The Glass Tower

by Gregg Dunnett

  In a daze, Julia went upstairs and got changed. She put on clean underwear, and then her most chunky sweater. After a moment's thought, she pulled on jeans. It was hard to know what to wear for something like this.

  Then she looked around her little cottage, wondering seriously if she would ever return to it. The idea seemed preposterous. Everything seemed preposterous. Nothing seemed real. She locked the cottage and climbed into her car. Her once-loved, now-hated car. She adjusted the seat and mirrors so that they were correctly aligned – they still didn't feel quite right where Rob had fiddled with them, him being so much bigger than she was. She checked she had her Automobile Association membership card tucked into the little pouch on the inside of the windscreen. Then she took several deep breaths, and started the engine.

  Driving away from the house she felt a little better. If the police were already looking for her, then that would be the first place they would go – at least on the move she would be harder to find. But she still felt vulnerable, driving around with those scratches on full public display. Every car she passed, every pedestrian, she imagined them pointing, following her. Demanding to know who she'd hit. She checked her rear view mirror frequently for the police. But everyone ignored her. No one knew. Yet.

  She thought about where to go. The nearest town was Dorchester, but she didn't want to go in that direction, because it would surely be the Dorchester police that led the investigation into the dead woman. No, better to do this somewhere else, where there was less to connect the two incidents. So instead she drove north towards Yeovil. She didn't know the town well, and she became increasingly scared as she drove, wondering if it was even suitable for what she had in mind. What if it had a pedestrianised town centre? She wouldn't be able to do it then.

  That would almost be a relief.

  Several times as she drove she wondered whether she was actually doing it at all. Could it be that she was just driving herself to the police station in Yeovil? Where she would park and calmly confess to what she had done? That seemed quite possible. And yet at the same time it felt quite possible that she was not driving at all, but imagining the entire thing. Certainly, it didn’t feel as if she were in full control of her actions. She was a passenger, not in the car but in her own body. Being taken for a ride, to a destination she didn't yet know.

  She shook her head to clear this thought, and then played back last night in her mind. Or rather, it began playing back, like a documentary film, projected onto the inside of her eyeballs. Rob had decided it would be safer – without discussing it with her – to not turn up at Becky's parents in the middle of the night looking as wild-eyed as they did. So he'd turned around and driven them all the way back to Southampton. To a little terraced house. They'd arrived there at about one-thirty in the morning. And then Rob had pretty much abandoned her. It meant Julia was faced with driving all the way back to her cottage – about an hour and a half drive – completely alone. She'd protested of course – if she was supposed to be over the legal alcohol driving limit, then how could Rob just send her on her way? But by then she seemed to have run out of goodwill with him or Becky. They had exchanged contact details – whose idea had that been? – and Julia had driven off.

  She had tried to sleep for a while in a nearby residential street, but after a couple of uncomfortable hours she decided she was probably okay to drive. She bought coffee from a nearby petrol station and drove home. Fortunately, there had been no more incidents...

  HOOOOOOOOOOONNNNNNNNKKKKKK!

  In a flustered panic, Julia realised her car had drifted over onto the other side of the road. Coming straight at her – fast – was a truck. She yanked on the steering wheel and swerved back on to her own side, just in time for the truck to flash by beside her. She caught a glimpse of a driver, all stubble and greasy skin, shaking his fist at her.

  "Oh my goodness," Julia said. She gripped the steering wheel tightly.

  After that she forced herself to concentrate on driving until she had arrived safely in Yeovil. She followed the signs to the town centre. She wasn't sure exactly why that seemed the best place to put her plan into operation, but by that time, she was a long way past thinking straight.

  When she arrived, she promptly changed her mind. The town centre was far too busy. There were parked cars, bicycles (she was giving them a very wide berth), mothers pushing prams. An elderly man struggling along the pavement on a walking frame. It was horrible, and as soon as she could she turned off the main high street and just followed where the roads took her. She didn't want witnesses, she decided. At least not too many of them. But did that even make sense? Did she need them? She wasn't sure. Didn't know. The fourth coffee was wearing off and she was beginning to feel tired. Sooooo tired.

  Suddenly she just wanted to get this over and done with.

  By then she had somehow arrived on a wide but not busy road, on an ugly industrial estate. Flat roofed commercial units were laid out on either side. A car garage. A little food processing plant. But no people. Yet coming towards her, still some way off, was a Post Office van, in shiny red livery. It looked quite new. New enough to have airbags, Julia thought. Or a part of her thought. The majority of her brain was no longer thinking. It was way past that. She was simply acting, driven along by a primordial sense of preservation. Fear. Desperation.

  The van drew closer. Close enough that she could make out the driver, a young Asian man. He looked to be whistling. Like Postman Pat, Julia thought. The cartoon character that children watched. Although he wasn't Asian. At least, he hadn’t been when she was little. It was possible that he was portrayed as Asian these days – she had no reason to watch children's television and it was quite irritating how politically correct everything had become. Or gay. Maybe Postman Pat was gay these days. Not that there would be anything wrong with that. Nothing wrong with her agent being gay either, come to that. Although he could have told her. It would just have nice if he’d mentioned it. Not that it was important, it was more about being civil. After all she was only his highest-earning author. By a very long way. That wouldn't hurt would it? The other one, his partner, he'd been nice. Was Postman Pat gay? A gay Asian?

  Oh heavens!

  Julia gripped the wheel harder again, feeling her arm muscles ache from the tension. This was really going to happen. It wasn't her doing it, but it was going to happen. It seemed quite impossible, but also quite certain. Julia had entirely ceased to be in control of her body. It was controlled by someone else.

  As the van drew nearly alongside, its driver was utterly oblivious to the streams of consciousness running through the mind of the woman in the jauntily approaching Morris Minor. So he wasn't even looking when Julia swung the steering wheel violently, so that her little car lurched onto a collision course with the van. It was only the movement that caused him to look, seeing the car’s thin front tyre appear almost deflated such was the additional pressure from the sudden change of direction. He stopped whistling. He tried to hit his brakes and steer out of the way at the same time. But there was no time. He began to scream but it was muffled by the explosive ballooning of his airbag as the two vehicles smashed together.

  Ten

  If Julia – or whatever part of her hyper-stressed, caffeine-soaked and sleep-deprived brain was in control at that point – had expected she would black out on impact, she was to be immediately disappointed.

  The details of the actual collision were blurry. There was a screech of some sort, and then a massive, jarring bang!

  This was immediately followed by the feeling of being pulled violently sideways, by a force of such incredible power it was almost comforting. But that was immediately followed by a sudden and shocking pain in her face as her head hit the steering wheel, then more eye-watering pain in her legs, and then in her back. She let out a horrified, shocked scream, and then found everything had stopped moving.

  And though Julia had supposed she would merely wake up in hospital at this point, that didn’t happen either. She fo
und herself sitting back in her seat, the windscreen in front of her shattered. The bonnet of the car, which had stretched and dropped down to the headlights in a way she always found rather comely, was now crumpled up and short. The van she had hit was nowhere in sight, at least, until she turned her head – at the cost of a huge, shooting pain that went down her neck and towards her pelvis. But then she saw it. Somehow it had spun around so that it was facing the same direction that she was. No. She was wrong again, it was her car that had spun around. The greater weight of the van had meant it had barely deviated from its original path. She had hit it, and been bounced right off again, like a tennis ball hitting a wall.

  Through pain that seemed to crystallise the view from her eyeballs, Julia watched as the driver of the van tried to get out. His airbag had gone off and he had to fight against the folds of material, and then bash at the door to get it to open. When he did, he staggered out. For a second he rested, with one hand on the top of the cab of his vehicle, then he made his way over to her.

  "Urgh," he said. His eyes were actually spinning around, as if he might really be a cartoon character.

  "You alright, lady?" He was panting as if he'd run a sprint. Then he seemed to force himself to focus.

  "Oh shit," he said. It took Julia a moment to understand this was in response to the way she looked.

  "Don't move, yeah? I'll call an ambulance. Just don't move anything. Okay?"

  The idea that Julia might move would have been humorous in other circumstances. The pain was like nothing she had ever experienced. She felt it in her face, and sensed from the wetness that blood was leaking from her nose. She felt pain in her legs, but most of all she felt it in her back. It was like being gripped from behind by a giant, angry bear. Every breath was a new, necessary agony.

  Somehow thoughts made their way into Julia's brain. Had she overdone it? Two words formed and seemed to be crawling higher in her consciousness.

  Spinal injury.

  She'd watched a television programme about it recently. One of those fly-on-the-wall shows following the emergency services as they deal with car accidents. RTIs they called them. Road Traffic Incidents – because apparently there was no such thing as an accident any more, there was always something that caused them. This show featured a woman in a car who had had an accident. An incident. And everyone had thought she might have a spinal injury. They'd interviewed her later from her wheelchair, because they’d been right and the woman would never walk again.

  Julia moaned, out loud. What had she done? How could making herself disabled possibly make this any better? She moaned again, but it hurt too much, so she stopped and tried to sit still. Tried to understand how she could be in so much pain, and not be unconscious.

  "They said they'll be here quick, just hang in there," the van driver said now. "What happened anyway? Did you have a blowout, yeah? It looked like it. Like you suddenly couldn't control the car. I saw it, yeah?"

  Julia had only some idea what a blowout was, but already she was realising how this accident had to look like an accident. She tried to nod and it was agonising.

  "Don't move! Yeah?” Postman Pat shouted at her. “You might have a spinal injury or something. I saw this programme on it. Just stay real still." He had his hands out to calm her down, as if she might climb from the car and start fighting.

  When the pain receded enough that she could form a word, Julia replied.

  "Okay," she said. And began to cry.

  "They're coming lady, okay? They're on their way. Just don't move. Stay right still."

  This time Julia knew not to nod.

  Those ten minutes before the ambulance arrived seemed to take forever. Every breath had to be anticipated, braced for, and then taken, even though it caused a new wave of pain. Some people came up close to the car and peered in. Most moved away again, expressions of horror on their faces. Postman Pat told everyone who would listen that Julia had suffered a blowout to her tyre, that he’d actually seen it happen, and it was this that had sent her careering over to the wrong side of the road. One man took it upon himself to make sure no one tried to move, or even touch Julia. Voices told her to 'hang in there'. Julia wondered if she might not. If she was actually going to die. A part of her wished for it.

  Eventually the noise of an ambulance sounded in the distance, and soon after Julia could make out the flashing blue lights with the corners of her eyes. Two green-suited figures came out. They acknowledged the driver of the van, then asked him to wait in the ambulance. Clearly, Julia was their priority.

  Then they were beside her. They asked her name, and did their best to assess her injuries. They didn't look happy. Julia kept focusing on breathing in and breathing out. Bearing the impossible pain with every breath.

  "We're not going to move you until the fire brigade get here, Julia," the first paramedic explained. She was a young woman, with very blonde hair.

  "It's just a precaution, but we don't want to risk moving you until we've had a little look at your neck. Is that okay? We’re just going to pop this neck brace on until we can get you in the ambulance." She turned away and talked to her colleague. Julia caught the word 'helicopter'. From the corner of her eye Julia saw their concerned looks.

  Then the woman came back, smiling again. "We can give you a little injection for the pain? If you'd like?"

  "Yes, please," Julia croaked. She felt like she were drowning and had just been offered a breath of air.

  By the time the police car turned up the injection had gone in. And now the pain had receded a little, like an outgoing tide. Still there, just not so close.

  Two officers began speaking with the paramedics, far enough away from Julia that she couldn't hear what was being said. Then they spoke to the driver of the van. Out of the corner of her eye Julia could see him gesticulating with his arms, showing how the two cars had come together. Several times the officers turned around and looked across at Julia. Finally they came over.

  "Hello," one of them said. It was a woman. "My name is PC King from Yeovil police station. Try to stay calm, I'm here to help you. How are you feeling?"

  Julia managed to grunt a reply.

  "Felt better."

  "I'm not surprised, you've had a good old shunt here. Now we're going to get you cut out of your vehicle. But while we're waiting, I need to get an account of what happened from you. Is that okay?" The police officer woman had a strong local accent and she finished the sentence with a wide smile.

  Julia grunted again.

  “It's Julia, isn't it? Can you state your full name?"

  Julia grunted her answer. The tranquillisers were really kicking in now.

  "Do you remember what happened at all, Julia?"

  Julia thought. The word 'blowout' formed in her mind.

  “It felt like a blowout, maybe."

  PC King wrote this down.

  "How did it feel exactly?"

  Julia didn't know, but some of the words that Postman Pat had said repeated in her mind. She parroted them back, and they seemed to please PC King.

  "That's great. Really good. Now, Julia, I have to do this I’m afraid.” She cleared her throat and began what was clearly a well-practiced speech.

  “As I suspect you of driving a motor vehicle on a public road which has been involved in a road traffic collision, I require you to provide me with a roadside specimen of breath for analysis. Failure to do so is an arrestable offence. Is that okay?" PC King smiled again with a little eye roll. As if to show she had to do this.

  Julia was about to grunt that that was fine, when a new thought occurred to her. One she hadn't even considered. What if she was still over the limit from the day before? The irony of that seemed brutal.

  "Grrnnngg," she said.

  "That's lovely." The policewoman smiled.

  There were more questions, lots of them. About what Julia had drunk and when, and whether she had used mouthwash. Julia's answers all went down on a form, and she became increasingly sure she was going t
o fail the test. What then? Would she be in as much trouble as she had just tried to escape from? Finally, she watched PC King unwrap a clear plastic tube and fix it to a fluorescent yellow box.

  "The machine is asking your age?"

  Is it? Julia thought, and told her.

  "Thank you. I will hold the device. What I require from you is to take a deep breath before creating a tight seal around the end of the tube with your lips, and providing a long, continuous breath until I tell you to stop. Is that okay?"

  Julia blew. It hurt like hell, even through the drugs. The policewoman didn't tell her to stop until she was nearly flat out of breath, and then she inspected her box. Eventually it beeped at her. Julia waited to hear her fate.

  "Okay Julia, I'm pleased to tell you you’ve passed the test. You can relax now. The fire brigade has just arrived, they’re going to get you out of here. Don't worry about anything. We'll get the car cleaned up. Now, is there anyone you'd like us to contact?"

  Julia gave the woman Geoffrey's name, and watched as she wrote it down in a little notebook.

  Then the firemen arrived. Burly men with yellow helmets and heavy-looking uniforms. They had buzzing saws and strong arms that passed things underneath different parts of her body. Julia was finally slipping out of consciousness at this point. The only part that stuck in her memory was when they moved her.

  "One," the leader of the team said, as they gathered around her and the spinal board.

  "Two – gently now."

  "Three!"

  They lifted, and the pain roared like a giant woken from his sleep. It crashed around her body and only began to back off when she’d been transferred to the ambulance and the doors were shut.

  They raced through the streets. Through eye-watering pain, Julia could hear the sound of the siren.