After the Accident: A compelling and addictive psychological suspense novel

by Kerry Wilkinson

  She said she wanted to take a shower, so I left her doing that while I waited in the bedroom area. There was a king-size bed and I remember thinking that Mum was going to find it very empty when it came to sleeping. She was having a hard enough time of it as it was – and that was before what happened to Dad.

  …

  I realise I contributed to everything that went wrong.

  Julius: After Emma got her sentence, she wasn’t around to see how Mum took it. I would sometimes take the girls round to their house and Mum would still be in bed, even though it was the afternoon. Other times, she’d be on a cleaning spree and would be doing something like scrubbing the floor of a cupboard. I never knew which version of her would be home when I visited.

  I know Emma will say she had it tough inside… but it was hardly a party outside.

  Emma: When Mum came out of the shower, she said she wanted to sleep but made me promise to wake her at four o’clock, so that she could go back to the hospital. I told her I would, then she slipped a tablet and got herself under the covers. I didn’t even ask what she’d taken.

  Julius: Mum took a lot of pills during the time Emma was inside. She tried to hide them at first, but it became too obvious. I would have asked what they were – but it wouldn’t have made any difference. I think we’ve always been a family of people who do what they want – and only answer questions if we need to.

  Emma: I don’t know what I did for the next few hours. I might have slept myself… but that doesn’t sound like me. Perhaps I went for another walk? I doubt I went to the pool. Do you really need to know?

  Julius: I don’t think I saw Emma between the time we got back from the hospital and later that night. It’s only now, looking back, when I wonder where she was, or – perhaps more importantly – who she was with.

  Emma: When I woke Mum, she was looking a little better – but not much. There were still rings around her eyes and that hollowed sense that she carried. We ended up getting another taxi to the hospital and then the receptionist there waved us through. They knew who she was by then and I think word had gone around the island about what had happened.

  Mum knew where she was going and led the way through the corridors without anyone stopping us. It would have probably felt odd, except that it all happened so fast that I didn’t have time to think it over. Before I knew it, we were in front of a door and a nurse was waiting for us. She said that Dad was doing as well as could be expected – and a few other things that I don’t really remember.

  After that, she showed us inside. Dad had a private room to himself. It was quite a big space, all white, with a bed right in the middle. He was lying on his back in the bed, with the sheets tucked underneath his chin. Mum went closer to the bed, but I watched as he breathed in and out. It was so… peaceful.

  I remember this stupid sense of envy; that I’d love to be able to sleep like that. I knew it wasn’t real sleep, that he was in a coma, but my mind was all over the place.

  Mum was sitting at his side and she’d taken his arm out from under the covers. She was talking to him, saying she was there and that she loved him. She was holding his hand, squeezing his fingers and I felt so out of place. I shouldn’t have been there. I had no idea what I could say to him, whether he was awake or not.

  Yes, he’s my dad, but I broke a part of him when I broke a part of me. How do you take that back?

  I felt out of the moment, distant and detached, almost out of my body.

  It’s funny how things like that happen. How you can sit and stare at a problem that never goes anywhere and then, the moment you step away, the answer slips into your mind.

  I think that’s probably why I saw what wasn’t there, instead of what was.

  Dad’s ring was missing.

  Chapter Eight

  THE WRONG THING TO SAY

  Emma: Mum stared at Dad’s hand and then looked back up to me. She goes: ‘He never takes it off,’ which I already knew. That emerald signet ring was almost the thing for which Dad was best known. If he had to knock on someone’s front door, he’d do it with that ring instead of his knuckles. He sometimes used it to flick the cap off bottles. It was like he’d made it a part of himself.

  He had definitely been wearing it the night before because he’d dinged his glass and made that speech.

  Mum checked his other hand and then spoke to a couple of people at the hospital to see if Dad had been brought in alongside any other possessions. They said he hadn’t.

  I know he’d fallen, but it seems unlikely gravity would be enough to remove a ring from someone’s fingers, which left us both thinking he might have been robbed. That made a lot more sense than him simply falling.

  I still had Jin’s card on me, so tried calling the number he’d given. I wanted to tell him about Dad’s missing ring – but there was no answer. I probably tried three or four times, before leaving a message to ask if we could speak.

  Jin: I had things to do. There was another big thing happening at that time.

  Emma: I left Mum alone with Dad for a bit – but visiting hours were almost over, so it wasn’t long before we got a taxi back to the hotel. Dinner had started, but Mum had asked if everyone could wait for us, because she wanted another group meal.

  Julius: The girls were hungry and trying to make them wait for Mum to get back from the hospital wasn’t going down well. It’s partly my own fault for letting them have so much ice cream on the first night.

  Emma: Dinner on night two was a lot quieter than night one. Not a surprise after what happened to Dad.

  Julius: It helped that Daniel and Emma were at opposite ends of the table.

  Emma: Everything was quiet and pleasant. Liz asked something about the possibility of visiting Dad in hospital, but Mum said there were limited slots, so they might as well continue to enjoy the holiday. If it had been anyone except Mum saying it, I would’ve thought it was a little dig about them spending all day at the pool. I don’t think she meant it like that, though.

  Liz: Daniel was really worried about Geoff – we both were. We’d have done anything to help.

  Emma: Things were winding down when Daniel got up to leave. He held a cigar up in the air as if that explained everything. It was one of those giant Bratwurst-like things, the sort of expensive one you only ever see fat, rich men puffing away. They act like massive dicks, so they might as well practise sucking on one, I guess.

  He disappeared out of the restaurant and I didn’t think much of it. That’s when Mum told me I should eat more.

  Julius: I heard that. Definitely the wrong thing to say.

  Emma: I ignored her at first, pretending I hadn’t heard – then she spoke louder. She said: ‘You got so thin when you went away. You can eat anything you want here.’

  Julius: Mum would never say Emma had been to prison. She’d always talk around it, saying she’d ‘gone away’, or ‘had things to do’. That was probably the weirdest. Simone and I were trying to be honest with the girls, but then Mum would say Emma had ‘things to do’ and it would confuse them even more.

  Emma: I had a bit of rice on my plate, perhaps some fish. I wasn’t hungry but also didn’t want to argue for a second night in a row, especially in the circumstances. I said I’d had a large lunch, which was a lie, though Mum didn’t know that. There was an irony in that I had been telling her to look after herself, but there she was saying the same to me.

  Julius: The girls were excited because Auntie Emma was going to look after them that night. After Simone and I split, I always tried to create events for them to look forward to. When it was my weekend with them, I’d let them know in advance where we were going so they’d want to see me. That holiday was all about setting little goals. They could swim in the morning, go to the beach in the afternoon, or have ice cream in the evening. That sort of thing.

  I’d not told them properly about what happened with Dad, only that he’d had a fall and was poorly in hospital. They didn’t know about the coma, or how serious it was.
I wanted to keep their minds off it, so that whole day was about the build-up to their evening with Emma.

  Emma: The girls were getting more and more excited as we had dinner. One of them would say: ‘Are you going to let us stay up until nine?’ If I said I would, the other would ask if it could be nine-thirty. It probably didn’t help that Julius let them go back for a third bowl of ice cream each.

  Julius: When they were two or three, Emma bought the twins a squeaky hippo each for their birthday. Those hippos were so loud, you could hear them through walls. You could hear them in the garden when they were inside a locked house. Emma might have forgotten, but I hadn’t. If the girls wanted three bowls of ice cream, then three bowls it was.

  Emma: As everyone was finishing, Julius went to take the girls upstairs into the hotel. I told him I’d be up in about twenty minutes but that I had to grab a few things from the cottage first. Really, I wanted to wash my face and have a little rest.

  Mum said she hadn’t finished eating, so I left her at the table with Liz, and then headed past the pool towards the cottages.

  Liz: Left her Mum all alone. Tells you something, doesn’t it?

  Emma: I had let myself into the cottage and was on my way into the bathroom when I heard footsteps from the back…

  …

  Actually, the more I think about it, the more I don’t think it was footsteps. There was grass at the back and I don’t think I’d have heard someone walking unless they were being really loud. I heard something, though – which is why I let myself out the sliding door at the back. That’s when I saw Daniel peeping into Mum’s cottage.

  Chapter Nine

  TINA

  Daniel: That’s slander. Or libel. Or both.

  Emma: Daniel was peering through the window at the back, but I wonder now if the sound I heard was him trying the door.

  Daniel: Absolutely, one hundred per cent, not true.

  Emma: When he saw me, it was like he was a kid caught in the fridge after midnight. He held up his cigar, which he hadn’t lit, and said he was looking for somewhere to smoke. It might have been more believable if the hotel’s only smoking area wasn’t in the opposite direction. He knew that because he’d gone there the night before.

  Daniel: I asked one of the little server fellows where I could smoke – and that’s where he pointed me. If you want to take it up with anyone, take it up with him.

  Emma: I told him the smoking area was in the same place it had been the night before. The same place he’d gone that morning. He stared back at me for a second and I know he was trying to think of a better explanation for why he’d been snooping. In the end, he disappeared off towards the place he should have been.

  Daniel: You should be asking her about why she was staying in that cottage in the first place. Her dad had an accident and, somehow, she benefitted from it. There’s a whole lot of questions I’d have for her, if it was me.

  Emma: I watched him go and followed him around the front. He kept turning and looking at me and it definitely felt good to have him on the run.

  Daniel: There’s something wrong with that girl.

  Emma: I waited until Daniel had gone and then went back into the cottage. I was trying to think why he’d be snooping around, but it didn’t feel like something I could simply ask Mum, or tell her. She had enough going on, plus I doubt she’d have seen it the way I did. She’d have waved it away as something innocent. But Daniel knew Mum was still at dinner, so it felt like something he’d done on purpose.

  Either way, I found myself inside and scrolling through my phone. I knew I was going to have to be up and invested in looking after the twins, but it had been such a long couple of days that I wasn’t in the right frame of mind.

  I checked the time and, even with the difference, I knew Tina would have just shut up the shop back at home.

  Tina (friend of Emma McGinley): I was driving home but pulled over as soon as I saw that Emma was calling.

  Emma: I work in Tina’s clothes shop. After I was released, I thought the only job I could get would be with Dad – and that was if he’d have me. It would have meant working with him and, more importantly, Daniel, every day. It would never have lasted and I would have ended up breaking my probation. It was Tina who saved me.

  Tina: I wouldn’t go that far.

  Emma: When my husband had divorced me and everyone else thought I was a monster, Tina was the one who said I could come and work with her. I’d have done it for free, but she set up a proper schedule where I’d get paid more after a certain length of time, or if I was opening up, that sort of thing. On the first day, she gave me a key for the shop and it meant so much that she trusted me. I was holding this little door key and I wanted to cry. I was pinching my thumb, trying to stop myself because it was such a silly thing.

  Then she started encouraging me to go to these trade fairs where people buy vintage clothes in bulk. She said I had a better eye than her and that…

  …

  Sorry, I need a minute.

  Julius: They should have come out as a couple. It’s ridiculous. Everyone knows anyway.

  Emma: We’re not a couple. It’s not like that. I can’t believe someone would say that. She just… she means a lot to me.

  Tina: Couple?! Ha! Who told you that? I think my girlfriend might have a thing or two to say about it.

  Emma and I work together, that’s all. Emma was going through a hard time and I’ve known her since we were kids. I offered her a chance and it turned out she’s very good at what she does.

  I know she says I saved her – but it’s not true. She’s the one who turned up on time every day. She’s the one who loaded almost six-hundred pieces onto our website, all with photos. She’s the one who bought two grand’s worth of clothes in bulk and ended up selling everything individually for something like ten times that. All that was in the first six months she worked at the shop. If there was any saving to be done, then it was Emma who did it. She saved herself.

  Emma: Tina saved me.

  Julius: They were definitely a couple – if not now, then before the island.

  Emma: We’re in contact every day in some way or another. If it’s during the week, we’ll be in the shop together, unless we have a day off. Even when we’re not in, we message through the day. I think I needed to hear Tina’s voice.

  Tina: I instantly knew something was wrong.

  Emma: As soon as I started talking, Tina stopped me and asked what was wrong.

  Tina: She was really cheery, which was a sign in itself. She was telling me how the flight was great and that the hotel was terrific. All that. I know Emma well enough to realise when something’s up. I cut her off and asked what was really going on.

  Emma: I said Dad had fallen off a cliff and that he was in a coma in the hospital.

  Tina: She was in a bit of a state because her dad was in the hospital. I don’t think I realised how serious it was at that point. She said everyone was due to be flying back at the end of the week, but her mum was likely going to have to remain with him for as long as was needed. Emma didn’t want her mum to be by herself, so she said she might have to hang around for a little longer.

  Emma: It hadn’t really hit me until then. Julius had the girls, so he’d be going home. Liz and Daniel weren’t going to stay – and I don’t know why Victor and Claire were there in the first place. Unless I was going to leave Mum alone, it was going to have to be me who remained.

  Tina: I told Emma not to worry about the shop; that she should take as long as she needed. I don’t think that was necessarily what she wanted to hear because there was a long pause.

  Emma: I don’t remember everything I said.

  Tina: Every time anyone goes on holiday, I think they have a secret hope that their workplace is going to fall to pieces without them. We all want to believe we’re the most important part in any machine but, with Emma… perhaps she needed to be told that a bit more than other people. If I’d been through what she has, I think I’d be the same.r />
  I asked if I could send some photos of jackets to her email so that she could tell me what she thought. She was so happy that I asked if she could upload the three she liked the most onto the website. She’s got a logon, so could access it anywhere. I was assuming she’d taken her laptop.

  It’s what she wanted to hear, so it’s what I told her.

  Emma: It was good to hear Tina tell me about how the day had gone. There was a woman who wanted to try everything on and then ended up buying nothing. Someone else was going to a 60s-themed party but refused to believe all the things she liked were from a different decade. It sounded like fun.

  Tina: It was just another day at work. I closed early because we were quiet.

  Emma: I told her I was babysitting Chloe and Amy that night.

  Tina: Her mood definitely changed across that phone call. I was surprised that she was going to be looking after the twins. I think I might have said ‘By yourself?’

  Emma: She told me I’d do great.

  Tina: The biggest concern I had wasn’t anything to do with Emma. If I had a child, I’d have no problem letting Emma look after him or her. It’s not like she’s a danger to children, or even that her judgement should be questioned. Not now, anyway.