by Chris Curran
‘Emily?’
She sighed. ‘You don’t seem to realise I’ve been over and over it through the years. If there was anything that could excuse what you did, don’t you think I’d want to find it?’
‘I’m not looking for an excuse. Just an explanation.’
‘Well I don’t have one.’
In the silence that followed, we both made a pretence of eating. I knew she wanted me to leave it alone, but I couldn’t. ‘Did you know about Dad and Lorna? That they had an affair that lasted years?’
It was obviously no surprise. ‘Well, I suppose I had an idea from things Mum and Dad said, but I’ve never given it much thought. And it doesn’t matter now, does it?’
‘It does, because it makes me think differently about people and about the past. To realise how blind I was.’
Emily threw down her fork, looking with disgust at the potato and fish she had stirred into a mess of grey lumps. ‘Matt said you were asking about anyone we knew who might have supplied you with the amphetamines.’
‘Yes, because I know I didn’t have any with me. Hadn’t touched anything like that for years.’
Her brown eyes, when she raised them, were hard. ‘Has it never occurred to you how easy it would have been to get hold of them at our wedding? Half the people there worked for a pharmaceutical firm, including your dad, Lorna, and Matt. And Alice is a doctor. So you have plenty of suspects there.’
She struggled into her cardigan, her bulk and her distress making her clumsy. I reached out to help her, but she shrugged me off. ‘Are you finished?’
We didn’t speak as we walked, and when we got to the house I expected her to go straight up. Instead, she went into the living room and slumped into an armchair.
I sat opposite. ‘I’m sorry, Em, I just can’t give up now.’
This time her eyes were gentle. ‘You know how stressed everyone at the firm was at that time so I’m sure some of them were self-medicating. But that doesn’t mean anyone supplied you. If you were really upset you could easily have seen a pack in someone’s bag and pinched them.’
That was something I’d never thought of, but it was true and, even if the person had realised, they’d hardly have come forward to the police. ‘In that case I still need to find out why I would want them.’ My voice wobbled and Emily reached out towards me, but couldn’t lean far enough to touch me because of her pregnant stomach.
She dropped her hand with a sigh and her voice wobbled too. ‘I thought you’d got over all this, Clare. Have you ever thought it could be a good thing you can’t remember the accident? Matt and I had already left on our honeymoon so we were spared some of the aftermath, but think about what Alice and my poor dad had to go through that night and the next morning at the hospital. And Lorna too, for that matter.
I shook my head, but couldn’t speak, and she pulled herself up, breathing heavily as she made her way to the door. Then she turned back. ‘I think you need to ask yourself if you really want to start probing the wound again.’
Chapter Sixteen
Emily insisted on cooking me a big breakfast next morning. We ate with hardly a word, and when I said I’d be fine getting a taxi to the station, she sighed. ‘I am a bit tired … if you don’t mind.’
I reached out across the table and touched her hand. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve upset you.’
‘It’s all right.’ She looked at me. ‘You will come again when the baby’s born, won’t you? See Mum and Dad as well.’
‘If you still want me to.’
‘Of course we do. Dad always blamed your father for what happened to you anyway.’
‘I was the one driving.’
‘He meant earlier, when you went off the rails. Adopting a child is a serious business and turning up with you the way Uncle Robert apparently did, as if you were a pet or something, Dad said he guessed it wouldn’t turn out well, even at the time.’
‘I can see that – poor Mum.’
‘And, according to Dad, she’d already had one or two breakdowns.’
‘But I thought it was post-natal depression.’
‘From odd things Dad said I think it was a longer term and more serious condition and it just got worse after Alice was born.’
It made sense: Mum’s attitude to me, mostly cold, but with occasional furious tirades, and even more occasional bursts of affection. Her feelings for Alice were too intense as well. I remembered her crying for a whole weekend once when Alice went to stay with a friend. And then there were the periods in the private hospital, often preceded by days in bed with the curtains closed and silence throughout the house.
There was a hoot from outside: my taxi.
At the door I put down my bag and kissed Emily. ‘I can’t give this up however much I would like to. I need to help Tom to understand, but I’m so sorry if it brings back bad memories.’
‘I know,’ she said, with her old sweet smile, her hand rubbing her bump. ‘I’ve been thinking about it overnight and you can’t refuse him that. I’ll try to think of anything that might help.’
‘And what about Matt? Could you ask him to tell me all he can remember about the scandal? He must have known Dr Penrose, and Lorna says Dad used to talk to him too.’
‘Of course I will. If it’s so important to you.’
When I turned to say goodbye. Emily clutched me to her for long seconds, and it was clear, from her quivers, that she was fighting the tears. There was a pain in my throat too.
I’d made sure I had plenty of time to spare before my train, and asked the taxi driver to head for Bramstone and stop just short of it. Then I got out and crossed the road to look back at the crash site.
Like many accident black spots, this was a winding country road surrounded by trees and fields. The first time I recalled coming here was when the police tried to get me to admit I’d caused the accident deliberately.
The woman detective was soft-voiced. ‘I know this is going to be difficult for you, Clare, but if you can remember anything that will help us it will make things easier for everyone and especially you and little Tommy.’
It was raining that day, a lacy curtain that shrank everything down to a few shrouded yards; a drizzle that crept into every gap in my clothes and made my scalp itch. My head still pounded and I had difficulty focusing my eyes. Every few minutes, I had to remind myself that this horror was my new reality. My baby, Toby, was dead and nothing could bring him back – Steve and Dad, too.
The policewoman said again and again, ‘Look around, Clare. Try to put yourself back in the car. What kind of a car was it, my love?’
I dragged out an answer, wanting only to get away. ‘A Mercedes – Dad’s.’
‘That’s right and you were driving.’ When I nodded, her voice became warm. ‘That’s great, Clare, you’re doing really well. You were upset weren’t you? Maybe you’d had an argument with Steve. Good-looking lad like that, you had to keep your eye on him, didn’t you? Was he playing around?’
I wiped at my face. Her words meant nothing. I just wanted to get out of the drizzle that tickled my scalp so much it almost hurt. I didn’t want to see the swerve of skid marks on the road and the scarred tree trunk with the grass burnt black beneath it.
‘Something, made you unhappy didn’t it, Clare. Was it your dad? It can’t have been easy being adopted. Did he say something to upset you?’ Her voice drilled on. ‘You wanted to keep cheerful – not to spoil the party. So you took something to help. Was that it?’
What she was saying began to make sense and I think I shook my head, scratching and pulling at my wet curls, my feet slipping on the crumble of soil, as I tried to pull away from her grip. ‘No, no, I wouldn’t have.’
‘And Steve was supposed to take Toby off early, wasn’t he? Why did you stop him?’
I shook my head to help me return to this new day of brilliant sun. Those weren’t the memories I wanted; it was the night of the accident I was desperate to recall. I looked at the curving road. The overhanging trees an
d lack of street lights would make it very difficult to negotiate on a dark night. Hillier had been heading home to Bramstone and he’d probably stopped on the grass verge, more or less where the taxi was parked now.
Jacob Downes’ evidence was more dramatic. He said he was about five minutes behind me, heard the crash, and arrived as the car burst into flames, to find me staggering about, just before I collapsed. He’d been riding aimlessly round the area and had actually gone right into Bramstone. Seen the Mercedes pull out of the farm track, and then ridden up to the church before turning to follow the same route I’d taken: his only option. At one point he told the prosecution he thought perhaps I was weaving a bit, but got flustered when my defence pressed him on this and admitted he couldn’t be sure.
‘Perhaps it was clear there’d been a party at the farm and you made the assumption that anyone driving away might be intoxicated. Is that possible?’ I remember Downes nodded and muttered, yes he might have, pushing back a lock of greasy hair, and I also remember wondering if he knew what assumption meant, or even intoxicated.
The mini cab driver hooted, warning me I would be late for my train, and I took a few quick photos of the place with my phone, knowing they were unlikely to help. Then I climbed in beside him and he began to turn the car. As he did so a van passed us, the sun flashing on its wing mirror.
And something stirred again.
The flash became a different flash, something blinding that made me flinch back as I felt a jolt and the steering wheel twisting in my hands, the car swerving into a skid. No!
And I was back in the taxi my hands pressed to my lips and the driver asking me if I was all right.
It’s wasn’t until I was on the train again that I was able to think. Couldn’t remember the taxi ride and everything at the station was a blur. What remained was the sense of dread I felt as I came close to remembering it all. The psychiatrist had warned me about this – my mind was protecting me and it might be dangerous to try too hard for recall before I was ready. But ready or not I had to risk it – for Tom.
As the train raced onwards I asked myself what, after all these years, had made the difference. Talking to people and going back to the scene had to have had an impact, but maybe it was as simple as the fact that I finally wanted to remember.
The accident happened in the dead of night, so there was certainly no sun around. There was often a light in my dreams and I’d thought it was a memory of the car bursting into flames. But I was sure now it something else. Headlights – the flash of headlights from an oncoming vehicle. On that dark road, a sudden light could have startled me enough to make me lose control.
Neither of the witnesses had mentioned seeing another vehicle and it wouldn’t make me any less guilty, but it could only help to know more about the exact moment of the crash.
Mr Hillier had been coming towards us, but he had arrived minutes after the accident: after Downes. And Downes had been behind us, so this other vehicle would have passed him. Then why hadn’t he mentioned it to the police? Maybe he had, but they were so sure of my guilt they told him to say nothing about it. He had certainly seemed very anxious giving his evidence, as if scared of saying the wrong thing.
Thinking about that, it crossed my mind that maybe there was just one headlight – the one on Downes’ motorbike. What if he had been coming towards us, like Hillier, not following as he’d said? Maybe even doing something dangerous? It would have been easy enough to move the bike before the police arrived.
Then something Hillier said came back to me. ‘I was very far away in my thoughts… ’ Had I been fooled, had the police been fooled, by the impression of integrity he presented? I saw a different scenario and one that now seemed very possible. Could Hillier, distracted by grief, have been driving back with his headlights full on, to blind me and make me crash. If Downes knew him as his old headmaster, it would be easy enough, surely, to persuade him to twist the facts just a little. At the time they didn’t know I was high, so Hillier could have feared being charged with dangerous driving himself. A vision of the whisky bottle on the table close to his hand came to mind.
I could almost see and hear it. The headmaster, used to giving orders, with his hand on Downes’ shoulder. ‘Maybe we should keep it simple, Jake. You say you got here first and I doubt there’ll be too many questions after that.’
Now I’d thought of it I wondered why I’d never considered it before or realised how important that burst of light was. Whatever else I saw in those brief moments of clarity, the brilliant flash was always there.
It didn’t explain the drugs in my system, or lessen my guilt, but it did mean I must talk to Hillier again. And to Downes.
The underground between Euston and Charing Cross was frighteningly crowded on a Friday evening. I’d got used to keeping out of people’s way in prison, but here it was impossible. The heat, the smell and the noise, the pressure of bodies against mine as I clung to a bar in the Tube, made me want to jump off every time the doors slid open. But I needed to get home, so I closed my eyes and clenched my teeth.
On the Hastings train, I called Tom’s mobile and then Alice’s home phone, but got the answer system on both. I left messages that I was still travelling, but I was looking forward to Sunday and would call them tomorrow.
When my phone bleeped with a text, I hoped it would be Tom, but it was Nic asking when I would be back and reminding me of her offer of a lift. I was tempted to call her, hoping her chirpy voice would cheer me, but talking to her might mean I’d miss Tom, so I texted back not to worry. I wouldn’t be in till after nine and Molly would be in bed.
The walk to the station on a bright morning had been pleasant, so I didn’t even consider taking a taxi on the way back. But in the dark it was very different and when I reached the steep road to the flat I was almost stumbling. There was no pavement here and I kept close to the hedges, but everywhere was quiet and when I was in sight of the house I could see a welcome gleam from Nic’s flat. All I could think of was falling into bed.
A roar and a blaze of light – and for a second I was transfixed, reaching for that memory again.
Then I realised what was happening and threw myself away from the car speeding down the hill.
As I slammed against the metal gate it gave way and I lay shaking on the path, floored by pain and shock. Alice had warned me about the road that first day, and I’d always been careful before.
Eventually, I dragged myself to my feet, my legs shaking as I scrabbled for my key, my curses more like grunting sobs than words.
‘My God, Clare, are you all right? Here I’ll get your bag.’ Kieran was behind me, his hand on my elbow. ‘I saw that, chased after the bastard to try and get his number, but he was doing a ton.’ He opened the door and without his saving hand I would have fallen through. I muttered something about being all right and tried to shut my own door on him, but somehow he was inside too making me sit on the sofa.
Then he was holding a steaming mug in front of me and sitting beside me – too close. I closed my eyes to shut him out and sipped the drink, letting the warmth calm me, and ignoring the urge to rub my aching hip. ‘Thanks. I’m fine now.’
‘You don’t look it. Are you sure you don’t want me to call a doctor? Or I could drive you to Casualty.’
‘No, no. I’ll just have a bath and get to bed.’
‘Did you get a look at the car, or the driver?’
‘No, it was all so fast.’
‘I couldn’t describe them either, but we should call the police anyway.’
‘No.’ My voice was a seagull shriek, and Kieran put his hands to his ears, with a wince and a smile.
‘OK, OK, it was only a suggestion. Don’t suppose there’s much point anyway, as neither of us saw anything useful.’ He headed for the bathroom. ‘Right, you relax, while I run you a bath.’
Despite my throbbing side, the coffee and the soft cushions soothed me and I began to feel I could have slept. But I was too aware of Kieran, and when he ca
me back to tell me the bath was ready I jumped up, anxious to lock myself away from him.
The world lurched and he caught my arm and steered me back onto the sofa. ‘Sit still for a minute more. Get your breath, then I’ll help you. Don’t worry, I’m not going to offer to undress you, but I think I should sit out here until you’re finished. Don’t want you drowning.’
I swallowed the rest of my drink and stood very carefully. ‘Just moved too quickly. Honestly, I’m OK.’ He followed me to the bathroom door, but I closed it firmly against him, calling from inside to say he should go home, I was absolutely fine. He shouted back something about checking on me soon, and I heard the door slam – there was no way I would let him in again.
As I sat in the warm water I began to cry, huge sobs with no thought behind them and, despite the heat of the water, I was shivering when I got out. I pulled on a sweatshirt, pyjama bottoms, and socks and sat on the sofa too weak to do anything else.
When I heard Kieran’s tap on the door I ignored it, but he called through, ‘Clare, are you all right? I’m coming in.’ Then the door opened and he was in the little hallway.
I went to the living room door. He was smiling and brushing a curl of dark hair from his forehead. ‘You didn’t drown I see.’
‘How did you get in?’ I was aware that my voice was shrill, but he didn’t seem to notice.
‘I still had your spare key.’ He waved it in front of his face. ‘Couldn’t take a chance you’d collapse on me, could I?’
I could barely get the words out. ‘How come you’ve got my key?’
‘I told you, I helped out when the place was for let. Showed a few people round. Forgot I had it.’
‘Well, I’ll keep it now, thank you.’
He handed it to me with one word, ‘Fine,’ and left, closing the door quietly behind him.
Chapter Seventeen