In the same drawer there was a bulldog clip, holding together a wodge of papers. He chose to look at that next. It was a stack of receipts and tickets: Nando’s orders, bus tickets, e-tickets from the festival they’d all gone to as a group the previous summer; there was even a scraggy end of till roll from Sainsbury’s for the purchase of two meal deals. The story the receipts told was indecipherable, at least by Marcus.
There were sounds downstairs. The click of the lights in the kitchen being turned on. Fran was on the move.
He returned the token bag and receipts to the drawer. Alone, they formed an incomplete story. He pushed the drawer shut, stood up and slid the notebook into his back pocket. His eyes swept the room, looking for clues. A sea of faces stared back at him from the myriad of pictures pinned to Jess’s noticeboard. Marcus didn’t know, yet, which of them had been special, which had mattered more than the rest.
He turned off the light and pulled shut the door, Jess’s secret safe with him – for the time being.
Chapter 46
MO TEXTED to say that he couldn’t make it; apologised, twice; said he’d message her later; sent an emoji. He was blowing it out of proportion. It was only a poxy dog walk, after all. Like it was going to bother Tish that he couldn’t find the time, in between college and his job, and his obviously demanding family, to fit her in – as he had been doing so loyally for the past few weeks. But her day seemed to drag more than normal without the thought of Mo rocking up on her doorstep at 7 p.m., give or take two minutes, and dragging her out to walk and talk. Sal was at work, so it was down to Harley to keep her company. He did his best, but he wasn’t much of a conversationalist.
When Mo called at lunchtime, Tish deliberately didn’t pick up. She looked at his name on the screen, waited while her messaging service kicked in, saw the voicemail alert, but even then – on principle – she didn’t click on it straight away. Tish had her standards, and relying on a lad, any lad, was not one of them, not any more. She had enough of her mojo back not to be that much of a doormat. A minute later a text arrived from him. After five minutes she relented and listened to his message. He sounded dorky on the phone, the hesitancy more obvious. It suddenly struck her that his ‘phone voice’ fitted her old impression of Mo – nice, cute, but nothing more.
‘Hey there. I didn’t get a chance before. To call, I mean. I had a thought. You might not fancy it. But you know I said I can’t come round tonight? Well, I wondered…do you want to come round to mine? Just for a change. Mum and Dad will be out. Not that that makes any difference. Anyway, I’ll text you the address. In case you can’t remember it. Any time after half six is fine. Bye.’
The text was his address, as promised. Tish was ashamed to admit to Harley that she wouldn’t have remembered it, without his prompting. Not that there was any way she was going round to his.
She stood outside his front door and messed with her hair. It was 6.32 p.m. She thought about going for a walk round the block before knocking, but before she had a chance to run away, the door opened. Shazia smiled and covered her surprise, badly.
‘Tish, how lovely. How are you doing? Well. Obviously.’
Tish blushed and nodded, as Nihal appeared at Shazia’s shoulder.
‘We’re just on our way out. Go on through. They’re in the back.’
They? Mo’s parents edged past and made their way to their car, leaving the door wide open for her. Tish didn’t step inside. It seemed rude. She waited, waved them off. Only after the sound of their car had faded did she walk into the house. She crossed the hall following the noise, feeling like she was trespassing.
‘No!’ a child shrieked. ‘Me. Me. Me.’
‘Hi!’ she shouted. There was no answer.
They were in the sitting room at the back of the house. Mo was crawling round the room on his hands and knees, a small boy clamped onto his back like a limpet. On the floor next to him stood a stocky little girl, who was yanking at the boy’s T-shirt.
‘Hi,’ Tish said, louder this time.
Mo finally registered her presence. He pushed himself up onto his knees, unsteadily. The boy clung on, throwing Mo’s balance off. The little girl eyed Tish for second, an appraising stare, then threw her arms around his torso – a clear indication that Mo was hers and that Tish had best ‘back off’! Mo swayed, encased in his child sandwich, and grinned. ‘Hi. You came.’
She nodded at this obvious statement of the truth. ‘I can see you’re a bit busy.’
Both of the kids were competing for his attention. ‘Again. Again!’ the boy shouted, obviously worried that Tish’s appearance was going to put an end to their game.
‘It’s my go. You promised,’ the little girl wailed.
‘This is Fatima and her brother, Fahad. My cousins,’ Mo said apologetically. Tish shrugged, indicating that it was fine with her for Mo to continue with his babysitting duties. She perched on the sofa. Mo peeled the boy off him and resumed the correct ‘horsey’ position for the little girl. Fahad, disgusted at being ousted, stomped off into the corner, where he sat cross-legged, his back to the room, muttering to himself.
The little girl was shorter than her brother, and this made it more of a challenge for her to get up onto ‘the horse’, added to which Mo kept deliberately dipping and arching his back. Her frowning frustration was funny, but Tish could see that she was beginning to get genuinely upset. Though she didn’t like kids, and had little desire to touch this small, sweaty, ferocious square of a child, she went over and hauled the little girl up onto Mo’s back. Once there, Fatima grabbed fistfuls of his T-shirt, trying to steady herself. When she was settled, she slapped her chubby thighs hard against his torso. In response, Mo snorted like a thoroughbred and set off around the room.
The child immediately slipped sideways. Her face froze in panic – which forced Tish to spend the next twenty minutes walking alongside her, holding her safe in her imaginary saddle.
Half an hour later the kids finally let Mo bribe them into submission with biscuits, juice and cartoons – though they refused to sit on the same sofa together, sibling rivalry extending as far as the seating arrangements. Mo and Tish stood in the kitchen, keeping an eye on them through the open door.
Tish sipped her juice. They were all on the blackcurrant squash. How much her evenings had changed! ‘You’re good with them.’
Mo pushed his hair back off his forehead. ‘They’re here quite a lot. Mum helps my Auntie Saima out. She works shifts.’
‘And tonight you got the short straw?’
‘Mum and Dad had to go to a “thing”, at the council. Something about the new housing estate they’re building at the back of the house. I didn’t listen, to be honest.’ He drank half of his glass of juice in a few swallows. ‘I don’t mind them coming around. It’s kinda nice. It livens the house up. I think my mum misses having little kids around.’ He turned away to rinse his glass.
‘Your sisters are older, aren’t they?’
‘Yep, Aisha works for a marketing company down in Leicester; and Laila is in her last year at uni – on for a First. Mum and Dad are “so proud”.’ He made air quotes with his fingers.
‘I’m sure they’re proud of you as well.’
Mo looked away, focused on the kids. The twang of the cartoon soundtrack filled, but didn’t cover up his lack of response.
‘Mo?’ Tish reached out and touched his bare arm, uncertain why the mood had changed.
He smiled at her, but it wasn’t the usual full-beam grin that he normally gave her. ‘Not so much lately – given what’s been going on. The crash. All the publicity. The police. It’s not been good. They don’t say anything, but I know how uncomfortable it all makes them. But at least there isn’t going to an actual trial now. My mum and dad would’ve hated that. Me having to give evidence…Us, I mean. Right in the middle of the exams. Not that’s it’s especially bad for me. That’s not what I meant.’
‘I know what you meant. I’m glad we don’t have to take the stand, either.
But even if we had been forced to, it wouldn’t have been too bad. We are all just caught up in it. And you – you weren’t directly involved.’ He didn’t look convinced. She ploughed on. ‘You’ve got nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to feel bad about.’
‘So you said.’
The echo of the fight at McDonald’s shimmered between them. He looked her full in the face.
‘It wasn’t anything to do with you,’ Tish repeated.
‘But it was. Whatever was on my phone…that’s what set Harry off.’ Mo paused. ‘I’ve never seen him like that before.’ He faltered, not wanting to upset her, but unable to stop, now that he’d finally said something. ‘Tish, what did I film that I shouldn’t have? I still don’t know. The police won’t tell me. They say it’s part of the evidence. And Harry won’t talk to me. But it’s driving me insane. And I do feel guilty. Whatever it was that got into Harry that night – and whether it made any difference to how he drove or not – it did start with me. Do you know what was on my phone?’
‘Don’t, Mo,’ Tish warned.
At that moment the cartoon in the other room changed and the kitchen was filled with the sound of an elephant trumpeting. Mo reached across Tish and pulled the door nearly shut. ‘Tish? Please?’
Her voice, when she did eventually speak, was brisk, dismissive. ‘Mo. You have to trust me. I’m telling you…it wasn’t your fault. You’ve got to forget about it. Put the crash behind you. Use that huge brain of yours, concentrate on your exams and pass with straight As. Then you can bugger off to Liverpool and leave all this mess behind.’
As much as he wanted to drop it – to climb back inside the haven of their weird, out-of-hours, separate-from-everything-else friendship – Mo couldn’t. He had loyalties, and not just to her. ‘But what about Harry?’
Tish’s face lost some of its softness. Her mouth tightened. ‘He was driving, that’s why it’s coming down on him. There’s nothing we can do about that. Even if we wanted to.’
‘But he never meant for it to end the way it did. You know that. You know Harry better than I do.’ She stiffened, but Mo pushed on, risking it. ‘He wouldn’t hurt anyone deliberately. It was an accident.’ Her harshness was confusing.
‘Mo, there was no one else on the road. No one crashed into us. He drove off the road, slap bang into a wall.’ Tish touched her jawline, whether consciously or unconsciously, it was hard to say. Her scars were reminders that would never go away. ‘Besides, it’s the police who have decided to prosecute him, not us. They must think he was to blame, or they wouldn’t be going after him for it. I refuse to feel bad about Harry, on top of everything else. You mustn’t, either.’
Mo hated the pull of sympathies in his gut, and the shade of doubt that crept over him every time he thought about Tish and Harry. Her avoidance of talking about anything to do with that night, or about Harry, only served to sharpen his ill ease. He really wanted to leave it. But he didn’t. ‘Was it drugs? At the party?’
She pushed away from the work surface. ‘Mo. Please. I don’t want to talk about it. I’d best be off.’
He didn’t want her to go. He wanted to snatch back all his questions, go back to the light-hearted silliness of horsing around with the kids. ‘Stay. Please. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’ But he’d blown it and he knew it.
‘Nah. I’m gonna head home.’
He saw Tish to the door and watched her walk away, without looking back. Then, because what else could he do, he went back to his babysitting duties.
Chapter 47
MARTHA DIDN’T recognise the person who walked into their kitchen on the morning of the court hearing, though she knew it was her big brother. ‘Suited and booted.’ She didn’t know why that phrase popped into her head. Yes, she did. It was a Fran phrase. It was from the last time she’d seen Harry looking so smart. Prom night. Fran had used it as they stood together on the patio, watching Harry and his friends swanking around in the back garden in the sunshine. Harry had looked sharp that evening – the best-looking by far. Mr Popular, surrounded by his friends. Confident. Relaxed. It was the day Fran got her to take the photos, a perfect moment captured, for ever.
Harry made himself a coffee and drank it, without speaking. They listened to their dad moving around in his study, on the phone. He was always on the phone. Martha was aware that these last few minutes with her brother were important. They could be their last alone together for a long time, because, much as she wanted to be, she wasn’t convinced by her dad’s reassurances. This might very well be Harry’s last taste of home and freedom, and therein lay the pressure. She didn’t know what to say to the stranger that Harry had become – the man in an expensive jacket and dark trousers; a stranger with blank eyes who was about to go to court for killing one friend and maiming two others. She desperately needed Harry to help her. But he didn’t.
‘Are you all right?’ It was a pathetic question, but it was all she could manage.
‘Yup.’
‘Sure?’
‘Yup.’
She couldn’t leave it at that. ‘It’ll be okay. Dad’s confident you’ll be coming home with us. Afterwards.’
He looked at her, finally. ‘Yeah. Let’s hope so.’
Martha could hear the lack of conviction in his voice. It frightened her. ‘I love you,’ she blurted out.
Harry smiled. ‘I love you, too.’ He put his mug in the sink. Walked over to her. Hugged her as if he was trying to break her ribs, then said, ‘Tell Dad I’ll see him in the car.’
Harry sat in the front and Martha in the back. She had insisted on coming to the hearing, despite Dom trying to dissuade her. That had necessitated an excruciating phone call to her school to inform them that she would be absent for the day. They hadn’t needed to ask the reason; they already knew. The secretary had the cheek to inform Dom that it would have to go down as an ‘unauthorised absence’. Dom had almost laughed. Almost, but not quite. There was nothing funny about the situation they found themselves in.
They were meeting Ross and his team in the lobby at the courthouse. Dom had phoned the solicitor one last time before setting off. To his credit, Ross himself had taken the call. But there was nothing he could do at this late stage, other than reiterate to Dom that everything was in order and that, from the indications he’d been getting – he didn’t clarify from whom – leniency was going to be shown.
As Dom drove, he didn’t speak. He and Harry had gone too many rounds over his decision to plead guilty to have anything left to say, but that didn’t mean Dom had let it go. Today could have been the start of Harry’s defence, the fight to exonerate him. Instead it was going to be a public sanctioning of his guilt, and a meting-out of his punishment. A done deal. No opportunity for a different result. They would never know what the alternative could have been, because Harry had refused to roll the dice. He’d caved. That display of weakness or fear – whatever it was – was eating away at Dom. It ran contrary to every instinct within him, to let other people decide your fate. His son had obviously inherited very little from him. It was as if Harry wanted the humiliation and the punishment. He really didn’t seem to care about what his guilty plea meant for himself, or for anyone else. Dom couldn’t even blame Adele – and, sitting on his own with a whisky many a night, he had tried.
They drove down the ramp into the underground car park, trading bright sunshine for grey gloom. It seemed an appropriate transition.
Chapter 48
IT WAS what Harry expected, but the speed with which he was sentenced and removed from the court was a shock.
In the weeks leading up to the hearing, his legal team had talked him through what would happen. They had prepared him for a number of different outcomes – a suspended sentence, a driving ban, community service, reparations to the families of the victims, a custodial sentence – with ‘optimistic’ minimums and ‘worst-case scenario’ maximums. They had also explained that, because he had turned eighteen, any custodial sentence (should one be handed down)
would have to be served in a prison, rather than a young offenders’ institution.
Well, a custodial sentence was no longer ‘a possibility’.
It was a fact.
He’d been sentenced to four years. Six months had been taken off his term, because of his cooperation with the police investigation and his guilty plea. With good behaviour, it would be less. Ross had said they normally halved the tariff. So that would make it, optimistically, a two-year sentence. It was doable. It was going to have to be.
Was it appropriate? Was it fair? Or was it a travesty, given the damage he had caused? Harry didn’t know. But as they led him out of the court room, away from the blur of faces and the raised voices, his overwhelming emotion had been shame. Fran had been shouting; his sister crying; Dom already raising objections. There was such a confusion of reactions that no one seemed to pay much attention to him being ‘taken down’.
They put him in a holding cell somewhere in the rabbit warren basement of the building. Harry sat on the bench and waited. He was going to prison. Now. This very afternoon. This cell was his first taste of what his life was going to be like for the foreseeable future. Harry knew that if he thought about it too much, he would panic, so he chose not to. He counted the whitewashed bricks instead. They brought him a ham sandwich, a bag of crisps and a bottle of water. He ate his lunch without tasting it. He’d heard that prison food was bad. This thought, popping into his head, made him snort out loud. His capacity to still bother about irrelevant, selfish things, at the same time as his life imploded, really was quite staggering. The quality of the food inside was going to be the least of his worries.
One Split Second: A thought-provoking novel about the limits of love and our astonishing capacity to heal Page 17