Blink of an Eye (2013)

by Staincliffe, Cath

  ‘Still in hospital . . . Yes, for some time, they say. Next Monday? Yes . . . If they move her to another ward I can drop you a text . . . Thanks, that’s great.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘He wants to see her. He does deal with driving offences and he wants to find out what her instructions are. And he says if the police show up before then she’s not to talk to them without him there.’

  ‘Okay.’

  Phil started clearing up and I turned on my laptop. There were dozens of emails in my inbox but I hadn’t the will to open any. Instead I googled death and driving, the page of links loaded and I went to the criminal justice website.

  My eyes flew over the definitions, and the table of sentencing guidelines. Death by dangerous driving, twelve months where there are no aggravating circumstances. Seven to fourteen years for the most serious culpability. Further down the page a list of aggravating factors, among them alcohol and excessive speed.

  Phil came and looked over my shoulder. I heard him sigh as he saw what I was reading. ‘Up to fourteen years,’ I said.

  He put his arm round my shoulders. ‘Worst-case scenario,’ he said, ‘if she gets convicted. She might get off. We’ve no idea. Don’t think the worst.’

  ‘I know.’ I closed the laptop. ‘You’re right. And if her driving was fine when Monica passed them, then perhaps there was a problem with the car, with the accelerator or the brakes.’

  ‘Go down to the river?’ he suggested. ‘It’s lovely out there.’

  There’s a short cut behind the school playing fields and then it’s a fifteen-minute walk to the Swan, a little riverside pub that has a large beer garden facing the water. The place itself was surprisingly quiet, although there were joggers and dog-walkers and people strolling and cyclists passing in a steady stream.

  We stopped for a drink, had two. Hoppy beers brewed on the premises. The midges were out and I felt a nip or two on my neck. Phil never suffered. The surface of the river looked serene, silky, a shining ribbon of brown rippling between the banks. But this whole stretch had been used as a dumping ground for years. Building waste, litter, chemicals and rubbish chucked into it. Even after three decades of sustained clean-up, there would be all sorts lurking down there: old mattresses and paint tins, slabs of concrete, car wheels, shopping trolleys and bread trays.

  Phil stroked my arm and I smiled at him. My back was aching from the tension of the last few days and fatigue rinsed through me. The beer was making me feel sleepy. ‘I love you,’ I told him.

  He gripped my hand, kissed my knuckles. I rubbed at my neck; another prick from one of the gnats.

  We walked back in the twilight, holding hands all the way. I caught the scent of barbecued meat at one point, plunging me back to that Sunday and the sweet happiness of the party. And on one of the cul-de-sacs near our house, two kids played out on their bikes. Just the sight of them was like a cold shower, extinguishing the tiny glow of peace I’d had in the simple pleasure of the walk and the quiet waterside drinks in Phil’s company.

  Phil put some music on when we got home, an old blues compilation that seemed to suit our mood, Billie Holiday and Muddy Waters making magic out of misery. I concentrated on writing a list of all the things that needed sorting out while Naomi was in hospital: everything from notifying the Jobcentre that she was incapacitated to checking that her bank account wasn’t going to go over her overdraft limit and land her with mounting debts. I’d check her appointments diary, in case there were arrangements to cancel, and work out what to do about her phone contract, given that the phone had been destroyed when the car caught fire.

  I assumed Alex would be dealing with the car insurance and so on, as he was the registered owner, though Naomi was a named driver. Their premium was astronomical, as they were young drivers. It made some sort of sick sense now, though, Naomi one of the faces behind the statistics about risks and demographics.

  I went up to her room and gathered together Alex’s clothes so I could return them. Would he be fit enough to start his new job? If he was, would there be any problem with the job offer given that he had been in the accident? I drew the curtains, thinking about it. They couldn’t penalize him for being a passenger, surely. I remembered reading about one case where a passenger had been prosecuted because he had known the driver was over the limit and failed to stop him.

  But Alex was adamant that Naomi was sober; he’d never have got into the car if he’d thought she was pissed.

  I woke at three in the morning, slathered in sweat, my pyjamas twisted into tourniquets round my legs, my heart pounding. The tatters of the dream fading like smoke. An ancient prison cell, underground, dank, dark, a stone slab. The walls wet with seepage, the smell of earth and decay. Naomi there, her pale fingers clenched round the bars at the front, her face contorted and wild. Screaming ‘Let me out, let me out!’ On the slab behind her a child, still and waxen, lips and eyelids deepest blue, limbs mottled. A doll child. Head turning, eyes opening, empty sockets, savage black holes staring at me, swallowing me.

  Naomi

  He’s here! Alex. He’s here. There are bruises on his face and a cut over his eye and he comes on a crutch, with one arm and one foot in plaster, and sick gathers at the back of my throat.

  He says my name, like he still loves me, but all I can say is sorry, sorry, sorry. ‘Sorry, I never meant for this to happen.’

  ‘I know that,’ he says. ‘Don’t be daft.’

  ‘The little girl,’ I say, because it seems important to be honest and say it out loud.

  ‘I know.’ He looks so sad, his mouth turning down at the corners. He manages to sit down, and the crutch crashes to the floor with a clatter and the woman in the far bed makes a huffing noise, complaining.

  I wish the curtains were drawn round the bed and we could have some privacy, but I can’t do it. I can’t even stand up yet, and I can’t ask Alex to hop about. He can barely walk.

  ‘You pulled me clear.’ My voice breaks on the last word and I rub at my eyes. There’s no point in bawling. I need to talk to him, to apologize.

  ‘You remember?’ he says. He picks up my hand, traces the line of my thumb. There are flecks and marks on his hand, cuts healing.

  ‘No, none of it really. I’m so glad you’re okay . . . well . . .’ Okay doesn’t quite cover it. He’s all bandaged and broken.

  ‘Me too – you,’ he says. ‘They’re discharging me, so I must be doing all right.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I say, ‘for . . . you know – and I’m so sorry. I’d do anything . . .’ I run out of words, my throat too tight, and I can’t stop the tears. I reach for the tissues. Then I have a drink. ‘Sorry,’ I say again.

  He nods, his eyes shining. I’ve never seen him cry and he doesn’t now. This is probably as close as it gets. Some people are like that, not just men either. Suzanne doesn’t cry, not really, not that big, messy sobbing and letting go and her nose going all red and snotty. Sometimes she’ll get like maybe three tears and they sort of squirt out; more like tears of fury when she’s spitting mad, and that’s your lot. Mum cries like a tap. But she must be able to turn it off for work. Lots of the situations she deals with are really sad and she’d be no use to anyone if she went to pieces all the time. Dad rarely cries, but when he does, his eyes go pink and he makes a strange noise in his throat.

  ‘I can’t remember anything,’ I say. ‘The last thing I remember was you telling me about the job.’ I have a clutch of anxiety then. ‘They’ll still take you, won’t they? Is there a physical or anything?’

  ‘Should be okay,’ he says, knitting his fingers through mine, ‘though I might need to negotiate a later start date, put it back a couple of weeks.’

  At least that was going to be okay, then.

  ‘And you kissed me, I remember that – were we arriving or leaving? We were at the side of their house.’

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘we’d just got there.’

  ‘That’s all there is,’ I say. I take a breath, feel the stabb
ing pain in my side. ‘Was I going too fast – speeding?’ I wait for him to answer. He squeezes my hand.

  ‘Maybe a bit, yeah.’

  The guy with the tea trolley pitches up and I feel like asking him to come back later. But we accept a cup each, and once he moves away, it feels safe to talk again. ‘I can’t have seen her, can I? Did I say anything?’

  He shakes his head, frowning. I can tell how hard it is for him to talk about it; it’s not just me. ‘No, it happened so quickly. One minute we were coming out of the bend and sort of skidding, and then this massive bang. The bike ended up on the railings by the school.’

  And the girl? Oh my God. The image of her impaled, like a rag doll. I have to know. ‘And her?’

  ‘She landed in the middle of the road. I didn’t really see her after.’ He swallows. ‘We hit the gatepost and flipped over on to the roof. It was so fast.’ He pauses.

  ‘Who called the ambulance?’

  ‘Me. There was no one else around. You weren’t breathing,’ he says.

  It must have been so frightening for him.

  I think about it after he has gone. The car on fire, roaring with flames, like a special-effects stunt, the little girl and me on the road. Alex all alone, no one driving up or walking past – like some apocalypse movie.

  Carmel

  Phil told Naomi we’d found a solicitor to come and talk to her.

  ‘What have the police said?’ she asked. ‘What’ll happen?’

  ‘Nothing yet. We don’t know exactly,’ Phil said. ‘That’s why we’ve asked Don to come and see you. He’s an expert, he deals with this sort of thing all the time; he’ll have an idea of what to expect and what to do about it.’

  She put her hand to her head, her fingers knotted in her hair. The bandage was gone, the bruising round her eyes faded to mustard yellow. The big bruise on the left of her neck by the collarbone sling was more vivid. The graze on her cheek a large rust-coloured scab. ‘I keep thinking it can’t be true,’ she said. ‘I’ll wake up and it’ll all go away. But it won’t.’

  I struggled for something to say, some comfort to give her. In the end I just agreed with her. ‘I know, darling, we just have to get on with it.’

  She seemed angry at that, a hard glint in her eyes as she retorted, ‘You didn’t do it, you don’t have to . . .’ then broke off, too agitated to articulate.

  Phil intervened. ‘Have you remembered anything else?’

  She gave a shake of her head. Although she was frightened and furious and feeling guilty, there was a marked improvement in her physical state. The procedure to drain her lung had gone smoothly, and being able to breathe easily again meant she had greater energy and less pain. Apparently the scars from the operation were healing nicely, too. The staff had given her a shower and she now wore her own nightdress instead of a hospital gown.

  ‘I’ve bought you a phone,’ I said. ‘There’s credit on it.’

  ‘Thanks,’ she said, a little shamefacedly after her outburst.

  I gave her my own phone so she could copy in numbers, and then talked to her about some of the practical things that might need sorting out. She found it hard to concentrate, I noticed, but was eventually able to remember that she’d only recently paid a credit-card bill and that the Jobcentre stuff was in a folder in her room. It did seem as though the memory loss was simply around the trauma.

  We were going to be lucky. I hardly dared believe it, but any time I considered our situation, I was aware of the Vaseys. The accident bound us together, reverberated through our lives. If I could have, I’d have gone round there and sat with Tina and Simon and shared their grief, supported them as best I could. But I’d have been an intruder, the do-gooding ghoul. My place was with Naomi. But again and again my thoughts returned to Tina Vasey and the pain and wretched grief she must be feeling.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Carmel

  I began to read up on amnesia, wondering if I could do anything to help Naomi regain the missing hours. Sometimes visiting the place where the precipitating event occurred could trigger recall or flashbacks, in the same way that music or smells might. I thought of how I would retrace my steps when I mislaid my car keys and then remember where I’d left them. I could hardly re-orchestrate the barbecue for her, but it couldn’t do any harm to find out more about it: who she’d talked to, where she’d been. I could also see if anyone agreed with Suzanne that Naomi had been drunk. Of course I was hoping that they would contradict Suzanne’s version and confirm Alex’s, bolstering my belief that Naomi would not have driven the car in a state of inebriation.

  There was plenty I could tell Naomi from the time we’d overlapped at Suzanne’s, but I’d need to talk to other people too: colour in the picture of what happened later. It was the least I could do. I had to do something to try and find out about the missing hours, in order to help her get her memory back.

  I talked to Suzanne and Jonty first. She looked a little sceptical. ‘You think it’ll be any help?’

  ‘I can try. I can’t do nothing. Anyway, other people can tell me what state Naomi was in.’

  ‘I’ve told you, she was drunk.’

  ‘That’s not what Alex says. Maybe she was just being giddy, having a laugh. Maybe you misread the situation,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t believe me?’ Her eyes were shining with intensity. She didn’t give me the chance to answer. ‘She kept topping up her glass, she was the life and soul.’

  ‘Then why the fuck did you let her drive home if she was in such a state?’ I spoke more harshly than I intended.

  Suzanne’s face shuttered closed. Then she glared at me. ‘It never occurred to me that she was driving.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, and squeezed her arm. ‘Of course you wouldn’t have let her go, if you’d known. You didn’t see them off?’

  She looked at me like I was raving. I saw it was hardly the sort of small, intimate event where the hosts would escort each set of departing guests to the door.

  ‘Suzanne, this is family. If she’s convicted but there are no aggravating factors like alcohol, then she gets a lighter sentence.’

  ‘You’re on to a loser there, then.’

  Was there a trace of jealousy buried in all this? Suzanne had wanted to show off her baby, so she’d organized a fabulous spread and even been graced with fine weather. But had she then found herself overlooked once Naomi arrived and started entertaining people?

  I was determined not to get deflected from my cause. I took a breath and said, ‘Tell me everything you can remember about Naomi that day.’

  ‘She was in the garden most of the time,’ Suzanne said.

  ‘Can you remember what she was doing, and who she talked to?’

  ‘Erm, Julia from down the road and then Gordy later, and she was helping with the Chinese lanterns.’

  ‘It wasn’t even dark,’ I said.

  ‘Well, we wanted to do it while there were still some people here,’ Jonty said.

  ‘And then she was dancing with Pip. She talked to Alice and her husband, too,’ she said.

  Jonty said, ‘And I saw her inside with Martin, I remember that.’

  ‘He’s my trainee,’ Suzanne reminded me.

  I wrote down everything I could manage and they helped me put a very rough timing next to some things, like lighting the lanterns at seven and the dancing not long after.

  What else might she have done? ‘Did she eat anything else? I know she had a plateful not long after they got here.’

  Jonty had tended the barbecue on and off for about three hours so that as new guests arrived there were always freshly grilled steaks and kebabs. ‘Tuna – that’s right,’ he said so loudly I jumped in my seat and Ollie twitched.

  ‘Jonty,’ Suzanne scolded.

  ‘She did come back for more because she said she’d try the fish this time.’

  ‘Any idea when that was?’

  ‘Five-ish?’

  ‘We left at five,’ I said.

  ‘Aft
er that, then. I was nearly done,’ he said. ‘Oh, and she borrowed my camera.’

  ‘Could you copy me the photos?’ Along with the ones from Phil’s camera, I could put together a visual record of the afternoon.

  ‘Sure, I’ll put them on a data stick. I think there’s some with her in too.’

  ‘You said she kept topping her glass up?’ I spoke to Suzanne. ‘Do you remember when you saw that?’

  ‘Every time I noticed her she had a glass in her hand.’

  ‘But you don’t know what was in it.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’ She held my gaze, unflinching.

  I backed away from the topic; there was nothing to be gained from quarrelling about it any further.

  As we’d been talking, I’d made a list of the people who had figured, and now we went through the photos and I linked names to faces and got people’s contact numbers. I noticed, though I didn’t point it out, that of all the photos that showed Naomi, there was only one where she was holding a glass – and that was when we had the champagne. So there was no damning pictorial evidence to support Suzanne’s story.

  Ollie woke then and she fed him.

  ‘How’s work going?’ I asked Jonty.

  ‘Good, yeah. They’ve seen the rushes for the first film, Shrewsbury, and everybody’s happy. We’ve a great editor on board. So we’re hopeful we’ll get a second series.’

  ‘Brilliant. Where’s next?’

  ‘When Belfast is done, we’re in Aberdeen.’ His phone rang then, and he glanced at the display. Picked it up. ‘Natalie, my PA. She must have heard me talking about work.’

  I wondered how Suzanne really felt about Jonty working away while Ollie was so small. I knew she was loyal and would never admit any dissatisfaction, and of course she knew how things worked in his business, but she must miss him, I thought. Just to have someone there to share the load, someone who could do the early-morning nappy change. Someone to supply cups of tea and take the baby out for a walk while she had a bath or a shower.