The Accident: A heart-stopping thriller with shocking secrets that will keep you hooked

by Dawn Goodwin

  I went to grab my bag from under the table and felt the handle catch on the heel of my shoe. Leaning over, I could see my personal detritus spilling onto the dirty floor – lipstick, used tissues, a lone tampon. I quickly gathered together as much as I could see before the nausea returned, then abandoned the bag on the table and staggered out none too gracefully towards a door marked ‘Toilets’ in the far corner of the room. It led to a long, narrow corridor winding past a now-dormant kitchen and two non-descript doors. Choosing the New Orleans-style image I thought looked most like a woman, although was very much open to interpretation, I pushed through into a dark cave of a bathroom. I rushed into the cubicle and closed the door behind me. Kneeling on the cold tiles, I waited to see if anything would come up, but the nausea had passed.

  I emerged from the cubicle to be confronted by my own face in the mirror above the sink. My eyes were wide, pupils dilated, cheeks red with exertion. The reflection swam in front of me, at once in focus then a Picasso image of eyes and nose. I still needed air.

  I left the bathroom and headed back towards the stairs to the outside and the crisp street air. It was deserted, with only a few parked taxis at the kerb waiting for the bars to close and their night-time trade to kick in. I wandered down the street a little way, breathing deeply and feeling my dizziness subside and my pulse slow.

  I turned to head back to the bar, but felt a large hand grab my arm and spin me around. The beardy guy towered over me and, catching me off-guard, I felt him pull me roughly towards a small alley next to the bar door.

  He leaned into me, his weight pressing me against the brick wall, and my heart rate inched back up in giant leaps. His breath was sharp with alcohol.

  ‘You think you’re a bit of all right, don’t you?’

  I was struggling to compute what was happening. I considered the flaky skin on his lips, watched as if in slow motion as they came closer and I felt him press them against my mouth. I could feel his tongue trying to force its way into my clamped lips. It wasn’t erotic or exciting, if that’s what he was aiming for. His hands started to roam over my body, searching for a way in, and I felt my blood pump faster as I realised I may be in a bit of trouble. One arm then pinned me tightly across the shoulders to the bricks as his other arm carried on roaming.

  I didn’t feel scared though. On the contrary, adrenalin suddenly flooded through me like a hit of caffeine and I felt more alive and in control than I had in months. If he was hoping to terrify me into submission, he’d picked the wrong night.

  He pulled back to look at my face, searching for the anguish and dread that he needed to see, but the wide, demonic eyes that looked back threw him momentarily off guard. In that second, his grip loosened and I twisted free. The anger that had been bubbling under the surface for months rose up with ferocity and I felt myself jab the flat of my hand up and under his nose. Blood immediately flowed down into his beard and he staggered backwards, his hands clasped over his injured nose.

  ‘Fuck!’

  I moved towards him and pushed him back against the opposite wall, then went in low and grabbed his crotch in an iron-clad fist. He exhaled sharply and he released his nose to grab at my fingers.

  ‘You don’t know who you’re messing with. I’ve had to deal with a lot worse than the likes of you recently, so if you want to come out of this with both balls still in place, you’ll back away quietly.’

  ‘Fucking bitch,’ he spat at me.

  I gave a squeeze of my hand for emphasis and relished the strangled groan that escaped from him, before I let him knock my hand away and stagger off into the night.

  The grin on my face felt frozen in place as I turned and headed back into the bar.

  *

  I returned to the booth, but Scarlet wasn’t where I’d left her. The lurid skulls painted on the wall, with their cavernous eyes and menacing grins, peered down on me lasciviously, making me feel twitchy and watched. I was still high on the adrenalin and blood rushing through my body and wanted another drink to extend the feeling. I felt alive, strong, dangerous – poles apart from the numb emptiness of the past year.

  The crowd had thinned and waiters were starting to stack the chairs on the tables. Looking around, I saw Scarlet sitting on the bar, legs dangling, singing loudly to ‘Piano Man’ by Billy Joel. I floated up to her, performing an impromptu expressionist dance routine across the floor and laughing hysterically. A few of the clean-up staff were watching me with wonder – or disgust. I didn’t care. I leaned in and told Scarlet about the Beardy Man and she high-fived my bravado like a high-school cheerleader. She jumped down to join me and we weaved and swayed around the dance floor.

  Eventually, when I staggered and fell against a table, one of the waiters gesticulated to an unseen body and a big, burly, suited man emerged to casually suggest he call us a cab, which I accepted with an exaggerated sigh and booing from Scarlet. I tried to focus on my watch face and I think it said 03:19, but I couldn’t be sure.

  We grabbed our bags and lurched up the now fiercely lit stairs, through the empty bar above and out into the chilly night air, the man holding a steadying hand in the small of my back. This time, the cold air slapped me full in the face and everything went blank, due to a lethal combination of alcohol and shock I expect.

  The next thing I knew I was pulling up in a cab outside my house. I found some cash in my purse and handed it over, before trying to scrabble out of the car with a bit of forceful help from Scarlet and the driver, who helpfully said, ‘Straight in, miss. And watch yourself.’ He didn’t hang around to make sure I was okay but sped off, possibly in case I threw up on him.

  I offered to walk Scarlet home, and she replied that she would then walk me home, at which point we collapsed in hysterics at the idea of us walking to and fro between our houses, but never finishing the journey, like a warped Alice in Wonderland satire – ‘Curiouser and curiouser,’ she had said earlier. Indeed, it did sometimes feel like I had fallen down a perverse rabbit hole.

  It was all we could do to stand up; as it was, we were using each other as stabilisers. Before staggering off in the opposite direction to me, Scarlet spotted Felicity’s perfectly placed parking cones ready for duty. She looked at me, winked naughtily and tiptoed over to the cones while loudly shushing me with a finger to her lips. I teetered over, giggling.

  ‘Have you got any make-up on you?’ she asked in a loud drunken whisper. She grabbed one of the cones as I sat down heavily in Felicity’s perfect plant pot of pansies and lavender, which fitted my bottom perfectly and was astonishingly comfortable.

  I found some bits of old, abandoned make-up in the back pocket of my handbag and Scarlet began applying eyeliner, mascara and eye shadow in the shape of a crude face to the orange plastic, all the while with her tongue poking from her mouth in concentration. Her face reminded me of someone, but I couldn’t think who in my intoxication.

  In a final flourish, I handed her the red lipstick lifted from our first outing together and she added a demonic, grinning mouth to the mask. She stepped back and presented the cone to me with a ‘Ta-da!’

  It looked sinister and evil – a huge smiling but crooked red mouth, big black-rimmed eyes with heavy blue lids and rosy cheeks.

  She staggered over to Felicity’s front door and placed the cone on top of the perfectly trimmed olive tree that stood to the side. I pushed with my feet to stand up, but instead heard an alarming cracking sound and felt the tub give way underneath me. Scarlet roared with laughter as I hit the ground hard, then held out a hand to try and help me up, but we had both gone beyond hysterical laughter. The exertion of standing proved too much to bear as the taste and smell of tequila rose in my nostrils. I suddenly retched and vomited right onto Felicity’s doorstep. Horrified, I stepped back, just as the outside light above her door illuminated. We turned on our heels and scrambled to hide behind the nearest car.

  As I crouched on the ground, Scarlet handed me my bag, gave me a quick thumbs up, proudly proclaimed, ‘Nice one
!’ then turned and disappeared into the night. I leopard-crawled towards my own door and darted inside without a second glance.

  *

  The throbbing in my head woke me and I struggled to peel open my eyes. There was a distant ringing in my ears and I felt like I was lying under a very large, heavy object. I looked over to Tom’s side of the bed, but it was empty.

  Slowly, body consciousness filtered in. I appeared to be naked from the waist down, my jeans and knickers tangled together in the middle of the bedroom floor, but was still wearing my bra and top. My necklace had wound around my throat and threatened to garrotte me. One shoe lay abandoned in the middle of the cream carpet and I could tell from my desiccated eyes that I had scrambled into bed without removing my contact lenses.

  I peeked over at the clock on the bedside table and it took a few seconds before the numbers came into focus. It was already past 10 a.m. I couldn’t remember what time I had got into bed.

  I slowly pulled myself up to sitting, then wished I hadn’t as the room kept moving around me. Nausea hit me and a foul-tasting burp rose in my throat. I launched myself towards the bathroom and made it just in time before I threw up violently into the toilet. Once the heaving had stopped, I knelt, then lay on the floor with my burning cheek against the cold tiles. My head was pounding more than ever with the exertion – a steady, rhythmic thud behind my eyes. I peeled the dehydrated contact lenses from my eyes and threw them into the toilet bowl, then lay still again.

  I don’t know how long I stayed there. It felt like hours; the tiles weren’t cold against my cheek any longer, but I was shivering.

  Eventually, I dragged myself to standing, wrapped my mouth unceremoniously around the tap in the basin and swilled brutally cold water, before drinking as much as I could handle without throwing up again. Then, on very unsteady legs and with one arm outstretched to steady myself against the wall, I crept back to bed and pulled the covers over my head.

  *

  When I next opened my eyes, I noticed a cup of tea on my bedside table, steam still uncurling comfortingly. The fog in my brain was lifting by small degrees. I could hear distant sounds of Tom pottering around downstairs. My stomach dropped and a thin casing of shame fell over me at the thought of explaining myself – again.

  I sat up slowly, rearranged the pillows behind my still throbbing head and reached for the tea. As I brought it to my lips, the faint smell of milk made my stomach lurch again and it was all I could do to get the cup back on the table without spilling it before I was propelling myself to the toilet again. This time nothing came up, but the retching seemed to continue for ages.

  I was left on my knees panting, tears of exertion running down my cheeks and the smell of alcohol in my nostrils. I wiped my face and this time I crawled back to bed, the act of standing proving too challenging.

  Propped up against the plump pillows again, I closed my eyes and tried to remember the details of the night before. Some of our conversations filtered back to me and made me chuckle despite my condition. I vaguely remembered someone offering to call us a taxi. I also remember walking relatively steadily to the door of the bar, then feeling the cold night air hit me like an ice sheet. After that, the details faded into misty uncertainty, but the cold air had clearly brought my inebriation rushing to the surface. I reached once more for the tea, hoping the caffeine would settle the tremor in my hands as I tried to dredge up what I had done next.

  An image of the Beardy Man and his scaly lips pressed against mine reared up and coldness washed over me, quickly followed by the heat of anger. I pushed on past and conjured up flashes of other moments – the taxi journey, snippets of conversation, terrible singing – and then the memory of the parking cones and my special gift for Felicity rushed in along with mortification.

  I sighed as a voice in my head started lambasting my behaviour. What kind of a mother was I? What if Grace had seen me in that state? What if Beardy Man hadn’t surrendered so easily? Then I remembered Scarlet drawing the face – she could surely share the blame for that stunt, hilarious as it was at the time.

  My thoughts were a jumble: Voice 1, the prosecution, accusing and scolding in Tom’s rich, lecturing tone (the one he saves for telling Grace off); Voice 2, the defence, vocalising that I am allowed to let my hair down once in a while (not surprisingly in Scarlet’s lyrical, righteous lilt). I couldn’t remember the last time I had laughed as much – or suffered as much the next day – but I did have fun. Then my innate sense of responsibility, borne from nearly a decade of being a mother, kicked in and Voice 3 joined the baying crowd (sounding very similar to my own mother) to chastise me for getting that drunk and out of control, and putting my own safety at risk.

  I dozed off with the voices arguing amongst themselves.

  *

  I was woken by the sound of the front door closing. Tom going somewhere no doubt. Looking at the clock, I realised that I had missed the morning completely and it was now just after 3 p.m. I lay for a moment in consideration, then decided that I was indeed feeling less shaky and nauseous. My head was still pounding though. Looking over, I saw that my still-full mug had been replaced with a tall glass of water and a couple of paracetamols. He had his moments, I’d give him that.

  I sat up gingerly and reached for the glass. It was cold and wet and all I really needed right then. I threw back the pills and gulped some of the water, hoping it would all stay down.

  Equilibrium partially restored, I gingerly climbed out of bed and headed for the shower, still feeling jaded and fragile. I turned on the water as hot as I could handle, in the hope of blasting some life into me, and kept my eyes averted from the glass screen in case there were more mist messages I didn’t want to read. The steam started to make me feel light-headed after a while, so I emerged into the foggy air of the bathroom and groped for a towel. I dried myself slowly, my head pounding even more when I bent over to wrap my hair in the towel. Everything was proving a feat of pure exhaustion.

  Downstairs I heard the doorbell ring. My first reaction was to ignore it. I wasn’t expecting anyone and certainly didn’t want visitors, not even Scarlet. It rang again, more insistently, so I grabbed my robe off the back of the bathroom door, tying it tightly as I headed towards the stairs. From the top of the staircase, I could see a shape through the frosted glass of the door, but it didn’t look like Scarlet. I hesitated, unsure whether I had the energy for this, until the letter box flew open and Felicity’s eyes peered straight at me. My heart and stomach fell.

  ‘Veronica, open up!’ she called.

  Knowing that she had seen me, I descended the stairs wearily and pulled open the door. Felicity was standing on the step in her blue Lycra running capris and a ridiculously tight vest, eyes glistening.

  ‘Felicity, what a nice surprise. Going for a run?’

  ‘Veronica.’ I could feel her bristling in front of me. ‘We need to talk about last night.’ Her voice was so cold, I imagined seeing puffs of her breath in the air. I knew I had a choice to make: denial or admittance. What would Scarlet do?

  Felicity tapped her foot, expecting me to say something, but I hadn’t chosen my method of attack yet.

  She eventually broke the standoff. ‘You know what I’m talking about.’ Her arms were folded tightly across her ample chest, making her boobs look like they were making a bid for freedom from the Lycra.

  I felt a giggle rise in my throat.

  ‘About what exactly?’ I managed to say.

  ‘I heard and saw you!’ Her voice was rising and her boobs heaved in tandem, jiggling in her incredulity. I couldn’t help but stare and wonder if one of them would break loose if she got really wound up. They were challenging me – and I accepted.

  ‘Doing what?’ Pulling my eyes away, I leaned against the doorpost and folded my arms in defiance. I was aware that I was still wearing a ridiculously bundled towel on my head and a robe in the middle of the afternoon. But gone were the days when I gave a shit what Felicity thought of me, it would seem.


  She rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders melodramatically, with a huge sigh. Boob 1 and Boob 2 undulated. ‘So it wasn’t you drunk on my doorstep last night? You weren’t defacing my traffic cones? I got the fright of my life when I opened the door and saw that face this morning!’ Her mouth was pulled into a grotesque mask of disgust. ‘Thank God poor Tabitha wasn’t with me when I collected the milk this morning. She would’ve been traumatised,’ she continued.

  ‘Oh, I doubt that,’ I muttered. ‘She’s probably seen – or done – worse.’

  She threw me a stony look, then continued her rant. ‘Then I saw what else you left! For goodness sake, Veronica. Not only did you break my flowerpot, but to vomit on a neighbour’s doorstep is possibly the biggest insult you could come up with. We’ve been friends for a long time – I deserve better than this. Tom couldn’t have been with you. He would never have allowed this to happen.’ She gesticulated at me vaguely. Her voice had risen an octave, and Boob 1 and Boob 2 were dancing as her hands waved in emphasis.

  I started to giggle.

  ‘How can this possibly be funny?’ she screeched.

  ‘Oh come on, Felicity. If you think about it, it kind of is,’ I said in between chortles.

  ‘No, it bloody well isn’t.’ She was now shouting and using her height to tower over me in a manner she thought was threatening. But all it did was give me an even closer view of Boob 1 and Boob 2, making me snigger some more.

  Then she started to jab at me with one long-nailed finger, while spitting words at me. ‘Have you no shame? Think about your husband. Think about your daughter.’

  And at that point, my mirth vanished as she overstepped the mark.

  She continued jabbing away, ‘I’m only pleased that I had time to tidy up your mess before Tabitha saw it. I would not have liked to try and explain to my impressionable young daughter – and your goddaughter – the seedy side of alcohol and what happens when a woman loses control, like you have so clearly done. She is naïve, innocent and bright, and I would hate that to be sullied by the likes of you.’ Tiny drops of spittle settled on her lower lip as the vitriol dripped from her tongue. ‘You are a disgrace, Veronica, and you need to sort your head out. It’s no wonder our friends have washed their hands of you. I don’t know who you are anymore. Grace would be ashamed, as I’m sure Tom is.’