‘I was upset that I’d upset Jess.’
‘And while all this was going on, what was my daughter doing?’ Fran’s voice was forceful, demanding.
‘Crying.’
The room went quiet, each of them imagining Jess sitting in the front seat of the car, distraught…because of him.
Harry needed to keep going, to put into words the next twenty minutes of that night – the last point when things could have turned out differently and all their lives could have gone on, maybe even recovered from the mess he’d created. ‘I went back to the car. Apologised to Jess for losing my temper. Tried to comfort her, but she said she wanted to go home.’ Fran swallowed a sob. ‘Tish and Jake got in and we drove off.’
‘What about Mo?’
‘We left him behind.’
The atmosphere in the car had been poisonous. No one talking except Jake, who was yakking total gibberish. Tish’s eyes had drilled into Harry’s every time he glanced in the rear-view mirror. Jess had been stony silent, her face turned away.
‘Then what happened?’
He’d driven them home, fast, wanting the night to end, for the anger and panic in his gut to subside. Just wanting to get back. To get rid of Tish and her silent accusations. To get shot of Jake and his pissed-up ignorance. To park up on a dark side-street with Jess and try and explain. To make her look at him, so that she would see how sorry he was. For him to get her to understand that Tish meant nothing to him, compared to what he felt for her. To tell Jess how he couldn’t cope without her. That he would never do it again. That he loved her.
He never got the chance.
‘We were nearly back.’
Maybe that was why she finally turned towards him, her eyes big, her expression bereft, and asked him, again, ‘Harry, how could you?’
And he’d looked at her and felt terrible and trapped and guilty and angry all at the same time. He knew that he owed her an explanation, but he couldn’t answer her because there wasn’t any good reason why he’d cheated on her. He just had – because he was a selfish prick. It didn’t mean he didn’t love her. He did. But he didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. He’d looked back at the road, heard Jess shout, ‘Harry!’, saw something flash in front of the car, jerked the wheel and lost control.
‘Then the car crashed?’ The woman again, stating the horrific obvious.
Harry nodded. He really didn’t want to have to describe the rest of it – the knowing that the car had become a missile. That they were going to crash. That there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Then the bang.
The pain.
The blank.
Then the screaming.
No, he couldn’t.
Fran was staring at him, her hands balled into fists on her knees. ‘So she was heartbroken in the last few moments of her life – because of you.’
‘Yes. I am so sorry. So very, very sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone, especially not Jess. I loved her.’
There was a second or two of stillness as his confession settled and took root.
He had loved Jess and he had killed her.
Fran slowly got up from her chair and crossed the room towards him. The moderator stretched out her hand – a discouraging or comforting gesture, it was hard to tell. Regardless, Fran ignored it. She stood over Harry, her stomach moving in and out, deep, steadying breaths. Harry tilted his face and looked up at her. She stared at him, her eyes full of tears, drew back her hand and slapped him hard across his face.
Chapter 72
THE FLAT of Fran’s palm connected with Harry’s face. It stung. She hoped it hurt him more. How dare he?
Kerry, the moderator, leapt out of her seat and put her hands on Fran’s arms, pulling her backwards.
How dare she?
Fran swung round, and Kerry let go. This was not in the carefully rehearsed plan, with all its emphasis on mutual understanding and respect.
‘Fran, please?’ Kerry looked shocked, her face ashen. Fran didn’t care. She owed this woman and her colleagues nothing. This had always been about getting something back for Jess; it had never been for Harry’s benefit, his rehabilitation, his grasp of the consequences of what he’d done – they were by-products, outcomes that the state wanted, to justify all the time and expense. She didn’t care about Harry. Not any more. How could she? How could she accommodate any thoughts about his wrecked life, his grief, his guilt, when she had an ocean of pain inside herself? She had walked into this bleak, bland room for one reason only – to get close to her daughter, by getting close to the person who had taken her away.
But it hadn’t worked. The more Harry had talked, the less it had been about Jess. He’d sat there, staring at his feet, dribbling out his self-pity and self-justification, and they’d expected her to just sit there, an audience for his performance. They had nodded and encouraged him, even praised him, as if his ability to string a sentence together was an achievement. I drank, but not much. Sympathetic smiles all round. I drove while drunk, but I’m sorry. Round of applause. I lied, or we both did. Indulgent nods. I cheated, but it meant nothing. Good on you for acknowledging the error of your ways. I broke Jess’s heart, but I didn’t mean to. Pat on the arm. I crashed the car, but it’s not my fault. We understand.
I loved her.
No, you did not! You used her. Humiliated her. Hurt her. Then you killed her.
Fran stood over Harry, watching as red finger marks appeared on his cheek, itching to hit him again. He didn’t move. He just sat there with his face raised, accepting his punishment.
Kerry stepped into the impending threat. ‘We really need to take a break. Jim, perhaps you could take Harry out for a while? Check that he’s okay. I think we all need to take some time to reflect and calm down.’
The officer tapped Harry’s arm, prompting him. He got to his feet slowly.
Fran suddenly wanted him to stay put. He’d had his say. She hadn’t. She wasn’t finished with him. She grabbed his arm. Harry stopped. She felt the muscles in his arm beneath her nails, the strength in him, but also the lack of resistance. His eyes were fearful.
‘Fran, this really is totally unacceptable. Please let go of Harry, immediately.’ There was no calmness in the moderator now. ‘Fran!’
She finally found her voice. ‘No! He needs to hear me. He’s ripped my life apart. He has to listen.’
Still Harry didn’t pull away. Their faces were close. She could see the dark shadows under his eyes, and how pasty and unhealthy his skin looked.
‘Fran. I’m not going to ask again. Let him go! If you don’t, I will be forced to ask the officers to intervene.’
She could smell him. Deodorant. The taint of stress on his breath. He was taller than her. His shoulders wide. A man.
Harry and Jess. Together. No, no, no! Fran recoiled at the thought and let go. Jim hustled him out. The door was pulled shut behind them.
She didn’t listen to the debrief. Didn’t drink the tea they fetched her. She might have nodded in response to their considered comments; she couldn’t remember. She didn’t care any more. When they felt she’d been chastised and sympathised with enough, she was escorted out of the prison through the various locked doors and gates. She found herself outside, standing next to a chronically embarrassed and panicky Natalie, whose lipsticked mouth kept moving. More empty words. Fran waited stoically for her to shut up. It was only when Fran went to her car, got in and shut the door that Natalie’s monologue finally ceased.
Natalie stood there, for at least another minute, looking distressed, before she finally shifted her bag onto her other shoulder and turned towards her own car. She would no doubt have to write a detailed report about why the session had gone so badly wrong. It would not go down well with her superiors. A black mark. Fran didn’t care.
Fran watched Natalie put her coat and bag in the back of her car, climb in, readjust her seat and her mirror – why would she need to do that? she hadn’t shrunk in the past two hours – and finally
set off. Her departure was a relief.
It was over. It had been a disaster. Fran felt worse, not better. Months and months of lobbying and planning and preparing for this day, believing that it would change how she felt by changing what she knew. But it hadn’t helped. She pushed the car into gear and drove out of the car park, following the satnav instructions that would lead her back onto the A1, to a life made worse by the visit.
Chapter 73
FRAN PUT her foot down and overtook a lorry. She was furious, blindingly, bitterly furious. Restorative justice! There had been nothing restorative about it. It had been corrosive. Poisonous! And as for justice, there’d been no justice in what had happened inside that room. Harry had sat there, hanging his head, wringing his hands – the picture of contrition – spilling out his self-pity and his lies, making it all about him. And Kerry, the moderator, the person who was supposed to be the impartial adjudicator, had nodded and made her sympathetic little noises and comments.
They’d positioned the meeting as Fran’s opportunity to get answers, to face Harry with the consequences of his actions, to arrive at closure. In practice, they’d ripped the wound of Jess’s death wide open, then expected her to sit and bleed out quietly while he got to talk, and talk, and talk. A confession, at last, of his drinking, his lack of attention, his responsibility for the crash, his disloyalty. All those careful, softly spoken words, with the bleating undertone of himself as the victim.
And it had worked. They had been sympathetic to him, angry with her.
They’d wanted a polite, civil, conciliatory meeting that ticked a box and earnt points for the judicial service. Jesus! – she undertook another car that was dawdling along in the outside lane – the meeting would probably help his case, earn Harry extra points for showing remorse. It was all a sham. How dare they blame her for the breakdown of the session? How dare they have the audacity to cut her off, censoring her feelings and her words? So much for the voice of the victim; the only voice that had been heard was his.
Fran drove on, her emotions rolling and roaring inside her.
They didn’t get it. Couldn’t. They hadn’t had their daughter taken from them, broken apart, killed by Harry’s arrogance and carelessness. Her fury bounced from him to the liaison team, to Marcus.
Marcus had left her to face the ordeal alone. He’d totally abdicated his responsibilities as a husband and a father. How could he do that? He should’ve been there at her side. The thought of having to explain to him what had happened, when she got back, was too much. He had no right to know, because he hadn’t stepped up. But if she didn’t tell him, didn’t talk to somebody about it, she feared she would go mad.
She took the exit.
And as for what Harry claimed about his relationship with Jess. She ragged the gears from fifth down to fourth. How dare he? No. Fran couldn’t bear to think about it. Not Jess. Not her cool, confident daughter. Jess, whose heart she’d known. No. She would never have had a secret that huge. Harry had been like a brother. Fran had half-raised the boy. No, it wasn’t possible. But the idea of them together as a couple swelled and pulsed inside her head, releasing a slew of unwanted images. Harry at the hospital, looking shell-shocked. Harry standing at the back of the chapel at the funeral, his face wet with tears.
The same Harry who had been in their lives for so long that they almost didn’t notice him. Eating meals in their kitchen. Horsing around with Jess. Sharing in their good times. Christmas, holidays, family birthdays – a thousand ordinary, happy days.
She crossed the first roundabout. Turned left, then drove over the second, took the right turn.
No. Not Harry. She would’ve known. Jess told her everything. They were close. Closer than most mothers and daughters. It wasn’t possible.
Out of nowhere, there was a little girl.
In the middle of the road!
No. No!
Fran slammed on the brakes. Her leg locked. The car kept going. The child’s small face froze – the beginning of a cry – but she didn’t move. Fran pressed harder. She was thrown forward, then backwards. The seatbelt sliced through her ribs. Too much momentum coming to a stop much too quickly.
The child had disappeared.
Under the car?
No!
Fran sat, chest heaving, hands gripping the steering wheel, and waited for the screaming to start.
Chapter 74
FRAN HAD never hit him as a child, not that Harry could remember, not even a tap on the hand or on the backside. Her disappointment had been a far more effective reprimand than any other form of punishment. Well, she was beyond disappointed with him now – past caring at all – unless pure disgust was some distorted form of affection. Harry’s face buzzed where she’d slapped him. She’d looked at him with such hatred.
He endured the unnecessary trip to see the medic and sat through the meeting debrief with Jim, stoically dry-eyed. They apologised for how the session had gone, even offered him the option of putting in a formal complaint. Harry declined. They got him to say how he felt. He lied and said ‘shaken, but okay’ and that he was still ‘glad to have had the opportunity to say how sorry he was’. He signed his statement and deflected Jim’s concern as they walked him back to his cell.
He was relieved to be ignored when he arrived back on the wing, other than a raised eyebrow from Elton, one of the lads in his work group. No one was interested. He went to the dining hall for lunch when summoned, though he didn’t eat. When he asked for permission to skip his afternoon work detail, they let him. He went back to his cell and sat on his bunk, listening to the other blokes being chivvied off to their different activities. It took a while, but eventually the wing quietened.
Only then did Harry let it in – the shame. The meeting had been his penance. He’d felt compelled to acknowledge the grief he’d caused; that’s why he’d participated in the restorative justice scheme. What he’d been unprepared for was being faced with the reality of how absolutely the accident had screwed up so many lives. Marcus obviously hated him so much that he couldn’t bear the thought of being the same room as Harry, and Fran hated him so much that she wanted to hurt him physically. Harry got it. They had loved their daughter, and he had taken her away from them. He’d shattered their lives. But deep down, despite all the counselling to expect anger and not forgiveness, he had secretly hoped the bonds that used to tie them together – all their shared history, Fran’s role as his surrogate mum – would count for something. That, and his confession that he really had loved Jess.
It hadn’t.
They would never forgive him. Jess could never forgive him. No one could. His dad was right to keep Martha away from him. He deserved to be on his own.
He rolled onto his side and pulled his knees up to his chest, making himself as small as possible. And that’s how he stayed, sleepless and silent, as the imprint of Fran’s hand on his cheek slowly faded away.
Chapter 75
WHAT DO you do after nearly killing someone?
You sit, shaking, behind the wheel of your car, waiting for the sky to fall in.
When it doesn’t, you have to choose what you’re going to do next.
The little girl hadn’t gone underneath the wheels of Fran’s car. She was still in the road. A woman was with her. Fran watched the woman scoop the child up into her arms. She ran over to the pavement, clutching the girl’s small body to her chest. Once safely off the road, she dropped to her knees, set the girl on her feet and hugged her tightly.
Thank God!
Fran’s heart thudded.
In rapid succession she took in the huddle of the woman and her daughter, the traffic lights – now on green, though she had no intention of moving – the pedestrian crossing, the staring faces of a number of passers-by, the awareness that somehow she was on Staincliffe Road, five minutes away from home. And yet it seemed like only a few minutes ago that she was leaving Darlington. Somehow she had lost an hour of her life.
A car behind her honked once, te
ntatively, then again, more loudly. With trembling legs, Fran found first gear and set off very slowly. A little further down the road she saw a space and pulled over. Handbrake on. Three sobs escaped from deep inside her. She looked in her mirror, searching for the woman and her child, but couldn’t see them. She unpeeled her hands from the steering wheel. Freed of their anchor, they began to shake. As her heart exploded, she sat perfectly still, waiting for the condemnation that never came. There was no irate witness banging on the window, phone in hand, having already called the police. No shaken, distraught mother running up to the car, tear-stained child in tow, accusing her of nearly killing her daughter. No squad car arriving. No officer breathalysing her, assuming alcohol or drug use, and arresting her.
Nothing.
Just a steady flow of traffic and pedestrians – none of whom paid Fran the slightest bit of attention – and the crashing waves of adrenaline careering around her system. Gradually her racing heart slowed and her breathing found its normal rhythm. She sat with her hands in her lap, aware of her own chemistry working to stabilise her. When the shock finally dissipated, she was left calm, but beached. Body back in sync, brain in limbo. It was as if her head had been banged so hard that everything in it had fallen out. She was blank.
Still nothing happened. Still she didn’t move.
The thoughts, when they came, did so slowly, tentatively, creeping rather than rushing to fill the void.
She had nearly killed a child. Someone’s daughter.
She hadn’t.
But she could have done.
A split second separated her from having destroyed a family. It was as slender, and as huge a difference, as that.
But the terrifying thing was that it hadn’t been a moment’s inattention on Fran’s part; it had been a whole journey. She had driven all the way back from Darlington in a daze. All that way, on the motorway and side-roads, at speed, making decisions, overtaking, changing lanes, stopping at junctions, using roundabouts, reacting or not reacting to traffic lights. None of which she had any memory off. Because…
One Split Second: A thought-provoking novel about the limits of love and our astonishing capacity to heal Page 26