Blink of an Eye (2013) (21 page)

I began to wonder if the trauma that had prompted Naomi’s amnesia had also affected some part of the brain that influenced personality. After all, I’d seen that with my mum. The old Naomi, the slightly ditzy, funny, spontaneous girl, was now lethargic, colourless. It could be the grey fog of depression smothering her energy, but what if she never came out of it?

There had been a reporter in court and the evening paper let the world and his wife know that Naomi Baxter (25) of Northenden, Manchester, had been charged with causing death by dangerous driving in the case of Lily Vasey.

We got phone calls. People who weren’t close but knew us well enough to have our phone number. Friends of friends, people who come for New Year’s parties and we don’t see from one year to the next or who I’d met through the massage course. They called up, to express their shock: was it really our Naomi, was there anything they could do?

I don’t know what was more difficult, the twittering interest of those individuals or the shattering silence of others. The Cynthia Stillers to whom we had become pariahs to be shunned.

For a few days I fended off any queries from Naomi about seeing Suzanne, saying she had a lot on, then that Jonty was back from Aberdeen and they had plans, then that Ollie wasn’t sleeping much. Not that Naomi mentioned her sister often.

It was during one of her visits to the hospital outpatient clinic, in the waiting area, that she interrupted me reading my book to say, ‘I texted Suzanne, she’s not replied. Is there something wrong with her phone?’

Oh Jesus. How to answer. There was no way to tell her without it cutting her to the quick. But I couldn’t lie to her; she didn’t deserve lies.

‘Suzanne’s upset,’ I said, ‘about the accident, about you driving.’

The expression on her face altered, the glower of guilt, plain as when she’d been a child caught doing something she shouldn’t.

‘She’s finding it hard to deal with.’

‘With me?’ Naomi said, her voice wavering.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’

She bit her lip, her brow creasing. ‘So she’s dumped me, has she?’

I hesitated too long, framing the words, confirming her guess. When I began to try and explain, she just said, ‘It doesn’t matter, we were never that close anyway.’

Writing off twenty-five years of sisterhood, of shared mealtimes and holidays, of games and outings and celebrations and squabbles. Tears and kisses and secrets.

‘Is that really how you feel about it?’

‘Don’t bother with the whole social-work bit.’ She rolled her eyes.

‘I’m not being a social worker, I’m your mother,’ I said.

She left her chair then, ostensibly to get a cup of water but effectively ending the conversation.

I put my head in my hands, closed my eyes and tried to calm my pulse. When we got home I rang the GP. Maybe Naomi was refusing to try tablets for her troubles, but I needed something otherwise I was going to fly apart. I could feel the pressure growing inside, an explosion waiting to happen, the fuse burning, crackling, fizzing along. Saw myself, arms and legs and head shattered, flung, soaring away from each other. A crash-test dummy.

Suzanne never forgets and she never forgives. She’s got a big black book in her head and everyone’s slightest misdemeanour is listed in precise detail, in permanent ink. I used to wish that once, just once, she’d mess up big time. Find out what it’s really like to make a mistake, to jump the wrong way, to fail. To feel small and shabby and miserable about yourself.

I’ve tried so hard to impress her. Slaving for my A levels and getting good grades, sticking at the degree even though it was really tough and I often wanted to give up. But the most I ever got from her was ‘Pretty good’, in this
I can’t quite believe it
voice, half expecting her to say that the grades were easier to get than when she sat them.

And then I couldn’t get a job and we were back living at Mum’s and I’d nothing to show her. Only Alex. Nothing to prove that I wasn’t a slacker and a loser.

And now this.

And she’s not the only one, not the most important one. How they must hate me. Lily’s parents, her brothers, all the rest of her family. Hate me without even knowing me, without any idea of what I look like, or what my personality is like or what I feel about what I have done.

I can’t even apologize to them, say how sorry I am, because if I did that then it would be like admitting I’m guilty, and everyone agrees that I have to plead not guilty.

Sometimes I feel like giving up and owning up, saying, ‘Yes! I did it, I suddenly remember! It’s all come flooding back. I was careless and I was drunk and I just never saw her, didn’t realize we were so close when the bumper or the wheel or whatever hit her.’ But I can’t even do that because I’d be perjuring myself, you see. Because I
can’t
fucking remember, so how the hell can I stand up in court and say ‘x and y and z happened and I’m terribly, terribly sorry, punish me now’?

I don’t think the guilt will ever go away. Even if they convict me and send me to prison. The awful leaden feeling inside, like an iron fist, cold and hard and unforgiving. Nothing can bring Lily back. There’s no magic formula that can bleach away the stain of what I’ve done. It’s only right that someone pays. If it was Ollie that had been hurt I’d want someone to pay for it. I wish there was something I could do to show them how sorry I am, how truly, truly sorry.

Becky and Steve come round. They talk about her wedding dress, then fall quiet and she looks a bit funny. She says, ‘You might want to take your Facebook page down.’

Steve goes bright red, like a tomato. ‘People mucking about.’

I grow cold. ‘What’ve they done?’

‘It’s just juvenile,’ Becky sighs, ‘prats.’

‘What is it?’

‘There’s a wreath, your name on it.’

‘And comments about your driving.’

‘Right.’ I get my laptop then and there and go to the page. I don’t want to read any of it but some of the words jump off the screen:
slapper, crazy bitch, killer
. These must be people who know me, people who are my Facebook friends.

‘We could report them,’ Becky says.

I shake my head. ‘Not worth it.’ And anyway, most people would probably agree with them.

I deactivate my account. I’m gone. Don’t exist any more.

When they’ve left, I look on Alex’s page. It says:
Status: single
. I feel like I’m trespassing. I close it down quickly. It’s like I can’t be part of that world any more.

Evie came round for the evening. Naomi was up in her room, which gave me a chance to tell her about the rift between Suzanne and her sister.

Phil had been relatively sanguine about it. ‘Give her time, you know Suzanne. High horse, higher principles.’

‘She’ll be feeling things more intensely after the baby,’ Evie pointed out. ‘Perhaps when things have settled down . . .’

‘When have you ever known Suzanne to change her position?’

‘Here.’ Evie filled our glasses. ‘Suppose Naomi’s found not guilty? There is a chance of that?’

‘According to Don, yes,’ I said.

‘How would Suzanne see it all then?’ Evie said.

‘Well, she’s pedantic, so in theory she’d accept the legal arguments, but she’d probably say that morally Naomi was still guilty. She’s so . . . righteous.’

‘There’s nothing you can do really. Just keep the channels of communication open, keep seeing her and Ollie and Jonty,’ Evie said. ‘What about Naomi, have any of her friends been around, been here for her?’

‘Yes, Becky and Steve, they’ve been brilliant.’ Naomi hadn’t kept in close contact with many friends from schooldays, but Becky was one of them. She had gone to work in the family business after school, where she met Steve, who’d just started as their online sales manager.

‘And when’s she next in court?’ Evie took a drink.

‘Next month, for the committal hearing,’ I said.

Waking up, and the dream starts to dissolve. I try and snatch it back, catch it, cling to it. I was happy. We were in a hotel, Alex and me, a plush room and a trolley with food on it, white curtains billowing. An outside terrace, ours, with steps to the beach. Alex had been surfing, he came running up the beach and I ran to meet him and he kissed me and his lips were warm and salty. Not cold like someone fresh from the sea. And in the dream I wasn’t frightened, there was no fear, no sick apprehension, no cold ball of shame in my belly. It was like Adam and Eve before the fall or something. How we used to be.

But now the dream is just an aftertaste, sweet in my mouth, making it fill with saliva, an urge to retch coming. In the toilet, I heave but nothing comes up. It happens a lot. I mentioned this at the hospital, at one of my outpatients visits, but they didn’t have any theories about it. Certainly didn’t think it was anything significant in comparison to all the other physical stuff I’ve got going on.

I know what it is.

I can’t stomach myself. I make myself sick.

I
go to the cemetery. It’s huge. There are old graves from hundreds of years ago, and tombs too, smothered in green, some of the stones cracked and tilting.

There are roads and pathways. I don’t know where to start. There is the chapel. I remember vaguely coming here when Nana Baxter died.

I follow a woman who is carrying flowers into the office building with the clock tower. I’m holding a bouquet too, brightly coloured, red and yellow and purple and white. I didn’t write anything on the card. I don’t want to upset anyone. I shouldn’t think Lily’s family would want me here. I’m sure if they saw my name on the flowers they’d tear the heads off and shred them into little bits.

In the office I give Lily’s name. The woman checks on the computer and tells me it’s in the section on the other side of Nell Lane, and gives me a plot number.

It’s quite a walk and I’m sweating and my ankle is very sore. The trees on the way are vast and old and the air is full of flies and butterflies, and where the sun cuts through the trees, dust swirls round and round in long spirals.

There are no trees in the new bit, lots of new graves. The main road runs close by, the traffic loud and constant. My mouth is dry. I didn’t think to bring any water with me.

Lily’s grave has a marker but no headstone yet. I suppose they have to get it carved. There are lots of toys and flowers, cards and helium balloons that have sunk to the ground now.

There are three vases with flowers in. It’s hard to find space to lay my flowers down without disturbing anything, so I put them off to one side.

There is a lovely photograph of her in the centre in a white frame. She’s looking at the camera full on and laughing and she has a straw sun hat on. Perhaps it’s from a holiday.

‘I’m sorry,’ I whisper, ‘I’m so sorry. I am sorry.’

The blare of a horn from the motorway startles me and my heart jumps in my chest.

I walk back to the bus stop and go home.

‘It’s good you’ve been out,’ Mum greets me when I get in.

I’m parched. I get a drink of water and gulp it down. ‘I went to the grave,’ I say.

She pauses. I can see she’s wondering what to say; she wasn’t expecting this. In the end she says, ‘All right then,’ and gives a nod.

They say she died instantly. That she didn’t suffer. But the people left behind, the people who loved her, they must be in agony.

I keep thinking of prison, being locked up, and the sort of people who’ll be in there, and the bullying. It frightens me. But everything feels scary these days. Most of all the inside of my head. I have these horrible thoughts, like a commentary scrolling on a loop, like the way on the news they have a running stream of headlines at the bottom of the screen. And it never stops and it continually distracts you from what the newsreader is saying.

My commentary goes on and on. It’s even worse when I’m with other people and I’m trying to act normally but I’m worried that they can tell what I’m really thinking. And see what an awful person I am.

Like Becky and Steve come over and Becky talks about stuff at work or a band they saw or the latest on the wedding, and I look like I’m interested but in my head I’m like,
And why do you think I care? You with your happy face and your dull, pretty boyfriend and your safe little lives. Why are you here? What are you for, exactly?
Awful, nasty thoughts.

I hate myself for being like this. I am such a fake. I am full of poison. Pathetic. You think they’d have noticed by now.

My last regular visit to the surgical consultant. The person who deals with me I’ve never met before. They ask the usual questions and I don’t have to undress or anything. I’m still losing weight but I tell them it’s because I’m eating more healthy food. It’s what they want to hear and it doesn’t really matter. I’m still a size ten, hardly fading away. I like the thought of fading away. Nothing drastic or sudden but a slow decline. So I’d go from like I am now to slightly see-through like a ghost and then eventually drift into thin air.

The doctor says, ‘And how are you in yourself?’

‘Not so bad,’ I lie.

In myself I am a total fuck-up.

Mum brings me tea and toast if I’m not up in the morning. She tries to talk to me, invites me to go shopping or offers to treat me to a haircut. She goes on and on, like a fish on a hook, flapping this way and that until I want to push her out of the room. Push her down the stairs. And then I feel so horrible for even thinking like that.

The only escape is sleep, but I can’t sleep enough, not as much as I want to. I wake too early, still tired, when the house is cold, and I lie there trying to force myself back under, but my mind won’t be quiet. Or I go to bed and lie awake for hours, the tension setting in my arms and back like concrete, my skin itching, the sheets mashed up as I toss and turn. I did try listening to music on my iPod, but so much of it makes me cry.

I miss Alex. It was the right thing to do: why should he be saddled with me after all that has happened? Besides, it could have tainted his reputation at work, too, couldn’t it? Like when we first got together and I wanted to put him on my Facebook page. He was okay with that but he said if there was anything dodgy there like drunken pictures or stuff about drugs it’d be better to take it down because he has to be squeaky clean if he wants to be a solicitor. It’s like those teachers who put totally inappropriate stuff up there and then their kids at school find it and they end up being disciplined or sacked or whatever. Alex needn’t have worried – I’d nothing scandalous on there. But if we’d stayed together?
Status: it’s complicated – partner in prison :-(