Page 35 of After the Accident
I know that sounds like an excuse, but it honestly isn’t – it’s a factual thing. I’ve never tried to minimise what I did. I made a terrible, unconscionable decision to drive.
My baby boy died on the side of the road and then, just after, they arrested me for drink-driving. It all became the same thing.
The papers rightly said I was the drink-driving mum who killed her one-year-old son.
That’s me.
That’s who I was, who I am, and who I’ll always be.
In the three years between the car crash and us ending up in Galanikos, Mum and I had never spoken about what happened and then, suddenly, we were.
I pleaded guilty and it was at the sentencing hearing where the lawyer tried to make the same argument that Mum was later making in the cottage.
Mum looked up to me from the sofa and she said: ‘You did your time.’
All I could think was: ‘It doesn’t bring him back, does it?’
Maybe I said it out loud, or maybe she read those thoughts?
She stood again and went to the door. We weren’t having the conversation, after all. She bowed her head a fraction and told me to enjoy the day.
She left after that – and all I can remember thinking is that I really wish we’d not had the talk. It didn’t heal anything and it didn’t help…
…
I went to prison. I wanted them to throw away the key, but, instead, I was considered low-risk at reoffending, so they let me go after barely half my sentence.
My husband divorced me. Can’t blame him for that. I don’t even know where he lives now.
They banned me from driving, even though I served that while I was behind bars. Like outlawing a man from walking – but only while he’s asleep.
Were there penalties? Not really.
When I was a girl, Mum shouted at me for knocking over a salt shaker. She shouted at me for walking into the kitchen with muddy shoes. She shouted at me for getting home three minutes after curfew. She did all those things and then, when I took away her grandson, she told me that I did my time…
…
…
I need that minute now.
Extract from local newspaper website:‘…police said Mrs McGinley had 39 micrograms of alcohol per 100ml of breath when she was breathalysed at the scene. The legal limit is 35 micrograms.’
Emma:I walked down to the village after Mum left and went back to the car hire place. I’d been nervous the day before because I’d not driven since the crash. It was probably that talk with Mum, because I was so furious with her for letting me off, but I wasn’t nervous the second time.
I still can’t believe I got my driving licence back. If you don’t ban someone for life for killing their baby boy, then what do you ban them for?
I wouldn’t have reapplied if it wasn’t for Tina. She said I might need to drive to help out with the shop at some point, so I did it for her. I never planned to drive again, but then there I was, on Galanikos of all places.
Barak greeted me like an old friend. He told me he’d saved me the best car and that he had the best price. I filled in the paperwork and showed him my driving licence. I was waiting for him to throw it in my face and tell me I shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near the road but all he did was photocopy it and hand it back. He barely even looked at it, not that there was anything strange to see. On paper, I’m like any other driver.
Everything took less than five minutes and then he handed me some keys, before pointing to a small white car.
I’d spent so little time thinking this through that it was only when I got to the car that I realised it was an automatic, with the driver’s seat on the opposite side to what I’m used to. It should have put me off, but it gave me confidence instead. This was different than any time I had driven before.
It was hot when I got into the driver’s seat: that sort of sweltering, suffocating claustrophobia that you only get from cars on a warm day. As soon as I turned the key, cold air started blasting from the vents. I felt the vibrations rumbling and I knew I should be hesitant.
I wasn’t.
