Fran pushed her bowl aside, dragging his attention back. ‘Marcus, I need to talk to you about something, and I want you to hear me out before you say anything.’ He could do nothing but nod. ‘I’ve been looking into a service called restorative justice.’ She paused, as if waiting for him to react. He didn’t. ‘It’s a scheme they run for the victims of crimes. They arrange meetings with the perpetrators – face-to-face sit-downs – with a moderator present. It’s all very safe and well managed…from what I can make out. The meetings are so that everyone directly involved in an incident can talk through what happened and learn from it.’
‘And…’
‘Well, I approached them…regarding Harry.’
‘When?’
She looked uncomfortable. ‘Before Christmas. Just to make initial enquiries. It’s a non-starter if the perpetrator refuses.’
‘And…’
‘I’ve received an email from them, saying Harry has agreed to meet us, if we want to pursue it. I obviously haven’t committed us to anything yet.’
Marcus wasn’t really surprised. He’d seen what she’d been watching. He’d looked at her search history. What he was angry about was Fran taking him for mug. If it had got to the stage of them approaching Harry, she’d hadn’t simply made initial enquiries; she must have made a formal application, must have spoken to them, pursued it, provided them with information – all without saying anything to him.
Fran was still talking. ‘We can discuss it more tonight. I’ve got some information I could show you, but given that I’ve just heard he’s said “Yes”, I thought I should tell you.’
‘Yeah’ was all he could manage by way of a response.
She actually squirmed in her seat. ‘Marcus? Do you think it’s something you would consider? It might really help. Give us a chance to speak to Harry directly. He barely said two words at the hearing. This way, we could talk to him for as long as we need – find out what really happened that night. That’s got to be worth pursuing, hasn’t it?’
Harry had said more than two words at the sentencing. He’d read out a short statement, the paper wavering in his hands, his voice low and distressed, his face so tight it was amazing the words had managed to get through his clenched jaw.
‘Marcus?’
He stood up. ‘I’ll think about it. I’ve got to get ready for work.’
Upstairs he cleaned his teeth, looking at himself in the bathroom mirror. If the eyes are supposed to be the window to the soul, in his house the blinds were down.
Chapter 67
THREE WEEKS later Harry received the letter confirming the restorative justice meeting. He took it back to his cell. It had been opened and read, of course – that was one of the many personal infringements of serving time. Nothing was private, nothing except your thoughts, and even those they wanted. Up until that point Harry had stoically resisted their attempts to get him to talk – to share – and yet by agreeing to the meeting with Fran and Marcus he had walked straight into the firing line. He slid out the letter. He skipped through the official waffle on the front. Fran and Marcus’s questions were on the second page:
The applicant[s] would like the discussion to focus on the following areas:
• The events on the night of the crash, specifically,
- for you to talk about what happened at the party
- for you to explain your decision to drink and drive
- for you to provide a detailed breakdown of exactly what happened after you and the others left Alice Mitcham’s house
- to explain why you left Mo Akhtar behind in the car park
- for you to give your explanation of what caused the crash
- for you to describe what you did immediately after the crash
- for you to express your understanding of your responsibility for what happened.
• For you to tell us anything you can about how Jess was that night – before, during and after the crash. What mood she was in. What she said. What she did. Specifically, for you to describe her last few hours of consciousness.
• For you to say what you would do differently.
• For you to demonstrate that you comprehend the impact of your actions on the lives of everyone involved and on the lives of their families and friends.
The questions were what he’d expected, because they were what any parent would want to know – had the right to know – about the death of their child. And the only person who could answer them was Harry.
He put the letter aside, lay down and stared at the ceiling.
Over the course of the next couple of hours he sensed, rather than saw, the screws on duty slow as they passed his cell door. They all looked in, checking on him. At least none of them tried to engage him in conversation. As he lay on his bunk he concentrated on the floaters that drifted across his field of vision. Jess had once gone into a long spiel about them – she’d just done ‘eyes’ on her biology course. The weird, ghostly shapes were something to do with blood cells and proteins reflecting off the retina. Aware that he wasn’t listening, she’d taken it up a notch. She’d announced that in some people they were an indicator of a rare medical condition – she made up some daft name – and that in these people the floaters were actually microscopic creatures that had got inside the eyeball. She claimed that you picked them up from swimming in infected water – he’d just come back from a holiday in Goa at this point – and that, if left untreated, the bacteria could multiply and destroy the person’s sight, so that eventually they couldn’t even see what was right in front of them. At that point Harry had put his phone down and given Jess the attention she was demanding, and deserved.
He rolled onto his side and wished he could cry, but the sea creatures swirled by, refusing to cooperate.
Chapter 68
FRAN HAD arranged to meet Natalie, her advocate, in the visitors’ car park at the prison. Even with the heavy traffic, she was early. She was glad. She needed the time to calm down and compose herself. The drive had been as bad as she’d imagined: lorries whizzing past within centimetres of her car, splattering dirty slush and spray onto her windscreen; impatient drivers flashing at her to move over; the anxiety about coming off at the right junction. It was the furthest she’d driven in ages, in terrible weather – the type of trip no loving husband would make his anxious wife do on her own. But she had made it safely, in one piece, arriving in the right place, in good time. Relieved of the pressure of staring at the road in front of her, she took in her surroundings. The prison was what she was expecting. An ugly main block of a building, surrounded by equally brutal smaller blocks encircled by a chain-link fence.
It had taken months to get to this point; it had taken courage and perseverance, and it had cost her.
Marcus’s abandonment of her and Jess was unfathomable. Right up until this morning she’d thought he would have a change of heart and come with her, if not willingly, then at least out of his sense of loyalty. That he was making her face this on her own was… unforgivable. She knew – and this is what made it seem such a calculated ploy – that he’d banked on his last-minute refusal to drive her up to Darlington in bad weather as the insurmountable hurdle that would get her to cancel. It just went to show how little Marcus knew her any more. How out of touch he was with the steel in her spirit.
He’d signalled his discomfort with the whole idea over the course of the weeks building up to the visit: refusing to watch the videos she queued up for him; skim-reading, at best, the literature she left out on the dining-room table; adding nothing to the list of questions they’d been asked to submit in advance of the trip to Darlington. Every conversation they’d had about it had been the same – Fran’s belief that this was an opportunity they couldn’t pass up, and Marcus’s view that it was a very bad idea. His key concern, and the one he repeated over and over again, was what she thought they would get out of it.
Answers! That’s what they would get.
Or that’s what she was going to get. Not Marc
us. Because he was sixty miles away, at home, hiding from reality.
Natalie’s car pulled up alongside hers. Fran reached for her coat and stepped out into the cold wind.
Chapter 69
HARRY CHOSE a pair of jeans and a plain T-shirt from the small pile of clothes in his cupboard. They were badly creased, and neither smelt that fresh. The prison laundry was basic – you were lucky if you even got your own stuff back. The jeans and the top had his name inside them, written in indelible Sharpie by Martha. Every time he put on his clothes the sight of her handwriting hurt. Dressed, and ready as he’d ever be, he sat on his bunk and waited for Jim to come and fetch him.
It had transpired that the restorative justice process required Harry to have a representative who was ‘on his side’ at the meeting – it couldn’t go ahead without one – so in the end he’d been forced to ask his dad. It had been a frosty conversation.
‘But I don’t understand why you’d consider doing such a thing?’ Dom had kept his voice low, despite the cacophony of laughing and arguing around them in the visitors’ room.
‘I just think I should meet them. Now that they’ve asked?’
‘But it’ll be awful.’ Dom was remembering the fierce energy of Fran’s grief and her anger, when she turned up at the house.
‘It’s supposed to help.’
‘How?’
‘By getting it all out in the open.’
Dom made a noise, which was not assent.
Harry tried a different tack, one he thought might have more influence. ‘They also said that it looks good, if you do it. It can influence parole decisions.’
Dom glanced around the packed visitors’ room. ‘By much?’
Harry felt the familiar irritation with his father’s binary approach to life – the accountant’s measurement of profit and loss – and, out of perversity, he downplayed the value placed on the restorative process. ‘Well, there are no guarantees. Besides, that’s not why I’m doing it.’
‘So, why you are?’ Dom’s impatience wasn’t ill-concealed – it wasn’t concealed at all.
Fuck him! It hadn’t ever occurred to his father than he might need to talk about what happened; that bottling it all up was screwing with his head. It was like having a migraine that never went away. But Dom had no patience with that sort of nonsense. He didn’t do messy emotion. Harry resorted to provoking him, as usual. ‘Because I knew it would piss you off.’
Dom’s response was a sudden stiffening of his whole body. He snapped upright, making full use of his six-foot-two frame and his gym-honed shoulders. He wasn’t so different from the thick-necked steroid boys on the wing. ‘Harry. Pack it in.’
Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw one of the officers catch the whiff of trouble rising from their conversation. His attention locked onto them, ready to intervene. Harry took it down a notch, not out of his respect for his dad, but in order to avoid any grief from the screws. ‘It’s actually my choice, Dad. You can turn up or you can not. It makes sod-all difference to me. I know how much you hate coming here anyway. I don’t want to put another date in your busy schedule. I’m sure one of the screws will step up instead.’
‘Now you’re being childish,’ Dom said. ‘I didn’t say I wouldn’t come. I just want to know what the outcomes are likely to be.’
‘Hell knows. That’s kinda down to Fran and Marcus.’
‘And that’s my point.’
‘Yes. And?’
‘You’ll be at their mercy.’
‘Yes.’ Even while agreeing, they could argue. The officer was still observing them. Body language didn’t lie.
‘Well, that’s not good, is it?’ Dom pointed out.
‘No. Not good. But that’s the point.’
‘We’re going round in circles. You’re going do it with or without me, aren’t you?’
To which Harry had answered ‘Yeah.’
There was a knock on his cell door. It was Jim. ‘You ready, lad?’
Harry stood up. ‘Yeah.’
Chapter 70
IT WAS all so ordinary.
A room set up ready for a meeting, with tea, coffee and biscuits laid out on the side, a flipchart in the corner. There were only five chairs in the room, arranged in a somewhat pathetic-looking semicircle. Fran and Natalie took their places, but their presence felt inadequate. The space could easily have accommodated twenty or more. Fran had read that some sessions involved whole communities facing down the perpetrator. She’d pored over the stories of neighbours brought together by their indignation over arson attacks; parents who’d stood side-by-side demanding justice for their murdered offspring; siblings who had fought for years for their day of reckoning, after a parent had been left for dead by a drunk driver. There was an army of victims’ families out there, united in their grief and their pursuit of the truth. Today she joined their ranks – while everyone else, including her husband, turned their faces away.
She had never felt more alone.
Chapter 71
HARRY STOOD on the other side of the door. He had never felt more alone.
Jim checked one more time that he was ‘happy’ to go through with the meeting. He nodded. The escorting officer opened the door and Harry walked through it.
There were chairs, set out in a semi-circle. A window. Three people. One of them Fran. No Marcus. No last-minute appearance by Dom. Mugs. A kettle. A plate of biscuits. Touches of humanity. Everyone standing. A woman with severely cropped dark hair taking drinks orders. The banality of it. Then everyone sitting. Harry opposite Fran, too close. Unable to look at her. Voices. The facilitator woman, ‘Kerry Something’, welcoming everyone. A calm voice that didn’t ease the thudding inside Harry’s head or lessen the discomfort of his ribs hitching up and down because there wasn’t enough air in his lungs.
The woman was going through the ‘rules’. There was no need; he had been told them, many times over. They were expected to stick to the basics of a normal conversation – in the most abnormal of circumstances – mutual respect, listening, no interrupting, learning from each other’s experiences. It was a mantra designed to make what they were about to do safe. It didn’t feel safe. Harry had never felt more aware of his body; of the bones in his backside that were making sitting on the plastic chair uncomfortable; of the noise of the air sucking in through his nose and out through his dry mouth; of the crack of his joints as he clenched and unclenched his fists. It was impossible to make himself less present. But there again, that was the point.
Finally the moderator turned to Fran. ‘Do you want to get us started, Fran? Bear in mind that you have your prompts, if you need them. And I’ve got a copy of your questions, should you need me to step in and facilitate at any point.’
There was a silence that was thicker and heavier than anything Harry had ever experienced before. Within that silence was compressed months and months of raw emotion – his and hers. He didn’t look at Fran. He couldn’t. He looked at the floor, not allowing his gaze to stray beyond the confines of his trainers.
‘I want to know what happened?’ Fran’s voice was clear and steady.
It was what he was expecting, what he had prepared for, but it was impossible to answer nevertheless. His trainers were dirty, stained by the months of walking the halls and yards of the prison. The lace on the left shoe had snapped. He’d had to knot and rethread it, so it was laced up wrongly. They were waiting. Fran was waiting. He was waiting.
‘Harry!’ Instinctively he looked up and instantly regretted it. ‘You have to tell me what happened. That’s why I came. You owe me that. You owe Jess that. Tell me what happened.’
She had every right to demand his confession. But still…where was he supposed to begin? He wanted to tell Fran, needed to, but he didn’t know how. Panic took over.
He hadn’t even been aware of Jim, until he felt the pressure of his hand on his arm. ‘Harry. It’s okay. Take a breath. There’s no rush.’ Fran’s face said otherwise. ‘Why don’t you start by telling
Mrs Beaumont about the party? About what you and your friends were doing before the crash. Anything at all. Just to get us going.’
Under pressure, Harry blurted out, ‘I only had a couple of drinks.’ Fuck. Fuck. Fuck! That wasn’t what he’d meant to say. What the fuck had he said that for?
He heard Fran inhale – a short gasp of frustration. He’d disappointed her before, hundreds of times when he was a kid, but he’d never seen her look so disgusted.
What he wanted to start with was: I am so, so sorry that I took Jess from you. I would do anything to bring her back, if I could. I understand why you hate me. I hate myself. I hurt Jess. I didn’t mean to. But I did. I wish – more than anything in the world – that I hadn’t, but I did. I loved her, but I treated her like I didn’t. I don’t know why I did that. I regret it. Really, truly regret it. I never meant to hurt her. But that was the problem. I didn’t mean anything enough. I didn’t realise until it was too late how much I loved her. I didn’t appreciate how happy she made me. I didn’t realise that I had to let her know that I loved her by what I did. I was a shit to her that night. And other times. I made her sad. I made her happy as well, some of the time. But I didn’t stick to it. I didn’t stick to her. Not enough. Not in the way she deserved. She was better than me. And I took what we had and fucked it up.
He glanced at Fran. The look of disgust on her face was what he deserved.
The moderator stepped in, trying to make up for his false start. ‘I think what Fran wants from you, Harry, is a description of the events of the night. Why don’t we start with what happened at Alice Mitcham’s house? How did you get there?’
A simple question.
So, fucking answer it, the voice in Harry’s head screamed. He focused on the broken shoelace. ‘I drove to the party.’ Everyone sat back a fraction in their chairs – Harry could tell by the readjustment of their feet. He made himself keep going. ‘I picked Jake and Tish up from her house, and we went on from there.’ He was already forgetting that there were details Fran didn’t know, couldn’t know – because they had kept things from her. But now was the time for telling her the truth. ‘Jess was already at my house. She got ready there.’ Fran made another odd noise, a strange, stuttery kind of inward breath, like his words had got stuck in her windpipe. ‘Jess had said that she was staying with Gabbie.’
One Split Second: A thought-provoking novel about the limits of love and our astonishing capacity to heal Page 24