Blink of an Eye (2013) (16 page)

I remember comparing it to my own adolescence. It had helped that I knew what I wanted to do with my life, starting with becoming independent. University was the route to that and so it made sense to work for it. As for under-age drinking and the like, that all went on but I never got caught and I spared my mum and dad any confrontations. In my last two years at home, I’d often wait until they were in bed and then sneak out to meet up with people, or I’d pretend to be going to bed and actually leave the house. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

Early summer things seemed to change. Naomi began seeing more of her other friends, and Georgia was in a heavy relationship with some lad and apparently besotted. Then Naomi got a part-time job in a restaurant, washing up and running errands. Like someone emerging from sleep she seemed brighter and had more energy, she regained her equilibrium and her confidence grew. She no longer had to pout and bluster to disguise her faltering self-esteem. And she raised the prospect of going back to college.

She altered the mix of courses to avoid the dreaded Miss Gaffney, who she really did dislike, and she had to have a meeting with the staff, who did not want a repeat performance and needed convincing of her commitment.

We never looked back – well, only with a grateful laugh and a shudder when Phil and I recalled that time and related it to friends having traumas with their own teenagers. Naomi got an A and two Bs in her exams. Surprised us all. Miffed Suzanne, who always considered herself to be the brightest child.

Naomi had tested us significantly as a teenager, but in the intervening years, in the recent months, I’d seen no sign of her reverting to that risky, out-of-control behaviour, though she knew how to have fun still. She got tipsy sometimes when she and Alex went partying, but she’d not given us any cause for concern.

Don heard me out. He believed it had very little bearing on the case or any potential prosecution. What was more significant was that Naomi had a clean licence and no record of any drink-related offences, antisocial behaviour and so on. And as yet we had no way of knowing whether alcohol was even a factor in the accident.

T
oday they got me out of bed and made me stand on my good leg, holding on to a frame, for a few seconds. My leg was shaking, weak as a kitten. Like in dreams where you can only run in slow motion, or when you can’t run at all even though there’s some bear or wolf or a psycho serial killer hurtling after you.

The physio will come back and in between I have to do these stretching exercises. It’ll be another couple of weeks before I can put weight on my broken ankle. The other women in the ward are so cheery and chatty and they’re always sharing their symptoms, but I feel awkward joining in. I don’t want them to know what I’ve done. When the rest of them talk, I pretend to read, or to sleep. They know I was in a road accident, but that’s all, I think.

They’ve moved me to a bed near the window because I don’t need any attention in the night. I can look out on to a service road with double yellow lines all along it. I see the vehicles going up and down and sometimes a smoker will walk by, puffing away. There is a building on the other side, a vast brick wall without any windows. It is impossible to count the bricks but I try, hoping it’ll lull me to sleep. There is a corner of sky at the far side of that roof. A little patch, just enough to see whether it’s cloudy or blue or night.

Mum paid for a TV for a few days but I told her I wasn’t fussed. It’s hard to explain: stuff that used to be a laugh even because it was so dire, like
Come Dine With Me
or
Jeremy Kyle
, well, I know it’s trivia, always did; I could poke fun at it, chat about it later. But now I glaze over. I can’t connect any more.

Not just with telly. With anything.

They try and jolly me along, Mum and Dad. They take turns coming now. Today it’s Dad. I always feel this pang when I see him. That I’ve let him down. He never asks about it, the accident, doesn’t go on about remembering like Mum does.

‘Hello.’ He kisses my head and puts a bag on the tray table. ‘Chocolate flapjack.’

‘Thanks.’

He takes off his coat and hangs it on the back of the chair, then shifts the chair about till he’s facing me. ‘Tickets will be out soon for Leeds Festival,’ he says, ‘if you and Alex would like to go? Or Sziget in Budapest if you fancy going further afield. Go with Becky and Steve, maybe? I can get some tickets. I could treat you.’

I can’t look at him, and he says, ‘You’ll be up and running by then,’ to chivvy me along. But that’s not why I’m skirting round it; it’s that I don’t want him to waste his money on something that I don’t think I could face. I can’t see myself in a field with a load of people, jumping about pretending things are okay. Can’t imagine ever doing anything like that again.

‘The police,’ I say. ‘Who knows what’ll happen?’ Because it’s easier to make an excuse about that than to tell him I couldn’t cope with his treat.

He sticks his lip out and sighs. His whiskers are grey now, eyebrows too. He looks old. I never noticed that before.

He’s downloaded me some more tracks, for my MP3 player. I let him load it up. All these lovely things; he’s trying so hard to make things better and I just feel like crying.

He’s got the paper with him, the crossword, and he reads out a clue. I never, ever get them, they’re way too hard for me, but it’s not a bad way for the two of us to spend visiting time, because the silences aren’t awkward while he’s working out an anagram and I can get away with the odd question like ‘What does it mean?’

Alex texts me:
Hey u good babe? x
There are signs on the wall about not using mobile phones, but everyone ignores them. I text back:
K, dad’s here, sleepy l8trs x

Dad folds his paper up and gets his jacket on. The leather is so cracked now, the whole thing is dropping to bits. I can’t imagine him ever getting a new one; he’d look so weird in something neat and shiny.

He kisses me again. ‘Need anything bringing?’

‘No, ta,’ I say.

I lie down and close my eyes, but before long they insist on doing my checks. Then the expedition to the toilet. Then comes the night.

I dream of her a lot – Lily. I dream all sorts about her. Sometimes she’s fine. I dream, but what I need to do is remember.

I was returning books to the library, unread and overdue, abandoned in the upheaval, just paying the fine, when someone called my name. Julia, Suzanne’s neighbour, the ones who came to the barbecue. I couldn’t remember exactly what she did, something with disabled children; she had a young woman with her, a girl with Down’s syndrome.

‘How are you?’ Julia said. Then pulled a face. ‘Sorry, stupid question. I’m so sorry, what a nightmare.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed.

‘Have you time for a coffee?’

‘Yes, if . . .’ I looked at the girl.

‘I’m leaving Lauren here, work experience,’ Julia said.

I waited while she said her goodbyes to Lauren, then we crossed to the nearest coffee shop further down the high street and took our drinks to a quiet corner at the back.

‘How is Naomi?’

Broken, I thought. But I tried to be less pessimistic. ‘Still reeling; she was quite badly injured.’

Julia nodded. I imagined Suzanne had told her some of what was going on.

‘And of course with, you know . . .’ It was still so hard to frame the words, to release them into the air, stark and forbidding.
With the death . . . with the little girl dead.
I shook my head, ‘She still can’t really remember anything,’ I said. ‘I’m hoping to find out stuff for her, talk to people who were at the barbecue and see if I can help her get her memory back. Did you see much of her?’

‘A bit. We talked about festivals,’ Julia said. ‘She and Alex couldn’t afford to go to anything and she was telling me how you and Phil took the two of them when they were younger.’

‘For years. I’m getting a bit past it now. I like my own bed. But Phil would sleep on a bed of nails if he got to hear some decent bands. Do you remember anything else?’

‘Her arriving with the champagne?’

But I’d seen that myself.

‘What happens now?’ Julia said.

I told her about the legal stages. She was sympathetic and non-judgemental while other people were avoiding us. I wondered where that came from.

I returned to the party. ‘What time were you there till?’

‘About half four. Collette was getting ratty and Fraser had promised to give Neville over the way a hand. Did you ever meet Neville?’

I frowned, not sure who she meant.

‘The dog people.’

I smiled. ‘Oh, right.’ The neighbours immediately across the road, in one of the new houses, trained dogs and had a kennels half a mile away.

‘They were moving, Fraser was giving them a lift.’

‘What are the new people like?’

‘Not seen them much yet. Youngish, out at work all hours. Makes you wonder if we’ve got it all wrong. There’s millions with no work and those that have jobs are working themselves to breaking point.’

Walking home, I considered who to talk to next, who else Naomi might have socialized with between five, when we’d left, and eight, when she had.

There’s a saying somewhere, China or India, that if you save a person’s life you are responsible for them for the rest of your days. Which seems a pretty heavy-duty burden and might put you off in the first place. And it’s beginning to feel like that is how it is between me and Alex.

He visits and it’s as if he thinks we can go on like before. I don’t know. The accident has poisoned everything. It’s this horrible event that’s there, a dense shadow over our heads.

I can’t shift the guilt inside me, and the nicer Alex is, the worse I feel. I don’t deserve it. I don’t deserve him. Why did I ever think we were right for each other? He’s got an amazing degree, he’s got ambition and a job to go to, and I’m just not in the same league. Imagine it, when he’s hanging around with all the legal types, going for drinks after work and staying up late cramming his textbooks, and I’m in a call centre or stacking shelves (if I’m lucky) or behind bars in prison (if I’m not).

As I was starting work, an evening shift, one of the community social workers I’d not met before called in to follow up on a client.

The social worker, Ricky Clarke, had an easy way about him. Late twenties, a local lad, he was relaxed and friendly. I warmed to him. We covered what we needed to, then as he was leaving he paused and said, ‘Hope you don’t mind me asking, but I think you used to know my mum. Geraldine Clarke, was O’Dwyer.’

Good God! Petey’s sister.
‘Yes!’

‘And my uncle—’

‘Petey.’

‘Yeah, he was in a band . . .’ he said, sounding uncertain.

‘That’s right, the Blaggards, with my husband Phil.’ Geraldine, known as Dino. This was her son. Oh God. I was smiling, but suddenly I found it painful to remember and I didn’t know how much he’d been told. He was tiny when it happened. ‘Say hello to your mum,’ I said. ‘How is she?’

‘She’s good, yeah. I will.’ He grinned, and I saw a sudden flash of Petey in the way he tilted his head. Then he left.

Petey.
Feeling shaken, I sat down.

He’d moved in with Dino in 1983. She was the one member of his family we’d all met, as she was closest in age to Petey and came to quite a few gigs. But she wouldn’t give the drums house room. She had a new baby. So the kit stayed at the shop.

He’d been living with her almost a year when it happened. We’d seen him on the Saturday. The Smiths were on at the Hacienda and we’d had a brilliant night. Phil and me, Ged and his girlfriend, and Petey. We walked partway home, oblivious to the steady rain, and stopped for a curry on the main drag in Rusholme. Ged and his girlfriend left and the three of us went back to Platt Lane. We stayed up another couple of hours, drinking and smoking and talking about all sorts. Phil was excited by the idea of setting up a gig for the Blaggards at the Capri Ballroom further down the road.

The next day was dry but clouded over, a hangover-type day. We ate sausages and beans for breakfast, drank loads of coffee and got smashed. Petey came to the park, where we had a chaotic game of frisbee and got stared at and called names by a bunch of scrappy kids.

He went off to get the bus from there. He had a loping walk, always had his hands in his pockets and leant forward as if he was struggling into a headwind. When he reached the end of Platt Lane, he turned and raised a fist, an ebullient wave, and we waved back, jumping and larking about. We were still kids, really, twenty-three and twenty-four. So young.

Dino rang the shop on the Monday morning. I was upstairs getting ready for work, on the rota for a double sleepover at the children’s home and intending to go shopping for some food before then.

Phil came into the room, his face ashen.

‘Phil?’ A shiver ran through me.

His mouth trembled as he spoke. ‘It’s Petey, he’s dead. Been killed.’

‘What!’

‘Run over.’

‘Oh my God. Where . . . when?’

‘Last night, Regent Road.’ One of the major roads in Salford. ‘The guy stopped. They breathalysed him, apparently. He was drunk.’

‘Petey. Oh, fuck.’ I dropped the top I was ironing and began to cry.

The shock was overwhelming.

I wondered who the driver was. Some flashy business guy who’d been drinking at one of the private members’ clubs or entertaining clients before leaving for home? Or a local lad tanked up on cheap cider? Was the driver on his own? Was he hurt? The lack of any detail was infuriating.

I still went into work, muddled through in a daze.

A couple of days later I rang Dino to ask about the funeral arrangements. ‘I’m so sorry,’ I told her. ‘We all are.’ The news had spread quickly around our circle of friends and acquaintances.

‘We’ve had the police round again,’ she said. ‘They say Petey walked into the traffic on purpose.’

‘What?’ I thought I’d misheard.

‘He walked into the road and just stood there. He wanted it to happen.’ Her voice was ragged, tired, hopeless.