Blink of an Eye (2013) (12 page)

‘The girl?’ I say.

‘She didn’t survive,’ Mum says.

Oh God, no! Please, no!
‘Who was she?’

‘She was called Lily, Lily Vasey, nine years old. They live in the estate off Mottram Lane. She had two older brothers.’

The shock makes me gasp. It’s unbelievable. If this has really happened, how could I not know it, remember it in every cell, in every pore?

I’m crying and they are touching me and saying stuff to try and calm me down. My heart is going really fast, making it hard to breathe properly, and there is this dark, oily, sick feeling in the pit of my stomach.

I want her to take it back now. All of it. I want them to go. I want the whole world to go away.

‘Was he speeding?’ Everyone does it, now and again. Even if they don’t all get caught. Neither of us has ever had a ticket.

‘Alex wasn’t driving,’ Dad says in a really quiet voice. ‘You were.’

What? Have I heard him wrong? But his face, Mum’s face . . .

I can’t describe what it’s like. A tearing. A guillotine cutting off everything that has been, severing connections to all the good things in my life. Or like one of those traps, nets that scoop up animals in the jungle, hoist them into the trees.

They stay for ages, insist on sitting with me even though I don’t want to talk. They say Suzanne will come later, but I don’t want her to, I don’t want to see anyone.

The awful thing about it is that I have done this terrible, terrible thing and I can’t remember the tiniest bit about it. How weird is that? It’s like I’m a fraud, a fake, all upset about something even though I’ve no recollection of it. Who am I crying for? My thoughts are churning round and round, probing what they’ve told me. Each time I light on the girl on her bike, or the car flipping, or Alex hurt, it scalds me and I shrink inside, but I can’t stop doing it. I’m hypnotized by it.

Mum keeps saying it was an accident, as if that makes it all right. But if I hadn’t lost control of the car, we wouldn’t have crashed, so it’s pretty clear whose fault it was.

At long last they go.

I’m so sorry. So so so so sorry. And there is nothing I can do about it.

I wish I was dead. I wish I had died instead. Or that Alex had left me in the car.

It can’t be true. How could I forget something that massive? That awful? It dawns on me that everyone knows. The nurses are bound to have heard how I ended up in here. No wonder poker face looked at me like she did, gave me my medicine with a tight little smile, more of a snarl than anything. I don’t blame her. I don’t blame her at all.

N
aomi looked desolate, haunted, her face drawn, a sheen of fear in her eyes. This was something she needed to confront, to wrestle with and absorb. But how much harder it must be when the facts come from other people. When they arrive in a vacuum, robbed of context or sense-memory or reference points. No way to knit it together with your own impressions and sensations. A truth that you learn but do not know.

She cried, not making much noise. I stroked her back, my own face wet, aching for her. Eventually I broke the rhythm. ‘Come on, have a drink and blow your nose.’

She did as I said, numbly, her face muddy with misery.

There was little more conversation.

Naomi was lost in her thoughts, trying to disentangle what we’d said.

‘Suzanne’s coming later,’ I said eventually.

‘I don’t want her to.’ Naomi’s face crumpled. ‘I don’t want to see her today, Mum.’

‘Okay, I’ll tell her you’re not feeling up to it.’

She cried again as we hugged goodbye. ‘I can’t believe it, it’s unreal.’

‘I’m so sorry,’ I said. There was only one crumb of comfort I could offer her, a tiny thing to help her feel less terrible. ‘It was an accident,’ I said, ‘an awful accident.’

‘But it was my fault,’ she said, distraught.

All I could say was, ‘We don’t know all the ins and outs yet.’

And she wiped her eyes and slowly shook her head in defeat.

As I waited at traffic lights on my way to work one day, two and a half weeks after the accident, a funeral party drove past; it wasn’t far to Southern Cemetery. I saw the flowers in the hearse first, spelling out the name LILY, then took in the white coffin. My stomach fell. A long, slow procession of cars followed. When the lights changed, I stalled the car, broke into a sweat, cursing as the driver behind impatiently blared his horn at me.

My heart went out to them, her poor, poor parents. I pictured their devastation. The empty bedroom, the absence of Lily that must feel like the withdrawal of air or the loss of light. Aching arms where she should be, missing her laughter and her foibles and the sight of her entering a room. The loss that would last for ever. The wound in their hearts that would never heal over. A yoke of grief. Not to be overcome but simply to be borne. And I was bitterly ashamed that there was no word or deed I could gift to lighten the burden of sorrow. It was not fair. It was so very cruel.

LITTLE LILY LAID TO REST.
The front page of the local free paper. I felt the slap of recognition when I saw the photograph. A picture of her grieving family in their black clothes. The parents were the couple I had noticed with the policeman outside the A&E department on the evening of the accident: he’d had his arm around her; her head was buried in his chest.

The article included a statement from the police:
The investigation into the accident is ongoing and our sympathy is with the family at this difficult time.
The piece concluded with a quote from her father, Simon Vasey:
Lily was the light of our lives, a friendly, cheeky, loving little girl who completed our family. It is beyond devastating to lose her like this, but we hope that one day we will see justice done
.

I took a breath. Felt a wellspring of grief for them, sick and sorry.

Friendly, cheeky, loving.
That could have been Naomi. Naomi as she was. I wasn’t sure she was still that girl. This had changed her. There’s often some depression after major surgery, but I didn’t think she’d smiled since it happened. Only the occasional wry half-smile, an expression of resignation or deprecation, not humour, certainly not pleasure or joy.

It’s hard to take it in. The terrible thing I’ve done. I feel filthy. Disgusted at myself, and still incredulous. The ugly truth is lodged in my head like a dense, dark lump. A clot or a tumour, heavy as lead. I keep repeating it like a chant.
I crashed into a little girl and killed her. I crashed into a little girl and killed her.
It sets off a current of panic that swirls and surges through me. If only I could run away, run from it all, outpace it until I was on safe ground and free of the sin, free of the deed. How can I ever make this right? Why was I so stupid? Why was I driving too fast? Why?

I wish I could freeze everything and turn back time and change something so I’d never got in the car and put my foot on the pedal. Change the past so we’d missed the barbecue. Or even that Alex didn’t get the job so we weren’t feeling up to going. Or go further back so I’d never met Alex, never been to uni, never got my A levels. I’d give all that up to save the little girl. I know I’m howling for the moon. What can I do? What can I possibly do?

‘I think we should talk to a solicitor,’ I said to Phil.

‘What?’ He set down his fork.

‘Get some advice for Naomi. They’re likely to charge her, the police,’ I said. ‘It’d be better to talk to someone now rather than wait. She could go to prison.’ I’d lost my appetite, stared at the slivers of vegetables on my plate, the grains of rice stained by curry sauce. ‘I could ask at work,’ I said. Plenty of our clients needed legal representation. ‘Evie might know someone.’

‘What about Hugh’s bloke?’ he said. ‘Don, he does criminal law.’ Hugh was the saxophone player in Phil’s band. We’d met Don a few times, but like me, he didn’t go to their gigs very often any more.

‘Try him,’ I said, ‘and if it’s not his sort of thing, I’ll call Evie.’

Phil got Don’s number from Hugh and managed to get through to him on his first go. I found it hard to sit still as I listened to him sum up the situation, so I ended up pacing round the room, stopping each time Phil spoke to hear what he said.

‘Still in hospital . . . Yes, for some time, they say. Next Monday? Yes . . . If they move her to another ward I can drop you a text . . . Thanks, that’s great.’

‘Well?’

‘He wants to see her. He does deal with driving offences and he wants to find out what her instructions are. And he says if the police show up before then she’s not to talk to them without him there.’

‘Okay.’

Phil started clearing up and I turned on my laptop. There were dozens of emails in my inbox but I hadn’t the will to open any. Instead I googled
death and driving
, the page of links loaded and I went to the criminal justice website.

My eyes flew over the definitions, and the table of sentencing guidelines. Death by dangerous driving, twelve months where there are no aggravating circumstances. Seven to fourteen years for the most serious culpability. Further down the page a list of aggravating factors, among them alcohol and excessive speed.

Phil came and looked over my shoulder. I heard him sigh as he saw what I was reading. ‘Up to fourteen years,’ I said.

He put his arm round my shoulders. ‘Worst-case scenario,’ he said, ‘if she gets convicted. She might get off. We’ve no idea. Don’t think the worst.’

‘I know.’ I closed the laptop. ‘You’re right. And if her driving was fine when Monica passed them, then perhaps there was a problem with the car, with the accelerator or the brakes.’

‘Go down to the river?’ he suggested. ‘It’s lovely out there.’

There’s a short cut behind the school playing fields and then it’s a fifteen-minute walk to the Swan, a little riverside pub that has a large beer garden facing the water. The place itself was surprisingly quiet, although there were joggers and dog-walkers and people strolling and cyclists passing in a steady stream.

We stopped for a drink, had two. Hoppy beers brewed on the premises. The midges were out and I felt a nip or two on my neck. Phil never suffered. The surface of the river looked serene, silky, a shining ribbon of brown rippling between the banks. But this whole stretch had been used as a dumping ground for years. Building waste, litter, chemicals and rubbish chucked into it. Even after three decades of sustained clean-up, there would be all sorts lurking down there: old mattresses and paint tins, slabs of concrete, car wheels, shopping trolleys and bread trays.

Phil stroked my arm and I smiled at him. My back was aching from the tension of the last few days and fatigue rinsed through me. The beer was making me feel sleepy. ‘I love you,’ I told him.

He gripped my hand, kissed my knuckles. I rubbed at my neck; another prick from one of the gnats.

We walked back in the twilight, holding hands all the way. I caught the scent of barbecued meat at one point, plunging me back to that Sunday and the sweet happiness of the party. And on one of the cul-de-sacs near our house, two kids played out on their bikes. Just the sight of them was like a cold shower, extinguishing the tiny glow of peace I’d had in the simple pleasure of the walk and the quiet waterside drinks in Phil’s company.

Phil put some music on when we got home, an old blues compilation that seemed to suit our mood, Billie Holiday and Muddy Waters making magic out of misery. I concentrated on writing a list of all the things that needed sorting out while Naomi was in hospital: everything from notifying the Jobcentre that she was incapacitated to checking that her bank account wasn’t going to go over her overdraft limit and land her with mounting debts. I’d check her appointments diary, in case there were arrangements to cancel, and work out what to do about her phone contract, given that the phone had been destroyed when the car caught fire.

I assumed Alex would be dealing with the car insurance and so on, as he was the registered owner, though Naomi was a named driver. Their premium was astronomical, as they were young drivers. It made some sort of sick sense now, though, Naomi one of the faces behind the statistics about risks and demographics.

I went up to her room and gathered together Alex’s clothes so I could return them. Would he be fit enough to start his new job? If he was, would there be any problem with the job offer given that he had been in the accident? I drew the curtains, thinking about it. They couldn’t penalize him for being a passenger, surely. I remembered reading about one case where a passenger had been prosecuted because he had known the driver was over the limit and failed to stop him.

But Alex was adamant that Naomi was sober; he’d never have got into the car if he’d thought she was pissed.

I woke at three in the morning, slathered in sweat, my pyjamas twisted into tourniquets round my legs, my heart pounding. The tatters of the dream fading like smoke. An ancient prison cell, underground, dank, dark, a stone slab. The walls wet with seepage, the smell of earth and decay. Naomi there, her pale fingers clenched round the bars at the front, her face contorted and wild. Screaming ‘Let me out, let me out!’ On the slab behind her a child, still and waxen, lips and eyelids deepest blue, limbs mottled. A doll child. Head turning, eyes opening, empty sockets, savage black holes staring at me, swallowing me.

He’s here! Alex. He’s here. There are bruises on his face and a cut over his eye and he comes on a crutch, with one arm and one foot in plaster, and sick gathers at the back of my throat.

He says my name, like he still loves me, but all I can say is sorry, sorry, sorry. ‘Sorry, I never meant for this to happen.’

‘I know that,’ he says. ‘Don’t be daft.’

‘The little girl,’ I say, because it seems important to be honest and say it out loud.

‘I know.’ He looks so sad, his mouth turning down at the corners. He manages to sit down, and the crutch crashes to the floor with a clatter and the woman in the far bed makes a huffing noise, complaining.

I wish the curtains were drawn round the bed and we could have some privacy, but I can’t do it. I can’t even stand up yet, and I can’t ask Alex to hop about. He can barely walk.