Page 23 of Close to You
Jane has turned back to the windscreen, but she stops and our eyes meet in the mirror. Her brows have dipped inwards.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Someone stole my car overnight.’
‘From the hotel…?’
‘I drove back not long after getting your text. I couldn’t sleep.’
Jane has her hands at a textbook two and ten on the wheel. Someone who’s used to driving carefully with her young daughter at her side. She’s started to reach for the handbrake but stops in mid-air as it sinks in. She doesn’t turn as she speaks.
‘The police think you did it…?’ There’s a glimmer of doubt in her voice, as if she’s really saying: ‘Tell me you didn’t do it…?’
Norah is babbling to herself in the front seat and then, from the stream of infant consciousness, produces the word ‘tree’. It breaks the impasse as Jane twists against her seat belt to look at her daughter and then me.
‘She likes the word “tree”,’ Jane says. ‘I think she’s going to be a botanist.’
‘Or a lumberjack.’
That gets a smile. ‘Not a lumberjack.’
‘I got home and went to sleep,’ I say. ‘When I woke up, my car was gone. I called in to report it and then the police turned up and breathalysed me.’
Her eyes go wide: ‘Really?’
‘I passed. I only had that one glass early on last night. They might contact you at some point. I had to tell them who I was with at the awards dinner.’
She pouts a lip and the momentary glimpse to Norah tells me that she doesn’t particularly want to get involved in whatever I’ve caught myself up in. I don’t think I blame her.
‘Is the road still closed?’ I ask.
‘There was a load of signs up when I was trying to get here, so I think so. I had to take that back road that goes past the rugby club, near Little Bush Woods.’
‘Can you take me to the crash?’
There’s a momentary hesitation, but then Jane reaches for the handbrake. ‘Sure.’
The scene of the crash is simultaneously better and worse than I imagined. There’s almost a comedy to it in that whoever was driving my car smashed it into the lamp post adjacent to the ‘Welcome To Gradingham’ sign. Underneath, it still reads ‘Thank you for driving carefully’, which now comes across as somewhat sarcastic.
The lamp post has doubled in half and there’s a small white tent on the grass verge, where, presumably, the poor pedestrian ended up. There are no pavements out here, yet locals are used to walking the country lanes to get to some of the houses that sit a little outside the village boundaries. I’ve done it myself – more or less everyone who lives in the area will have done the same at some point.
My car is also in the verge, though it is almost entirely shielded from view by a series of screens. There are three police cars parked opposite the crash scene, with barriers across the road. A uniformed officer is standing to the side, whirring his finger in a circle to encourage us to turn around. Instead, Jane parks on the side of the road, where there are already a couple of other vehicles. In a village where very little happens, this is up there with a new Nintendo console for entertainment. The officer is trying to convince people there’s nothing to see, while kids who have dumped their bikes on the ground are taking photos on their phones. The ‘Thank you for driving carefully’ juxtaposition will be a meme within the hour – if it isn’t already. It might be funny if it wasn’t my car and I wasn’t the person accused of a hit and run. Not to mention the victim…
‘I’ll wait,’ Jane says, seemingly reading my mind once more.
I let myself out of the car and approach the makeshift barrier. The crash scene has suddenly become Gradingham’s top tourist attraction. When the only competition is the duck pond, it’s not much of a surprise.
As well as the officer at the barrier, who has seemingly given up on trying to turn people away, there are more watching on as three people in white paper suits disappear behind the sheet that’s covering half of my car. There are skid marks on the road, with rubber marks from where the car veered off to the side.
There’s blood, too.
A splash of deep crimson has stained the grass at the top of the verge, before disappearing down the slope, out of sight.
The number plate at the back is covered by the sheet, but the purple heart that hangs from the mirror is clear enough. There’s no question it’s my car.
‘You have to move back.’
I look up – and the officer who was guarding the barrier has been joined by a second. The newcomer has his arms spread wide in front of the kids and is beckoning them away.
