by Jane Corry
‘Ah, but I had some help, didn’t I? Besides, this is my punishment. Being here.’ He shakes his head. ‘The question is, Alison, what kind of punishment will you get when your time comes?’
Suddenly I feel very, very angry. If this is Crispin, it should be me who is furious with him; not the other way round. ‘You raped me,’ I hiss. ‘You deserve to be in prison.’
He moves towards me again. ‘Raped? Hah! You wanted it.’
A cold shiver goes through me as I remember my feelings when I first saw Lead Man. How he’d stirred longings inside me I’d had only once before. Something I didn’t want to think about.
It’s true. I had felt something for Crispin, for a moment. But I had said no.
‘I did you a favour,’ he continues. ‘No one else wanted you. Apart from that little creep of a friend of yours. What was his name now? Robin Hood. That’s right.’
He’s coming closer. For a minute, I think he’s going to strike me. I wince. Stagger backwards and fall against a chair, hitting my cheek. I go lightheaded. Then my scarf tightens round my neck: the primrose yellow one I’d put on that morning to complement the cardigan.
‘Help,’ I begin to scream. ‘He’s strangling me.’
Crispin’s eyes narrow above me. ‘Shut up!’ he hisses.
‘Help,’ I yell again.
Surely one of the officers has got to hear me? The door opens and a figure stumbles in. Stefan?
‘Get off her,’ he growls. ‘You will not touch one hair on her head.’ He brandishes his stick and rushes forward.
What happens next is so fast that I can barely take it in. Stefan stumbles. There is a horrible hollow crack as Martin grabs the old man’s stick and thumps him on the head. Stefan slumps to the ground. Blood trickles on to the stained carpet tiles.
He looks at me and mouths, ‘Please forgive me.’ Then his eyes close.
‘Help,’ I try to yell, but all that comes out is a whimper.
‘Give me your key.’ Martin is growling.
I shouldn’t do this. I know that. I try to remember what they’d told me during the key talk, but no one had given me hard practical advice on what to do if I was attacked or threatened.
‘If you don’t, I will kill him.’ This time his voice is almost soft. He holds the stick up, right over Stefan’s head.
I look down and see that Stefan is still breathing. I can’t let him do this. Reluctantly, I hand over the keys and he slips them triumphantly into his pocket.
‘We have to get help for Stefan,’ I plead. I have tears in my eyes. I fumble in my cardigan pocket, in the hope of finding an overlooked handkerchief.
‘Stop that. Sit down. Pick up that pencil.’
Shaking, I do as I am told.
‘Now write,’ he says. ‘Tell it as it happened.’
‘What do you mean?’
He is still holding Stefan’s stick. ‘Write down exactly what happened on that morning of the accident.’
‘But – but you know,’ I hiss. ‘You were there.’
‘You’re right. I was. But the rest of the world wasn’t. Well, now they’re all going to know exactly what you did.’
I glance down at the belt round my waist.
‘And don’t think of using that whistle,’ he says softly. ‘Or you’re dead.’
47
July 2001
Ali
‘I want to be with my sister.’ I’d found my voice now but it felt all scratchy and sore. My face was throbbing but I furiously dismissed the pain.
‘Don’t you worry about her,’ said a man with PARAMEDIC on his badge, who was sitting with me in the back of the ambulance. He was applying something cool to my face. ‘Might have a broken nose here,’ he was murmuring. ‘Do you feel dizzy? Sick?’
‘Yes. No. I’m not sure.’ The balloon of panic inside was getting bigger by the second. ‘But what about Vanessa? Is she OK?’
‘Don’t fret about her either. We’ve found the name of your school in your bag. Someone there will contact your folks. Now, let’s take a look at that knee.’
‘Were they hurt?’ I blurted out. ‘The people in the car. The Wrights.’
‘You knew them?’
My head was throbbing so hard that I could barely think. ‘I recognized the number plate.’
Another voice was cutting in. ‘You can talk to the police about that later. Let’s just concentrate on you, shall we?’
They took me to a room in the hospital. It had other beds but they were empty. Kitty was nowhere to be seen. ‘I want my sister,’ I said tearfully.
‘All in good time,’ said the doctor, taking my pulse.
‘They’ve already done that in the ambulance.’
‘We need to check. I know this is difficult but –’
‘Ali! It’s all right. We’re here.’
Mum’s arms were around me. But not David’s. He was clutching the back of a hospital chair. His face white. He seemed smaller than this morning.
‘Kitty,’ I whispered. ‘Where is she? What’s happening?’
Mum sat by the side of the bed, stroking my hands. Her face was red and blotchy. ‘You’ve got to be brave, love. We all have to. Your sister has been put into what they call an induced coma. She’s had some head injuries. It’s the best way, apparently, to let the brain heal itself.’
None of this felt real. ‘How bad is it?’ I croak.
There was a whimper from David. ‘My princess,’ he moaned. ‘My little princess.’
‘It’s quite bad.’ Mum’s hand tightened. ‘Your poor nose. Does it hurt a lot?’
I sensed she was distracting me. ‘And Vanessa?’
‘The police need to interview you when you feel ready. Do you feel up to that, love?’
‘Yes. Please tell me. Is Vanessa badly injured? What about Crispin?’ It was all his fault. All of this. ‘He was yelling something about his mother.’
‘She wasn’t wearing a seat belt. Went through the windscreen. That’s what the police want to talk to you about. What exactly happened, love? Were you crossing the road?’
‘We’d just … started to. Kitty … Kitty wouldn’t hold my hand. And then … the car came straight at us. The Wrights’ car with the L plate on the front.’
David’s fists were clenched. ‘I’m going to kill that kid.’
Something else wasn’t right. I could feel it.
‘Is Vanessa in an induced coma too?’
Mum’s eyes filled with tears. ‘I’m sorry, Ali-bean.’
Ali-bean. The nickname Mum had used when it was just the two of us. ‘I’m afraid Vanessa’s dead. And Crispin’s mother too.’
Dead? Both of them? My skin froze as her words sank into my head. That couldn’t be right. Could it?
Because if it was, I had blood on my hands. And on my soul.
What would Mum say when she knew the truth? It would only be a matter of time now.
Because when Kitty finally came round, she’d tell everyone exactly what happened.
We were allowed to see my sister through a window in Intensive Care. But we couldn’t go in. Not yet. There were too many people doing things to her. Checking the monitor, which was making that awful high-pitched shrieking noise every now and then. ‘Don’t worry too much about that,’ said one nurse. ‘It’s only because it’s just rising above the average. It usually steadies again.’
But what if it didn’t?
I could see Mum and David were thinking the same. But neither wanted to say so. Instead, we just stood there. Holding hands. I was between them. Mum’s hand on the left. David’s on the right. Never had I felt so close to them before. It had taken Kitty’s accident to do this.
Only a matter of time …
The bleeper got louder. It continued to shriek. It wasn’t falling down to the average line.
Yes it was.
Collectively, we breathed a sigh of relief.
Meanwhile, Kitty lay in a bed with wires all over her body. She was wearing a kind of cradle cap. The
re were more wires coming out of that. Her face was covered with bandages. Her left arm too.
A trolley passed behind us. A grey-faced woman was lying on it. Not young. Not old. Her eyes were closed. There was a drip attached to her arm. She was being taken into a side room. Another trolley passed in the opposite direction. There was an air of calm urgency in this place. Like a small, intense little community. A world, I told myself, which hung on by its fingertips every day while I and everyone else carried on as normal. Until chance took one of us inside.
Nothing mattered more than life, I realized, my eyes returning to Kitty. Why hadn’t I understood that before? Not long ago, I had wished she was dead. And yet, here I was, praying my sister would survive. Prepared to forgive her for all her slights and insults. Willing her to wake up. To let us start again.
The bleep kicked into action once more. The three of us held our breaths. Waited for it to subside like it did before. But it was carrying on. Higher. More persistent.
‘What’s happening?’ cried out Mum.
‘It’s all right,’ snapped David, as though reassuring himself too.
‘High-frequency alert,’ said one of the nurses urgently.
A white coat rushed into the room. Another attempted to usher us out but Mum was having none of it. ‘What’s going on?’ she growled. A protective mother, crouching over her cub.
‘There are signs of a blood clot.’ The white coat’s face flashed pity. ‘We’re doing what we can.’
A nurse in blue and white stripes offered tea. No takers.
‘Don’t let our daughter die,’ begged David.
Die? No! She couldn’t. But at the same time, I was aware of something awful rising in my chest. Something I didn’t even want to acknowledge. But there it was. Refusing to go away.
The thought that if Kitty died, I’d be off the hook.
They managed to sort out the blood clot. I couldn’t say exactly how long it took. Time, I was beginning to understand, was a weird thing in hospital. It seemed to pass really slowly and then, all of a sudden, it was dark outside when you still thought it was afternoon.
‘Will there be any long-lasting damage?’ Mum had asked. The white coat had hesitated. There were heavy bags under his eyes. ‘I’m afraid it’s difficult to say at this stage.’
I felt relief. Hope. And fear. All at the same time.
The uncertainty was the worst part. ‘If we knew exactly how bad she is, we could get our heads round it,’ David said as we drove home. I knew what he meant. But I also wished I hadn’t agreed to the suggestion about going back for clean clothes and a rest while Mum stayed with Kitty.
It was awkward, being in the car alone with David. He kept pushing me to go over the ‘sequence of events’ again and again until I felt my head would explode. ‘Stop it!’ I yelled finally. ‘I can’t talk about it any more. Don’t you understand?’
Then his face had crumpled and, to my horror, he began to cry. I found myself briefly touching his hand in sympathy, even though he was driving.
The first sight, as we opened the door, was Kitty’s new turquoise trainers. Just like Vanessa’s. Now they sat on the shoe rack, redundant. ‘She never got a chance to wear them,’ whispered David.
Flying up the stairs, I tore into Kitty’s bedroom. Maybe she was still here! Maybe the accident had never happened. Shivering, I took in the school blouse flung on the floor. A copy of a teenage magazine with a coffee-mug stain. Doodles on her desk. A poster of S Club 7 on the wall above the bed. A teddy, next to a mascara wand on the dressing table. It was all there.
Apart from my sister.
‘Help me, Ali.’ I could almost hear her voice, pleading. ‘You can do it. I know you can.’
I didn’t have to go to Vanessa’s inquest. Instead, said the policewoman, they would read out the statement I’d given at the time. When Mum and David came back, their eyes were red and hollow. ‘That poor girl,’ sobbed Mum. ‘They said she’d died from multiple injuries. Just like Mrs Wright.’
‘It’s the trial that’s important,’ snapped David. ‘But that won’t happen for a while. At least the little bastard didn’t get bail. That’s something, I suppose.’
Meanwhile, there was the funeral. ‘What will people think if you’re not there?’ Mum had said when I pleaded to stay by my sister’s hospital bed instead. So I gave in. Good girl, Alison. If only they knew.
It seemed as if the whole school had turned up; wailing in one wave of grief after another as the coffin came in. Was it really possible that Vanessa, with her made-up face and cheeky smile, was inside that box? Her father was one of the bearers. Agony made his face unrecognizable. An only child. Her parents had nothing now.
All through the service, I wanted to stand up and shout ‘Blame me!’
Afterwards, people quietly sidled up to me with well-meaning questions which failed to disguise their curiosity. ‘How is your sister doing?’
‘Still in an induced coma,’ I told them, one after the other. No more. No less.
‘At least she’s alive,’ spat Vanessa’s mother, who emerged at my side just as the last trail of mourners was leaving. ‘That boy deserves to hang.’
‘Come on, now.’ Vanessa’s father put a burly arm around his wife. ‘You don’t really mean that.’
‘I do.’ She was looking straight at me, her lovely violet eyes appraising me like some kind of lie detector. ‘I’ve always said I’d kill anyone who hurt my daughter. And I would.’
Afterwards, I couldn’t wait to get back to Kitty. ‘I said goodbye to Vanessa for you,’ I said, kneeling down at her bedside, trying to equate this strange body full of wires with my pretty, vivacious, impossible sister.
The nurses had told me to talk to her. ‘People in comas can still hear, you know. There’s medical evidence.’
Was I right, I asked myself, to tell Kitty that Vanessa was dead? But my sister would have to know if she woke up, wouldn’t she? And I had to be there when she did.
48
May 2017
Alison
So I write. Martin – Crispin – watching every word. Every letter. I don’t have to, of course. I could make up another story. But I’m tired of running. It’s all getting too much.
In my usual, careful, even handwriting, I describe how my sister and I were running for school. How we’d missed the bus. How Vanessa was ahead at first and then came back to join us.
Then the bombshell. How my sister and her friend said they knew my secret. Seeing me through the window of the summer house. Having sex with this man standing over me right now.
All the anger I’ve been bottling up over the years suddenly pours out. I throw the pencil down and look right at him. ‘How could you do such a terrible thing?’
For a minute there’s a flicker in his eyes. Remorse? Maybe. Then it’s gone.
‘And don’t even think about calling it rape,’ he snaps. There’s a groan from the bloody mess on the ground next to me. Stefan.
‘He needs help,’ I plead.
‘Keep on writing.’ He raises the stick. It falls on the desk next to my right hand. It misses my fingers by centimetres. As an artist, I’m always worried about my hands. They’re my tools. One of the few ways to escape this world.
Sweat is pouring down Martin’s face. Mine too. He could kill Stefan. And me. Unless I think fast.
Shakily I pick up the pencil again. So I pushed my sister into the road.
‘There’s more,’ he says. ‘Go on.’
My eyes are so wet that I can barely see my own writing now. I pushed her in front of a car coming round the corner. Then I fling my pencil on to the desk.
He says my sentence out loud.
Every word feels like a leaden weight. A poisoned pill.
I am exhausted. Martin’s scars appear to gleam with triumph, or maybe it’s just the sun streaming through the dusty window. ‘So you lied in court. You said you were arguing with your sister and she pulled away. But really you pushed her because you were scar
ed she’d tell about us having sex. If you had told the truth, I might not be behind bars. If you hadn’t pushed your sister into the road, my mother might not have died.’
He is so close now that there is barely breathing space between us. I can see each pore in his skin. Breathe his breath. Inhale his murderous anger.
‘You killed her,’ he spits.
He raises the stick again. I feel strangely calm. If the accident hadn’t happened, Kitty would be dancing and running and walking instead of being in a wheelchair. She might have been a famous artist or a musician. Vanessa would be alive. Her parents would still have a child.
Death will, quite frankly, be a release. I take a hanky out of my pocket and mop the sweat running down my neck.
‘Leave her alone.’
There’s a roar. A choking noise. For a minute, I think that an officer has finally come in to see what is going on. Then I realize. It’s Stefan, miraculously stumbling to his feet.
‘Stay where you are, old man,’ hisses Martin.
But Stefan’s hand appears to be reaching out for something on the dirty brown carpet tiles. A piece of glass which glints in the dusty sunlight. A glass offcut from my college workshop which I’d wrapped in one of my linen handkerchiefs when I’d last worn this cardigan. It must have fallen out just now when I’d got it out.
It’s only a small narrow strip – which is probably why it had got through this morning’s search – but still sharp.
With a surprising agility, given that he’d been on the floor only just now, Stefan lunges at Martin’s neck.
To my horror, Martin throws Stefan to the ground like a rag doll. But the old man staggers to his feet, snatches back his stick and whacks Martin on the head. ‘You do not touch my daughter. You hear?’
‘I told you before. Get off.’
There’s a scream. High-pitched. Like an animal in pain. Then a thud.
‘No.’ I howl. ‘NO.’
Stefan is lying motionless. Blood spurting from his throat like a fountain. I scream, dropping to his side. Is he breathing? It’s hard to know.
‘He needs help,’ I cry.
‘Too late for that.’ Martin grabs me, the sliver of glass still in his hand. ‘Your turn now,’ he growls. ‘You’ve had this coming for a very long time. My mother died because of you. And you are going to pay for that, the same way that the bastard who did this to my face paid.’
