Blink of an Eye (2013) (23 page)

He’s boiling over with rage, like he’ll explode.

Mum is trying to talk and calm him down, but he just keeps shouting.

I feel dizzy, like I’m going to fall over, then he turns and walks away a few steps and runs back again. ‘You’re dead,’ he shouts at me. ‘You’re fucking dead.’ And he picks up one of the big white cobbles at the edge of the drive and hurls it at the house and runs. I can’t see it hit from where I am, but there’s a clang as it strikes the lounge window, no smashing sound, and then I see it roll on to the path.

I wish he’d broken the glass.

My legs were weak. I shut the door and said, ‘Ignore him, he’s upset.’

‘He’s right, isn’t he? That’s what people think.’ Naomi went upstairs, despite my calling her back. I sat down, waiting for my heart to stop racing.

Lily’s brother. The poor kid. He’d have looked us up in the phone book probably, trudged around the houses where Baxters were listed until he found the right one. Full of rage and hot grief and missing his little sister. Screwed his courage to knock each time. To ask his question. Deliver his message. Was it him who daubed the shop?

Phil wanted to tell the police, but I talked him out of it. ‘It’s hardly a crime. He loses his little sister, the family’s torn apart, and what can he do? Nothing but this.’

‘Turn vigilante.’

‘Come on, he called Naomi a bitch; it’s not exactly a cat nailed to the door, is it?’ I had a moment’s vertigo, the missteps that came every so often when I would think,
How did we get to this? How surreal is this conversation?

Phil winced and bent forward.

‘You okay?’

‘Indigestion,’ he muttered.

‘You never get indigestion. Do you want a Rennie?’

‘No.’ He straightened. ‘It’s going off.’

‘Perhaps you should see the doctor?’

‘Don’t fuss, Carmel.’

Bloody cheek.
‘I’m not fussing, but it might be a good idea.’

‘Well, I’ve my next lot of blood results next week, so I’ll be there then, won’t I?’

What if it was serious?
I thought of my dad, a squirt of panic in my chest. ‘It’s great that they can pick these things up nowadays,’ I said, trying to reassure myself as much as Phil.

‘Don’t tell Naomi,’ he said.

‘Tell me what?’ Naomi came in. She was so very pale. I had to get her outside more. She’d get rickets at this rate. Neither of us said anything.

‘Well?’ she said.

‘Your dad’s got high blood pressure, he’s having it monitored.’

‘He’ll be all right, though?’ she said.

‘Course,’ Phil said.

Naomi was four months old when my father died. Dropped dead, literally. A heart attack that felled him like a tree. Left him prone on the petrol station forecourt. He’d gone to refuel and use the automated car wash. A foggy October afternoon. He was only fifty-nine. Looking forward to retirement in the next few years. I suppose nowadays he’d have been on aspirin or statins already, his high risk identified in the annual check-up. Given advice on diet and exercise. Perhaps they’d have inserted a stent to widen the artery.

I’m glad he never lived to see Mum get ill. And I’m glad I don’t have to tell either of them what Naomi has done and see the expression in their eyes.

I keep thinking about Lily’s brother. I wonder how he felt about his sister. He’s much older, and a boy. Would he have played with her, given her piggybacks or taught her how to use the Xbox, or was he too busy with his own mates? Maybe she got on his nerves, always wanting him to watch her dress up and sing like Lady Gaga or whatever. Perhaps she was a spoiled, whiny little kid who told lies and got him into trouble. Or a tomboy who kicked a football about and did martial arts. Did he boss her about?

Suzanne always had to be in charge. Whatever we did, it had to be her idea or she’d refuse to play. And if I carried on anyway she’d stop playing. Once there was a gang of us on holiday; we were camping by the coast on Anglesey, and Suzanne and I met a bunch of other kids and made a den for ourselves in the dunes. And we had this game where we all had to go and hide and when Suzanne blew her whistle we had to race back to the den like we were under attack, like we were in a war or something.

Then I said we should take turns with the whistle. That’s all.

And she just went back to the tent. We tried playing without her but the other kids said it wasn’t as good. They liked her bossing them about.

And if I ever stood up to her and said, ‘We always do your ideas, why can’t we do mine?’ she’d just say hers were best and mine were stupid. And I’d hit her and she’d be glad because then she could go and tell on me.

The things I see when I am awake are almost as bad as the things in my dreams.

But it’s not just in my head; it’s real, it’s out there. You’ve only got to look at the TV, people being blown up and tortured, streets with rubble and lost shoes and dead bodies, bloody. Starving kids, and women being raped, and everyone just acts like that’s normal. The way of the world. Which is going straight down the toilet with global warming and animals losing their habitat and the ice melting and people without enough water to drink.

The headlines in the paper are the same: no work, economies collapsing, murders, terrorist attacks. You have to walk round like you’re in a shell, sealed off from it, or you’d go barmy. It gets to me. It scalds like hot oil on bare skin. I try and avoid it now. But I can’t escape my own thoughts. This witch in my head, gloating, obscene. Cackling at me and forcing me to see all the dirty, sick things in life. And she’s got her nails in my brain, skittering against the inside of my skull.

I’ve stopped trying to remember. I don’t think it’ll ever come back.

The dreams I remember too clearly. They coat me like dust or tar. Last night there was me and this dead body, a woman, naked, and her skin all waxy and purple. I’ve killed her. I’m begging Suzanne to help me hide her before I’m found out, and Suzanne’s shouting at me, ‘How could you?’ And I know there isn’t much time and I’m digging with my hands, tearing grass out in cold lumps, breaking my nails and gouging the ground. Dread coiling through me like a snake. I roll her into the grave and I’m shovelling soil over her with my arms and she starts climbing out. I’m pushing her down, my hands on her face and her shoulder. She’s very thin and very strong. She has mottled white eyes like hard-boiled eggs and blood in her mouth.

All day today I’ve had her in my mind. This dead woman. I should be thinking about Lily Vasey, about her being dead, not some zombie I’ve invented.

Mum calls me downstairs. I go down because if I ignore her she comes up to fetch me. Ollie’s there. Suzanne’s gone to have her hair done. I don’t know if she realizes that whenever she leaves him here, Mum encourages me to play with him. Probably not.

He’s a bit different every time he comes. He’ll be holding his hands or trying to grasp things, or making sounds he’s just discovered. He likes it if I get on the floor and let him lie on my stomach. He reaches for my hair.

But I look at him today, lying there and chewing on this plastic dinosaur he has, and I don’t feel safe with him. The witch is whispering in my ear. I’m not to be trusted. He’s so small and vulnerable. A moment’s madness and his skull could break, crushed like an eggshell.

‘Pick him up,’ Mum says.

What if I just snap, lose control? The possibility jolts through me. I shake my head. ‘I don’t feel so good.’

‘What’s wrong?’

‘Headache,’ I say. My hands itch. ‘I might go and lie down.’

She sighs. ‘Can’t you just make an effort?’

It
is
an effort, this is an effort, everything’s a fucking effort. Standing and blinking, breathing and keeping my thoughts hidden.

Ollie bashes himself in the eye with a fist and starts to whimper. Mum scoops him up. ‘Take some paracetamol,’ she says to me, then she shushes him.

I do as she says, swallowing the tablets with water as I look out of the kitchen window.

There’s a sudden movement in the corner of the garden, shaking a bush there, and my skin tightens. All the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and my bowels turn to water. It’s the corpse coming to find me, climbing out of the grave. The shock hurts my chest. I squeeze my eyes shut tight and look again. A squirrel darts across to the back gate.

I hold on to the sink, trembling.

Mum’s getting Ollie’s lunch out. ‘You want to feed him?’ she asks.

‘No. I’m going to bed.’

I don’t look at her, I don’t need to. I can imagine she’s exasperated with me again. Her lips’ll be pressed tight together. She might even roll her eyes. But I can’t explain it to her. If I said it out loud –
I might hurt him, Mum, there’s these awful pictures in my head, the things I could do
– it would just make it all more real. I just want it to stop. I just want some peace.

A
lmost three months after the accident and five weeks after Naomi had first appeared in the magistrates’ court, we returned there for the committal hearing. She was withdrawn for much of the time, barely responding to the scene around her, or even to us when we asked her something. Her nails were bitten down to the quick.

At one point she stood up suddenly and said she was going outside. She looked panicky and her face was ashen. I got up too and she grabbed my arms.

‘We need to stay inside the building,’ Don said apologetically, ‘in case they call us.’

Naomi was making a sort of rocking motion, like someone preparing to bolt.

‘I feel dizzy,’ she said.

‘It’s warm in here.’ I tried to downplay her reaction. ‘Let’s go to the ladies’.’ I was thinking she could wash her face, put cold water on the back of her neck and cool off.

She continued to rock, looking to left and right.

Phil stood up. ‘Come on.’ He put his arm around her. ‘Stretch your legs.’ He edged her along and they walked off down the corridor.

Don shot me a sympathetic look and said, ‘It’s a stressful situation.’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘I’ll get her some water.’

By the time Phil had walked her round the building, she was calmer again. Back to being quiet and distanced. She drank some water.

When she was finally called in, she gripped the sides of the dock so hard her knuckles were white. She confirmed her name and address and date of birth and the magistrate asked Don if he consented to the case being heard at Crown Court. That was about it.

Afterwards Don had a quick meeting with us. He had a file which he patted as he spoke. ‘Now that we’ve got the full case papers, my job will be to see how we challenge their case. That means questioning everything. Can they prove Naomi was driving? Can they demonstrate beyond any reasonable doubt that her driving was dangerous? Can they present evidence that shows that her driving was the sole cause of the cyclist’s death? And on all those points we look for gaps, for absence of evidence, for weak areas. We introduce uncertainty, we query everything. Given what you’ve told me about the state of the vehicle, there will be very limited forensic evidence.’ He put his hand on the papers. ‘And there is no CCTV coverage included in here. The road traffic investigation unit estimate the car was doing forty-six miles an hour.’
In a thirty-mile-an-hour zone.
‘We will get our own experts in to consider that. Speeding of itself is neither dangerous nor careless. No evidence has been recovered indicating any mechanical fault.’

Now that he had the complete case file, his investigators would be visiting the scene of the crash, measuring distance and angle, studying the road traffic unit’s report and assessing every little bit of factual evidence before making their own interpretations. They’d comb through the witness statements for errors or gaps and set out to find anything additional that might contradict or undermine what was in the file.

I had felt helpless for weeks, swept along by the current of events and failing in my attempts to revive Naomi’s memory, but now that Don had talked in concrete terms about what defending her would mean, I saw some small chance for me to contribute. Why didn’t anyone stop her driving? I thought.

‘I can talk to people,’ I said.

‘You don’t need to bother,’ Don said.

‘No, I will – I already have, anyway. Hoping to help with her amnesia. Anyone who says anything remotely helpful, anything that’s not in there,’ I pointed to the file, ‘I’ll pass on to you. I can’t just sit here and . . .’ I shut up: too emotional. Don’s cheeks grew rosy at my little outburst.

Phil was bothered by my keenness to get involved. ‘Shouldn’t we leave it to Don?’

‘Look, I’ve no objection,’ Don said. ‘I know you’re a reliable person, you’re used to dealing with people, but I will say now that I
can
cover this – it’s part of my role.’

‘I have to do something,’ I said again. ‘What about Alex – are we allowed to talk to him?’

‘If he’s willing. The law says there is no property in a witness; neither side owns them, and their evidence can be considered, even used, by both.’

Naomi watched us debating, then said, ‘You don’t have to do it, Mum.’

‘I want to – maybe I need to.’

‘What do you expect to find?’

‘Some things don’t add up: why did you drive in that state? Why didn’t anyone stop you?’

The next person from the barbecue that I rang up heard me out then said, ‘Sorry, no.’

‘If it’s a question of time . . .’

‘It’s not that. I, erm, I don’t want to get involved.’

‘But you wouldn’t be, not real—’

‘I think what she did was appalling. I don’t want anything to do with it.’ And he hung up.

Somehow Suzanne got to hear about my efforts, and when I called round she took me to task. ‘Why are you still hassling everyone, Mum? What does it matter? The facts are staring us all in the face. What are you wasting everybody’s time for? Is it some sort of distraction?’

‘I’m trying to make sense of it,’ I said.

‘It doesn’t make sense,’ she said sharply. ‘That is the whole point. Naomi has a solicitor; it’s up to him to go and talk to people or whatever, isn’t it?’