Even as I was thinking it, I knew it was nonsensical. How would Scott know I was staying in a cottage? How would he have got in? What could he do with a locked phone?
Why bother?
It was after that when I realised I’d have to go back to the room and use the hotel phone to call the UK and get my SIM card cancelled.
More hassle, more stress – but I didn’t get a chance to do anything.
By the time I got back to the cottages, Mum was on her way out. I’d not even realised the length of time I’d spent in reception. I told her I was missing my phone, but she shrugged and said: ‘It’ll turn up.’ She continued walking past me and then stopped and turned to say: ‘It’s dinner now.’
It felt like being a child again. When your mum tells you to do something with such a tone that it doesn’t feel like there’s any alternative.
Despite everything that happened on the holiday, those dinners were the one constant. It was Mum’s way of keeping away the disorder; something she could control.
Julius: It was a quiet dinner on that third night. Claire had gone, Victor was sulking, Dad was in hospital, Mum was pining for him, Emma was buried in her conspiracies, Daniel had no one to bore with his skiing stories, though he still tried – and Amy and Chloe had tired themselves out by the pool.
Best night of the trip.
Emma: Victor was sulking because Claire had left. He ended up sitting next to his dad and Daniel was busy boring the arse off him by going on about some hunting trip they’d gone on a couple of years before. He was the only one talking at that table and was getting louder the more he drank.
His skin had gone full giant radish at this point. I felt hot just looking at him. He’s the sort of man who will walk around saying how he ‘always caught the sun’, even though what he actually means is that that he’s roasted himself for ten hours with no sun cream. The type who’ll dismiss all science and government warnings because he’s not got skin cancer.
The louder and drunker he got, the more I had to dig my nails into my palms to stop myself from saying something. Daniel was dominating that table with Dad gone. He was finally master of the domain. He’d click his fingers towards waiters to demand more wine and his eyes would follow the women in their short dresses, even though his wife was right there.
When Dad and Alan owned the property business, it was a fifty-fifty thing. After Alan died and things changed, Dad ended up keeping fifty-one per cent, with Daniel buying the other forty-nine. I don’t know the specifics of everything – but that’s how it stood on that day.
Who benefits? was the only thing I kept thinking. Scott had got that phrase into my head and it wasn’t going anywhere.
Julius: Victor left the table first. He said he was off to show a local girl a good time.
Emma: Ugh.
Victor: It was a joke. Everyone at that table knew it was a joke.
Emma: After Victor left, I waited about five minutes and then figured I could make a break for it, too. I had no plans for the evening, other than to call my phone company and then go to sleep. There’s that saying about things seeming different in the morning and I really hoped so many things would.
I said goodnight to the twins and Mum – and then walked off towards the cottages. There’s an archway a little past the pool, before you get to the walkway for the cottages, where it’s almost completely dark. It’s only a few steps to get through it and then there’s another row of lights. I stood under that arch, looking at the midges buzz close to the lights near the pool, and I felt watched and… vulnerable, I suppose.
I don’t think I stood there long, maybe a couple of seconds, and then I walked really quickly back to the cottage. I let myself in and then locked the door behind me. I didn’t turn on any lights, but I stood in the window, looking out towards the lawn. I don’t know what I expected to see, if anything, but I couldn’t lose that feeling of being exposed.
It was probably five minutes until I pulled the curtains and went through to the bedroom.
I saw it the moment I went through, sitting on the side table exactly where I’d left it hours before. Exactly where it hadn’t been when I’d last looked.
My phone was back.
Chapter Nineteen
Day Four
THE SECOND GLASS
Emma: Mum woke me up the next morning. I was still dozing when she knocked on the cottage door. She was looking brighter and said she was off to the hospital to see Dad being brought out of the coma. She said she’d contact me if there was any news – but no one was really using their phones on the island because of the poor signal.
There was an optimism about her voice that hadn’t been there in a couple of days. She told me to go and enjoy the island and that there was no point in wasting the day.
Perhaps she saw something in my face when she said that. Something I didn’t know was there. In the end, I can’t tell you why that was the day we finally had the conversation. It had been around three years overdue, but I suppose I didn’t want to hear it and she didn’t want to say it. Then we were away from our comfort zones and normality and, from nowhere, she finally said it.
She goes: ‘It was only two glasses.’
I was standing in the door frame of the cottage and she was about two steps away. She looked right into my eyes, like she was staring into my soul, and her voice croaked as if she was getting over a cold.
I couldn’t reply at first, there weren’t words. Time shifted. We were suddenly in the cottage’s living room area. She was on the sofa, but I was standing, looking down towards her.
She repeated herself: ‘It was only two glasses.’
I stared and all I could say was: ‘It was still drink-driving, Mum.’
She started with: ‘In my day—’ but I couldn’t listen to that. I talked over her, saying that it wasn’t her day and that it didn’t matter. I shouldn’t have had the second glass. I shouldn’t have had the first.
If I hadn’t been driving that day, then I wouldn’t have killed my little boy…
…
…
No, I don’t want a minute. I want to say this.
Mum goes: ‘It was the other driver who was speeding, not you.’
That’s what they kept talking about in court. My solicitor was convinced it was why I’d be dealt with leniently. That’s the truth – but it doesn’t help. I didn’t want leniency.
After the other car hit mine, there was bits of our vehicles scattered across the road. The paramedics was there with the fire brigade and the police. They were trying to cut my little boy free from the wreckage. I should be able to tell you what I was doing, but I don’t remember. I never see the scene in moving images. They’re always still shots as if I wasn’t there. As if I saw the pictures the next day and that those are what stayed with me.
While all that was going on, the other driver and I were both breathalysed. It wasn’t in question that he was speeding and had gone through a red light – there was CCTV of it happening – but his reading was zero. Mine was over.
I know that sounds like an excuse, but it honestly isn’t – it’s a factual thing. I’ve never tried to minimise what I did. I made a terrible, unconscionable decision to drive.
My baby boy died on the side of the road and then, just after, they arrested me for drink-driving. It all became the same thing.
The papers rightly said I was the drink-driving mum who killed her one-year-old son.
That’s me.
That’s who I was, who I am, and who I’ll always be.
In the three years between the car crash and us ending up in Galanikos, Mum and I had never spoken about what happened and then, suddenly, we were.
I pleaded guilty and it was at the sentencing hearing where the lawyer tried to make the same argument that Mum was later making in the cottage.
Mum looked up to me from the sofa and she said: ‘You did your time.’
All I could think was: ‘It doesn’t bring him back, does it?’
> Maybe I said it out loud, or maybe she read those thoughts?
She stood again and went to the door. We weren’t having the conversation, after all. She bowed her head a fraction and told me to enjoy the day.
She left after that – and all I can remember thinking is that I really wish we’d not had the talk. It didn’t heal anything and it didn’t help…
…
I went to prison. I wanted them to throw away the key, but, instead, I was considered low-risk at reoffending, so they let me go after barely half my sentence.
My husband divorced me. Can’t blame him for that. I don’t even know where he lives now.
They banned me from driving, even though I served that while I was behind bars. Like outlawing a man from walking – but only while he’s asleep.
Were there penalties? Not really.
When I was a girl, Mum shouted at me for knocking over a salt shaker. She shouted at me for walking into the kitchen with muddy shoes. She shouted at me for getting home three minutes after curfew. She did all those things and then, when I took away her grandson, she told me that I did my time…
…
…
I need that minute now.
Extract from local newspaper website: ‘…police said Mrs McGinley had 39 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath when she was breathalysed at the scene. The legal limit is 35 micrograms.’
Emma: I walked down to the village after Mum left and went back to the car hire place. I’d been nervous the day before because I’d not driven since the crash. It was probably that talk with Mum, because I was so furious with her for letting me off, but I wasn’t nervous the second time.
I still can’t believe I got my driving licence back. If you don’t ban someone for life for killing their baby boy, then what do you ban them for?
I wouldn’t have reapplied if it wasn’t for Tina. She said I might need to drive to help out with the shop at some point, so I did it for her. I never planned to drive again, but then there I was, on Galanikos of all places.
Barak greeted me like an old friend. He told me he’d saved me the best car and that he had the best price. I filled in the paperwork and showed him my driving licence. I was waiting for him to throw it in my face and tell me I shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the road but all he did was photocopy it and hand it back. He barely even looked at it, not that there was anything strange to see. On paper, I’m like any other driver.
Everything took less than five minutes and then he handed me some keys, before pointing to a small white car.
I’d spent so little time thinking this through that it was only when I got to the car that I realised it was an automatic, with the driver’s seat on the opposite side to what I’m used to. It should have put me off, but it gave me confidence instead. This was different than any time I had driven before.
It was hot when I got into the driver’s seat: that sort of sweltering, suffocating claustrophobia that you only get from cars on a warm day. As soon as I turned the key, cold air started blasting from the vents. I felt the vibrations rumbling and I knew I should be hesitant.
I wasn’t.
It was muscle memory as I eased off the lot onto the road. I drove slowly out of the village, but, as soon as you’re past the cliffs and the hotel, the complications disappear. The ocean is on one side and the fields are on the other. The only turn-offs are narrow unmarked lanes that lead to isolated houses. Anyone could drive on that stretch of road.
There were no speed limit signs, but I wasn’t driving quickly anyway. Aside from bends, the only time I moved the steering wheel was to go around the craters that count for potholes. I’d probably been driving for about half an hour when the road narrowed to a single lane.
When the engine sputtered the first time, I thought it was because of the terrible road surface. Thirty seconds later, it sputtered again. It was like those last few spins of a lawnmower blade after the power has already been turned off. I felt my stomach sink, knowing what was coming.
A few more seconds and the engine cut out completely. The steering suddenly got heavy, not that it mattered too much because the road was straight. The car rolled to a stop, with the front wheels wedged in a pothole the size of a paddling pool.
It was like a cloud had drifted across me, even though the sky was clear. I was filled with this overwhelming sense of dread that comes from being powerless.
I wished there was a real cloud because the sun was searing as I got out of the car. My top stuck to my back immediately and there was sweat on my arms.
On one side of the road, the cliffs dropped down dramatically to the rocks below. On the other, an enormous field of overgrown wild flowers stretched all the way towards the volcano in the distance. It felt as if I was at the edge of the world.
I checked my phone, but there was no signal. I tried to start the car, but it didn’t even click. It felt dead. It felt… hopeless.
I looked both ways up and down the empty road, wondering what the hell I was going to do next.
Chapter Twenty
MAYBE A CALIPPO
Emma: I can’t believe I’m admitting this – but I opened the bonnet and looked at the engine. I have no qualifications, no training, and I had no clue what I was looking for. I sort of stared at the engine as if that would do any good.
I couldn’t see anything, because of course I couldn’t – so I walked around the car and had a second look, then I tried turning the key again. Nothing happened, obviously. There was no steam, no fire, nothing obvious… it just didn’t work.
The sun was high by this point and it would have been at least thirty degrees. I’d not brought any water. I’d been doing between thirty and forty miles per hour for half an hour, so I was anywhere from fifteen to twenty miles from the village. I was trying to remember the map from the hotel lobby. I’d followed the road up the coast, towards the north, and I had a feeling it was around thirty miles to Agios Georgios. At best, I had ten miles to walk – and that was to a place where there was seemingly nothing. At worst, it was twenty miles the other way to get back to the hotel. Either way, it definitely wasn’t a distance that was walkable in that heat.
I sat back in the car, but nothing was working, including the air conditioning, so I left the doors open and then walked across to the cliffs. I kept away from the edge – but I didn’t need to be close to see the tide smashing into the rocks below. It was impossible not to think of Dad. How, if the tide had been in, it wouldn’t have been a beach where Dad landed. That he wouldn’t be in hospital at that moment, that it would have been much worse.
Alan didn’t have that luxury. He hit rocks and I guess nobody could survive that.
I was thinking of that when I heard the engine. When I turned, there was a car shooting along the road from the direction of the village. There was a spray of dust and the driver was definitely going a lot faster than I had been.
I dashed back to the road, waving my arms and shouting like a madwoman. It sounds stupid now. It was a single-lane road and there’s no way the driver could miss me – the rental car was blocking half the road and he’d have had to swerve onto the verge to go around. That didn’t mean the driver would stop – but it did mean there was no need to jump around as if I was trying to flag down an airliner.
As the car got closer, the small, chipped stones were spraying off to the side as it bumped up and down across the potholes. I didn’t think the driver was going to stop. It certainly didn’t seem like they were slowing… and then, as I was about to shield my eyes to escape the dust, the driver slammed on the brakes and bumped to a stop.
I wish I could tell you the guy’s name. He didn’t tell me and I didn’t ask – but he was definitely a local. He was in a vest and trousers, which was one of the easiest ways to know who lived on the island and who didn’t. Only people from Galanikos can cope with the heat in anything other than shorts.
He blocked the other half of the road with his car and then got out and looked towards the rent
al before shrugging at me. He goes: ‘Not working?’ as if I’d deliberately abandoned the car with the doors open.
I held up my phone and said that the car wouldn’t start and that I had no reception.
He was wearing sunglasses and I couldn’t see his eyes, but there was this moment where it felt like I could.
I can’t explain it, but there was something in the way he looked to me and I felt…
…
I was scared.
Suddenly it didn’t feel hot any longer. I was in the middle of nowhere and there was this stranger standing a couple of metres from me.
He asked where I was staying and I must have hesitated because he started listing the hotels in Galanikos. There aren’t many and I remember saying ‘yes’ to the one Paul was in, hoping he would stop.
We stood there for a second and I was in these thin sandals, knowing I couldn’t run, even if I wanted to. The cliffs were behind me and, in front, the wild flowers were up to my hip. He was looking at me through those glasses and it felt like anything could happen.
And then he turned to the car and muttered something I didn’t understand. He ducked under the bonnet and knocked something with his fist before heading back to his own car. He got a toolbox from the back and then used a spanner to twist something, before whacking another part of the engine with a hammer. He had a bottle of water and poured about half of it into a different part of the engine. When he’d done all that, he stepped away and nodded for me to get back into the car.
All of this happened in about two minutes at the most. I got inside and turned the key – and the engine started. It was like a magic trick. I wanted to ask how he’d done it but knew I’d likely have no clue, even if he explained it.
He closed the bonnet and stepped away, then gave me another shrug as he put his tools back in his car. I was trying to say thanks, but he was already back in his own car. I’d not even closed the door on the rental when he sped off along the road.
After the Accident: A compelling and addictive psychological suspense novel Page 12
