by Jill Childs
‘That’s looking lovely, Gracie.’ I couldn’t even see, I just wanted to soothe you. ‘That yellow is so cheerful.’
You didn’t lift your head. I reached forward and scooped a clump of falling hair, tucked it behind your ear. Such soft, fine hair. Hairclips never stayed in place for long.
‘I’ll get some glue. When you’ve finished colouring, we’ll cut out together and I’ll show you how to stick tissue paper on the back so light shines through.’
I knew you. You would talk if you wanted to. You never responded well to questions. I rummaged in the back of the kitchen drawer through blunt scissors and scattered paper clips and an unfolding ball of string until I found the glue.
You sat, eyes on my fingers, as I carefully cut out the paper panels and we started to stick on the tissue paper.
The window was almost finished when you suddenly said, in that way you had of launching a sudden remark from nowhere: ‘Was the accident Auntie Ella’s fault?’
The breath caught in my throat. ‘Auntie Ella?’
You nodded. ‘She was very cross, Mummy.’
My fingers fumbled the piece of tissue paper, stuck it crookedly.
‘What makes you say that?’
Your eyes stayed on the petals.
‘No, not red. Blue.’ Your voice had a tremor as you pointed to the next petal, ready to fight me. I gave in at once. You could do it any way you wanted; what did I care? All I wanted was to keep you talking.
Once we’d glued the blue one into place, you said: ‘She kept talking on the phone. She shouted. Screamy shouting. I heard.’
I stopped, looked at you. That’s what the woman in the café said, that she’d been arguing on the phone. I hadn’t considered that you must have heard too.
‘Gracie. This is important. When did she shout?’
You looked petulant, annoyed by my sudden change of mood, by the fact I was interrupting you at a crucial creative moment.
‘In the car.’
‘But when?’ My fingers trembled. ‘Before the accident?’
You nodded.
‘Auntie Ella shouted on the phone?’
‘Yes, Mummy. I already said.’
I stared at you, imagining it. If she held the phone in one hand, she only had one hand on the wheel.
‘You’re spoiling it.’
You pointed at the tissue paper, crushed between my fingers. I set the picture on the table and you fell to smearing glue along the edges, ready for the final panel. A prick of sweat ran along my hairline as I watched you.
‘Gracie, what did Auntie Ella say, do you remember?’
You didn’t answer at first. Your face was tight with concentration. You held up the yellow tissue paper for me to cut.
‘She said: “Go away. Stop it. Leave me alone.” Like that.’ You finally tore your eyes from the picture and looked up. Your eyes were mischievous. ‘That’s not very polite, is it? She should have said please.’
‘Yes, she should have said please.’ My head span. ‘Even silly grown-ups forget sometimes, when they get cross.’
‘Silly sausage.’ You smiled to yourself. ‘Silly banana.’
I wrapped my arms round your small body and squeezed you tightly, even as you struggled to pull away. I whispered into your neck. ‘I love you, Gracie.’
You battled to extract yourself from me, brushed fallen hair from your cheeks, smoothed out the crumpled tissue paper and handed it to me. The sight of your sweet face, so serious, so intent, made my eyes swim. I blinked. I thought about what might have happened, about what so nearly did.
‘I love you so much. You have no idea.’
If you heard, you gave no sign of it. You were here, fully focused on the present.
I left you to squeeze the glue on your own, getting it everywhere. I just couldn’t help. My hands shook in my lap. I sat, trembling, watching you and thinking about the accident, wondering who had made Ella shout down the phone that day. I knew now with absolute certainty that Ella was every bit as responsible for that crash as that poor girl.
Seventeen
That night, you cried out in your sleep. I stumbled through to you. Your eyes were screwed closed but your face was contorted, your arms flailing.
I sat on the floor by your bed and stroked the hair from your hot face, whispered: ‘It’s alright, Gracie. Mummy’s here.’
Wherever you were, lost in some dream, I couldn’t reach you there. What business did a girl have with nightmares when she wasn’t yet four years old? After a few minutes, when you still didn’t settle, I sat you up. You reached out, still half-asleep, arms wide, to be lifted and I carried you through, your bear pressed between our chests, to my room. You lay in the middle of the bed, your compact body kicking and elbowing me as you made the space your own.
You opened your eyes, looked round at the shadows and smiled, pleased.
‘Mummy and Daddy’s bed.’
Just Mummy’s bed now. I stroked your hair and you curled yourself round your bear, your head on his back, and dropped again into sleep.
I looped an arm round your firm body and put my face against your neck. Your hair was soft and fine and smelt fresh. You should always sleep here with me. Why did you have your own bed now, anyway? What did it matter? I lay quietly in the darkness, listening to your slow, soft breathing beside me, feeling your warmth.
We argued about this too, Richard and I, when you were a baby. One of many arguments. I never thought, when I was pregnant with you, so full of joy, of hope, hands protective on my swollen stomach, relishing the sight of it, everything an expectant mother is supposed to be, that he’d have so many dogmatic opinions about childcare. I thought he’d leave all that to me; wasn’t that what men were supposed to do? But he was a passionate father, determined to do everything right and someone else filled him with ideas, I was sure of it. Ella, perhaps. She was in the background all along; I know that now.
I reached out and stroked your cheek with my fingertips, wondering if you could sense me, even through sleep. He was fiercely opposed to ‘co-sleeping’, as he called it. He said it was dangerous; we might smother you. We needed to set boundaries.
He wasn’t the one breastfeeding every few hours. After you fed, you fell asleep against me, cuddled in the crook of my arm, your face against my warm skin, listening to my heartbeat. What could be more natural? It was the comfort and warmth all animals needed.
He ended up sleeping in the spare bedroom and moved his clothes into the wardrobe there so he could creep out to work early without disturbing us. I was glad. It put an end to the argument. There was no one to sigh and raise himself on an elbow and grimace when I brought you into bed to feed and kept you there. Was that very wrong? I went over and over it afterwards, once it was all too late and he’d left and news broke of the wonderful Ella, glamorous, amazing Ella with her pert breasts and tight stomach, who wanted him in her bed all night, every night.
You were my daughter. Of course I was besotted with you. Of course you were my life. I thought he’d understand that. I thought he’d feel the same.
I was clasping you too tightly. You twisted and bucked in your sleep and kicked away from me to settle again in the empty ocean of the bed. I shifted my weight to move a little closer to you again. I didn’t want to let you go. I wanted to feel the heat rising from your body through the Dalmatian pyjamas you loved so much.
I lifted a finger and ran it gently over your hair. Ella, you said, screaming down the phone, just when she most needed her mind on the road. The thought of it, of your anxiety as you listened from the back seat, made me physically sick. I should have been there. I should have protected you.
I closed my eyes. An image swam up of your tiny pale body, stretched out on the hospital bed, pierced by tubes and needles. I sat up, shook it out of my head and looked down at you now, sleeping beside me, your eyelids flickering as you dreamed.
Eighteen
My mental image of the inside of police stations came from watching televi
sion dramas. Old-fashioned ones, mostly, full of dingy corridors leading to dark offices with shields mounted on the walls and heavy wooden desks with swivel chairs. And in some bright communal area, a large incident board, pinned with photographs of suspects, linked by pins and string and dotted with yellow sticky notes.
Our local police station wasn’t like that. I’d walked past it a thousand times and never really noticed it until now. A 1980s multi-storey office building with tall glass doors, all chrome and concrete. The young man on the ground floor reception desk looked dubiously at the business card.
‘Is she expecting you?’
I stood my ground. ‘She told me to get in touch. Is she in?’
He narrowed his eyes, then hit a button on the phone box. His headset bobbed round his cheek.
He lowered his voice as he spoke into it. ‘There’s a Jennifer Walker, ma’am. Yes, ma’am. Right away.’
The police officer stood there in the lift lobby, waiting, as I emerged on the fourth floor.
‘Mrs Walker. How’s Gracie?’
‘Fully recovered. Thank goodness.’ I laughed nervously.
Her handshake was hard and her pace brisk as she led me past broad windows that showed an open-plan office beyond, two banks of desks crammed with people. It looked as soulless as a call centre.
She ushered me into a small, bare room with a plastic-topped table and four metal-framed chairs and gestured to me to sit. The walls were beige and the only object on them was a metallic clock with black numerals. Five past eleven.
She pulled a second chair up to mine and sat, her feet flat on the ground and her legs apart. She was no taller than me but her brusque manner and her uniform made her thick-set and masculine and, although she made an attempt at a smile, the overall effect was intimidating.
‘So, how can I help you?’
The window behind her faced down the high street. Everything looked different from this angle. The three-storey rows of shops were low and poky. The red roof of a double-decker bus slid to a halt as the lights directly below changed to red and the small figures of pedestrians, two mothers pushing buggies, a stout middle-aged man, a willowy youth, an old lady walking with a stick, pressed forward from the edge of pavement. It was the ragtag, anonymous public of which I was part, which she was here to protect.
‘It’s about the accident.’ I hesitated, feeling my way. ‘I’ve got new information. I thought you ought to know.’
‘OK.’ She nodded, her expression non-committal. ‘What’s the information?’
I took out Ella’s mobile phone and handed it to her. She looked it over, then raised her eyes, waited for me to say more.
‘It’s hers. See? Ella’s.’
I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but it was clear she didn’t understand how significant this was. ‘It’s Ms Hicks’s phone? Had she lost it?’
‘Yes,’ I stuttered. She made me nervous. ‘I mean, she probably didn’t tell you, did she? That she’d lost it?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I don’t believe she did. Should she have?’ She seemed at a loss. ‘Was it stolen?’
‘No!’ My words were thick with emotion as I struggled to make her understand. ‘It was at the scene of the accident.’
She gave a slight sigh. ‘I’m sorry, Mrs Walker. I’m not sure I understand.’
I leaned forward, earnest. ‘It’s evidence. Of what happened. I just thought, if there’s an investigation, you might need it. It’s evidence against Ella.’
My voice sounded thin and insubstantial in the echoing acoustic of the small room.
Her eyes never left my face. ‘Evidence of what, exactly?’
‘Of what really happened.’ I sat forward, my voice rising with my frustration. ‘It was left at the scene of the accident. A woman picked it up. She saw everything and she gave it to me.’
‘Why didn’t she bring it to us, if she thought it was evidence?’
‘I don’t know.’ I looked down at my hands, clasped in my lap. ‘I don’t think she realised how important it is. It shows, you see, that Ella was on the phone at the time of the crash. The call’s logged.’ I pointed to the phone, willing her to take me seriously and to look for herself. ‘That proves it.’
She didn’t even blink. ‘Proves what?’
‘That she was responsible too. For the accident. Yes, OK, that poor young woman veered across the road. But why didn’t Ella react? Swerve to avoid her? Because she was on the phone. She was preoccupied. That’s dangerous driving, right there.’
Below, in the street, the lights changed a second time and the traffic slowed, stopped. A ragged line of pedestrians hurried across.
‘Is that why you’ve come to see me?’
‘Ella was shouting at someone. Angry. Telling them to leave her alone. Clearly she wasn’t watching the road properly. The accident – that girl’s death – Ella is to blame too.’
She didn’t answer. She just waited.
‘That woman heard her. She’s a witness. And so did Gracie, my daughter. She was right there. She saw everything.’
She got to her feet. ‘I’m afraid I’ve got a lot of work to do.’
I jumped up. ‘But you need to do something. If she was distracted—’
The police officer raised a hand to silence me. ‘These are very serious allegations. You should be careful.’
‘Me?’ I blew out my cheeks. ‘She’s the one who—’
‘Mrs Walker. The coroner has already given a verdict. Accidental death. The case is closed.’ She handed the phone back to me. ‘You might want to return this to Ms Hicks as soon as possible, if it’s her property.’
I shook my head. ‘But two people heard—’
‘Listen. Firstly, even if this were a continuing investigation – which it is not – testimony from a traumatised three-year-old would not be reliable. Secondly, even if the timing of the call had matched the exact time of the accident, no coroner would have found Ms Hicks responsible.’ She leaned in closer to me. ‘The post-mortem found that Ms Parkes had excessive levels of alcohol in her blood at the time of the collision. She had a history of similar offences.’
I stared at her, my cheeks hot. ‘So you’re not going to do anything?’
Her face was hard. ‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know. You’re the police officer, not me. Prosecute her for dangerous driving. If Ella hadn’t been distracted that young woman might still be alive today. Think of her family.’
She turned away from me towards the window and her shoulders rose and fell as she breathed deeply. I waited, my legs juddering. When she turned back to me, her features were stony.
‘Mrs Walker, I understand you’ve been through a lot.’
‘She had my daughter in the back. She nearly died too. What if I’d lost her? Then what?’
‘That’s enough, Mrs Walker.’ Her tone was icy.
‘She wasn’t watching the road. She was on the phone, shouting. How’s it not her fault, at least—’
The police officer raised her hand and the look on her face silenced me. She shook her head, crossed the room and opened the door for me to leave.
At the lift, she said: ‘I’m very sorry. But as far as the police are concerned, this is now over. Take my advice. Leave Ms Hicks alone. Leave everyone alone. You have a lovely daughter. Go home and look after her.’
The lift doors opened and I stepped inside. She reached in to press the button for the ground floor. By the time the doors slid shut, she had already turned back towards the soulless office.
Downstairs, I walked straight out into the street and stood at the crossing, waiting for the lights to change, wondering which unseen people might be watching me from above and trying hard not to cry.
Nineteen
Ella
It’s early evening and the drone of a male voice, leaking through from the sitting room, tells me Richard is watching the evening news while I cook pasta. My neck and shoulders still hurt from the accident and I move round the kitche
n with stiff robot arms, laboriously turning my whole upper body to reach for things, instead of bending naturally.
Then the doorbell rings. I go. I assume it’s that young offender who keeps trying to sell me tea towels and oven gloves or one of those charity workers who come door-to-door just when we’re about to eat and opens with cheesy lines like: ‘Do you care about sick children?’ If Richard goes, we’ll never sit down to dinner.
So I open the door with a scowl on my face, to find two police officers standing there, the same pair who interviewed me in hospital.
‘Ms Hicks?’ The female officer. Hatchet-faced. ‘May we come in?’
I hesitate for just a moment, wondering if I have a choice. I decide that, as Richard would say, non-compliance might not be in the best interests of the client.
They loom large in the sitting room, looking round, taking it all in. Richard jumps up to switch off the television and straightens the newspapers into a pile as if untidiness might be used in evidence.
‘Good evening.’ He goes into solicitor mode, all eager to please. ‘How can we help?’
The female officer sits down without being asked and turns to me. Her sidekick, the young Asian man, takes out a notebook and pencil.
‘Ms Hicks, we wondered if we could ask you a few more questions?’
I incline my head. In the kitchen, the pasta is no doubt turning to mulch but no isn’t really an option. ‘About the accident?’
‘Yes.’ She gives nothing away. ‘At the time of the accident, were you having a conversation on your mobile phone?’
No beating about the bush, just straight out with it.
I stall, feigning surprise: ‘Mobile phone?’
She isn’t fooled. ‘We’ve interviewed a witness who says she heard you. She says you sounded angry.’
‘Ah.’ I make a big show of remembering. ‘I was cross with Gracie. That must be it. She was being a monkey in the back and I told her off.’