Page 34 of After the Accident
Who benefits?was the only thing I kept thinking. Scott had got that phrase into my head and it wasn’t going anywhere.
Julius:Victor left the table first. He said he was off to show a local girl a good time.
Emma:Ugh.
Victor:It was a joke. Everyone at that table knew it was a joke.
Emma:After Victor left, I waited about five minutes and then figured I could make a break for it, too. I had no plans for the evening, other than to call my phone company and then go to sleep. There’s that saying about things seeming different in the morning and I really hoped so many things would.
I said goodnight to the twins and Mum – and then walked off towards the cottages. There’s an archway a little past the pool, before you get to the walkway for the cottages, where it’s almost completely dark. It’s only a few steps to get through it and then there’s another row of lights. I stood under that arch, looking at the midges buzz close to the lights near the pool, and I felt watched and… vulnerable, I suppose.
I don’t think I stood there long, maybe a couple of seconds, and then I walked really quickly back to the cottage. I let myself in and then locked the door behind me. I didn’t turn on any lights, but I stood in the window, looking out towards the lawn. I don’t know what I expected to see, if anything, but I couldn’t lose that feeling of being exposed.
It was probably five minutes until I pulled the curtains and went through to the bedroom.
I saw it the moment I went through, sitting on the side table exactly where I’d left it hours before. Exactly where ithadn’tbeen when I’d last looked.
My phone was back.
Chapter Nineteen
Day Four
THE SECOND GLASS
Emma:Mum woke me up the next morning. I was still dozing when she knocked on the cottage door. She was looking brighter and said she was off to the hospital to see Dad being brought out of the coma. She said she’d contact me if there was any news – but no one was really using their phones on the island because of the poor signal.
There was an optimism about her voice that hadn’t been there in a couple of days. She told me to go and enjoy the island and that there was no point in wasting the day.
Perhaps she saw something in my face when she said that. Something I didn’t know was there. In the end, I can’t tell you why that was the day we finally had the conversation. It had been around three years overdue, but I suppose I didn’t want to hear it and she didn’t want to say it. Then we were away from our comfort zones and normality and, from nowhere, she finally said it.
She goes: ‘It was only two glasses.’
I was standing in the door frame of the cottage and she was about two steps away. She looked right into my eyes, like she was staring into my soul, and her voice croaked as if she was getting over a cold.
I couldn’t reply at first, there weren’t words. Time shifted. We were suddenly in the cottage’s living room area. She was on the sofa, but I was standing, looking down towards her.
She repeated herself: ‘It was only two glasses.’
I stared and all I could say was: ‘It was still drink-driving, Mum.’
She started with: ‘In my day—’ but I couldn’t listen to that. I talked over her, saying that itwasn’ther day and that it didn’t matter. I shouldn’t have had the second glass. I shouldn’t have had the first.
If I hadn’t been driving that day, then I wouldn’t have killed my little boy…
…
…
No, I don’t want a minute. I want to say this.
Mum goes: ‘It was the other driver who was speeding, not you.’
That’s what they kept talking about in court. My solicitor was convinced it was why I’d be dealt with leniently. That’s the truth – but it doesn’t help. I didn’t want leniency.
After the other car hit mine, there was bits of our vehicles scattered across the road. The paramedics was there with the fire brigade and the police. They were trying to cut my little boy free from the wreckage. I should be able to tell you what I was doing, but I don’t remember. I never see the scene in moving images. They’re always still shots as if I wasn’t there. As if I saw the pictures the next day and that those are what stayed with me.
While all that was going on, the other driver and I were both breathalysed. It wasn’t in question that he was speeding and had gone through a red light – there was CCTV of it happening – but his reading was zero. Mine was over.
