‘There you go, my girl. It’ll be soon, I know. I’ll help you get it out quick as a flash. As a flash, I tell you. Everything will be just fine. You know that I’ll look after you. You know that I’ll see you right, my precious girl. By gum, you’re looking fine tonight. You’re a beauty, that’s for sure.’
The cow turned to him, pink-nosed, chewing methodically, submissive. Angus placed a hand on each of her masticating cheeks. Her face was the kindest, gentlest thing he had ever seen. He felt blessed.
4
Margaret Holloway
Monday, 9 December, 2013
It was only three days since the crash, but already Margaret was back at work. She had been absent for only one day – the Friday following – but in that time Stephen Hardy had been expelled. She felt exploited, but had yet to speak to Malcolm about it.
Everyone had been surprised that Margaret returned so quickly. Ben had begged her to take a week off, but she had refused. She had a few scratches still visible on her arms and face, and her ribs hurt when she laughed or twisted, but that was all.
‘Why would I take a week off when there’s nothing wrong with me?’ Margaret had said to Ben, wide-eyed. ‘Besides it’s nearly the Christmas holidays.’
‘You need to listen to what the doctor said.’
The doctor had told her that she was suffering from shock. Margaret had told Ben that she was fine, and finally he yielded.
Her husband was a big bear of a man, with thick black hair and a lopsided smile. Margaret was tall – over five foot eight – but his size still dwarfed her. Love for them had sprung, like mushrooms overnight, sudden but tender, seeming right. They had been together since university in Bristol, when he had sat next to her in an English lecture – knees akimbo because he couldn’t fit into the seat – and asked to borrow a pen from her, before putting it behind his ear and not making a single note for the duration. He was from Liverpool with a sing-song accent and a nice smile and she had liked him right away.
Now, in her office on the third floor, Margaret remembered his face when she left for work this morning. He had been tired – fresh from sleep – lines on his cheeks from the pillow.
‘I think you’re being silly,’ he said, again, shrugging, hands in his pockets and a night’s stubble on his chin. She had stood on tiptoes to kiss him and told him once again that she was fine.
She was attending a deputy head teacher’s conference that afternoon and had a presentation to give on behaviour management, so was working through her lunch hour. An uneaten egg sandwich sat by her keyboard.
The crash on the M11 had been a major incident, involving more than thirty vehicles. Most of the injured had been treated at the trauma centre at the Royal London Hospital. Margaret knew that she was lucky to be alive.
She felt on edge and her concentration was worse than usual. Now, at her computer, she searched the internet for news stories of the crash. There were several reports, even in the national papers, because the damage, fatalities and injuries had been extensive. London’s Worst EVER Pile-up, the Mail had called it.
Although she was trying her best to concentrate, her thoughts returned to the crash. The memory which haunted her most was that of the moment when her car had concertinaed around her, the airbag blew up in her chest and the fuel tank burst. Each time she recalled it she could remember more details: the sound of metal rasping against metal, the sweat on her palms against the steering wheel, the precise pattern of snow as it blacked out the windscreen.
She had come close to being burned alive in her car and the thought both petrified and transfixed her. She didn’t know why, but the memory was compulsive. She had mentioned it briefly to the doctor and he had said it was a symptom of post-traumatic stress.
She was an atheist and had never been superstitious, but the burned man had appeared like a guardian angel, saving her seconds before a lingering, agonising death. She had barely spoken to him and then he had disappeared into the snow, himself obviously wounded. At the hospital, the waiting room was crowded and Margaret had searched for his face, but she hadn’t seen him.
There was a knock on Margaret’s office door and Malcolm entered. She pushed up her sleeves.
‘I heard you were back. How are you?’
He had phoned the house over the weekend, but Ben had taken the call.
‘I’m all right, thanks. Glad to be back.’
‘You were so lucky. Absolutely horrendous…’
‘I know.’
‘You know it’s fine if you take more time…’
‘Thanks. I just wanted to get back and get stuck in. You know how it is.’
Malcolm nodded, frowning.
‘Listen, I heard about Stephen,’ Margaret said, standing up to face him, leaning against her desk.
‘I’m sorry. I knew how you felt,’ he said. ‘I spoke to Jonathan…’
Jonathan was the deputy head for curriculum.
‘Why did you speak to him? I’m the deputy responsible for pastoral. What’s Jonathan got to do with it?’
Malcolm smiled and coloured. ‘Look, your opinion was the most important, and I took it on board, but ultimately it was my decision.’
‘I asked you to consider Stephen, and his life…’
‘Margaret, the decision’s been made.’
‘You had no right.’
‘I think you’ll find —’
‘You knew how I felt!’
Malcolm closed the door, and it was only then that Margaret realised she had been shouting. Her heart was beating so fast that she could feel it against her ribcage. It was beating as hard as it had the moment when she thought she would die.
‘It was my call and it was approved by the chair of governors. I don’t exclude pupils lightly, but I think it was the right thing to do. I kept the police out of it.’
‘That doesn’t make it all right.’
‘However valid your arguments, I wasn’t convinced it was the best way to go. I’m sure there will be another time when your view will be supported.’
‘This isn’t about me!’ said Margaret, feeling the heat in her face. ‘It’s about him, don’t you realise what you’ve done?’
She began to cry.
Malcolm’s lips parted in shock.
She tried to compose herself, immediately embarrassed and confused.
At 3 p.m., Margaret stood before a group of deputy head teachers from across the London boroughs to give her presentation on Byron Academy’s behaviour management strategy. The meeting was in a high school in Camden – a 1960s building with low ceilings and strip lighting. Midwinter and the heating was on full blast. She felt sweat at her hairline.
She had spoken to this group many times but today she felt young and vulnerable before them. Her uneaten sandwich was still in her bag and her stomach rumbled. She placed a hand on her midriff to silence it.
Margaret glanced at her rough notes then bent over the laptop to pull up her slides. Her fingers were trembling.
She knew the topic inside and out. Not only had she been in management for more than six years, but she had worked her way up and diversified her fields: head of subject, head of the Learning Support Unit. She was one of the youngest deputies in the room, but knew she was one of the most experienced.
‘Thanks for coming, everyone, and thanks to John for providing the cakes,’ Margaret began, her voice wavering. She cleared her throat, then reached for a glass of water, noticing again the tremor in her hand. There was a murmur of laughter and quiet conversation.
Margaret beamed a large smile at the group and clasped her hands. ‘Today I want to run through not just behaviour management…’ she was aware of her heart beating, ‘but I want to talk about our school drugs and sex education policies and our pastoral approach to… to…’
The notes shook in her hand and she lost her place.
‘You can see here,’ she began, turning to the image projected on to the whiteboard. It showed a pupil with his head down on the desk. The word
s she had planned to say, about disengagement from learning and disenfranchisement, swirled inside her head. She had given this talk so many times before, yet now she struggled to formulate the words to explain the correlation between achievement and behaviour. She knew it all by heart, but there was not enough air in her lungs to complete the sentence. A trickle of sweat coursed between her shoulder blades. She tried to swallow but her mouth was dry.
Her trembling forefinger was too heavy on the button for the next slide and she accidentally shunted too far forward, then fumbled for a moment with the mouse – tremulous cursor on the screen – until she retraced her steps. Get a hold of yourself, she thought.
She felt, in this safe, warm staffroom, as she had felt trapped in her burning car.
The air wouldn’t go deep inside her lungs when she tried to breathe. She turned to the slide again, full of hope for recovery, but could say nothing more. She thought she was going to faint. Every time she tried to speak, she sounded as if she were running upstairs.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said finally, touching her face and finding it damp with sweat. Margaret put down her pointer, picked up her coat and left the room.
Outside, the cold air was a deliverance. She was wearing a suit and an open-necked blouse and it was still freezing, but the weather was what she needed. She didn’t know what was happening to her. Her heartbeat began to slow as shame filled her. She had actually cried in front of Malcolm and now she had humiliated herself further in front of all her regional colleagues. It wasn’t like her. She was passionate but professional. She had never shouted at a colleague, or burst into tears, or broken down in a presentation.
She put on her coat and walked to the Tube, feeling defeated. On the way, she took her phone out of her pocket and scrolled to Ben’s name in her contacts, letting her thumb hover over the call sign, but then turned it off. She needed to get things clear in her own head first, before trying to explain to anyone else. Instead, she walked with her hands inside her parka, no longer sure of where she was going or what she was doing.
However much she wished to deny it, it was clear to Margaret that the crash had affected her. She had argued with Ben and forced herself to come straight back to work, but privately she admitted that the doctor might have been right that she was in shock. Yet shock wasn’t a clearly defined illness. She had no spots or infection; she could find no wound. Apart from the breakdown at work, the only tangible change was in her mind, with its constant replay of being trapped in a car about to explode and burn. It was as if her mind was a scratched CD, returning and returning to that moment in her life when she nearly died.
At Camden Town, she stood looking at the Tube map, as if she were a tourist discovering it for the first time. She could go back to work, a few stops away, or she could go home. She felt cold and alone, almost disembodied.
Despite herself, her attention focused on Whitechapel station. After a moment’s consideration, she pushed through the barrier, descended the stairs and boarded the Northern Line, then changed to the Hammersmith and City. She was walking slowly and found that people jostled her on the escalators and the platform and again climbing the stairs to ascend to street level. When she emerged, she followed the signs for the Royal London Hospital.
As she approached the hospital, she slowed her steps. It was bitterly cold and she turned up her collar, breathing through her nose to try to warm the air. She had been taken to the Royal London on the night of the crash and she felt at once relieved yet anxious to be returning. She knew why she had been drawn here. She wanted to find the man from the crash: the memory of him walking away haunted her. She needed to know that he had received treatment for his injuries. She wanted to know his name.
When she arrived, she went straight to reception.
‘How can I help you, my love?’
‘I’m sorry to bother you. I just wanted to ask if you remembered the M11 pile-up a few days ago? I wanted —’
‘How can I forget? I worked all night.’
‘Oh, great,’ said Margaret, smiling suddenly. ‘I mean, I’m sorry that must’ve been a nightmare. It’s just, I was one of the casualties… I was OK, only a few scratches, as you can see, but there was a man that helped me. He was hurt too, and I wondered if he had been admitted. I wanted to visit him and thank him.’
‘Well, I can check for you. What’s his name?’
Margaret raised her shoulders in apology. ‘I don’t know his name. I wondered if you would be able to help me work out who he is?’
‘Oh no, I’m sorry, love. If you don’t know his name…’
‘He was quite distinctive. This man, he had been burned – he had significant facial scarring, old scars from some time ago. He was strikingly disfigured.’
‘I’m sorry, love, this is a hospital and —’
‘He must have broken his hand and he was bleeding from his forehead. He might have been admitted for…’
‘Well, there really is no way to identify him.’
‘He saved my life.’
‘I’m sorry, I can’t help you.’
Margaret wanted to explain further, but there was a queue.
‘I’m sorry,’ the woman said again as she turned her attention to the next person in line.
Margaret stood outside the hospital, buttoning her coat and wondering what to do. She was near the smoking shelter and was surprised how many people were crowded inside it to smoke. There were visitors in heavy jackets and patients with coats pulled over pyjamas – smoking with one hand while the other was attached to a drip.
Margaret put on her gloves and was about to leave when a nurse who was smoking near her touched her arm.
‘I heard you talking to Carol,’ said the woman. She had large brown eyes and a grip that Margaret felt through the sleeve of her parka. ‘You were asking about the guy that came in the other night – the one with the scars.’
‘Maybe,’ said Margaret. ‘How did you —’
‘He’s scarred from the face to the waist… terrible. I’ve never seen anyone as bad and I’m a nurse. Is that the guy you mean?’
‘It must be.’
‘It was the way you described him. He struck me the first moment I saw him, and you say he helped you?’
‘Where is he, do you know? Is he still here?’
‘I know it’s wrong; I shouldn’t say anything, but it was a major incident and it was crazy in here that night. I knew the guy you meant right away. You can’t miss him, can you, God bless him. He’s in my ward. He nearly died and they’ve put him in a coma. No visitors… not a single one. No next of kin on the system, nothing. I know lots of people are lost and looking for loved ones. I shouldn’t say anything but… everybody needs somebody, don’t they? It’s not right otherwise.’
‘Can I see him?’ said Margaret.
‘He’s in the ICU. If you let me finish my ciggie, I’ll take you up.’
She extinguished her cigarette, then Margaret followed her inside.
Margaret and the nurse were silent as the lift ascended. The woman wore a badge that read Tara – Clinical Support Worker.
For Margaret, it was as if she were seeing herself from another angle and only just recognising who she was.
The lift doors opened and she followed the nurse along the corridor to a locked ward. The nurse punched in a pin code and then held the door open for Margaret.
She put a hand on Margaret’s arm. ‘He’s down at the end, but just let me talk to Harvey – he’s the charge nurse looking after him. I’ll explain to him why I let you in.’
Redemption Road Page 4
