broke my marriage.”

“That marriage wasn’t right for you. I was right for you. I am the only one who loves you the way you deserve to be loved. All-consumingly.”

And now Magdalene moved. Slowly, as if her legs were not really holding her, she stood up, rooted to a spot, hands flat on the dark oaken surface, face turned down.

“Go on.” Sam would’ve bet her entire bank account—such as it was—that those two words and the meaning behind them were the last thing Magdalene really wanted to happen at the moment. But there seemed to be more, a well of madness, indeed all-consuming, and George needed to voice it, and Magdalene needed to hear it.

“We were happy then. You and I. Yes, you were so hurt, so broken after the divorce, but you got over it, I was there to hold you as you cried. You made me so happy. You stayed with me those months. I watched you sleep. So beautiful, Maggie. Mine.”

Sam recoiled, unable to hide her reaction to the revelations that just kept coming any longer. Disturbing wasn’t even the right word anymore to describe what was happening, what had happened.

“We had years. Years! Happy, peaceful years together. And then you went to that damned conference in New York and when you returned, I knew…”

George swallowed convulsively, and her gaze, suddenly directed at Sam, was full of pure poison. She continued as she turned back to Magdalene, but the venom never left her tone.

“I knew your every expression, every line on your face, your every smile, every frown. And you came back glowing. You came back… freshly fucked! I could smell it on you for days, no matter how many showers you took. You kept thinking about her. It was all over your face. The dreamy expression of reliving the sex. The spacing-out in conversations. You returned changed. I hated it. I couldn’t stand it.”

George swiped her fingers over her face, but when she let her hands fall, the expression in her eyes reverted to being just as apathetic as before, as if the pain had dulled her senses, and no matter how many times she tried to clear her mind, nothing helped anymore.

“But then you got the position at Three Dragons and I thought we would have a new start. I forgave you again. You kept hurting me and I kept forgiving you. I had dreams of finally confessing to you that I’m the one who loves you best, truest, who has been by your side, who made you who you are. But the very first day, I came into your office and this whore was throwing it in your face that you’d slept together and I knew… I knew she was the one from New York because you just weren’t yourself around her. You were disgusting. Pining, longing. Wanting her, and she cared only about this goddamned school. She was using you, and you couldn’t even see it. So I had to hurt her, had to punish her. For you!”

And now there was no trace of anything resembling distance in Magdalene’s eyes. They shone with a strange kind of light, and Sam thought it must be truly terrifying to have that gaze directed at you. George‘s face said as much, the haziness disappearing and real fear taking residence there.

“You hurt Sam because she and I were together in New York?” Sam thought that she preferred the deadly calm of the questioning from before, because the rage evident in Magdalene’s voice now was horrible.

“She didn’t deserve you! She had to pay! So I wanted to hurt her a little. But it was the kid who sprained her ankle, and she didn’t even get electrocuted because she was wearing those damned boots. There were some other things, the broken floorboard, the loose balcony railing - but she missed those. Nothing could touch her.”

“Joanne stepped on that floorboard, and only because Sam was near, she was caught in time to prevent serious injury.”

Sam still remembered the outcome of that painful afternoon when Joanne had fallen through the broken board, after doing her evening rounds of the Amber dormitories. Sam had accompanied her since they hadn’t been able to hang out much lately, and Sam had missed the older woman. She was there to catch Joanne as her leg went through the floor on their way back to the faculty dormitory and she remembered thinking that things could have ended much worse if she hadn’t been uncharacteristically quick that evening. As it was, Joanne had a bruised ankle to show for it, and Magdalene had been forced to find emergency funding to change the flooring in the faculty quarters.

“What do I care? You were under her spell, you worked day and night to make sure she was happy, that the school was the way she wanted it, and she was never grateful. You were getting a bit too suspicious though, so I had to convince you that it was Orla who was after you, with rats and threatening letters and emails and the soy milk. It worked before, at other schools, you’d be so isolated, you’d always turn to me and we’d be together. And here again, it was easy since Orla is such an idiot. She kept believing my every word, that you would destroy the school. It was so very easy to make her hate you. After all, she already envied you so much for taking her position.”

The vitriol just kept pouring out. More and more and more until Sam felt she was drowning in evil, in malice. Such simple things. Small, deliberate, everyday words and deeds that had poisoned the minds of so many people, that had caused so much pain, that could have caused so much more.

“And the attic?” Magdalene, relentless now in her pursuit of the full truth, straightened her spine and Sam saw nothing but contempt on her face. The pity was gone, the fury was gone as well.

“You took her to the mainland and I could tell you’d fucked her, and I knew you wouldn’t be able to stop yourself. It’s like she was your disease. One has to cut out the disease to make the body whole and healthy again. She had to go.” George’s chuckle was ugly.

Magdalene moved her hand and Sam saw her hold her phone. The screen lit up and then the voice recorder was clearly visible. George’s eyes widened at the realization that she had been recorded the entire time, but Magdalene only gritted her teeth and growled, “Go on,” and George dropped her hands in her lap and obeyed.

“You ordered the archives moved from the basement, so I moved them to the attic, and as I was moving them, one of the laborers wondered if we weren’t at all concerned about how big of a fire hazard it was becoming, with the old furniture and old electric up there in a dusty attic. It’s like he wrote a step-by-step plan for me to get rid ofher.” She spat the pronoun as if it tasted bitter on her tongue. Still, she did not take her eyes off Magdalene, drinking her in with decidedly sick fervor.

“It was very easy to set up. Very easy. You know how industrious I am. You always praise me for being smart, for being efficient. I was very efficient that night. But then you arrived, and my whole plan was ruined. So I had to change things up. I took the picture and sent it to Orla, set that bitch up to take the fall. Really, for someone who used to hold such an important and authoritative position, she is a remarkably stupid woman.”

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