by Adele Parks
He turns to me. ‘OH FUCK YOU!’ It’s screamed, from the depths of his lungs. From the depth of his soul. His words are full of pain, frustration, anger. The vileness spills, billows like ink. Spreading, blotting our history, staining it. He’s not looking ahead, but I am. As we turn the corner, travelling way faster than we should be in a residential street, I see her. I see her but don’t understand it. Millie? What’s Millie doing out at this time of night? She’s dashing across the road from our house back towards India’s. She doesn’t look both ways as we’ve taught her. She just steps out.
* * *
It’s black. So dark. A deep, terrifying dark. I’m woozy, disorientated. I’m drifting in and out of consciousness. I need to wake up. I was having an awful dream. I want to wake up. I feel my eyelids flutter but still can’t see anything. Then someone, Simon presumably, starts flickering the bedroom light on and off. I think so, because the bleak darkness is slapped with shapes, bright flashes. I can hear him groaning, grunting. Not a sex sound. Pain, sadness. His breath is hot. On my neck. I’m in bed, just dreaming. I tell myself this because I want it to be true. I want that more than anything, but it’s not. The flashes vanish then reappear, vanish again. I can hear the sound of rain on the window. On metal? My eyes stay open long enough for me to see Simon, his head against the steering wheel.
‘I’ve called an ambulance,’ he mutters. He’s crying. Tears roll down his face.
I scramble for the car door handle. Fling it open and almost fall to my knees in my haste to get out of the car. My head hurts. I can feel something running down my forehead. I lick my lips and taste the iron tang of blood. I’ve hit my head against the windscreen. The car is scrunched up against the huge oak tree on the pavement outside our house. We’ve turned, swerved suddenly.
The world stops. It is silent. I can no longer hear the rain splattering against the ground or the car, or the wails of sirens in the distance. I can’t hear myself screaming, although my mouth is open and now neighbours are running out of their homes, coming towards us. All I can hear is my heartbeat pounding, so powerful that it is jumping out of my chest. It throbs through my body, it kicks me in the gut, it’s cracking open my skull. She is on the ground, flat on her back with her leg twisted under her, an unnatural broken angle. A broken thing. I start to shake, tremble with such violence, as though electricity is flooding through my body, shock after shock after shock. I’m on my knees. My instinct is to scoop her up, cuddle her, but I am being held back. People are telling me not to move her. Her stillness is impossible. She is never this still. Not when she’s playing musical statues, not even when she’s asleep. My baby is never still. I carefully kiss her forehead. Her face is the same. There is blood coming out of the back of her head, more blood than when she slipped in the bath. It runs on to the road, and with the rain, into the gutter.
The dark, the wet, the red lights all slide about me. I turn to look at Simon. He gets out of the car, steps towards us. ‘Stay away from her,’ I yell, bending over her body. ‘Stay away from us.’
But I can’t protect her. I’m too late.
22
Chapter 22, Simon
They asked him if they could breathalyse him. It wasn’t really a question, nor was it a matter of whether he was drunk or not. They knew he was. That was obvious. They were establishing how drunk, exactly. For their files. For his trial. They produced a yellow box from somewhere or other. Simon wasn’t sure where. He kept trying to turn around to look at what was happening with Millie and Daisy. No one would tell him how Millie was doing. They wouldn’t let him go to her. Was she dead? He couldn’t believe that. He wouldn’t believe it. But she was motionless. There was a lot of activity around her. Paramedics now. Thank God. They’d fix her. They’d save her. Surely.
The policeman kept saying, ‘Hey, over here, mate. Concentrate on what’s happening over here?’ But he craned his neck. Watched as they loaded his daughter into an ambulance, as Daisy climbed in after her. His wife didn’t once glance his way. He asked if he could go in the ambulance too, but he wasn’t surprised when he was told a flat no. He had known they wouldn’t let him. There were consequences. Please God, let them be taking her to hospital. They’d fix her there, right. She could be fixed. Please God, not the morgue.
‘That’s my daughter. My wife.’ His comment didn’t elicit any sympathy. ‘How is she doing?’ He screamed his question after the ambulance. No one told him anything. The sirens wailed back at him. It was still raining. Not as heavily now but he was wet through. Wet and miserable. To his core. They hated him. He could see that.
Whilst they wouldn’t answer him, they asked plenty of questions of their own: his name, address, profession. He tried to concentrate. Tried to cooperate. ‘How old are you?’ asked the policeman, gruffly.
‘What?’ He couldn’t focus. What had he done? Jesus. Hell. No. What had just happened here?
‘How old are you?’ He could hear his mother’s voice. Old enough to know better. But it was in his head because his mother was not there. Nor his wife. Nor his daughter. They had all gone. ‘If you can take one long continuous blow into this, please.’ The police officer was polite but clearly not to be argued with. Simon blew into the plastic straw attached to the yellow box, until the machine beeped. The officer looked at the reading and was not at all surprised. ‘We are arresting you under section five of the road traffic act.’
Handcuffs were snapped on Simon. It was not a violent action, he was not turned around and pushed against the car, like in the TV shows. The officer did his job efficiently, carefully. They both seemed to accept that this was what had to be done.
‘My daughter, she just stepped out.’ Simon muttered. ‘Ran out. Didn’t look where she was going. We’ve told her to always look. Why wasn’t she in bed?’ His head hurt, as did his chest. His neck. But it didn’t matter, he didn’t care. Millie. His little girl.
They put him in the back of a transit van. He hadn’t seen it arrive. Things weren’t happening in a smooth, continuous way for him. Time was lurching about. Stuttering. He’d thought it would be a police car. He’d seen it on TV, people like him were put in the back of a car. The van was worse. The van was designed for evil men. It smelt of fear and cruelty. They asked him if he’d been sick.
He hadn’t. Or had he? Maybe. He shrugged.
They told him he could have a lawyer. Did he know a lawyer? No. They’d had a solicitor when they’d moved to a new house, some years back. But no. Their area of expertise was doctors. They knew a lot of doctors. He just shook his head. The police officers said they could get him one. After that, they didn’t talk to him any more.
He was led into the police station via a back entrance. He was still drunk and felt disorientated. Even after that. Especially because of that. He couldn’t sober up instantly, it was science. So, he simply followed instructions, shuffled along next to them, went where they directed him to go, did what they told him to do. He’d been here, to this station once before. A couple of years ago, he’d found an iPhone in the high street and he’d handed it in to the police. At the time, he’d felt really pleased with himself for doing that and then a bit deflated when they’d barely thanked him, barely acknowledged his good Samaritan act that had interrupted his day. He’d never heard whether the phone had been returned to its owner or whether it was still languishing in a lost property lock-up behind the front desk. He had a feeling that things could languish here.
The place they took him to now was very different from the public reception. Significantly more ‘back room’. Grubby. One door opened, he waited, it closed behind him before the next one opened and then he was moved forward. They were treating him like a criminal. He was a criminal. This was surreal. How was she? No one would say. The officers that were at the scene handed him over to someone else. They robotically recounted what had happened to a woman behind a desk, keeping it brief, factual. They confirmed the make, model and registration of his car. They confirmed that Daisy was there too but no
other witnesses. Everyone looked at Simon, disgust, pity, bewilderment. He could feel the heat of their stares, but he kept his eyes on his trainers.
‘We’ve a brief statement from the wife, but we’ll need more. She was injured and distraught. Left in an ambulance.’
‘Go and write it up.’
The officers sloped away without throwing him a backward glance. He wasn’t worth it. Simon asked about Millie again. No one replied. He wondered whether he’d said the words out loud or just in his head. He was shaking. He was in shock. They asked the questions, they told him. Medical ones now. Did he self-harm?
‘No,’ he replied, deadpan, not even bothered enough to sound indignant.
‘How much have you had to drink?’
‘A lot,’ he admitted. He wasn’t being evasive, it was just that he’d long since given up counting.
‘Can you try to be specific?’
‘Five maybe six, but over the period of the night.’ He thought this sounded reasonable, but it was an underestimate. He was in the habit of lying about that particular question. It didn’t matter anyway, they had instruments that gave accurate readings.
‘How much do you regularly drink?’
‘I like a drink,’ he slurred. He’d tried not to slur. He was tired. He wanted to go to sleep. Shut this down. Get out of this nightmare.
‘Do you have a drink problem?’
‘I have no problem with how much I drink. Other people might have.’ He almost sniggered at that. He wasn’t himself. He didn’t know who that was anyway.
The sooner they let him sleep, the sooner he’d wake up and this would all be different. That’s what happened. He drank, he fucked up, he slept and the next day he started again. A fresh day. Things never looked as bad in the morning. That’s what Daisy always said to him. Why was he here again? He needed to lie down or he might fall down. He imagined just curling up on the tiled floor, here in front of them. He just needed to sleep.
They got him to breathe into another box. They called it the intoximeter, but he wasn’t sure if that was an in-joke, or the real name. They waited a bit and then asked him to breathe into it again. ‘His alcohol level is still going up,’ said the policewoman with a sigh. ‘He’s too drunk to be charged. Take him to a cell.’
23
Chapter 23, Daisy
Sunday, 24th July 2016
She looks so tiny. My slight sprite has always seemed bigger than she is because of her giddy effervescence. Her demeanour. She’s fun, normally: laughing, dancing, skipping. Moving. But now she’s still. Silent. No laughing. I can only hear my mother crying. She keeps apologising for it, but I don’t mind. She should be crying. She should be wailing. We should be tearing out our hair, beating our chests. How are we just sitting here? How are we going on?
Her skin doesn’t look right. It’s a sallow yellow. She’s usually tanned or rosy with exertion. The sheet is pulled up to her chest. It’s white I suppose but it looks grey too. Everything is grey.
My father and sister take turns in patting my mother’s arm, pulling her into the occasional embrace. No one touches me. They tried to. When they first arrived, breathless and disbelieving. They hugged me as they fell through the door, but I stiffened, then pushed them away. I don’t want their comfort. I don’t want anything other than to see her open her eyes.
‘I don’t understand why she was in the street,’ laments my father.
She and India had been camping in our back garden. They had taken India’s younger brother’s tepee out there on Saturday morning and played camp most of the day but that hadn’t been enough for them. They’d wanted to sleep under the stars. They had mentioned as much to me, but I had fobbed them off, said they could play camp in India’s bedroom. I should have known that wouldn’t be enough for Millie’s irrepressible spirit. When she gets an idea in her head, there’s no stopping her. My eyes drop to her now. Stopped. They slipped out, unbeknown to India’s mother. The tepee was totally inadequate for camping, it is just a play tent. The torrential rain had ripped through so they’d chosen that moment to give up and dash back to their beds. They should not have left their beds, but kids do things they shouldn’t. India’s mother told me this while I was kneeling on the street with my baby, waiting for the ambulance. She was sobbing, apologising, saying she should have kept a closer eye on them. Yes, she should have, but this is not her fault, not really.
I don’t answer my father’s question. He and my mother will blame themselves for the accident. They’ll say that she has never slipped out anywhere when under their care. They’ll hate themselves for going to the Royal Albert Hall. I wish I could turn back time. I wish they hadn’t booked tickets and that they had been babysitting because they are vigilant, almost neurotic. It’s true that Millie wouldn’t have been able to slip out of an open patio door under their care. But this is not their fault.
I shouldn’t have let him drive. Why did I do that? I should have stood in front of the car if I’d had to. Why didn’t I do that? I don’t know. I can’t remember. I can’t remember anything important. I guess I didn’t have the energy to fight him. I chose that moment to be weak and pathetic. I allowed him to break me down. I must have got in the car next to him. I suppose I must have told myself that there only a few more minutes left to drive, that he wasn’t too bad, that I’d seen him worse. I can’t believe I did that now. I’m so ashamed. I probably felt sorry for him. Just for a moment. Less than that. Long enough. Or done with him. Exhausted, I just wanted to get home.
My breath catches in my lungs, this is what drowning feels like.
I should have been more forceful. Did this come about because I wanted to avoid a scene? I gave in to him. I must have. I touch my head. I can’t actually remember the journey. I hit my head on the windscreen at the… I struggle to let the words drift into my head. Once there, they are real. Immovable. I hit my head on the windscreen at the point of impact. I hit my head on the screen when the car hit Millie and the tree. The doctor who has carefully examined me explained that my patchy memory of last night is likely to be a temporary thing. The result of a concussion, the result of the shock. He says brains are clever things and that most likely my brain has triggered a coping mechanism. Blanking out the horror. I don’t want to cope! It’s selfish of me. I should have to remember everything in lurid, excruciating detail, over and over again. It should be seared onto my brain. That’s what I deserve.
I try to. I concentrate very hard. My head throbs with the effort. There was shouting. We were arguing. Did I distract him? I wasn’t shouting. He was. I need to remember more. I remember the impact, or rather the feeling of it, more than a visual memory. I sunk. Went under. Gave in to the slow pull and drag of blackness.
‘I’m so sorry, Millie,’ I whisper to my still, ashen daughter. I take hold of her hand and kiss it. It’s cold.
This is my fault, and this is Simon’s fault.
I hate us both.
24
Chapter 24, Simon
Simon didn’t have a clue where he was. This happened to him from time to time, so for a moment he allowed that to just be a fact; he didn’t try too hard to work out his location. Instead he thought about his body. He was cold. Shivering. The sort of shivering that went deep into his bones, the sort that came with a hangover. His head was splitting. He felt impotent, unable to form thoughts or reason.
He was in a tiled, oblong box. He considered that he probably wasn’t awake yet. He was still asleep, just dreaming. He hoped so because this place was grim. His back was stiff and achy. He felt as though he was in the grip of flu. He sat up. Had he slept on a park bench? He had done so once before, and it was not to be recommended. He looked about him. He had in fact slept indoors on a cream plastic bench, just six inches off the floor. There was a thin mattress which seemed a bit like a yoga mat, plastic again, a small apology for a pillow, a thin, scratchy blue blanket. It took him a moment because his head was pounding, ready to explode all over the ugly tiled walls. And then he real
ised. He was in a cell.
He staggered to the small metal toilet pan that hung on the wall. He could see evidence that he’d tried to use it last night, but his aim had not been so good; it was covered in piss and vomit. He peed now, swaying, he had to place one hand on the wall for balance. He noticed a small sink recessed into the wall. There wasn’t a plug and he soon found out that the water flowed out slowly. There wasn’t room to put his head under the faucet, so he scooped as much water as I could into his mouth with his hands. It wasn’t much. Certainly not enough to assuage his raging thirst. His eyes were too tight for his head. His stomach burnt. He needed a drink. He banged on the door.
‘Hey, I need to talk to someone. What the hell is going on here?’ No one came. He banged again but then stopped because suddenly he was scared. Banging on the door of a police cell didn’t seem like a bright idea. It seemed like he was causing trouble. He didn’t want trouble. He couldn’t think why he was there. Not precisely. Then someone turned back the pages in the picture book of his memory.
He remembered last night; people kept coming into the room. The cell, he supposed. They would shake him awake, not violently but firmly. ‘Where are you? Who are you? Lift your right arm?’ they’d demand. He’d answered their questions, lifted his arm, told them to bugger off, he just wanted to sleep.
He had been in a van. He was brought here in a van. That was right. And before that? He was in a car. It was raining. Daisy was furious at him. Why? He couldn’t remember. He’d broken something at Connie’s party. That was it. A vase or a plate, a clock? He didn’t know. He could see it smash. Pieces bouncing on their hardwood floor. He could hear the gasps of their smug, stinking rich, fertile friends who were standing around passing weed, passing judgement. And he’d been furious with Daisy too because she’d broken so much more than a vase.