Blink of an Eye (2013) (19 page)

Of course we have to drive past where it happened to reach Suzanne’s, so I try to recall Alex and me in the Honda on the way to the barbecue. I know we took champagne. Alex told me we bought it from Safeway. I know from what Mum’s said that we arrived at four. But nothing emerges. The only memories I have from immediately before we got there are Alex breaking the news when we were at home and me jumping at him, and then the kiss at the side of Suzanne’s house.

My stomach swoops when we get to Mottram Lane and drive past the school, but the images in my head are the second-hand ones I’ve been given. I try not to get too disappointed and tell myself it might be different coming in the other direction.

The sky is still clouded over and there’s a sewagey smell in the air. Lots of the houses have Union Jack flags flying high for the Queen’s Jubilee. Becky and Steve went to a street party; his mum’s a keen royalist, apparently. My folks are the opposite. When they were still at school, it was the Silver Jubilee, and the Sex Pistols were at number one with ‘God Save the Queen’ and it was banned from the airwaves.

At Suzanne’s street, Mum does a three-point turn and stops. ‘This is where you were parked,’ she says. ‘We saw your car when we were leaving.’

I nod. I close my eyes to see if that helps and run through the sequence Mum has discovered: handing out champagne, cuddling Ollie on the swing seat, eating, talking to Julia about festivals, taking photographs on Jonty’s camera, the conversation with Gordy, reading to Adam, the Chinese lanterns, dancing with Pip.

‘Okay.’ I clear my throat, nod to Mum that we should set off.

She drives to the dual carriageway and along to the junction with Mottram Lane. The lights are red. My knees are pressed tightly together, my hands between them. There’s a sickly taste in my mouth. A magpie pecks at something at the side of the road. I look away.

The lights change and Mum turns right. I try to relax, to let my body settle and my mind loosen so I’m more open to the chance of remembering. It’s not easy, though; my back is stiff and my guts are knotted up still.

Mum drives slowly to the bend; there are no cars behind us. ‘This is where you went too fast,’ she says, ‘and here,’ as we round the first curve of the bend, ‘is where you swerved back in.’

I imagine it. That’s all I do.

I see the railings by the river on the left and the bushes and trees there, the school over to the right. The glimpse of red, Lily’s dress, the thump and screech; they fit here but that is still all I have. Free-floating elements, isolated and incomplete.

‘Can you stop?’

‘Hang on.’ She drives a little further until we are on the straight stretch and parks at the side of the road.

‘I’m going to get out,’ I say.

She nods.

‘I won’t be long.’

A couple of cars drive past as I walk along the pavement back to where it joins the grass verge on the bend. I’m still using a stick to take the stress off my ankle. I walk across the grass to where the railings are broken. Alex said they smashed through the rear windscreen. The trees are blackened, fire-damaged. On the ground, new shoots of green have grown up through the scorched grass. This is where we ended up, hanging upside down, rammed against the railings. I look over towards the school. Lily’s body landed somewhere in the middle of the road. I try to picture her in different poses, on her back or curled in a ball. Here Alex pulled me out. Here he called the ambulance. Here Lily died and my heart stopped too. But I was lucky. Tears sting the back of my eyes. Why, why can’t I fucking remember?

I see Mum coming.

‘Anything?’

Shake my head.

‘Lie down,’ she says, ‘if you can manage it.’

Oh God.

‘Try it. You never know.’

And I do, with her help. Because I’ll try anything that might work. I lie on the grass after checking it for dog dirt and shut my eyes. I can hear birds somewhere, chirping, and traffic, and an ice cream van’s chimes suddenly cut out. I hold the red in my mind for a few moments. Then I think about the thumps and the screech.

Another car goes past fast, rap music pulsing out for a couple of seconds.

I open my eyes and see the shattered branches of the burnt trees reaching towards the vast sky. The sky is grey, blank like my memory.

I lift my arm and she helps me up. I brush the bits of twigs and cinders off me. My throat aches, a tight ring of frustration.

I don’t want to cry, and try not to, but tears run down my face anyway.

I’m so sorry
, I think; I wish I could just go and tell them. Over and over and over again. Find a way to show them how dreadfully, dreadfully sorry I am.

Mum hugs me and we walk back to the car.

I’m not going to give up, I’m not going to stop trying. I’ll try hypnosis –anything else I can find that might help.

I owe it to them, to Lily’s family. The loss of memory makes me feel like I’m hiding from what happened. I don’t want to do that. I want to take responsibility and remember every fucking second and every detail. I want to remember it every second of every day for the rest of my life. I want to be unable to forget it.

That’s what I deserve. I have to find a way to make it happen.

We’re finishing lunch the next day and Mum is asking me if there’s anything I want to do in the afternoon when the doorbell rings. It’s the police. Come to arrest me.

I freeze, outwardly numb but my mind shrieking with fear. I don’t want to go to the police station. Of course, I have no choice.

Mum’s saying how they’ll get Don, telling them I have a solicitor. And then we’re going. My legs tremble as we walk to their car and there’s a roaring sound in my head.

At the police station I’m taken to the custody suite and have to answer questions about who I am and my health; they take my fingerprints and a mouth swab. They ask me to hand over my phone and keys and everything in my pockets. They want my belt, and my necklace too.

They lock me up. A cell with a hard bench and nothing else. Graffiti scratched into the walls. With what? Fingernails? It smells like disinfectant and something else, something cheesy. I’m cold but I’m sweating too, I can smell it. I want to wee but I don’t know if I’m allowed to or how to ask someone. If I’m supposed to call out or what.

It’s hard to judge how much later a police officer unlocks the door and says, ‘Your solicitor’s here. Come this way.’ I do as I’m told.

I nearly cry when I see Don. He’s got me a drink of tea in a paper cup. He arranges for me to go to the ladies’ – a police officer waits for me in the corridor outside.

‘I’ve spoken with the police,’ Don says, ‘and they want to interview you on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving. You understand?’

I nod. My heart contracts.

‘They’ve got the blood alcohol results from when you were admitted to hospital.’

I can hear a rushing sound in my head, and from his expression I can see it’s bad news.
Please, no!

‘You were almost one and a half times the legal limit for driving.’

It’s like the ground’s opened up beneath me and I’m plunging straight down.
Oh God, no!
How could I have done that? I can’t believe it. What the hell was I playing at?

I can’t talk; I’ll just blub if I try.

‘Still no recall?’ he checks.

I shake my head, my mouth all wobbly.

‘Right.’ He picks up his iPad. ‘There’s nothing to be gained by sticking you in an interview where all you can say is “I can’t remember”, so I’d advise you to offer a prepared statement. Yes?’

When I agree, he goes on, ‘All we need is to explain to them that you’ve no memory of the accident and the hours preceding it.’

He helps me word the statement, keeping it short and to the point.

Then I have to go back in the cell again.

Eventually they come for me, and they read the charge. I try not to cry. I will be released on bail, to appear at the magistrates’ court in a few days’ time. At the custody desk I get my things back and have to sign some forms, and then Don takes me home.

It’s official. It’s not going to go away or get forgotten about. I’m not going to wake up and laugh about it. I feel so dirty. So rotten. To the core.

N
aomi had been petrified, monosyllabic before they took her away. Her face, already pale from being inside so much, was now white as chalk. Don met us at the police station. We weren’t allowed beyond the front desk. They took her down to the custody suite. My work had brought me to police stations on several occasions. I knew the drill. But the fact that this was my daughter being booked in put a completely different slant on it. Phil had closed the shop and come to be with me. We were grateful to see Don, to have someone take charge.

‘I’ll have a pre-interview meeting with the police first,’ he said. ‘They are aiming to talk to her on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and they have the blood alcohol results.’

I swallowed, watching Don’s lips, trying to second-guess what he’d say. Wanting the result to be negligible, below the limit, to exonerate Naomi, lift the cloud. To demonstrate that it was an accident, nothing more. Her greatest sin taking the corner too fast. An accident, pure and simple. If she had been drinking, the purity vanished, didn’t it?

‘She was over the limit.’

My heart swooped.
Please no. No.
The hope melted away. I felt everything get darker.

‘They’ll tell me what they’ve got – the bare bones. Then I’ll see Naomi, advise her and take it from there. We could be a couple of hours. I can ring you?’

We hesitated, but he encouraged us to go. ‘There’s nothing you can do here,’ he said.

Phil was too strung out to go back to work, and my shift didn’t start until four. I rang Suzanne and we went over there.

‘Alex told us she was fine,’ I said to Phil when we were on our way. ‘Oh, Phil. Perhaps she’s got a drink problem? With all that stuff in college and now this. She could have been hiding it from us. From all of us.’

‘She hasn’t the money to drink all that much. We’d have noticed. We’d have seen the evidence, smelled it on her. It’s more likely she just made a serious misjudgement, thinking she could drive having had more than she intended.’

Back then, when she had been drinking in college, I’d tried to work out whether we’d contributed to her unhealthy use of alcohol. Had we not sent clear enough messages, been too tolerant of stories about drunken folly or set a bad example? Alcoholism runs in families, but there’d been none of that as far as I knew in either Phil’s or mine. We didn’t drink to excess, we didn’t drink every day, but booze was a pleasure and part of our socializing.

‘Suzanne was right,’ I said. Oh God. I could feel a band of tension around my skull, and my eyes ached. ‘What’s going to happen, Phil? If she’s convicted?’ I thought of the prisons I knew, of how grim life was inside them. ‘The drink – that’ll add to any jail term.’

Why?
demanded a voice in my head;
why, why, why?
Why had she been so stupid? To risk everything, to take a life for the sake of a couple of drinks.

We were all subdued, our talk desultory as we wandered around the country park near Suzanne’s house, taking turns to push Ollie in his pram. Suzanne hadn’t said much when I told her she’d been right about Naomi drinking, that she was over the limit. Just dipped her head once in acknowledgement, drew in her lips in a little moue of disapproval. I was glad she hadn’t launched into any attack or analysis; I don’t think I could have stood it.

The time stretched out, painfully slow. Phil kept checking his phone as if we’d not all hear it when it rang. Back at Suzanne’s we had a cuppa and some fancy ginger cake she’d bought, and Phil’s phone finally went off, making me jump, splashing some of my drink over the side of the cup.

Phil answered, listened. I saw a spasm of disappointment tighten his face, and then he said, ‘We’ll see you there.’ He put his phone down. ‘They’ve charged her, causing death by dangerous driving.’ He cleared his throat. ‘Released her on bail. They’re going back to the house now.’

‘Oh God,’ Suzanne sighed, and fetched a cloth to mop up my spill.

I got up. There was a roiling sensation in my stomach.

As we reached Mottram Lane, it was afternoon break and the children were running around in the school playground, busy knots of them in powder-blue uniforms.

Charged and released on bail
. Words that I’d never imagined hearing in connection with one of my kids.

We reached home at the same time as they did. Phil made tea; we were drinking an inordinate amount of tea. I had switched from coffee not long after the accident when I found myself speeding and jittery and having trouble sleeping.

‘The basis of their case against Naomi is Alex’s eyewitness statement,’ Don said, ‘in which he describes her as driving too quickly and losing control of the car. They also have statements from other witnesses who saw Naomi drinking at the party.’
Suzanne would be one of them.
‘And the results of a blood alcohol test. Naomi had one hundred and fifteen milligrams of alcohol per hundred millilitres of blood – the limit is eighty, so she was almost one and a half times the limit.’

I saw Naomi set her jaw, head down, staring at her hands.

‘That doesn’t alter the charge,’ Don explained. ‘It will be taken into account for sentencing, but I hope we will not reach that point. We gave the police a prepared statement explaining Naomi’s persistent amnesia. We go to the magistrates’ court sometime in the next couple of weeks, but that will simply be adjourned. The prosecution need time to get all the committal papers together. The committal hearing at the magistrates’ is usually within four to eight weeks after the preliminary hearing. If you know all this, with your job, stop me . . .’ Don looked at me.

‘Some,’ I said.

‘But it’s all new to me,’ Phil said, ‘and Naomi.’

‘Their case rests on Alex’s account, but I don’t know that there’s anything in there that
proves
,’ and he stressed the word, ‘dangerous rather than careless driving. The amnesia means it isn’t an easy case to fight, but I’d argue it’s not an easy case to prove, either. I’d be very hopeful of being able to reduce the severity of the charge or even get a not guilty result. Though there are no guarantees.’ His confidence was a lifebelt to cling to.