Blink of an Eye (2013) (17 page)

‘No,’ I said, my stomach twisting and a shock of cold dropping through me.

‘There were witnesses; they’ve got it on camera, too.’

‘Oh, Dino.’

‘Why would he do that?’ Her voice broke and I got a lump in my throat. I had no answer.

Apparently several cars had swerved to avoid hitting him. But he stood there, unmoving, facing the flow, and eventually the driver, an engineer with a family and no history of driving offences, ploughed straight into him.

It was so tempting to grasp for other explanations: was Petey high, tripping on something, or sleepwalking, oblivious to the peril? Each fiction, thin as tissue paper, tore under the slightest examination.

He hadn’t left a suicide note, and that gave us hope that he’d had no set intent to end his life when he left home and walked to Regent Road in the rain. Perhaps it was a whim, a bad few hours, and if the car hadn’t struck him or the traffic had been lighter, or it hadn’t been raining or someone had stopped him for a light, he might have changed his mind.

We were looking everywhere but at the truth. Plain and stark and mystifying. Petey had deliberately stood in a road because he wanted to die. We never knew why he wanted to die, presumably because carrying on living was unbearable. It’s hard to accept that someone you love can feel so desolate, that you are incapable of providing what they need to make life tolerable.

Over the weeks that followed, we tried to make some sense of it, going over what we knew of him, what we’d seen, how he had been. We failed.

There hadn’t been any cloud of depression like a black halo over his golden hair that final weekend; he had not been surly or angry or anxious in our company.

He’d barely seen his father since moving out, so it wasn’t as if he’d been attacked again recently. We could find no explanation, no justification. His death was like something random, wicked, fickle. It took me years to be able to think about Petey without the cramping pain of grief and guilt.

And of course what hurt more than anything, a sting in the heart, was that he hadn’t been able to tell us; we hadn’t been able to help him.

The funeral was ghastly. A Catholic service with lots of prayers and hymns and communion. It had nothing of Petey in it. Not in what was said or the music or the flowers. We could have been burying his grandmother; apart from the name and the reference to
this young man
, it would have been exactly the same.

We sat at the back, a gang of us, his mates, like interlopers. Dino, her face softened by sorrow, holding the baby on her hip, was the only one who even spoke to us. Their mother had to be helped to walk, so distressed was she, and their father, a big beefy man with a large head, was like an ogre in my eyes.

I fantasized about exposing him, laying bare the truth of how he used to terrorize his son. Cloud cuckoo land; besides, I didn’t really know the hard facts about his mistreatment.

After the cortège left to go and bury Petey, we all got the bus to the Grant’s Arms in time for opening hours and held our own version of a wake. Drinking beer and putting our favourite tunes on the jukebox. I kept expecting him to join us. Someone would come into the pub and I’d glance across, my heart rising in hope, thinking I’d see his flare of hair and his sweet face; that he’d pull up a stool and drum on the table or scrawl a picture on a beer mat or print the opening line for a new song. Beat me at arm-wrestling.

We’ve a few photos from those days. My favourite, the one I got blown up to A3 and mounted for Phil’s fortieth birthday, is one of the band after they had played a little club off Shudehill behind the Arndale Centre. It’s dark and it’s been raining and the four of them are outside, with the gear, waiting to load it into the van that Ged had borrowed. It’s in black and white, and the flash picked up silver drops on the brickwork behind them. Lorraine and Ged are to the right, then Petey in the centre and Phil on the left. Someone has said something funny and the other three, their faces bright with amusement, are all looking at Petey, who is finding it absolutely hilarious. His head is flung back, he’s got this great smile on his face, one hand clutching his chest as though he’d die laughing, the other half raised in a little fist of triumph. I can’t remember the joke, but that’s how I like to remember Petey: happy, helpless with laughter, with his mates, loved.

The Blaggards never played again.

T
he next couple of party guests only added a little to the picture. Francine Moorhead had talked house-hunting with Naomi. Apparently Naomi was already fantasizing about getting a place with Alex, now that he had a job, and Francine had bought a flat in the Northern Quarter in the city centre. But Francine had left after that conversation, so there was not much point in meeting her. Stella Connor was vague on the phone, struggling to remember Naomi, but finally recalled that they had talked briefly about club nights while getting food from the buffet soon after Naomi arrived.

‘You can’t remember for her,’ Phil said, one day. He thought I was becoming obsessed. ‘It’s futile.’

I didn’t argue. I didn’t want to get him any more stressed. He may have taken my silence for consent, assuming that I agreed with him, but I went on in my own sweet way.

Pip Shiers and I had talked a bit over the buffet. Jonty’s colleague, she was getting used to life outside London but admitted she still missed living there. ‘I’ll give it another couple of years,’ she said, ‘and then decide whether to move back. Depends if I can get any work, of course.’

When I rang Pip, she said she had spent some time with Naomi at Suzanne’s. ‘We got the dancing going,’ she said. ‘Not at all easy on gravel.’

Another nugget of information to tell Naomi – you were dancing. I could just imagine it, her dancing her heart out, arms raised and waving above her head, grinning at everyone. I hadn’t yet sat her down and laid out all the memories I’d been collecting for her.

I asked Pip if she’d meet up with me.

‘Not sure when – I’m up to my eyes with pre-production for Aberdeen.’

‘I could come to you, if that makes it easier?’

‘Great.’

Pip lived in one of the new flats in the developments at Harbour City, where Salford’s docks have been transformed. Her instructions for parking and finding her place were complicated but precise, and we met after she got back from work late one evening.

‘Sorry to drag you all the way out here,’ she greeted me.

‘No problem,’ I said.

‘How is Naomi?’

‘Still in hospital. Should be home in the next couple of weeks, we hope.’

Pip just shook her head. She offered me coffee but I didn’t imagine I’d be there all that long. She had a mesmerising view from her window, over the tramlines to other tower blocks and one of the canal basins. It was beautiful, a clear, still night. Lights reflected on the black water. There was an amazing number of stars visible. When I commented on the view, she said, ‘Yes, though I neglect it terribly. Too busy staring at the television. Comes with the job.’

‘So, you and Naomi started off the dancing?’

‘Yes, she’d got a party mix and she put it on. Jonty had speakers rigged up. I agreed to dance if she did and we got a few people up eventually.’

‘Can you remember any of the music?’ Music was supposed to be good for evoking memories, like smells, acting like a direct line to the part of the brain where they are stored. Maybe I could play Naomi the music?

‘Ooh, a real mix, “Dancing in the Street”, “Simmer Down” and that Smokey Robinson one . . .’

‘“Tears of a Clown”,’ I suggested.

‘Yes, and “Candyman”. What else? Oh yes – “Jump Around”, “I Got You Babe” . . .’

I recognized all the tunes she mentioned. ‘Did you talk about anything in particular?’

‘The job market, Alex getting his job. And Naomi told me about her interview. For a teaching assistant?’

‘Yes.’ I stopped writing. If they’d only left five minutes earlier or later, if she had driven just that little bit slower, she might have a job now. Lily Vasey would still be alive. Alex and Naomi might be moving into a place like this.

‘And apps,’ Pip said, ‘for phones: what we’ve got, what we like. She was into Angry Birds.’

Not any more. I suspected she was not allowing herself to do anything that could be considered fun or pleasure.

‘Was she drinking?’

Pip’s face fell, ‘Some,’ she said. ‘White wine.’

My stomach turned over.

‘When was this? Can you remember?’

‘When we were dancing. So sometime between seven and eight? Jonty said you don’t know yet if she was over the limit?’

‘That’s right – they couldn’t breathalyze her and the blood test they do takes a few weeks for them to get the results. Did she seem drunk?’ I was apprehensive about the answer.

‘Bit merry, perhaps. Not pissed, though.’

Sober enough to drive? ‘Did you see them leave?’

‘No. I’d gone to the loo, and on the way back I got talking with Jonty.’

What Pip said echoed Suzanne’s account. They’d left at eight, so Naomi hadn’t had time to process anything she had been drinking.
Not pissed, though.
Was that enough?
Oh God. Please, please, not pissed.

‘I Got You Babe’. I thought about it as I drove home, I’d played it non-stop, the UB40 and Chrissie Hynde version, when Suzanne was tiny. For the next twenty-one years, Phil and I were no longer just a couple, but a family. Then Suzanne left home, followed by Naomi. I’d been anxious about how I might feel, but I didn’t really suffer with empty nest syndrome when Naomi went off to uni. Yes, the house was quieter, there was an absence of interaction, a period of getting used to there only being the two of us, but my relief at her getting into university was the dominant feeling.

All the little chores felt easier too, the shopping and cooking, washing. Naomi, the girls between them, had generated a disproportionate amount of housework. With only Phil and me it was a doddle.

We began to rediscover some of the freedom we’d had before becoming parents. Spontaneity returned. We could decide to go and see a film or have a meal at the last minute, go to bed on Sunday afternoon if we fancied it, book a weekend away without having to worry.

I had more time too. I was still doing my shifts with the emergency duty team and of course I had my regular visits to Mum to fit in. But there was space in my week to take up new interests. I began to learn massage. I’d a vague idea that if social work got too grim, if I became burnt out, which I’d seen happen to many colleagues of mine, it would be useful to have some other skill. Something I could trade where I’d work for myself.

We didn’t get too complacent. Naomi came back at the end of each term and her summer breaks lasted several months. Nevertheless, it was a shock to the system when she and Alex first moved in with us.

They had stayed on in Newcastle for almost a full year after graduating. She had a part-time job in a video rental shop and he was working in a bar. Then the video shop closed and they couldn’t manage their rent any more.

They spoke to both Monica and then us, sounding us out. If they split their time between the houses, would we be happy for them to live with us until they found work? Well, we weren’t going to say no, though I did wonder whether it might be simpler all round to just base themselves in a single place instead of toing and froing all the time.

But once they’d come back, I saw that we would have struggled to accommodate all Alex’s possessions as well as Naomi’s. This way, most of his stuff was at Monica’s and most of Naomi’s at ours. They kept their old postal addresses and we gradually got used to the situation.

Naomi had a TV in her room and they made their own food. There were some niggles: their version of tidying the kitchen after having a meal was a long way from mine. Our fuel bills leapt up; they were in much more of the daytime and there were all the extra showers and loads of washing. But we rubbed along all right and we didn’t think it would be for ever.

Now for the first time I wondered whether Naomi would ever be able to build an independent life. If she did go to prison, securing work afterwards would be even harder. It was still unclear whether she’d have any long-term health issues as a result of her injuries. The biggest risk was infections; without a spleen, her immune system was compromised, and being in prison was a terrible place to be on that score.

I tried not to dwell on it, not to worry when it was all uncertain and unknown, but it was hard.

Monica brings Alex to the hospital. She came in with him the first time, after he’d been discharged and was visiting. She was friendly and everything but sort of professional – I bet she’s like that when she’s dealing with her passengers. No real connection. Not that we ever did have much of one, anyway. She used to try and pass clothes on to me. I know she was being kind because Alex and I were really skint and Monica’s my size. But I like boho stuff, or skate/surf-type clothes. There are little stalls in town where you can get recycled clothes and I like some of those. She wears completely different things, smart and tailored. At first I just used to thank her and put the things in my drawers, but then one time, when she had a roll-neck mustard sweater and a tweed pencil skirt, I said, ‘Aw, thanks, but I’m not sure they’re really me. I could take them to the charity shop unless there’s anyone else you know who would like them.’ I was blushing like mad; I really didn’t want to upset her, but I had to find a way to stop her doing it. Because sooner or later she’d see I wasn’t wearing any of it.

‘If you really don’t want them . . .’ she said.

My cheeks were on fire. ‘No, sorry, thanks, but . . .’ I said in a rush.

‘I’ve a friend might like them,’ she said. And she smiled.

We left it at that. It felt awkward but I think it was better than never saying anything.

Alex is her only child and there’s probably no woman out there who’s good enough for him. But I bet she’d rather he found some clever lady lawyer to date instead of the no-hoper who totalled her son’s car, broke his bones and killed a little kid.