Day of the Accident

by Nuala Ellwood

  He looks across at Claire. She shakes her head.

  ‘But they … they got her out, didn’t they?’ I say, my body pulsating with terror. ‘They got her out … of the car …’

  They don’t answer.

  ‘Elsp,’ I scream, yanking at the wires. ‘Please … you have to … tell me she’s …’

  Claire puts her hand on my arm. Her skin feels clammy on mine. I push her away.

  ‘I’m begging you,’ I cry, tears clouding my eyes. ‘She’s my … baby … She’s my … she’s my life.’

  Elms pushes his glasses up with the tip of his index finger, then fixes his eye on me.

  ‘I’m very sorry, Maggie,’ he says, his voice as spare as a telegram. ‘But I’m afraid your daughter died at the scene.’

  A high-pitched sound, like the air being released from a balloon, fills the air. Only after a couple of minutes do I realize that the noise is coming from me.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Maggie,’ says Claire.

  ‘She wouldn’t have felt anything,’ Elms says. ‘It would have been like going to sleep.’ But his eyes don’t meet mine.

  I start to rock, forwards and backwards; as though movement will suspend the horror.

  ‘We realize this is the worst possible news,’ says Elms. ‘And we are so terribly, terribly sorry.’

  I look up at him but all I see is Elspeth. My beautiful girl.

  ‘No,’ I say, shaking my head. ‘No. You’re wrong. She wazere, just … just on bed. Wet hair. She’s cold. She … she needs me.’

  Elms shakes his head.

  I look across at Claire. Her eyes are full of tears.

  ‘Help,’ I whimper. ‘Help … me … find her.’

  ‘Maggie, she’s not here, love,’ says Claire, wiping her eye with the back of her hand. ‘She’s not here.’

  And then something rises up inside me. A hot burst of anger.

  ‘This is crazy,’ I cry. ‘I saw her. She was here. Going to go find her.’

  I throw the covers back and try to get out of the bed.

  ‘Maggie, don’t,’ says Claire.

  I try to jump down but the wires hold me back. I grab at the drip in my arm, try to yank it out, but Elms grabs my arms tightly.

  ‘Let me go,’ I cry. ‘Please just let me go.’

  ‘Oh God,’ whispers Claire, beside me.

  Elms holds me down as Claire adjusts the drip. I catch his eye. And something about his expression confirms it all. My Elspeth, my beautiful Elspeth. I start to scream. My body jerks. Elms shouts something to Claire but I don’t hear what he says.

  ‘No,’ I cry as they try to guide me back on to the pillow. ‘Not Elspeth. Not my baby. No, no, no.’

  ‘Quickly, Claire,’ hisses Elms, still holding me down.

  I look up into Claire’s face as she prepares to administer the sedative. Her eyes are swollen with tears and her bottom lip is quivering.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says as she leans forward and pushes the needle into my skin.

  I look at her blankly. Then I let my head drop back on the pillow. As the door closes I feel something snap inside me. I put my hand to my heart. It is still beating steadily though it has broken into a thousand pieces.

  4

  Saturday 22 July

  The room is quiet save for the soft beeping noise of the bedside monitor where my blood pressure is displayed in stark green letters. Outside the door I can hear the nurses chatting at their station. One of them lets out a shriek of laughter and the noise cuts through me like a blade.

  It has been twelve hours since I received the news. Twelve hours of lying on my back, unable to move. I want to scream and yell but my body is numb and when I try to talk the words won’t come. Claire came in earlier and administered more pain relief. It’s so strong it feels like I’m floating above myself.

  A moment ago Dr Elms came and sat by my bed and told me about my injuries. I sustained some lung damage while in the river. Most likely it was my attempts to call for help while submerged in water that did it. He talked about the risks of developing inflammation of the lungs and how they are monitoring me for this; he spoke of his relief that the CT scans, taken when I was in the coma, showed healthy brain activity; no sign of damage.

  Yet all the while he sat there, talking, as doctors do, in that cold, matter-of-fact way, about recovery and rehabilitation and physiotherapy sessions, I could only think of Elspeth, my beautiful ten-year-old girl.

  I can’t accept what they are telling me. I would know if she were dead. I would feel it in my bones. There would be a sense of finality, a full stop. No, they are wrong. Elspeth got out of that car. She wandered off and now she is out there somewhere, lost and afraid. I can feel it.

  It’s the same feeling I used to get if I lost sight of her in the supermarket, a raw, knee-buckling panic. But she would always reappear; I can see her little face now, peeking out from behind the shelves. ‘Did I scare you, Mummy?’

  She would always reappear.

  That is why I know she is still alive, and that, wherever she is, she needs me. She needs her mummy.

  5

  Dear Mummy,

  I’m so scared. I don’t know why I have been sent away. Did I do something wrong? If I was naughty then I can make up for it. I promise I won’t be naughty again. This place is very cold and dark. The walls are bare and white and nobody smiles. I miss my old room. I miss the smell of the countryside. All I see when I look out of the window is concrete and glass. It’s like a prison. When can I come home? They have told me that you and Daddy are not coming back but that can’t be true, you love me more than anything in this world, I know you do. I think about you all the time and wonder what you are doing. There are some books here. They’re old and the pages are ripped but I don’t want to read them anyway because stories and books just remind me of you and then I get upset. Mummy you can’t forget about me, even if you’re angry with me I’m still your daughter.

  Please don’t leave me here. I need to be with you.

  I promise I’ll be a good girl and I won’t make you cross.

  I love you Mummy and I just want to come home.

  Your lovely daughter xxx

  6

  Saturday 22 July

  It’s Christmas morning. I’m sitting on the sofa, knees tucked underneath me, watching as Elspeth opens her presents. The living room is a sea of brightly coloured wrapping paper and ribbon. It’s her second Christmas, and her little face is beaming with happiness. The toy drum we bought her lies discarded on the floor. She’s more interested in the glittery box which she has placed on her head.

  ‘Hat,’ she says, looking up at me. ‘Baba got hat.’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, my heart surging. ‘And it’s a very lovely hat.’

  ‘Is it too early for one of these?’

  I look up. Sean is standing in the doorway holding a box of mince pies. He’s wearing a Santa hat and a bright red Christmas jumper. He looks so silly I can’t help but burst out laughing. When Elspeth sees me she starts laughing too.

  ‘Daddy silly,’ she says, clapping her hands.

  ‘What did you say?’ cries Sean, sticking his bottom lip out. ‘Did you say your daddy was silly? Why, I’m going to gobble you up for breakfast.’

  He lifts Elspeth up from the paper-strewn floor and blows a raspberry on her tummy. She beams with delight.

  ‘Again, again,’ she cries.

  I watch as the two of them play. My family, my beautiful family, warm and cosy and happy all under one roof. And then something happens. The room seems to fold in on itself. I can still hear Elspeth and Sean laughing but I can’t see them any more.

  ‘Sean,’ I say. ‘Where have you gone? I can’t see you. Where have you taken her?’

  I hear a noise and my eyes open. I see the end of my hospital bed and Claire coming in the door. Then it hits me. Why I’m here. What I’ve done.

  ‘How are we doing, Maggie?’ says Claire, smiling as she comes towards me.

  I don
’t answer her. My head is still in the dream. If I focus on it enough, perhaps I can go back there. To Elspeth. And Sean.

  ‘I’m just going to check your blood pressure,’ she says, moving to the monitor by the side of the bed.

  I listen to her muttering numbers that don’t make sense to me. She says it’s ‘all good’.

  ‘Could you tell me where Sean is?’ I ask. ‘My husband?’

  ‘I should really go and get Dr Elms, he –’

  ‘No,’ I say. ‘You don’t need Dr Elms, just tell me where Sean is.’

  The colour drains from her face as she pulls the chair out from beside the bed and sits down.

  ‘What is it?’ I say, dread rising up from my stomach to my chest.

  Claire grasps my hand. ‘Shh, Maggie, it’s okay. He’s fine.’

  ‘Oh, thank God,’ I gasp, lying back on the pillow. ‘Thank God for that. So, where is he? Can I see him?’

  I look to Claire for some sort of reassurance but she just shakes her head.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I cry. ‘Where is he?’

  ‘We don’t know,’ says Claire. ‘What we do know is that six weeks ago Sean left the unit to collect some things from home. He returned a couple of hours later, left something at the reception desk then walked out.’

  ‘Walked out? What do you mean?’

  Claire looks at me sadly.

  ‘It’s horrible to have to tell you this, Maggie, what with everything else you’re having to deal with,’ she says. ‘But he hasn’t been back since that night. It seems that your husband … Sean has disappeared.’

  7

  Monday 24 July

  I have been transferred from the ICU to a ward. They tell me I’m recovering well. My speech is improving and my blood pressure has gone down, my heart rate is sound and the threat of my lungs becoming infected has lessened. ‘All good,’ said Claire, repeating her favourite mantra, as the porters wheeled me down here.

  All good.

  How can she say that?

  My child is dead. My husband has disappeared. There is nothing good any more.

  The woman beside me has pulled the curtains round her bed. The other two patients in the ward, an elderly woman and a teenage girl, have had a steady stream of visitors all morning. It’s the girl’s birthday and her family are gathered round the bed, clutching balloons and toasting her with plastic cups of fizzy pop.

  I turn on my side and close my eyes, try to block out their cheery voices, but they grow louder.

  People often talk about emptiness but I don’t think I have ever truly felt it, not really. Before, emptiness was an abstract concept, a throwaway phrase that fitted everything from the state of the fridge to the silence of the house on a weekday morning. Nothing could prepare me for this kind of emptiness, the raw, exposed state I’m living through now.

  I have nothing. I am nothing. I would doubt I even exist, if it weren’t for the sensation of warm breath escaping in and out of my mouth. I remember the reading Sean and I had at our wedding: ‘Love is what makes us real’. I chose it because I liked the way the words sounded, the romantic, youthful undertones. I never really thought about what it truly meant, when you strip it down to its bare bones, though now I’m coming close.

  Elspeth and Sean made me real. They were the hands that held me aloft, the air that transformed me from a loose bit of plastic into a buoyant balloon. Without them I don’t exist.

  As I lie here, pressing my hands to my ears to block out the visitors’ happy chatter, I think back to the moment I gave birth to Elspeth. The midwife said it would feel like an expulsion. ‘You’ll never forget that sensation,’ she’d said afterwards. ‘That emptiness.’

  I know what she meant but that wasn’t emptiness, nothing close to it. The vacant space in my womb had been replaced with an eight-pound-six-ounce bundle of baby who took up permanent residence in my arms. The muscles of my right arm became firm and taut with the weight of her head resting on it. My breasts were full to the brim with milk, so heavy that sometimes I feared I would topple over. The house, that had seemed too big at first, sprang to life, each room stuffed with Moses baskets, changing stations, Bumbo chairs, cuddly toys and nappies. Elspeth filled Larkfields to the rafters. With her arrival it transformed from house to home. Life was so busy there was no spare time to think. Sean left the house at seven each morning, kissing me on the cheek as I gave Elspeth her first feed of the day. When he came home we were both so shattered from our respective labours we’d eat dinner on our laps in the living room, sometimes even in bed. My brain was baby shaped, every inch of it consumed with Elspeth, her feeding times, her temperature, her targets. There was no room for any other concern. My life was a well-fed stomach, full and fat and sated.

  How can she have just stopped being here? I ask myself as I turn on my back and look up at the strip-lit ceiling. My beautiful baby. How can she be gone? It’s inconceivable.

  ‘She’s just through here.’

  I don’t look up when I hear the nurse ushering yet another visitor into the ward but then the footsteps stop at my bed. I sit up and see a police officer standing there. She’s about my age, tall and rosy-cheeked with thick auburn hair tied back in a ponytail. She is wearing an ill-fitting black trouser suit and a pale-blue blouse. As she draws closer I can smell her perfume: a bitter citrus scent.

  ‘Hello, Maggie,’ she says. ‘My name is Detective Sergeant Grayling. I’m part of the team investigating the accident. Do you mind if I sit down?’

  She’s got a Yorkshire accent and it reminds me of a girl from Leeds I knew when I was young.

  ‘No, I don’t mind,’ I reply.

  She pulls the chair towards me and sits.

  ‘I was wondering if I might be able to ask you some questions,’ she says, bringing her chair closer. ‘Nothing too gruelling, it’s just regarding the accident.’

  ‘The accident?’ I repeat, flinching as one of the girl’s visitors lets out a roar of laughter.

  Grayling looks over at him and frowns then she turns to me, her face softening a little.

  ‘Would that be okay?’

  I nod my head.

  ‘Right, well, I know Dr Elms talked through the rough details of what happened,’ she continues. ‘But there are a few things I’d like to clarify.’

  Suddenly my heart starts to pound.

  ‘Is there something …’

  ‘Maggie, please don’t worry,’ says Grayling, placing her hand on my arm. ‘These are just routine questions.’

  I pull the covers up to my chest, my hands trembling with nerves.

  ‘I just need you to tell me anything you can about the evening of the twelfth of May,’ says Grayling. ‘Why you were in the car. Where you were going. Any little detail you can possibly remember will be helpful.’

  I look at her blankly. She might as well be speaking a foreign language. In my jumbled head the 12th of May is an abstract concept; as removed and alien as the disembodied voices that are bleeding into the room from the corridor.

  ‘You were outside the Plough Inn,’ she continues. ‘In the car park by the bridge. Can you remember what you were doing there?’

  I know the Plough Inn. It’s the gastro pub just outside Lewes. I’ve been there once, years ago when Sean and I first moved into Larkfields. We didn’t really like it. The food was awful and the regulars were rather cliquey. I have no idea why I would have headed there that night. I shake my head.

  ‘So you don’t remember parking the car?’ says Grayling, narrowing her eyes.

  ‘No,’ I whisper. ‘I don’t remember anything. Please, tell me what happened.’

  ‘Well,’ says Grayling, hesitating for a second. ‘It seems you got out of the car for some reason, leaving your daughter in the back seat. The fire officer’s report showed that the handbrake … it was only partially engaged.’

  ‘You mean I … it was my fault?’ I say. ‘I caused it?’

  ‘That’s not what I’m saying,’ says Grayling. ‘It appears fro
m the misapplication of the handbrake that it was just an accident. The car rolled and you couldn’t stop it. And judging from the injuries to your hands, it seems you did everything you could to save your little girl.’

  I look up at her. We both know what that means. I did everything, but it wasn’t enough.

  ‘The coroner was satisfied with that,’ she says, nodding her head. ‘Enough to have returned a verdict of accidental death.’

  My head is fizzing with facts. Coroner. Accidental death. Handbrake. None of it makes any sense. Why can’t I remember anything?

  ‘There’s just one thing that’s bothering me,’ she says, her tone changing.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, my throat tightening.

  ‘It’s the fact that the car doors were locked,’ she says, fixing me with a cold stare. ‘Is there a reason you would have locked your daughter into the car?’

  ‘No,’ I reply. ‘I’ve never locked her in, ever. I don’t understand that. Are you sure it was locked?’

  ‘Yes, the fire officer’s report was definite. Could you have been going into the pub?’

  ‘No,’ I cry. ‘Why would I go into a pub on my own? I don’t really drink. And there’s no way I would have left Elspeth alone in the car like that.’

  ‘Could you have been meeting someone?’

  ‘No,’ I say.

  ‘But how can you be certain if you have no memory of that night?’

  ‘I just know,’ I reply, my voice trembling. ‘I don’t socialize much, hardly ever in fact. My whole life revolves around my family; Sean and Elspeth. Look, she –’ I stop, my throat feeling like it’s closing up.

  ‘Take your time, Maggie.’

  ‘Elspeth was scared of locked doors,’ I say. ‘When she was about seven Sean took her with him to collect his suit from the dry-cleaner’s. She fell asleep in the back of the car so he locked it and ran in to get his suit. The car was parked right outside and he was only in there a few minutes. When he came out she was banging on the windows, terrified that he’d …’