Where The Truth Lies
Publication Date 03/03/2007 ISBN 0230019625 | EAN 9780230019621
Isabel Lincoln wants to know the truth about Thomas Paine High. She's the new Head after all. But the truth can be dangerous.
At forty, Isabel has finally given up on her cheating husband. She's a single parent, with two teenage children and a tough job running a London comprehensive school. Tougher still for a woman in 1981. Especially since the school's hero is Will Fullwood, her predecessor, dead but not forgotten. The staff back First Deputy Max Truman, who kept the school going during Will's last illness. How come the Governors appointed a woman when the charismatic Max is so clearly the man for the job? But Second Deputy Jack Redfern is definitely on Isabel's side. Within weeks he's in her bed as well. Safer no-one knows the truth about that. Max claims to be Isabel's loyal supporter and she wants to believe him, yet her suspicions grow. He isn't on List 99 but she doesn't trust him around young girls. It could never happen now. Not now there's a Sex Offenders Register. Or could it? Because, as Isabel discovers, suspicions are not evidence. Until she can prove his guilt, Max is officially innocent. But suppose, just suppose, he is innocent? Maybe Isabel has invented it all to discredit her rival. A paedophile at large? Or an innocent man hounded by groundless accusations? How can anyone ever be certain? Forthright but never sensational, serious without being solemn, Where The Truth Lies tackles the moral complexities of an issue which concerns every parent. Rosemary writes: As an ex-teacher and -Headteacher I can claim to know what really goes on in schools. My reaction when I read newspaper reports is often No, it's not a bit like that. The novel aims to counteract the simplistic tabloid view. I needed a dilemma where uncertainty would always remain, and I wanted one which would be especially challenging to a woman manager. A fifteen-year-old girl's accusation and a teacher's vehement denial, in a school where relationships were relaxed and informal, became the central issue. As it was first and foremost Isabel's story, it seemed natural to tell it from her point of view. I tried it as a third person, past tense, narration, but I 'heard' it as first person, present tense. I used the third person for Jack to put a little more distance between him and the reader. Although I was attracted to the idea of narrating it from the perspective both of the accused teacher and of his accuser, I could not see how that could be done without destroying the ambiguity. (The fascination remained and I'm now writing an entirely different novel where some of the narration is from the point of view of the accused.) So the reader hears only the interpretations Isabel and Jack put upon events. Their perceptions don't always coincide and even when they appear to share them the sharing is never complete. It's left to the reader to decide where the truth lies.