The Heights

by Louise Candlish

  It had stopped raining.

  A car door smacked shut and my spirits leapt. It was a taxi bringing him home from wherever he and Kieran had ended up. I scrambled out of bed again. Closing the bedroom door behind me, I paused at the fairy-lit landing to look down at the hall and my ear caught a fragment of something in the dawn silence – a voice, far away, transmitted through a radio.

  Then came a sharp rap on the front door.

  Lucas wouldn’t do that. Not this early. Years of experience told me that if he’d forgotten his keys, he’d go around the back first and check the kitchen door, hoping one of us had been absentminded and left it unlocked. Failing that, he’d text.

  Now, a second rap.

  Moving fast down the stairs, I felt my bare soles burn on the runner, before cooling on the hall tiles. Through the stained glass two figures were visible, but neither was the right height to be Lucas. I opened the door. A pair of uniformed police officers stood on the step. One man, one woman.

  Never, before or since, have my heart and lungs reacted the way they did. It was as if there was a living creature in my chest, with huge strong wings and a beak, splitting my ribcage as it fought to get out.

  ‘Are you Mrs Gordon?’ the woman asked.

  ‘No,’ I said, so discombobulated that I offered my maiden name, Harding, before hurriedly correcting myself. ‘I mean Saint. Mrs Saint. Ellen.’

  ‘Are you Lucas Gordon’s mother?’ she clarified.

  ‘Yes. Where is he? He went out yesterday afternoon and I haven’t heard from him, but I’m sure he’s at his friend’s place in South Norwood. I can find out the address…?’ I was aware that I was delaying, extending by a few extra seconds this half of my life. This half that had been shifting and exhausting and complicated, but always the better for Lucas having been in it. Always.

  ‘Would it be all right if we came in, Ellen?’ they said, but it was only when they asked if I was on my own, or if my husband or another family member was home and could be called down to join us, that I finally demanded that they say what they’d come to say. After that, my voice got stuck, impaled on a single syllable of denial: ‘No, no, no, no.’

  No.

  Killing Time (cont)

  For those in need of a recap, Saint first appeared in the news following the tragic death of her nineteen-year-old son Lucas in December 2014. A first-year geography student at Leeds University, Lucas Gordon was home for the Christmas break and out with his old school friend, Kieran Watts, when, in the early hours of 19 December, the Vauxhall Corsa the pair were travelling in plunged into Layham Hill reservoir near Purley.

  The details that emerged were heartbreaking. The car sank front first and became wedged on its side. Watts, the driver, managed to escape through an open window but was unable to get help quickly enough to save his friend. Emergency services arrived at 3am and Gordon was pronounced dead at the scene.

  In an echo of the infamous Chappaquiddick tragedy involving Ted Kennedy in 1969, the youngster was believed to have survived in an air pocket for several minutes before drowning. His seatbelt had been disengaged, evidence that he was conscious for at least some of that time, but it is thought likely that his injuries made escape impossible.

  Notoriously, Kennedy failed to call for help to rescue his passenger, Mary Jo Kopechne, in spite of there being a working telephone in a house close by. However, in this case, Kieran Watts, who repeatedly stated he ‘cannot recollect’ events, may have had different reasons for failing to seek help in time. His mobile phone was lost in the accident and there was no public phone or accessible residence within half a mile of the reservoir. His own injuries, which included concussion and a broken shoulder, would likely have hampered his efforts. Both Watts and Gordon were found to have taken cannabis in the hours preceding the incident.

  Many people will remember pictures published of Ellen with Lucas’s father, Victor Gordon, in the aftermath of the tragedy, which caught the public imagination as Christmastime horror stories often do. For a brief time, the terrible, haunting quality of those photographs seemed to challenge every one of us to face what it was we feared the most.

  Sunday Times magazine,

  December 2021

  Chapter 16

  I’ve lost most of my memory of those first days. There was a catastrophic failure to process that he’d been taken from us, even before you allowed for the sedatives I freely consumed. Justin and Vic were always present, Freya absent. ‘Better for her’ was the phrase we used; better for her not to see her mum catatonic. Oddly, I remember the taste sensations best: the permanent rustiness in my mouth, the vinegary tears. Also, the ghastly, mesmerizing vision in the bathroom mirror, as if my face was not my own but that of an ancient ancestor who’d crossed time to visit, lacking the words to speak, able only to stare at me glassy-eyed. The mother of a drowned boy.

  Is it helpful to excavate the details? To imagine every filthy, deathly drop of water as it replaced the air in Lucas’s lungs, weighing them down, preventing oxygen from being delivered to his heart?

  Well, the press thought it was, so the keener readers among you can search them out in seconds. Try ‘Festive Joyride Turns Tragic’ or – in a cultural reference not immediately clear to younger readers – ‘Echoes of Chappaquiddick in Teen Horror Smash’.

  In less sensationalist English, Kieran abandoned Lucas in a car filling with freezing dark water and there was not a shred of evidence to suggest that he’d tried to help him escape the vehicle. The opposite: he left him to die. And once I’d emerged through the pharmaceutical cracks, I had some questions about that.

  ‘They think he must have got out of the passenger window,’ Justin said. ‘The driver’s side was blocked because of the way the car got wedged, so he couldn’t escape that side.’

  ‘You mean he climbed over Lucas? In that tiny car?’

  ‘Yes.’ Though Justin’s tone was low and measured, the set of his face was grim. We were sitting in candlelight – or perhaps I just remember it that way. I certainly preferred dimness for a long time afterwards, the way it obscured the ravages in people’s faces. The loss of faith in their eyes.

  Police photos and diagrams proved the hypothesis: there wasn’t much space between the driver’s seat and the passenger window and Kieran couldn’t have navigated it without physically struggling past Lucas, who was still strapped into his seat. In physical terms, a shove or a kick would have made little difference to Lucas’s injuries, but that was not the point.

  ‘How did Kieran get the window open?’ I asked Justin. ‘Don’t the electrics shut down underwater?’

  ‘It was already open,’ Justin said. ‘They think Lucas must have been smoking before they went off the road. That very well might have saved Kieran’s life.’

  I closed my eyes – as if that would prevent me from hearing, from imagining. ‘Why didn’t Kieran help him, Jus? Even if Lucas was unconscious, he could have pulled him out with him, got him to safety.’

  ‘They think his instinct was to get himself to the surface as quickly as possible. Then when he got there, he’d lost his phone in the process, so he couldn’t call 999.’

  ‘Then he should have gone back down!’ I cried. ‘The reservoir isn’t that deep.’

  ‘They think he collapsed, went into some sort of shock. He’d broken his shoulder, remember. By the time he thought to go back to the road and flag down a car, it was too late.’

  I frowned. ‘You keep saying “they think”. Doesn’t he know?’

  ‘He doesn’t remember, apparently. All he remembers is coming to and staggering to the road. He doesn’t remember anything before that, the crash itself, escaping, swimming to safety. Nothing.’

  Including Lucas’s last words on this earth.

  If they’d been uttered in his presence, that was. The worst was to come, you see, and if there had been any way Justin could have kept it from me – not just then, but for ever – I know he would have. Because at some point following Kieran’s escape, Lucas
had regained consciousness and found the strength to unbuckle the belt that had kept him alive. He had managed to twist himself so that his left shoulder and arm were positioned in the open passenger window, his head jammed inside in the upper corner.

  ‘Was that… was that because that corner was where the last of the air was?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ Justin said. ‘They don’t know for sure. But hypothermia would have been an issue by then.’

  All parents have it, at least that is my assumption: an empathy with their child so deep it is extrasensory. Their joy is your joy, their pain yours. And what inhabited me most deeply in the aftermath – and did for years afterwards – was that moment when Lucas came to. The dark, icy claustrophobia, the primitive terror he felt when he understood he didn’t possess the strength to escape. Being aware, even for ten seconds, of his own hellish form of death: that’s what haunts me.

  If only he’d remained unconscious, he would never have known that terror.

  Vic told me later that he’d tried and failed to find Kieran, both at the hospital – he was too late, Kieran had been discharged after receiving treatment for his shoulder – and at Prisca’s home, which he’d found closed up, curtains drawn in every window.

  Still, the police knew where to find him, which was the important thing. Because, by the time Lucas’s body was released to us, it had been established that Kieran had had cannabis in his bloodstream at the time of driving and had been charged and remanded. The timing was important, because it meant he could not brazen out an appearance at Lucas’s funeral.

  Word reached us soon after that his claim not to be able to remember the circumstances of the crash had been authenticated by a police psychologist.

  ‘Very convenient,’ Vic said.

  ‘Isn’t it?’ I agreed, the taste of vinegar in my mouth.

  * * *

  Unlike on the morning of Lucas’s death, the day of the funeral started late for me, thanks to a sleeping pill. I’d just about conquered the daytime fog by then, but it would be a long time before I could do without chemical assistance at night. All I had to do was shower, get dressed and climb into the car, because everything else had been done for me by Justin and Vic. They’d chosen the church, the plot in the cemetery, the coffin, the flowers, the music. The guests.

  I don’t know if you have ever been to the funeral of a young person, but it is usually a second tragedy to be endured by those who have not yet processed the first. What survives most clearly in my mind is the sheer mystification on Lucas’s friends’ faces, as if they’d found themselves in a dystopia. Some rallied and took photographs – of themselves, of each other – in the way that strikes my generation as unseemly but is inoffensive to theirs. They meant no harm. They were paying tribute to their friend, that was all.

  Jade was there, of course, grief not quite subduing her prettiness. Expecting, when we came face to face, to exchange only the clichés of loss, she was clearly unnerved by my immediate and direct references to the circumstances of the accident. I’m not proud that I chose this occasion to interrogate her and, thinking of it now, I wonder if it was a defence mechanism. I was smothering my grief with a quest for understanding.

  ‘Have you spoken to Kieran?’ I asked her and her mouth opened in surprise. I smelled peppermint breath. ‘Do you have any idea why he didn’t help Lucas?’

  ‘It must have been impossible,’ she stammered. ‘Otherwise he would have.’

  ‘Is that what he’s told you?’ Though I had blocked all other voices, all glances, I could see she was distracted by those around us. She was probably shocked by my appearance, as well: owing to chest pain – a broken heart, what else could it have been? – I was a little bent in on myself, which brought my face closer to hers than was perhaps comfortable.

  ‘I only know what I’ve read, honestly.’ She paused. ‘I wasn’t there.’

  I saw it then, an electrical current through the muscles of her face: awe of the near-miss. She was thinking how easily she could have been there. If she’d come back from uni when Lucas had, if she’d delayed breaking up with him till the New Year, she very likely would have been out with them, perhaps in the very seat where Lucas was trapped. Soon, a unique blend of elation and guilt would replace this awe, along with a way to rationalize it. She had a second chance at life and she would seize it. She would seize it in Lucas’s honour.

  ‘So he hasn’t contacted you?’ I persisted.

  ‘He’s been remanded in custody, I thought.’ The effort not to sob was clear in her eyes.

  ‘But he can still make phone calls, can’t he?’ My voice was growing forceful amid the church murmurs. Beyond Jade, I glimpsed my husband and daughter standing with a group of Lucas’s old school friends. The identical downward turn of their mouths, their hopeless, leaden posture. ‘You need to tell me, Jade. This is our whole family that’s been destroyed. You can’t keep secrets about what happened!’

  She turned from me and began weeping. Sheridan hurried over to rescue her. ‘What’s going on? Are you all right, babe?’

  ‘I’m just asking her about Kieran,’ I said as Jade clung to her. ‘I thought she might have had more of a handle on his state of mind that night. Why he did what he did.’

  ‘I don’t think she knows anything,’ Sheridan said, her voice gently resistant. Nodding towards a cluster of mourners hovering to pay their respects to me, she steered her daughter away.

  Speaking of mourners, I’d just like to say that people came to the service who have barely been mentioned in this story, people who were important to Lucas and our family: neighbours, teachers, colleagues, old family friends we saw once or twice a year. Most of them wouldn’t have thought twice about diving into dark water to try to save Lucas’s life and, if I could start this project again, maybe I would prefer to write about them.

  Prisca was there. Vic must have invited her or perhaps she came of her own accord. I didn’t mind, so long as the only person she represented was herself. She did not approach me and departed directly after the burial; I saw her walking down the lane to the bus stop, her arms limp by her sides. Her wrecked Corsa, having been dredged from the reservoir, resided now in a police garage in Croydon.

  You know, even at the time, lacking in judgement and restraint though I was, it seemed remarkable that no one but me questioned Kieran’s actions – or even mentioned his name. I suppose they feared sullying the occasion by invoking it, but I didn’t like how this conjured a false narrative of solitary misfortune, the illusion that Lucas had driven himself into the reservoir.

  Only Vic’s cousin Danny broke the mould. ‘Pleased to hear the little bastard’s being kept in on remand,’ he told me, at the wake, glass in hand. His suit was new, his face shiny and shaved with care. ‘Is that going to be right till the trial?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said, adding that I hoped he was living in fear of the most menacing criminals his jailers could assemble.

  ‘Oh, Kieran’ll get what’s coming to him, don’t you worry,’ Danny said.

  * * *

  There was no trial. This is not a court drama – you are spared that. He spared us, technically, by pleading guilty, or rather his defence team spared us by convincing him to do so. For those who don’t know, credit is given in the form of a discounted sentence for saving time and expense, as well as for saving victims and witnesses the anxiety of having to give evidence.

  Of the various charges discussed with the CPS, the one that was eventually settled on was Causing Death by Careless Driving. Careless. The word offended me, with its sense of the throwaway, the extraneous. And yet it was perfect for that insolent, reckless individual who had arrived in Lucas’s life on the first day of sixth form and taken so little care of it.

  As for the sentencing, Kieran’s team introduced all sorts of mitigating factors besides that humble guilty plea: the unsettled nature of his childhood years; his immaturity and impressionability; the academic success he’d achieved against all odds. Then there was the lack
of definitive evidence about who had supplied whom with the cannabis and whose idea the joyride had been – the possibility could not be discounted that Lucas himself had been responsible for one or both. Indeed, it could be regarded as likely.

  Disgusting lies, Vic and I agreed. Kieran’s continuing memory loss was nothing more than a legal ploy. It was not even a mask for shame.

  We had written an impact statement, which Vic delivered in court in a heartbreaking undertone, and the press quoted:

  ‘When a beautiful young man like Lucas is robbed of his life, a whole family is robbed of its power. Of its love.’

  I was watching Kieran as Vic spoke. He was blinking and twitching, displaying all the signs of distress you’d expect, and others in the room read his remorse as real, I could tell.

  But Vic and I, we knew he was faking it.

  Killing Time (cont)

  After Kieran Watts was convicted of Causing Death by Careless Driving, Ellen and Vic launched a campaign to protest the brevity of his sentence. While not the first parent-led crusade for sterner prison tariffs, it must surely be a contender for the most vitriolic. No punishment was too extreme for Kieran Watts as far as they and their legions of followers were concerned.

  ‘How often do we hear the cry “Bring back hanging!” when there’s a crime that shocks the nation?’ the pair asked in one joint editorial for the Mirror. ‘Of course, most of us agree that’s a barbaric measure, that the UK is a more civilized place without capital punishment. But we don’t mind admitting there have been times since Lucas was taken from us that we’ve uttered the phrase ourselves – and meant it.’

  The piece ran alongside a photograph of their son’s grave in a South London cemetery.

  Like so many emotionally driven projects, the campaign blew itself out quickly enough, allowing the participants an opportunity for reflection one suspects they badly needed.

  Sunday Times magazine,