Page 57 of After the Accident
Julius:Emma said she’d found something of Dad’s and that Daniel wanted it.
It sounded, well… mad, I suppose. Such an odd thing to say. I asked what she’d found and she said: ‘I’m not sure I should say.’
Emma:I didn’t know if I could trust him. It was only the day before that I found out he’d lost his job and had been lying about it.
Julius:She ended up saying: ‘It’s just something Daniel wants,’ as if this was perfectly normal. She’d basically told me she’d stolen something from Dad – and that Daniel wanted it back. What did she expect me to say?
Emma:When it’s put like that, I realise it doesn’t sound great. All I can say is that it wasn’t as clear-cut as that. I knew lots of little bits of information that nobody else seemed to know and I made the best decisions I could in the moment.
It’s easy to say I was wrong when you can look back on things – but you could make that observation about all sorts of choices. There’s a whole scientific theory about it, called hindsight bias. Say you go into a lake to save a drowning dog. If you drown yourself, it was a terrible idea. If you save the dog and get back to shore, then you’re a hero. It’s the same decision, but it’s viewed through the outcome.
You can say I made the wrong decisions – but what if things had gone differently in those final twenty-four hours?
Julius:…
Really?Dogs in lakes? Is that the best she has…?
Emma:Julius said he was glad we were talking again. I said something like: ‘Did we ever stop?’
Julius:She’s my sister and there was a double punishment in losing her son and then going to prison. I’m not a monster. I wanted her to be an aunt to Amy and Chloe. Our estrangement, if you want to call it that, was pretty much enforced because she was behind bars.
Emma:I told him that he could have visited me at any time. He said he didn’t want to take up any of my visit times when other people could have seen me. He mentioned Mum, but I must have raised an eyebrow or something because he admitted then he didn’t want to go to a prison.
Julius:Can you blame me? It’s not like we were really close before that. What would we have ever talked about? Surely it was better to let Mum have the visiting slots?
Emma:He said that the twins ask after me and that he’d talk to Simone about seeing if I could be a bigger part of their lives when we got back to the UK.
…
He made me cry.
Julius:…
Obviously, I know what happened after that – but it was a genuine moment that morning. Amy and Chloe wanted to see more of her and it seemed like they were good for her, too. I thought that Emma might be able to tag along on some weekend trips, that sort of thing.
There were tears in Emma’s eyes and I can’t pretend that I wasn’t uncomfortable. There was a spare toilet roll on a shelf by the door, so I passed it to her and she blew her nose. It led to an awkward moment where she was holding this snotty tissue and didn’t know what to do with it. It made us both laugh.
…
I guess that was the last time we really enjoyed one another’s company. The last time we were a proper brother and sister. I didn’t know it then, of course. If I did, perhaps I’d have thought of something better to talk to her about. If we’d have been flying home that day, everything would have been different.
Emma:I wanted the thing he was offering. I wanted to be a fun aunt. I suppose I wanted to be part of a family.
Julius:It was Emma who chose not to have that.
Emma:We’d been talking for a while and the twins were obviously wondering what was going on. Amy came to the door and squished around her dad. She asked if I was going to be at dinner that night, because she’d missed me the night before. I said that I would. She asked if I’d sit next to her on the plane when we went back, and I replied that I thought she’d want to be by Chloe.
She lowered her voice to a whisper and there was a glint in her eye as she said I could sit in between them.
Julius:Amy came to see what was going on and asked if Emma could sit next to her when we flew home. I said: ‘We’ll see,’ because I thought Mum might want to be with the girls.
Emma:Julius told Amy that we were having a conversation and that she should go back to the telly. He said he’d be back soon and then they could go to the pool. She protested in the way kids do when they want to be involved in the things grown-ups are doing – but she did as she was told, which left Julius and me alone in the doorway again.
Julius:After that, Emma left and I didn’t see her again until the cottages.
Emma:Julius moved closer and pulled the door half-closed. He leaned in and whispered, asking if we should tell the police about Daniel.
I think I was surprised more than anything. He had seemed almost dismissive of everything I had been saying – but then he brought up the police.
