The Mistake I Made (31 page)

And he stood there smiling. He smiled as though nothing had happened.

36

‘NICE AFTERNOON?’ THE
taxi driver asked. A woman taxi driver.

She wore a loose orange vest without a bra and had a battered, well-thumbed Regency romance shoved beneath the handbrake.

‘Not exactly,’ I replied, climbing into the front seat.

‘A wedding? God, I’m sick of weddings.’ She rambled on. ‘If I have to go to one more bloody wedding—’

‘Look, I don’t feel like talking. Do you mind if we don’t?’

She did. She raised her eyebrows as though to say,
Who the hell do you think you are, lady?

‘Bad afternoon,’ I said. ‘No offence.’

Henry had taken off. At around the time Nadine had wanted answers. When I finally got away, there was an empty space in the car park where his Peugeot had been. I didn’t call him to find out why. He hadn’t stuck around to check on his sister, so the message was clear.

I’d gazed at the empty space and been struck by the urge to explain. Henry had gone away thinking I’d had an affair with Scott, and I needed him to know it was a long way off from that. The thing I’d had with Scott was absurd.

‘Henry?’ I imagined saying to him. ‘You see, you’ve got it all wrong. Scott
paid
me to have sex with him.’

‘Oh, well why didn’t you say so? Because that changes
everything
.’

No, Roz, Henry would not want to hear your reasons.

Henry hated Scott. He loved his sister. He had been growing to like me, and I had betrayed everyone.

As the taxi wound its way towards Hawkshead, I relived the scene I’d left behind. Each time I ran through it, I would dwell on a different aspect. So many people affected. So many points of view. I would have to leave the area. Petra would never talk to me again, so there was no reason to stay. And even though I could probably handle being the object of ridicule, and gossip, for the duration, I could not bear the thought of George finding out.

‘You heard about that body in the freezer?’ the taxi driver asked.

‘I heard.’

‘Poor sod,’ she said. ‘Looks like he upset the wrong person.’

‘It’s all very sad.’

‘He was pilfering money, you know,’ she said, matter-of-fact.

‘Is that what people are saying?’ I asked, and she nodded grimly.

I told her to pull in a little further along on the right, just in front of my house.

As I waited for my change she gestured to the Jeep, saying, ‘That your car?’, and I told her it was. ‘You’ve got something hanging down from the chassis,’ she said. ‘Best get it looked at.’

Around a hundred yards along the road I could make out a small boy with a dog. My small boy. My heart swelled at the sight of him. I waved, but he didn’t see me. He was lost in his own thoughts, walking with his eyes firmly on Foxy. Celia was right. Foxy walked particularly well for George. Proud almost. Usually, she would be straining at the lead by this point. Desperate to get back, an awful rasping sound coming from her throat. As they got closer, I could see her lifting her front paws up, high, like a miniature dressage horse. George chattered away to her, oblivious I was there.

Afterwards, I would say it happened so fast.

Afterwards, I would say it was instantaneous, but it wasn’t really.

I was aware of something even before I was aware of it, if that makes sense. I was used to the sounds of the village. Used to the flow of cars past the house. And just as when you might hear a distant siren and begin mentally locating your relatives, figuring out if it was at all possible for them to be involved, when I heard the engine gunning from the south-east, and I saw where George was, I knew without doubt it was possible.

And this was when time stopped.

I was too far away to reach him. The sound of the approaching engine told me it was going too fast, and the distance between us was too great.

Still I ran.

I set off screaming, waving my arms, because I knew what was coming. I knew it before I saw it. The Overfinch. The black Range Rover. Three tons of metal hurtling through the village, its driver demented with grief. The cause of that grief: me.

‘Get back!’ I screamed helplessly. ‘George, get back!’

He was too young, of course. He didn’t yet know. He didn’t know that pavements were dangerous places. That sometimes cars mounted pavements when the driver was drunk. Or old. Or having a stroke. Or young and stupid and reckless. Or heartbroken and attempting to drive through the tears.

He didn’t know that, and so he remained unaware of the Range Rover until it flew past me and I was close enough to see his face just begin to flicker with worry. A small frown appeared as he looked from his mother running to the approaching car.

If I’d been next to him, I would have thrown him out of harm’s way. But I wasn’t. And as the small Fiat reversed out of the driveway diagonally opposite, its driver blissfully unaware – loud music audible through the sunroof, the jaunty uke of George Formby – the Range Rover had to swerve to avoid his bumper.

There was the thin sound of brakes, tyres skidding and crunching metal.

And glass. There was so much glass.

Then silence. No sound at all. Just me, alone, in the silence.

37

HERE IS AN
odd fact: There are more road deaths in rural areas than on city streets. The reason? The greater distances from the nearest hospital.

It can take over an hour to get to the nearest A&E department from Hawkshead, and that’s not including the time it takes for the emergency services to reach the casualty in the first place.

Which is why we rely on the charity-funded air ambulance. And why, at that moment, my son was being transported, along with the driver that hit him, in the Great North Air Ambulance, as I followed in the car.

Later, I would remember nothing of that journey to Furness General Hospital. Which route I took, whether the Friday-afternoon traffic was abysmal, if I bought a ticket at the hospital car park. Later, I would have trouble recollecting anything of that day. Snippets would return in the coming months, fleeting memories that I would try to grasp hold of, but mostly, all I remember thinking was:

If only I’d run faster along the street. If only I’d left the hotel a moment earlier. If only I’d never agreed to Scott Elias’s proposal in the first place.

This is what the brain does. It looks for a way out rather than face the appalling truth. It searches out rabbit holes it may have missed. Finds weak spots in reality. It goes back over events as though they are happening for the first time, as though it may actually alter the course of those events.

Your conscious mind tells it to stop.
This is pointless
, it says. But it’s unstoppable.

If only I’d transferred money for Winston’s train fare, he would have made it back in time. George would have been with him, safely in Outgate, instead of with Celia and Dennis. If only we hadn’t split up in the first place, George would still have his own dog and he wouldn’t have been walking Foxy. If only I’d married someone more reliable. If only…

‘Mrs Toovey?’

I stood.

‘Come with me,’ the nurse said. She was in ICU whites, a tiny-framed woman you could bet could lift twice her own body weight. They’re like that in ICU.

‘Is he alive?’ I asked.

‘Come with me, we can talk through here. You’re a physio, right?’

‘Is he alive?’ I repeated, rooted to the spot.

‘He’s alive.’

‘Conscious?’

She dropped her gaze. ‘Not yet. He’s just being transferred from Emergency through to the unit.’

‘What else? What other injuries?’ I asked.

I barked my words at her, but she was unoffended. She held my gaze and ticked off George’s problems on her fingers.

‘Double pneumothorax,’ she said. ‘Fractured tib and fib on the right – those are compound fractures. Irrigation and debridement already done, and the fractures have been stabilized. Skin loss; he’ll probably need a graft. We may need to CT his tummy later, but we had to get the drains into his lungs first. No sign of an abdominal bleed, though. BP’s okay for now. Distal pulses all okay below the leg fracture.’

‘The loss of consciousness? A head injury?’

‘We don’t know. No evidence of trauma to the head, but we don’t know. You know how it is at this stage. Is there anyone with you? Anyone you’d like to accompany you?’

‘My sister’s on her way. His father is stuck in Cornwall. I can’t get hold of him. My parents are coming, but it will take them a couple of hours to get here.’

She nodded and asked for my sister’s name. Said she’d leave word at Admissions that she should be accompanied through to ICU on arrival. Petra was out of her mind. She couldn’t speak, let alone drive. And Vince had been drinking, so…

The nurse said, ‘The lady who was brought in with him in the air ambulance? The driver? Is she—’

‘We’re not related,’ I said coldly.

‘Oh.’

‘Is she alive?’ I asked.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She’s conscious. I got the impression she knew your son.’

‘She drove
over
my son,’ I said.

She nodded. ‘She’s very upset.’

‘I suppose she would be,’ I said. ‘Can I see him now?’

She turned, and I followed her. Her steps were quick across the floor and when we reached ICU she punched in a six-digit code on the keypad. Nothing happened, and she sighed. ‘I keep using the old code,’ she explained. She tried again and, before we entered, she turned to me. ‘Do I need to tell you he won’t look like he usually does?’

I shook my head.

‘Okay,’ she said. ‘Let’s go.’

There were six beds. Three were occupied. Nadine in one, George in the next one along and another patient opposite. He was a young guy with a tracheotomy tube in his throat, meaning he’d been here a while. I was later told he’d developed Guillain-Barré syndrome, his breathing muscles were paralysed and he had been in the ICU for five weeks. His mother would visit and weep gently for an hour before leaving.

The nurse explained that George may be transferred to a paediatric ICU at another hospital, as long as he was stable enough to move. For now, though, he would stay here. With Nadine.

I didn’t look at her. I had to walk past her bed. I was aware of movement, an arm being raised, a gurgling noise. She gave a low, agonizing kind of groan, like an animal trapped in a snare.

I kept my eyes in front and went to George. I knelt by the side of his bed and kissed his hand. He was stripped down to his underpants. His tiny, broken body was smeared with bits of dried blood, and the two chest drains were monstrous, snaking from between his ribs. ‘I’m here, baby,’ I whispered.

Instinctively, I checked the monitors. His oxygen saturation was a little low. I repositioned the pulse ox on his index finger and exhaled as the numbers climbed steadily.

There was a tent over his right leg. A compound fracture is an open fracture, meaning the skin had been torn off. An external fixator was fitted around his leg, but couple that with skin grafts and we were looking at about a year for recovery.

I twisted around to Nadine. Her eyes went wide when she saw my face, and she began shaking her head, trying to convey something important to me. Her expression was urgent and desperate. I turned away.

I got to my feet and drew the curtain across, cutting her off. I was aware of her crying without sound.

She had come looking for me. She had driven through Hawkshead looking for my house. And now we were here.

I kissed George’s hand again and whispered that I loved him. Over and over, I told him he was okay, that he would wake up soon and he would be okay. I told him not to be scared. I was here. I wouldn’t leave him alone.

He was so beautiful. His skin so smooth. There was a little dried blood around his ear. I asked if I could dab it away, and a nurse brought me a wad of cotton wool and a metal kidney dish half filled with tepid water. George didn’t stir. The intubation tube was tied in place with a length of fabric and it pulled downwards on his mouth, making him appear to grimace. I asked if they would adjust it slightly, and they did. The nursing staff tended to him like he was their own child. And it was this, watching the tenderness and care they bestowed upon him, that would cause me to unravel.

I’d held it together okay until then.

38

NADINE REMAINED IN
intensive care for twenty-four hours before being moved to the High-dependency Unit. She had a chest injury. In the time she was in ICU, Scott didn’t visit. Her children did, and I heard their hushed voices behind the curtain. By then, word had spread amongst the staff of the unit and they were aware of ‘our situation’. They dealt with us in a detached, professional way, granting my request that the barrier be kept between us – which I knew from my time in training on ICU was not strictly allowed. It wasn’t until Nadine had moved wards that a gossipy, camp male nurse by the name of Kyle made reference to the curtain, saying, ‘I think we can do away with the Wall of Jericho now. Don’t you?’

My parents came and went. Winston came and went. He came back with provisions and stayed.

The police arrived, and that was all quite straightforward. There were witnesses to say Nadine had lost control when the old guy opposite reversed into her path. Her blood alcohol level was tested on admission and she was found to be under the limit – although she had been drinking; she admitted that. She also told them she had just found out that her husband had been having an affair, so her responses may have been affected. She told them she was very sorry.

We were all very sorry.

Petra came, and stayed. And cried. And cried some more. She sat sniffling at George’s side for three full days, begging him to wake up, wringing her hands. Occasionally, she would shoot me a look and I would see the muscles on either side of her throat grow taut.

‘Say it,’ I said eventually, after a few more hours of this.

‘Say what?’ she asked.

‘Say what it is you want to say.’