Occasionally she was recognised. Reactions varied: some people pretended not to have seen her and took a different route across the park; others smiled and came to sit beside her. The ‘sitters’ invariably asked how things were going. Meaning well, but wanting a reassurance she couldn’t give. Their sympathy always forced her to move on. She became adept at creating fake appointments and pressing commitments. She’d walk away, take a turn round the neighbourhood until she was confident they’d gone, then she’d return to her bench.
Today the park was busy, the nice weather drawing people out, so there were plenty of other lives to watch and ponder. The burr of her phone in her bag broke her reverie. She thought about not answering it, but knew it would be Marcus, concerned about her whereabouts. He worried. But it wasn’t Marcus; it was Joe, their police liaison officer. The peaceful sadness that she’d been lost in evaporated.
He explained. She listened. He ended the call with a promise to ‘keep them posted’. Such a casual phrase.
Outrage flooded through her bloodstream.
‘Careless driving!’
It was an insult.
Careless was dropping a glass, or dinging someone’s car door in a supermarket car park. Careless was doing something through lack of attention, a lapse in good judgement, a mistake. It was something small and inconsequential. Harry had not made a mistake! He’d got drunk, climbed behind the wheel of his boy-racer car – bought for him by his indulgent father – driven too fast, lost control, crashed and killed their daughter.
Fran stood up and set off walking, fast steps, blood pumping, anger brewing inside her. There was to be no trial. It would be ‘unnecessary’. Joe had actually had the temerity to suggest this might be ‘better’ for everyone in the long run. ‘Less painful.’ He obviously knew nothing about pain, about its capacity to mutate and bloom, bruise, cut and nag in turn. No trial. Less cost. A quicker resolution. ‘Better all round.’ It was not better. It was an affront to Jess. Her death was huge and of consequence. It needed to be recognised, and prosecuted as such.
She left the park and headed along the road, closing in on home. Joe had gone on to clarify what she knew already, that a charge of ‘careless’ rather than ‘dangerous’ driving carried a lesser tariff. Less punishment. Less censure. Less justice. This was Dom’s lawyers at work. Throwing money at the problem. It was Dom’s answer to everything, and this was no different. But it was different. It was Jess. If she hadn’t got into that car with Harry, she would be alive.
Fran fumbled for her door keys. She let herself into the house, full of indignation. She needed to speak to Marcus immediately. She needed him to share in her rage, formulate a response, sanction her plans to appeal. They must fight for the more serious charge, insist that Harry was prosecuted properly. They had to.
But Marcus wasn’t there. She looked in all the downstairs rooms. She yanked open the back door and looked out at the garden – he spent hours out there most days – but there was no sign of him. His car was parked outside. Where was he? Upstairs. She took the stairs at a lick. He would be as shocked as she was.
‘Careless!’
She saw him before she made it up onto the landing. He was in the bathroom, sitting on the floor, his legs outstretched, his head bent, inert. The sight stopped Fran in her tracks. The shimmering bubble of bitter words in her head popped. He looked wrong. As she reached the top stair, Marcus looked up and stared, without seeing her. She walked slowly into the bathroom and crouched down beside him. His trousers were wet. He was holding something in his hands. Her brain was scrambling to decode what she was seeing. Marcus was crying, softly, steadily, unceasingly.
‘Marcus?’
Beside him on the floor was his tool box. The lid open. The top tray was ‘Marcus standard’ neat: the various screws and nails all appropriately stowed in their different compartments, his tools lined up precisely, his secateurs, a collection of different-sized screwdrivers, a Stanley knife. A pulse of panic went through her. But there wasn’t any sign of injury. No blood on the tiled floor. His colour was okay. His breathing was shallow, but he was obviously getting enough oxygen. Besides, Marcus would never do anything like that. Never. He wouldn’t ever leave her – even if he wanted to.
‘Marcus?’
He seemed finally to register her presence. ‘It wasn’t draining properly.’ He meant the shower. It hadn’t been. The water had been taking ages to empty. Now she could see that he had unscrewed the drain cover. The grubby trap was lying on the floor near his hip. She knew, before he opened his hands, what he was holding; knew what was soaking into his trousers, what had broken down his defences.
Jess’s hair.
His hands were full of clumps of their daughter’s hair.
Fran slid down on the floor next to him and leant into his shoulder. She didn’t try and take the sodden clump out of his hands. She couldn’t bring herself to touch it, and she knew that he wasn’t ready to let it go. Jess’s hair. Shiny after a shower. A bird’s nest in the mornings. Hair that drank conditioner. The bottle in the shower was always empty. Hair that stuck in winding strands to tiles and got clogged in the drain. Jess’s lovely, long blonde hair – reduced to a handful of grey, gunky matter.
She leant her head on Marcus’s shoulder and listened to him cry.
Chapter 44
THEY HAD taken Harley for a walk. It was grey and damp, not like late-May weather at all, but their evening walks had become something of a habit. A nice one. Mo wasn’t going be put off by a bit of drizzle. Harley had ‘made friends’ with a cocker spaniel. The two dogs were excitedly chasing each other across the playing fields, ears flapping, tongues lolling. Mo and Tish watched, easy in other’s company.
Her face was looking a lot better, the skin healing. She was using the oil Shazia had sent her; she claimed it was helping. And, to her delight, the doctors had finally given Tish permission to start using make-up again. It made a difference. But the change was not just in her appearance; it was also in her mood. Her confidence was coming back and, with it, her willingness to go out. There was talk of her coming back to college for the last few days of term before the summer break began – not to take any of her exams, but simply to see people, and to make the thought of returning in September to redo her upper-sixth year more palatable.
Mo was pleased for her. He knew how much being able to hide the worst of the scars meant to her, but it was also making him feel anxious. Tish was beginning to look and sound like the old Tish again. Which was good. It was what he wanted for her. How could he not? How could any reasonable person not want that for her, after all she’d been through? But at the same time he was very aware that the more Tish starting feeling and behaving like her old self, the less of a role he would have in her life. They’d never really been close before. They’d hung around together, but Mo had always been on the edge of things. It was the accident that opened a door for him to squeeze through. Tish getting better would narrow that tiny gap. Mo heading off to uni in September might very well slam it shut. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to lose her. No, that wasn’t right. He could imagine it, and that was what was worrying him.
She touched his arm. ‘You’re quiet.’
‘Sorry.’
‘You don’t have to be.’ She pulled her jacket collar up around her neck. ‘Is something up?’
‘Nah.’ He gave himself a metaphorical shake. ‘I’m just getting wet.’
‘You wuss! Come on, let’s walk over to the basketball cages.’ She slid her hand through his arm and set off.
His mood immediately lifted. It was stupidly old fashioned, but having Tish next to him, touching him, was as good as it got for Mo. It was the rightest feeling in the world. He felt proud, though there was hardly anyone else around to see them. That didn’t matter; wherever they were, he felt proud to be with her. He admired her strength and her sense of humour and her loveliness. She was beautiful.
Harley spotted that they were on the move and pelted over, h
is new best buddy hot on his paws. The dogs raced around them three times, then shot off again, boomeranging across the grass.
Tish talked and Mo listened, and the street lights came on and Mo wished they could keep circling the playing fields in the drizzle for the rest of their lives.
Chapter 45
THE THEME tune caught Marcus unawares – a trailer for a series they used to watch together, a cringey comedy that had made them all laugh. He glanced across at Fran, but couldn’t tell whether she’d registered the relevance of the music, connected it with Jess and felt the same swoop of fresh sorrow as himself. That was the problem. Not knowing at what level each other’s grief was set, at any given time. And it seemed to be getting harder, not easier, with time.
The screen changed and they were back to the detective drama. He wasn’t sure he could remember if it was the one with the Albanian drugs cartel trafficking girls or the one with the Deep South sadist who was killing young women in alphabetical order. Saturday nights in: brutality and cruelty in beautifully shot, grimy locations. Fran wasn’t paying attention to the TV. She was sitting on the floor on the far side of the room, looking at her laptop. In Jess’s spot.
The ‘floor sitting’ was a new development. It made Marcus uncomfortable, but he knew he couldn’t say anything. There were so many off-limits topics between them now. The only time they actually talked about the accident, and Jess, and the impending court proceedings, was with professionals in harshly lit rooms, with strict protocols and written agendas. Agendas that were designed to keep emotions in check. The recent victim impact statement session they’d attended had been excruciating. Never before had Marcus had his life so ruthlessly eviscerated in front of strangers. Never again did he want the differences between his own and his wife’s feelings so brutally explored, recorded, annotated and circulated for ‘approval and sign off’. Better not to go there – though he knew that was no answer, either. The date for Harry’s sentencing was approaching. Marcus wished it over. Perhaps then Fran would be able to let some of the anger go; perhaps then his wife would resurface from beneath the dark waters that were drowning her.
He stared at the detective on the TV, not bothering to follow the dialogue. He lifted his glass and took another mouthful of wine. Fran had a mug of tea on the carpet beside her. No alcohol for her. That was another recent development – a decision taken unilaterally, and stuck to, unwaveringly. This he did understand. Alcohol had played its part in the crash. He got the link. He understood the logic. But opening a bottle and pouring them both a glass was a ritual that Marcus missed – like so many other things.
The detective was now in a strip joint, seeking information from some doe-eyed pole-dancers in glittery thongs and high heels. Marcus took another drink. Two empty seats beside him. He stretched out his hand and stroked the fabric, rubbing the pile back and forth, dark–light, dark–light. His loneliness was physical, an ache that worsened with every day that passed. The kindness of strangers and colleagues – and there had been a lot of kindness and consideration shown – was appreciated, but it did little to lessen the pain of not being held and hugged. The weight of Fran’s bare feet in his lap as they watched TV, the unsought spontaneous hug of greeting or goodbye from Jess, the briefest of touches from either of them as they waltzed around each other, getting on with their lives – he missed and craved that physical contact. But Jess was gone, for ever, and although Fran was in the same room, not ten feet away, she was sealed off from him. They needed each other, but whether they could help each other was a different matter.
‘Fran?’
‘Yeah?’ She didn’t look up.
‘What are you looking at?’
‘Oh, nothing.’ But she didn’t stop, didn’t close the lid and come to sit beside him. Marcus didn’t expect any more than a flicker of her attention, but he did want her to hear him and acknowledge his presence. He took a bigger mouthful of wine. He could guess what she was looking at, and she knew it. That’s why she’d hadn’t told him. More research into other cases of death by ‘dangerous’, ‘reckless’, ‘careless’ – did it really matter which word they used to describe it? – driving. It was becoming an obsession. Grief and retribution. Death and demands for justice. Appeals. Challenges. The ‘voice of the victim’.
Only yesterday he’d walked in and caught Fran on YouTube, watching a video about the family of a man with a drug habit who had crashed a car with three of his family members in it, killing all of them. When she’d sensed Marcus standing behind her, she’d closed the lid of her laptop, ashamed, or perhaps unwilling to let him witness her obsession.
He took another slug of his wine, swallowed, put down his glass and continued not really watching the TV. For ten minutes.
He couldn’t stand it any longer. He stood up and walked out. Fran didn’t notice him leave.
He went upstairs, into Jess’s room, and closed the door behind him as quietly as he could, putting another barrier between himself and his wife. He was spending more and more time in Jess’s bedroom. Fran had her videos and her research; he had this.
With each visit he grew in confidence. Initially he’d felt like he was intruding. Jess’s bedroom was her personal space. When she was alive, he only ever entered it at her invitation. Now there was no need to knock. She would never again shout, ‘Come in.’ He hadn’t dared touch anything, to start with. He’d stood just inside the door. He certainly couldn’t bring himself to sit on her bed. He hadn’t opened a drawer or moved anything. But with time his self-consciousness had faded. He’d gone from standing by the door, to sitting on her chair, to perching on the edge of her bed, to sitting on it, to lying down. But lying on his dead daughter’s bed had been no good for him. Not at all. It had been an indulgence, a weakness that had led him to lose hours as he drifted in the darkness. And the one thing Marcus had decided, as he stood in the crematorium looking at the casket while Joan delivered Jess’s eulogy, was that he was not going to give up and go under. So he had sat up and started his quest to get to know his daughter better.
Her room was now the only place where he felt he could still function as her father.
He had started small, by opening Jess’s wardrobe and taking out all her shoes, toughening his hands and his heart. That first afternoon, with the sun coming in through the window warming his back, he’d simply counted how many pairs she had. He’d committed the number to memory. She’d have liked that – his nerdiness being put to good use. That was the day he’d discovered his first new thing about his daughter: she’d owned nineteen pairs of shoes, most of them in need of a clean. The next evening he’d taken the shoes out again and set himself the challenge of putting them in order, according to how often she wore them. As he moved them around on the carpet, he tried to think of specific occasions when Jess had worn each pair. It was harder than it sounded. It was a knowledge test of his daughter’s tastes and habits.
After her shoes, he moved on to Jess’s clothes. Her clothes were more of a challenge, there were so many of them, but he found the exercise equally fruitful. There were her ‘hundreds’ of tops, her selection of identical-looking jeans, a tangle of Lycra sportswear and, most heartbreaking of all, her stuff for bed: her PJs and her old, wash-worn T-shirts. It was time-consuming and difficult, but that was good – because that’s what being her dad had been like. With every item Marcus held in his hands, and with every trawl through his store of everyday memories, he felt like he was strengthening his connection with Jess. It comforted him.
This evening he was glad he’d had a drink before returning to his labours. He even reasoned, somewhat fuzzily, that Jess would’ve understood his need for Dutch courage. Because he’d completed all the obvious tasks: her clothes and shoes, her bookcase and her college bag. He’d even gone through her make-up, smelling the various lotions and potions and picking out the lip tint that he thought she wore most days. But he was apprehensive about what awaited him. Her bedside cabinet.
The small set of drawers with its
handles draped with necklaces, the front papered with stickers, seemed a much bigger step. A step that took him over the boundary of her right to privacy. He sat on her bed and spoke to Jess: in his head; he couldn’t bring himself to try it out loud – the lack of response would’ve been too much. He explained his reasons and asked her forgiveness, and tried to convince himself that she would’ve given him permission, but still he hesitated. The police investigation had muddied the waters. Marcus was honest enough with himself to admit that his compulsion to know everything he could about his daughter wasn’t driven purely by his need to hang on to her; it had also been triggered by the police’s questions, and their implications.
Marcus pulled open the drawer. Swift, decisive.
It was crammed with stuff. A phone charger, hair bands, lip balms, some tablets. On closer inspection, the tablets turned out to be contraceptive pills. This was no surprise to Marcus. He knew she’d been taking them to ease the symptoms of her periods. He and Fran and Jess had discussed it, quite openly. Dinosaur-parenting was not their style. But holding the packet in his hands, he wondered if Jess’s motivation for going on the Pill had been as straightforward as he’d chosen to believe. He put the box back. Shut the drawer, moved on to the next.
It was full of stationery bits and pieces. A flutter of Post-it notes drifted to the floor as he worked his way through the Biros and notepads and elastic bands. The third drawer was more organised, as if care had been taken with the items in it. It was here that Marcus started to detect brief glimpses of the Jess he didn’t know – the young woman with a private life. A notebook, a few mementoes, a perfume spray; for some reason, a children’s book about seahorses.
He lifted the purple notebook out first and placed it on the bed, not ready – yet – to face what was inside: Jess’s handwriting, and her secrets. Beneath the book was a small black drawstring pouch, the type that jewellery came in. It felt soft to the touch. He loosened the ties and eased open the mouth of the bag, then shook it. A handful of silver coins fell out onto the duvet. They were smooth, with words engraved on them. Not real coins, more like tokens. He picked one up. It was cool to the touch. ‘A kiss in the moonlight’. The second said, ‘A back scratch’. The third, ‘A massage’. The fourth, ‘A roll in the hay’. Tokens five and six were more of the same. A cheap gift, with tacky sentiments, that had meant something to his daughter. He put the tokens back into the bag and pulled tight the string, wondering how many – if any – she had redeemed. He felt confused as to whether he wanted the answer to be none, or all of them.
One Split Second: A thought-provoking novel about the limits of love and our astonishing capacity to heal Page 16