After the Accident: A compelling and addictive psychological suspense novel

by Kerry Wilkinson

  My biggest worry was that Julius might be setting her up to fail. If something did go wrong when the girls were in Emma’s care, then it would have been a lot for her to come back from. I only thought that because the relationship she has with her brother is… complex.

  Emma: ‘You’ll do great’ were her exact words. I think I needed the pep talk.

  Tina: I wouldn’t say they hated each other, certainly not then – but everything is complicated with Emma and her relationships. Things are bound to be when you’ve been through what she has. Things were difficult with her and her dad and probably the same with her brother. I wasn’t sure that Julius had her best interests at heart. Actually, I wasn’t sure that he had anyone’s best interests at heart, other than his own. He has this way of saying the right things, even though he’ll turn around and do the opposite.

  I don’t mind being wrong. I hoped I was. I remember telling Emma to be careful, but I wouldn’t have said it like that. I’d have said something like: ‘You’re going to do great – but make sure you’re careful.’ I could hardly tell her to beware of her brother.

  …

  I don’t think I’ve explained that very well. You’d have to know Emma and Julius to understand. You’d have to see them together. It’s got to be hard when you know your older brother is the favourite child and always will be. If you’re second-best among your own parents, then what sort of message does that give you when you’re growing up? People think Emma’s some spoiled rich girl who threw it all away, but you wouldn’t say that if you knew her.

  Emma: I think that was all Tina said.

  Tina: I remember telling Emma that I hoped she was OK and that it was great to hear from her. I really meant that…

  I hope I haven’t sounded insincere here. I know how it might have come across, but I find it so difficult to talk about Emma. Sometimes I overanalyse the things we talk about, or her reaction to things.

  I suppose I just want her to be happy. That makes sense, doesn’t it? She’s the best person I know, but she has a really good way of hiding it.

  Chapter Ten

  THE UNICORN HEAD

  Emma: It was Chloe who answered the hotel room door when I knocked… or at least she said it was Chloe. The girls were wearing identical pink pyjamas and had tied their hair into these topknot ponytails. It was really hard to know for certain who was who.

  Julius: Emma was running late, but I didn’t want to ask what was going on. I was trusting her that she hadn’t been drinking, or anything like that. I suppose there was a second where I thought leaving her to look after the girls might not be the best thing – but we’re still family, aren’t we? I wanted her to prove herself.

  Emma: Julius left more or less straight away and I suddenly realised this was the first time I’d been alone with a child since before prison. It would have been about three years at that point, maybe a little less. I try not to think about it, but it never leaves you…

  …

  I wouldn’t want it to.

  Amy: I liked having Auntie Emma there. She wasn’t always telling us to put things away, or to keep quiet.

  Emma: Julius said that the girls were eager for me to be spending time with them, but they both seemed quite happy to be playing on their iPads. I had a thought that it wasn’t like that when I was young – but I guess everyone feels like that. It used to be pop music, then TV, then video games. There’s always something. When I was a girl, I would have been watching music videos on TV all day.

  Chloe: She asked us what we thought of the hotel.

  Emma: I was happy to sit with them while they played their games, but I remember that, when I was young, I always liked it when people asked me for my opinion. Adults don’t always do that. You might go out for a family meal and someone always asks the grown-ups what they think of the place, or the food, or the price. The kids never get asked – or, if they do, it’s in a sort of babyish, condescending way.

  So I asked them what they thought of the hotel. I didn’t think they’d heard me at first and then they both lowered their iPads at the same time. It was almost as if they’d planned it – although I don’t think they had. Sometimes they do things in unison and it takes a moment to realise they’ve done it. It’s like your eyes don’t believe that something can be happening with such symmetry.

  Chloe: I said it was nice – but not as nice as the Center Parcs that Mummy had taken us to at Easter.

  Amy: Center Parcs is lush.

  Chloe: It’s really lush.

  Emma: They brought up Simone, not me. She was my sister-in-law, but we were never really friends away from when we were in the family group. At that point, it would have been three to three-and-a-half years since we’d last spoken.

  Amy: Dad said that, when we were with him, it was his time. When it was Mum’s time, we could talk about her as much as we liked.

  Emma: They asked if I thought Julius and Simone would get back together. I didn’t know what to say, so told them that it was a question they’d have to ask their dad when he got back.

  The truth is that I can’t see any way they’d ever get back together. Julius told everyone that Simone had been having an affair with her spinning teacher – and that she’d gone off with him. It’s not that I necessarily thought that was untrue, more that there was probably more to it. Julius could be like that sometimes. He’d tell the truth – but only a half-truth.

  When we were kids, Julius once told Dad a boy had been picking on him, so he’d turned around and knocked the lad to the ground. Maybe it was a generational thing, but Dad liked to hear things like that.

  It was true… except that the boy was only picking on Julius because Julius had been bullying that boy’s younger sister. Then Julius had knocked the lad to the ground – but only because he’d run at him from behind and hit him with a rock. He didn’t lie to Dad – but it wasn’t the whole story.

  I thought that’s probably what he was doing when he used to tell the family stories about Simone.

  When it comes to things like divorces or separation, it’s rare that the blame is all on one side…

  …

  Except with my divorce, of course. That was nobody’s fault but mine.

  Extract of a letter received from Tite, Tite and Gaze Solicitors, on behalf of Simone McGinley: My client would like to point out that the document agreed to between her and Mr Julius McGinley cited his ‘unreasonable behaviour’ as grounds for divorce. There was no need for any further notations in the agreement. That is a fact which speaks for itself.

  Emma: Chloe said that her mum doesn’t cry as much any more. It was really direct, in the way kids can be sometimes. I didn’t know how to reply, so I probably said something like: ‘Oh, that’s good.’

  Luckily they moved on, because they wanted to know what had happened to their granddad.

  Chloe: Dad wouldn’t tell us anything.

  Emma: I asked what Julius had told them. They said he’d let on that their granddad had fallen down and had to go to hospital. I didn’t want to lie to them, but it wasn’t like I could bypass their dad and tell them everything. They were only eight and I didn’t want them to have nightmares about cliffs and falling. I told them that Granddad had fallen over and that he was recovering.

  Chloe: I liked talking to Auntie Emma. She didn’t say that she wanted to watch the telly instead.

  Emma: The girls would drift from one subject to the next, even though one thing might have nothing in common with one another. It was like they’d built up this big folder of questions over a period of time. Because I was doing my best to answer, they decided to throw everything at me.

  They asked about electric cars, because one of their neighbours had recently got one. They wanted to know what happened after you separated all the plastic for recycling. They thought it was hilarious that their granddad still bought a newspaper. I didn’t understand why at first – and then they said that you could read everything on an iPad. It was that different way of seeing the worl
d.

  We must have talked for about an hour, more or less non-stop. I don’t remember everything – but there was definitely a moment where they asked what was wrong with their dad. I didn’t know what they meant at first. I think it was Amy who said that he kept holding onto his side and that he would do some breathing exercises each morning. I was a bit blank at first – but then I remembered he’d winced when he was at the shop counter outside the airport.

  I told them that when people get older, bits of their bodies can start to wear out. Then they started talking about how they’d get robot body parts if any of theirs wore out.

  Amy: Auntie Emma said I can have robot legs that will help me run really fast.

  Emma: It was inevitable where things were going to lead. They had probably been asking their parents for a year or two about it. In the end, I think it was Chloe who asked what prison was like.

  Chloe: Daddy told us never to ask Auntie Emma about prison…

  Emma: I didn’t want to give them nightmares – but I didn’t want to be evasive. When I was released, it was one of the things I decided I would do for the rest of my life. I wouldn’t bring up what happened unless I had to – but I wouldn’t lie about it, either. If people had questions, then I’d answer them.

  So I told the girls that prison wasn’t very nice and that nobody should ever want to go.

  Amy: Unca Daniel said people poo in a bucket in prison.

  Chloe: He said there’s a bucket in every prison room and that people have to poo in it. Then they sleep in the room with the poo and the poo goes everywhere.

  Emma: At some point, they must have asked ‘Unca’ Daniel about prison. I don’t know where or when that would have happened – but he told them something about buckets and going to the toilet. You know what it’s like when kids hear a rude-ish word and then can’t stop saying it… They asked if I slept in a poopy room and if I could smell the poo. How are you supposed to reply? I told them prison wasn’t like that, but they were giggling so much, I don’t think it mattered. It took them about fifteen minutes to calm down. Every time it quietened a little, one of them would whisper ‘poo’ – and they’d be off again.

  Daniel: I tried to scare them straight. Haven’t you ever heard of that? If I make you think prison is a scary place, you won’t want to go, will you? It’s basic logic. You can hardly tell them it’s all like a holiday camp nowadays.

  Amy: Unca Daniel said prison’s like a holiday camp nowadays.

  Chloe: I didn’t know what a holiday camp was… but I like holidays... like Center Parcs.

  Emma: I soon realised why they had so many questions. Daniel had told them that prison is a ‘holiday camp’. When they said they didn’t know what a holiday camp was, he said prisons were ‘better than Butlin’s’ – but they didn’t know what Butlin’s was, either.

  I can imagine him getting frustrated at that point, so he told them that all prisoners had their own television and a PlayStation. That being sent to prison was like being sent on holiday. That obviously made them say that they quite liked the sound of prison – which is why he told them that everyone poos in a bucket.

  …

  Imagine telling all that to a pair of eight-year-old girls.

  Daniel: I said no such thing.

  Amy: …

  …

  …

  Poo.

  Emma: We ended up playing a card game. They had played Uno before and had some Old Maid cards back at home – but they really liked the idea of me teaching them a game with actual cards. The only thing I could think of was Shithead, but I obviously couldn’t tell them that was the name, so I called it Unicorn Head.

  Chloe: We play Unicorn Head all the time now.

  Emma: We played until the girls could barely keep their eyes open. They said they wanted to keep going but didn’t protest too much when I put them to bed. I’d planned to read them a story, but they were both asleep as soon as their heads hit the pillows.

  I stood and watched them for a little bit… not long… but it was comforting to see them like that. They were so slim and small… so precious. They were taking these long, deep breaths and it left me feeling hopeful about the future.

  It was true when I said that I sometimes found it hard to see them or be around them – but I think I got over it that night. I started to think that I could maybe babysit them as a regular thing. Julius only had the girls every other weekend, but I thought about contacting Simone and offering to look after the girls if she needed a hand.

  …

  It was a fantasy, of course. I don’t think she’d have agreed and, even if she had, everything changed before we left the island.

  …

  Whatever happened later, I have to thank Julius for giving me those few hours. He didn’t have to and I’ll always have that evening. It might sound odd to say, but it was one of the best nights of my life.

  Amy: When we got home, Daddy told us Auntie Emma is a bad person who does bad things.

  Chloe: He said that bad people sometimes act like good people – but that they’re still bad people.

  Emma: After the girls fell asleep, I went out onto the balcony to get a bit of air. Galanikos can be stifling in the evenings sometimes. The heat of the day doesn’t clear and everything feels so close that you’re desperate to get away from it. That night, though, it was so much crisper and fresher than it had been earlier. It felt like the island was resetting itself. There was a chill on my skin and I wished it was always like that.

  The balcony overlooks the bar and there were still quite a lot of people out. I was sitting and watching. It was the usual holiday thing. Some people were dancing badly, while others were lining up shots across the bar. I spotted Victor and Claire standing near a piano. They were close to each other but angled away. I didn’t notice it right away – but then I realised they were having some sort of conversation, even though they weren’t facing one another. Their lips would move and then the other’s body would stand more rigidly.

  I think they were probably arguing, although I don’t know for sure. It was more the way they were going out of their way to not look at each other.

  Claire: We argued more or less non-stop on the island.

  Emma: I couldn’t hear anything over the music – but out of nowhere, Claire suddenly spun and then marched away. I think Victor called after her, but she ignored him and kept going. I watched him and he watched her. He didn’t move for a good thirty seconds after she’d gone, as if he couldn’t believe it. There was something about the way he was holding himself in, that time. The way his head was arched forward, with his shoulders tight and tense. I probably knew what was going to happen – and then it did.

  Claire: I was back in the hotel by then. I only know what people said the next day.

  Emma: There was a man who was on his way to the bar. He was going past Victor and they touched shoulders. He turned back to say sorry – but Victor swung at him before the guy knew what was happening. The punch landed somewhere on the man’s chin or cheek – and he toppled backwards into the piano. There was this enormous bang and the sound of tinkling keys.

  I thought Victor might turn and run, but he did the opposite. Even though the other man was on the floor, Victor launched himself at him and started swinging his fists back and forth. It was one punch after another – maybe five or six – until a couple of blokes pulled him off. I couldn’t hear the words, but he was shouting and raging, still trying to fight even though there were three people holding him back.

  There was a time when violence would shock me, but, on that night, I realised how much I’d changed. How desensitised I was. I didn’t want to be that person, but it’s like Pandora’s Box, isn’t it? When something’s out, it can’t be put back.

  Five or six security guards showed up then and pulled Victor away. They pinned his arms behind his back and one of them had him by the neck. Victor was still trying to get away but had no chance. They dragged him out through a side door and there was a mome
nt of calm confusion in the bar, where everyone stopped and looked to everyone else, wondering what had just happened.

  It was only a second, maybe two, where there was this eerie, confusing peace. Like when you’ve been running a bath and then you turn off the taps and there’s a final drip before the silence.

  Then it started to rain.

  Chapter Eleven

  Day Three

  THE SHEPHERD AND SAILOR

  Emma: I didn’t sleep a lot that night… I’m not sure how anyone could have. Julius got back to the room not long after Victor was taken away. The twins were still sleeping – I don’t think they’d moved – and then I headed off to the cottage.

  The thunder and lightning started about half an hour after the rain, and it went through most of the night. Every time it felt like things were quietening down, there would be another boom of thunder and then the rain would clatter on the roof louder than before. I thought about checking on Mum, but I didn’t want to wake her in case she was sleeping through it.

  Claire: I didn’t know there had been a storm until the next day. I’ve always been a heavy sleeper.