Day of the Accident

by Nuala Ellwood

  16th May

  Dear Mags,

  Christ, I miss her. I keep seeing her, in the corridor, in the car park. I can hear her voice, clear as a bell. How can she be gone, Mags? I just can’t get my head around it.

  Do you remember the day she was born? It was in a room just like this. The Griffin Room in Chelsea and Westminster Hospital. We called it our ‘private suite’ though we’d only been put there because you’d had a caesarean.

  I remember I sneaked out one morning to get some food and when I came back you and Elspeth were gone. I charged out of that room like a madman, grabbed some poor nurse and demanded to know what had happened to my wife and daughter. Turns out you’d taken her to the bathroom with you. When I came back to the room there you both were, all safe and sound and cuddled up. But I’ll never forget that feeling, that panic, because it was my first experience of the terror that comes with being a parent, the raw fear that the two people you love more than anything in this world could be taken away from you.

  I loved you back then, I really did, Mags. I knew what you’d been through and how fragile you were, but you were also strong. The strongest person I’ve ever known. But the pressure of these last few years just got too much. All I ever wanted was to make you happy but you pushed me away. You only smiled when you were in your study typing away on the computer or if you and Elspeth were playing together. I saw the way your face would cloud over when I walked into a room. You pushed me so far away that I couldn’t get back to you.

  I miss you. I miss Elspeth. I miss us.

  Please make it. I need you.

  17th May

  Hello Mags,

  I’m sitting here because I don’t want to go home. If I go home then all this is real. While I’m here in this hospital I can fool myself that this is a dream or that Elspeth has gone off on a school trip somewhere and will be back any day now full of stories and excitement.

  Another reason why I don’t want to go home is that I know I’ll have to start planning the funeral. Once the coroner’s report comes back then her body will be released and I will have to think of …

  You know last night I was trying to work out what she would like to have at her funeral and all I could think of was bowling. Bloody bowling. Do you remember for her last birthday she was adamant that she wanted a bowling party but we’d left it too late and they were all booked up. We ended up taking her friends to that pottery place in Lewes where they could decorate their own mugs. I’m talking gibberish, Mags, I know I am, but Christ I would give anything to just take her bowling now. To take the day off work for one lousy afternoon and see my daughter having fun in a bloody neon-lit bowling alley.

  So here I am, Mags, trying to plan her funeral like we planned her birthdays. We used to say to each other, didn’t we, in the weeks before her birthday, what would Elspeth want? And you would always know better than me. You knew that she preferred chocolate cake to vanilla; knew that she wouldn’t want to invite that spiteful kid from the village even though she’d invited Elspeth to her party. You knew which of the kids had a dairy intolerance and who was veggie. You knew that the cherry tomatoes always got left at the end and that you couldn’t go wrong with a few extra bowls of Hula Hoops. I’m trying to think like you, Mags, but inside I’m screaming, ‘I can’t do this.’

  You knew her better than I did. I was always on the outside looking in. You and Elspeth were this invincible team and I had no chance of joining. I look back at the last few years and the chasm between us just got bigger and bigger.

  I should have told you. I should have come clean and then none of this would have happened.

  I’m sorry, Mags. I’m so sorry.

  2nd June

  Mags.

  Today was Elspeth’s funeral. My heart is ripped to shreds. I’ve never known pain like this, Maggie. I can barely breathe. How is it possible to be burying your own child?

  Sophie Bailey brought her CD player and played their favourite Taylor Swift song, the one Elspeth used to sing over and over. I’ll never be able to hear that song again. I asked she be put in her purple dress, her favourite. Do you remember she used to say that the colour purple had magical powers, that it could protect you from harm? And as I was standing in that church, listening to the vicar talk about the purity of childhood and how Elspeth is safe with the angels, I asked myself why she wasn’t wearing purple that night, why both of you weren’t wearing sodding purple to protect you from harm.

  3rd June

  Writing it down will make it better, they said. Writing it down will help make sense of it all. So I’m sitting at our kitchen table with this bloody diary in front of me, trying to find the words that will make sense of the last twenty-four hours but I don’t think that is possible.

  So I’ll just be brief, Mags, and tell you what I know.

  They gave me your phone.

  It’s all on there, everything you tried to hide from me. Your secret.

  And when I read it I felt sick.

  How could you do this?

  It was your fault, Maggie, all of it.

  You killed our daughter.

  Part Two

  * * *

  33

  Saturday 5 August

  I’m with Ben. We’re down by the river. It’s hot, stiflingly hot. He kisses me. I tell him to stop. We shouldn’t be doing this. ‘Come on, Maggie, for old time’s sake,’ he whispers. And I relent. Like I always do.

  I open my eyes and the dream dissolves.

  Then slowly, like a rash creeping across my body, the revelations of the previous night come back to me. Sean. The diary.

  I turn on my side, trying to stem the images that are multiplying in my head. Elspeth lying in the morgue, her face battered and bruised. Dr Elms said she wouldn’t have felt a thing, but how does he know? It kills me to think that she could have been in pain before she died and that I couldn’t get to her. Her fear. Her panic.

  Is Sean right? Was I responsible?

  I lean across the bed, my head thick with sleep, and take the diary from the bedside table. I read the last page over and over, the venom of Sean’s words penetrating my skin. They gave me your phone.

  And in that moment, I remember something. Ben. He had been back in touch. I’d spoken to him on the phone, the day before the accident.

  I sit up straight, my heart thudding against my chest as bit by bit it comes back to me.

  The conversation was brief, and I was defensive and wary. He said he was sorry, that he felt guilty. What we did was bad, he said, but it’s time we forgive ourselves. When the call ended I felt strange, like I’d just been winded.

  I put the diary back on the table, my hands shaking. What was on that phone? Had Ben sent messages too? What exactly did Sean find out?

  Then my phone starts to ring. I stare at it for a moment, too scared to answer. But it could be important. I reach over and pick it up.

  ‘Hello.’

  ‘Oh hello, is that Miss Nielssen?’

  ‘Sorry?’ I say, my skin prickling. ‘Who is this?’

  ‘It’s Sharon Jarvis from Kingsland Farley. My colleague asked me to give you a call. You were enquiring about one of our properties?’

  ‘Oh,’ I say, remembering the estate agent. ‘Yes, thank you for calling but actually my name is not Nielssen. It’s Maggie Allan. Sean Allan’s wife.’

  ‘Oh, I’m sorry, my colleague said your name was Freya Nielssen. She must have got mixed up.’

  ‘It’s okay,’ I say.

  ‘It’s about Larkfields, is that right?’

  ‘Yes,’ I say, pulling the covers up.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you called,’ says Sharon. ‘Because we have a key fob here with your name on it but we had no number to call you on.’

  ‘My name?’

  ‘Yes, Maggie Allan?’

  ‘On a key fob?’

  ‘That’s right,’ says Sharon. ‘We received instructions to hold on to the fob and to pass it on to you. This was done through a previous letti
ng assistant who’s now left the company. She was a bit of an airhead, to be honest, forgot to take people’s numbers if they called with an enquiry, double-booked viewings. It seems she’d done it again with the Larkfields notes.’

  ‘You say you were given instructions,’ I say. ‘Was it Sean?’

  ‘I actually don’t know, Mrs Allan,’ she says, her voice flat. ‘As I said, it was my previous colleague who dealt with it all but reading between the lines it looks as though the house was emptied by a third party after the tenancy ended and the contents placed in a storage unit. We were entrusted with the key to that unit and on the notes here it says that we were to hand the key over to you if you made a recovery; if not then we were to donate the contents to charity. Does that make any sense to you, Mrs Allan? Have you been ill?’

  I put my head back on the pillow. None of this makes sense.

  ‘Mrs Allan?’

  ‘Sorry, yes, I’m still here,’ I say. ‘I’m just trying to take it all in. I have no idea why my husband has acted in this way. We were very happily married, everything was fine and then I had a car accident, my little girl was killed and he … he did this.’

  My voice catches and I try my best to suppress the tears that are building up.

  ‘Oh gosh, I had no idea,’ says Sharon. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  ‘You say you have this key fob at the office,’ I say, edging my way through her sympathetic noises.

  ‘Yes,’ she says, her voice lifting. ‘You’re welcome to come and collect it whenever you like.’

  ‘I can come this morning,’ I say, looking at my watch. It’s just after 9.30.

  ‘Fine,’ says Sharon. ‘I’m here all day. We’re just opposite the war memorial. You can’t miss our sign.’

  ‘Okay,’ I say, getting up from the bed. ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes.’

  ‘Mrs Allan?’

  A woman with a toothy smile greets me at the door as I walk into the estate agents.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘You must be Sharon.’

  ‘That’s right,’ she says.

  She’s a large woman – big-boned, as my mother would have said – with blonde hair cut in rather dated layers. Her face is overly made-up and she smells of talcum powder. She reminds me of the women who worked behind the make-up counters in the department store my mother used to drag me through when I was a child.

  ‘Do come through,’ she says. ‘I just have to retrieve the fob from our safe downstairs. Can I get you a tea or coffee while you wait?’

  ‘No thanks, I’m fine,’ I say, still reeling from the shock of reading the diary and remembering Ben’s call. Caffeine would be a bad idea right now.

  ‘Okay,’ she says, smiling politely. ‘Do take a seat and I won’t be a moment.’

  As Sharon disappears down the stairs I sit down at her desk. As I wait I try to compose myself. I look around. There are four other desks dotted about the room, each with a person sitting behind it, either typing on computers or talking on the phone. None of them look up at me. The walls are covered with properties for sale. I read the details of the one just in front of me. A five-bedroom detached house in Ifield, on the market for £860,000. ‘A perfect family home,’ is how it is described on the front. As I look at it I think of how we stretched ourselves to get Larkfields even though we offered the lowest possible price, which was miraculously accepted. It seemed the Gothic facade and potential flood risk had put other buyers off. Still, Sean assured me that it was all fine, that work was going well and he would be in line for higher bonuses as he worked his way up the ladder. ‘It’s your childhood home, Mags,’ he’d said to me as I sat there, six months pregnant and weeping at the thought of someone outbidding us. ‘There is no way we’re going to lose it.’ And I was such a ball of hormones and baby head that I trusted him to deal with the intricacies of the sale. He signed all the papers and dealt with the bank and the estate agent and I believed him when he came home and said the house was ours. And it was. Until he sold it to some property firm. If only I knew why he had done that. And why he kept it from me all these years.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting.’

  I look up and see Sharon coming back to the desk. She is holding an orange file in her arms.

  ‘I just need you to sign a couple of forms,’ she says. ‘And then I can hand you the key.’

  She opens the file and takes out a sheet of paper.

  ‘If you could sign and date this one, just at the bottom there,’ she says, pointing her pen at the relevant place.

  I scan the form. It’s a solicitor’s note. They are working on behalf of BH2 Properties who are registered to an address in the Channel Islands. The official language makes my head hurt but then as I get to the bottom I freeze. ‘Designated key holders for storage facility: Margaret Allan and Freya Nielssen.’

  That name again. Not just stated as Sean’s partner on some estate agency contact sheet but named as a ‘designated key holder’ on an official document for a storage unit that contains my belongings.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I say to Sharon, handing the form back. ‘Here’s this name again. Freya Nielssen. Why is she on here?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she says, shaking her head. ‘As I said on the phone, the tenancy termination for this property was dealt with by my colleague. I was on holiday at the time.’

  ‘And the colleague,’ I say, trying to collect my thoughts. ‘You said that she’s now left the agency.’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Well, is there any way of contacting her?’ I say. ‘To ask her about this woman and why she’s been named both as my husband’s partner and on here.’

  ‘Contact Maxine?’ says Sharon, her eyes bulging as if I’ve just asked her to commit murder. ‘I’m afraid I wouldn’t be able to help you there. Last I heard she’d gone travelling with her boyfriend: South East Asia then on to Australia. She only took this job to fund the trip and, if I’m honest with you, it showed. She had zero commitment, zero work ethic, last one to arrive on a morning and first one out the door at five thirty. I mean, no wonder there were mistakes and inaccuracies on her tenancy records, she spent most of her time on the internet looking at travel forums, but that’s millennials for you.’

  I look down at the form again, feeling even more confused. If this Freya Nielssen is the woman Sean is having an affair with then why would he want her to have access to our belongings? Surely they would be together. It just doesn’t make sense.

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t be of any more help,’ says Sharon. ‘But at least your name’s on there, eh? You can access your things now.’

  I nod my head as she passes the duplicate slip. I scribble my name then she hands me a blue plastic fob with a large yellow key ring attached.

  ‘Here you go,’ she says. ‘Now I’ll write down the address of the storage unit. It’s not far from here, just off the Piddinghoe Road. It’ll only take a few minutes in the car.’

  ‘It’ll have to be the bus,’ I say. ‘I don’t have a car.’

  ‘Oh gosh,’ says Sharon. ‘That was so insensitive of me. Of course you wouldn’t be driving after what happened. I’m very sorry about your little girl by the way. I do remember it now. It was in the papers.’

  ‘Yes, I believe it was,’ I say, getting up from the chair to stop her saying anything else. ‘Anyway, thank you very much. You’ve been very helpful.’

  34

  The industrial estate, where the storage facility is housed, makes me think of a nuclear fallout zone. Large corrugated-iron buildings loom ominously in front of me as I try to decipher the labyrinthine map on the entrance gate. According to the map the storage units are in the yellow quadrant towards the centre of the estate. As I make my way across I take out my inhaler. I’m utterly exhausted and I haven’t even got there yet.

  Eventually I see the name of the unit and a set of automatic glass doors with RECEPTION written above in big yellow letters. When I step inside I see a young woman in a navy-blue uniform sitting behind a desk. As I
approach, my eyes are drawn to the badge on her lapel which says: ‘My name’s Kelly and I’m here to help.’

  ‘Hi,’ I say. ‘Could you tell me where …’ I pause to consult the piece of paper Sharon gave me. ‘Where Unit 428 is, please?’

  ‘Sure,’ she says, taking a leaflet from the front of the desk and opening it out. ‘This is a map of the Yellow Bay. The four hundreds are situated on the fourth floor.’

  She takes a red pen and circles the relevant place on the map.

  ‘Your best bet is to take the lift, which is just over there,’ she says. ‘Then once you get to the fourth floor you need to turn right and you’ll find the even-numbered units.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, taking the map. ‘You’ve been really helpful.’

  I go to the lift and press the button. As I wait for it to arrive I feel an odd sensation in the pit of my stomach. I have no idea what is waiting for me up there.

  Then the lift doors open with a jolt and I step inside. I press the button for the fourth floor and close my eyes. I have never felt so strange. The anxiety, which had felt like sharp needles stabbing my skin, has been replaced with an odd sense of remove, like I am watching myself from above.

  Everything that I have learned these last couple of days – Freya Nielssen, Sean’s accusations, the phone call from Ben – it all feels like it’s happened to someone else. I should be feeling horrified or upset. Instead I just feel numb.

  After a couple of moments the doors open and I step out into a narrow corridor. The walls are painted an acidic yellow and the carpet is bright blue. The clashing colours make me feel disorientated. I turn right and count down the numbers on the metal doors.