Because she had been blinded by anger.
For the first time in months, Harry’s name entered her head and she didn’t clench with rage. Harry. Nothing. Just a coldness. She let it be.
She waited for the next name to enter her head. It was not who she was expecting. It was not Jess. Feelings started to return – a mix of panic, sadness and regret. At last she felt an imperative. Marcus. She must go home. She wanted to be with her husband. She needed to tell him what had happened.
She got out of the car, locked it and walked away. No one stopped her. No one shouted. She was relieved. She walked fast, her brain filling up with memories, words spoken that shouldn’t have been, shoulders turned away, hands let go. She got to the end of their street and speeded up, praying he would be there – working from home, sitting at the dining-room table. Why would Marcus be at home on a Friday? Come on, she knew why. Because, it came to her: he was struggling. The school was being supportive, stepping him down to four days a week, taking the Curriculum Lead role off him, giving him more preparation time – because he was struggling. She’d barely talked to him about it. Hadn’t cared enough or, if she was honest, cared at all. What did Marcus’s career matter, when Jess was dead? The feelings were overwhelming her now. A floodgate opened. His decision not to go to the prison. The decision that had so incensed her. She’d seen his refusal as a denial of reality, a neglect of his parental duties, ‘proof’ of his failure as a husband, but it wasn’t that he’d not wanted to go; it was that Marcus hadn’t been able to – because he was struggling.
She opened the front door, wanted to shout his name, but found she couldn’t. It was such a long time since she’d thought of him as ‘Marcus’. Instead, in her mind, he’d become an obstacle, an adversary, a stranger. Was that how he saw her? She didn’t know, because she hadn’t cared.
He was sitting, as she expected, at the dining-room table, laptop open, work spread out around him. He looked up when she walked into the room, his face guarded. It stopped her from saying anything. She felt unable to pick out the right place to start, from the welter of thoughts and emotions in her head. Instead she walked across to him and put her hand on the back of his neck, lightly, nervously. He let it rest there for a few seconds, before leaning forward to close his laptop.
Chapter 76
SOMETHING ABOUT her face looked different. Not the expression – her actual face. It was as if the bones had softened and her features had blurred. It was Fran, but not Fran. She walked across the room without saying anything and laid her hands on him. They hadn’t touched each other for so long that the sensation of her fingers on the back of his neck was strange. Marcus’s instinct was to pull away, but he didn’t, not immediately.
They sat opposite each other at the table and he waited for the fallout, but when Fran finally spoke, it wasn’t the tirade he was expecting. It was a question. A mundane, small, hesitant question. ‘Have you managed to get any work done?’
‘Some.’
She nodded. Still there was no gush of words and emotion. Instead she seemed to be holding herself in check. This was new.
He asked, ‘So how did it go?’
She shrugged off her coat, buying time. Despite everything, he was struck once again by how thin she was. ‘It wasn’t what I thought it was going to be.’
‘Okay.’ He said, still wary, waiting for the explosion. ‘How?’
‘I can’t really explain.’ She saw his face and hurried into the next sentence. ‘Not because I don’t want to, but I just can’t – not yet. I don’t know how to.’
He wasn’t surprised that Fran wasn’t prepared to tell him what Harry had or hadn’t said. They’d long since ceased sharing. They both hugged their own versions of grief to their chests fiercely, protectively. Why share, when the only thing you have is so personal and private that you can’t even reveal it to the one person who might begin to understand? Even the facts of their daughter’s death – even that information – she still wanted to hoard for herself. He was reduced, as ever, to the inconsequential. ‘Was the trip all right?’
She looked at her hands. ‘No.’
‘Why? What happened?’
She scratched at the palm of her left hand. ‘I very nearly caused an accident on the Staincliffe Road. A young woman was using the crossing with her little girl. I didn’t see them. I don’t think I even saw the crossing. I missed hitting the little girl by this much.’ She held up her hands, indicating a narrow margin. ‘I could’ve killed her.’
‘Jesus!’
‘I’ve left the car. I couldn’t drive it afterwards. I didn’t think I should.’ Her features seemed to smudge even more. ‘Marcus. I’m sorry.’ He waited for her to say more. ‘I was so angry that I wasn’t paying any attention to what I was doing.’
‘Because of the meeting?’
‘Yes.’ She stopped. Thought. ‘That, and because Jess is dead.’ The honesty of the statement surprised him. ‘I’ve been angry ever since we let her go. So angry that I haven’t been able to be anything else, think about anyone else. And for that I’m sorry.’ He reached out across the table and held her hand lightly, committing himself to nothing more than sympathy. ‘I want it to be different. And I know, for that to happen, I need to change. And I want to try.’
He nodded. He believed her. Or at least he believed in her desire to change, but not necessarily in her ability to do so. That would take a Herculean effort, and if she felt even a fraction as exhausted as he did, it was unlikely to happen.
As if to prove his point, Fran yawned. A long, body-racking yawn. The accumulation of the long drive, the meeting with Harry, the shock of the near-accident, it seemed to hit her all of a sudden.
‘I’m sorry. I’m shot. I really can’t think straight.’
‘Go and have a rest. We can talk later. This will keep,’ Marcus said.
‘Are you sure?’
Again a question, a taking on-board of his feelings. It was such a long time since he’d felt like he even existed in her universe that Marcus was surprised and touched. ‘Of course. You try and get some sleep, and I’ll go and fetch the car. Where are the keys?’ The safety of the mundane again.
‘In my handbag.’
‘Can I get them?’
‘Yes, of course.’ She levered herself up, using the table for balance. As she passed, she paused for a second or two. It was only as she started the slow climb up to bed that Marcus realised she’d been waiting for him to kiss her.
He found Fran’s keyring in her bag, pulled on a sweater, took his own keys from the hook in the hall and headed out.
It was one of those in-between winter days, not particularly cold, not bright, not wet, not much of anything really. As he opened the front gate, he sensed the curtains in their bedroom being pulled across. He had a few hours. Not that he could do much with them. Once again he was waiting for Fran to set the agenda. His own car was parked at the kerb. He stood beside it, thinking, but without arriving at any great insight or reaching any conclusions. After her rest, Fran would tell him her version of what had happened at the prison and he would listen, but he doubted whether it would answer any of his questions. Because he and Fran wanted different resolutions. She wanted to reclaim Jess’s death. He wanted to remember her life.
He didn’t need – no, it was more than that – he didn’t want any more of the horror. The hospital had been bad enough. He had no desire to know every awful detail of the events that put Jess there. What he wanted was to find out everything he could about her living, breathing loveliness: her thoughts and fears, her feelings and passions, her highs and lows and, most of all, her relationship with Harry. He wanted the Jess that he, as her dad, had never got to know – the one glimpsed in the mementoes and photos in her room and in the messages on her phone. But the conversation he needed to have with Harry was not one to be had in a room full of strangers inside a prison, amidst a swirl of anger and recrimination. It was an exchange that required calm and understanding and forgiveness. I
t was a conversation that might never happen, but he was prepared to wait.
Marcus opened the boot of his car and moved the old picnic blanket aside. The bag was there, wedged at the back, exactly where he’d put it a month ago. A medium-sized, anonymous-looking holdall. It was modestly filled with the essentials: clothes, toiletries, a couple of books, some photos of Jess, her phone. All neatly packed inside, ready for the day he decided that he and Fran had truly run out of road. Ironically, it was the thought of the bag being there that had given him the strength to stay. That wasn’t as illogical as it sounded. Planning an escape route had seemed the only sane action he could think of, in response to the sense of claustrophobia that had been building up since the day Jess died. He re-covered the holdall with the rug, slammed the boot and set off to retrieve Fran’s car. He should at least hear what Fran had to say.
Chapter 77
MARCUS LET himself back into the house. The car had been where Fran had said. Parked neatly enough – just another vehicle clogging up the streets. It was now outside, slotted in behind his. There were no sounds from upstairs. He settled back at the table and stared at the blocks of colour-coded lessons until his eyes hurt.
When Fran came back downstairs a couple of hours later, a crease mark on her cheek from the pillow, he made them both a sandwich. They ate at the table, spoke about the near-miss, even had a conversation about work. All delaying tactics. It was Fran who eventually broached the meeting, with another peace offering. ‘You were right not to come.’
He half-nodded. It wasn’t for him to say.
‘It was…very difficult.’
‘How could it not be?’
There was a brief flash of reaction in her eyes, but it flickered and died. ‘What I mean is: I went into it expecting something that was never going to be possible.’
‘What?’
She cupped her chin in her hand, as if the weight of her head was unsustainable. ‘I wanted to shame Harry. Make him feel awful. Make him face up to what he’s done.’
‘And that isn’t what happened?’
‘Oh no, it did. He was in bits for most of it. Really, genuinely distraught. He knows the damage he’s done.’ Marcus felt a stir of sympathy for Harry, but said nothing. Fran’s face looked raw. ‘It was how I felt that was the problem. I was furious. The more he talked and the more upset he became, the more incensed I got. I slapped him.’
Marcus was saddened, but not surprised. Before the accident, Fran would never have hit anyone; after Jess’s death, Fran wanted to slap everyone.
‘I hit him really hard. If they hadn’t have stopped me, I’d have hit him again. I was out of control.’
‘Because of what Harry was saying?’
She stopped and thought. ‘No. I think it was because the more he talked, the more I saw how much he was suffering. And I didn’t want to have to deal with that. I went in there thinking he had no right to feel anything other than shame.’
‘Is he ashamed?’
‘Yes, but it’s more than that. He’s been broken by it. That’s what I hadn’t considered. The impact on him. And I didn’t want to have to think about that – about what it must feel like to be responsible for so much suffering.’
It was the first time in months that Marcus had heard Fran speak about anyone else’s feelings other than her own. Perhaps the meeting had had benefits, after all. ‘Did he explain why he drank, then drove, that night?’ Harry was still guilty of that.
‘Yes. He said he didn’t mean to.’ They both knew that was no defence. She went on, ‘He was sorry. Very sorry. I believed him.’
‘And all the stuff about leaving Mo behind. What was that really about?’
Fran plucked at the skin on her neck, leaving marks. ‘They argued.’
‘About?’
‘A video Mo filmed at the party.’
‘Of?’
‘Harry and Tish.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Kissing.’
Marcus felt totally wrong-footed.
Fran reached for his hand. ‘It’s a mess. Harry claims he was in a relationship with Jess – had been for over a year – but that at the party he and Tish…had a thing. He confessed it wasn’t the first time.’
‘The bastard!’ Marcus’s fantasy of Jess and Harry as Romeo and Juliet crashed. All the messages and presents. They were just a way of getting her to sleep with him.
‘Marcus, no!’ Fran pleaded. ‘I know I’ve no right to ask you not to be angry. But we can’t. You can’t. It doesn’t help. It only makes things worse.’
Marcus didn’t know what to do with the emotions coursing through him. The sense of having swapped places with Fran was disorientating.
‘Do you think it could it be true? Could they have been together all that time, without us realising?’
For a second Marcus didn’t grasp what Fran was asking. There was only one way to answer her questions. He stood up, went out to the car, grabbed the holdall and brought it back into the room. In his fury he didn’t see the shock on Fran’s face. He dropped the bag on the floor, rooted through it and fished out Jess’s phone. Without a word, he offered her the hand-grenade.
Chapter 78
BY MONDAY lunchtime Fran wanted out of the optician’s. She wasn’t hungry, but she needed a break from the pressure of having to smile and be professional. The rattled feelings from the showdown with Harry the previous Friday, and everything else that had come out as a result of it, had gradually subsided, leaving her feeling bruised and battered, but – and this was a surprise – somehow changed, for the better. She’d finally started to think about the future and how to tackle it.
At the root of this glimmer of hope was her marriage. As overwhelming as the revelation of Jess’s relationship with Harry had been, what had truly rocked her was the realisation that Marcus had been considering leaving her. Even in her shattered state, the sight of that holdall, with his clothes all neatly folded inside, had shocked her. She’d been so scared at the thought that they were done, but she’d been unable to call him out on it. Not only because, at the time, they were groping their way towards an understanding of their daughter’s secret life, but also because, deep down, she knew why Marcus had been thinking of walking away.
She’d been unliveable with.
Their marriage was hanging by a thread.
Over the weekend they’d holed themselves up in the house and dragged it all out into the open. Jess’s relationship with Harry; their blindness to what had been happening under their noses; their failure as parents; their anger with Harry, with other people and with each other. The sense of despair, the intolerable, unforgettable memories – the terrible weeks in the hospital, Jess’s death, the storm of emotions around the organ donation, the grimness of her funeral. They talked about their very different takes on the same events, and their shared fear of what came next. It had been awful and painful, and yet it had also been a relief. For the first time since they’d walked into the ICU and seen Jess lying in that bed – no, for the first time since the knock at the door in the middle of the night – they shared their thoughts and feelings, honestly. All of them, including the dark and ugly ones.
On the Sunday night Fran had sat on the bed and watched as Marcus unpacked the holdall and put his things away where they belonged. Then he’d lifted the bedcovers and they’d crawled underneath and clung to each other until they both, eventually, fell asleep.
Now there was just the small matter of getting on with the rest of their lives.
Hence Fran going into work as normal on Monday morning and conducting seven eye exams by lunchtime before the need to escape and breathe became impossible to ignore. She spotted Martha as soon as she set foot outside the shop. She was sitting on one of the benches on the main concourse. She didn’t smile when she saw Fran. Fran walked over and sat down beside her. ‘Shouldn’t you be in school?’ Even now the parental gene wouldn’t switch off.
‘Yeah, but I wanted to talk to you. Can I? Talk to you?�
� Martha was nervous. Fran wasn’t surprised. She’d hardly been kind the last time.
‘Of course.’
‘I don’t know who else to talk to.’ Fran let Martha compose herself. ‘I’m really worried about Harry. I know you won’t take me to see him. It was wrong of me to ask, after everything that’s happened. I’m sorry about that. But I need to try and get up there somehow. And you’re the only person my dad listens to.’ The fact that she still believed this pained Fran. ‘I thought, if you asked him, on my behalf – especially given it was you – he might change his mind and take me with him the next time he goes.’
‘Why are you so worried about him?’ The image of Harry’s dark, shadowed eyes came back to Fran.
‘There’s something wrong. When we Skyped him last night I knew straight away. Something’s happened.’
‘What?’ She knew, of course. Her visit.
‘He wouldn’t say, but he looked awful. He had a bruise on his cheek. He said it was just muck from working in the gardens, but I don’t believe him. When I tried to get him to talk to me, he got angry and upset at the same time. Then he hung up. He’s never done that.’
Fran felt something inside her shift. ‘Maybe you caught him at the wrong time.’
Martha looked teary. ‘It’s always the wrong time, but this was different. I think he’s getting bullied.’
‘What did your dad say?’
‘What he always says, that Harry is an adult and we can’t spend our lives worrying about him.’ She gathered herself. ‘Fran, I know I can be a bit too emotional about stuff but, I swear, there’s something really wrong. Please.’
Fran examined the stirring in her chest and recognised it as sympathy. ‘Wait here a minute. I just need to call into work and tell them I’m taking a longer lunch break. Don’t move. I’ll be right back.’
In the car ride over to Dom’s office Fran let Martha talk. It was a flood of repressed worry and loneliness that she recognised all too well. The difference was that she was a fully grown woman with a husband, and this was a fourteen-year-old girl with only an emotionally reticent father at home and a brother in prison. As they neared Dom’s offices, Martha grew quiet.
One Split Second: A thought-provoking novel about the limits of love and our astonishing capacity to heal Page 27