One Split Second E-Book

Caroline Bond

• Herausgeber: Corvus
• Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2020

Beschreibung

One split second ... the moment that changed their lives forever. When a car carrying five friends home from a party crashes into a wall, the consequences are devastating - not just for the young people directly involved, but also for their families and the wider community. No one escapes unscathed, but some are more deeply scarred than others. Those affected are left to question who was to blame for the accident, and what price they will pay. This moving story of an accident and its aftermath explores our understanding of love and loyalty, grief and forgiveness.

Leseprobe

Also by Caroline Bond

The Forgotten SisterThe Second Child

Published in hardback in Great Britain in 2020 by Corvus, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Caroline Bond, 2020

The moral right of Caroline Bond to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities, is entirely coincidental.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 83895 107 8

Trade paperback ISBN: 978 1 78649 923 3

E-book ISBN: 978 1 78649 924 0

Printed in Great Britain

Corvus

An imprint of Atlantic Books LtdOrmond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.corvus-books.co.uk

Dedicated to the peoplewho say, ‘Yes’

THIRTY - TWO DAYS AFTER THE ACCIDENT

THE MESSAGE went out to All Staff at the beginning of the day. It was read and passed on over and over again. Conversations were had about who could be spared and who could not. Far more wanted to attend than were able, but that was the way it was – even for this. Many of the frontline staff knew immediately that they wouldn’t be able to go. Their presence was required elsewhere. When your day job is a matter of life or death, the living take precedence. A number of people were secretly relieved to be denied permission. It felt wrong not to want to be there, and wrong to be thankful to miss it.

The corridor vigil was a St Thomas’s tradition that had started with Lenny Okafor. Nineteen years of age, cause of death: inoperable internal bleeding caused by falling from a roof. (The firm that employed Lenny was eventually prosecuted for its poor health-andsafety procedures, but that provided little solace to Lenny’s family.) Lenny’s dad, Vincent – who was a porter at the hospital at the time of the accident – was, thankfully, not on duty the day his son was brought into A&E. In fact Vincent would never work as a porter again, not in St Thomas’s or anywhere else. He said he simply couldn’t face doing the job any more, not after what happened. The honour guard for Lenny was a spontaneous gesture of support organised by Vincent’s work mates. It felt like the least they could do to show their respects to the family and the brave decision they had made.

There were probably about twenty people there for that very first act of observance, most of them porters. They stood in clumps of twos and threes, ranged along the corridor, uncertain of the protocol, which was understandable – because there wasn’t any. Robbed of their usual banter, their feet still and their hands idle for a change, Vincent’s work mates shuffled and whispered quietly – until the doors of the ICU banged opened and Vincent, the bloke with the loudest laugh and the worst jokes, wheeled his firstborn out on his last-ever journey. As the gurney passed along the corridor the porters bowed their heads in absolute silence.

Now the attendees for the vigils came from every walk of life and level within the hospital. An untimely death touched all the staff, irrespective of their clinical and professional experience. They were all mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, friends and lovers – all capable of contemplating the unimaginable, and humble enough to pay witness to it. Indeed, the corridor ritual for the organ donation patients and their families had become a touchstone in the lives of many of them; a way – not that anyone ever voiced it – of warding away the Furies from their own precious, all-too-fragile loved ones.

By 10.36 a.m. on Wednesday 3 April more than two hundred people were gathered in the corridor on Level B. Clerks, porters, nurses, cleaners, quite a few of the junior doctors, a smattering of consultants and even a few members of the general public who happened to be there and who bravely chose to stay and participate. Many of the faces were familiar: rivals, adversaries, subordinates and bosses. They whispered to each other or stood apart in quiet contemplation – just as the porters had done for Lenny.

At 10.37 a.m. two of the ICU nurses came out of the ward and held open the doors. That was the signal. The gathered crowd, which had been subdued before, now fell silent.

The wait lasted only a matter of seconds, but it felt, as it always did, much longer.

Those nearest the door heard it first – the mechanical sound of the life-support machine. The trolley emerged slowly, flanked by the attendant staff and the patient’s relatives. In a wordless ripple, the attendees along the corridor bowed their heads. They did so to pay their respects, but also to avoid looking into the eyes of the grieving family.

Chapter 1

THE NIGHT OF THE ACCIDENT

PETE MCKINNON was looking for his cat when he heard the bang or, more accurately, felt it deep inside his chest. There was a moment of silence. Then the screaming started – a loud stream of noise that went on, and on. Pete froze. For a split second he contemplated going back inside his house and pulling the door closed behind him, but his better instincts took over and he set off running.

According to the police report, it took Pete less than twenty seconds to get from his small, weed-filled front garden to the incident.

Pete was the first person on the scene.

The first person to call 999.

The first person to try and help.

The first witness.

And he would wish, for the rest of his life, that he hadn’t been.

For years afterwards he would dream about the blood under the girl’s fingernails and the way she’d rocked back and forth in the moonlight before collapsing face-down on the grass.

The sirens woke more people. They peered out from behind closed curtains, felt an immediate sense of shock and an irresistible impulse to see more. Bare feet were shoved into shoes, jackets pulled on top of pyjamas, and phones slipped into pockets. They emerged from their houses and crept guiltily towards the lights – moths towards the flame.

Many would later wish that they hadn’t.

The first photo was posted sixteen minutes after the crash.

The first parent to feel vaguely sick when she saw the post was Tina Walker, up with her youngest daughter: earache – again. Tina was one of the lucky ones. Lydia, her eldest daughter, answered her phone on the third ring and promised faithfully – above the noise of the party – that she was fine. Tina insisted that she stay put and wait for her father to pick her up. It was a late-night ‘dad taxi’ run that Liam was deeply thankful to be able to do. Having reassured herself that her own daughter was safe, Tina began worrying about other people’s kids. She called Steph to double-check on Becca. Steph understandably panicked and spread the gut-clenching anxiety by texting anyone and everyone who had a son or daughter of an age to be out on a Saturday night, including Kath. Kath sent a group WhatsApp, thinking it was the quickest way of getting the word out. Cheryl saw it and immediately rang Sam and Melanie and, on second thoughts, Dom.

And so it was that the arteries that ran deep within the flesh of the community spread the fear. Even parents who knew full well that their kids were safe, and in their rooms, scrambled out of bed and went to look in on their ‘children’, many of whom were awake, their faces lit by the glow of their screens.

News travels fast, especially bad news.

By 1.45 a.m. the ripples of alarm had gathered force and a tidal wave of panic was sluicing through the community. The promise of instant contact afforded by modern technology became a blight. Anyone unable to reach their son or daughter immediately assumed the worse, many incorrectly – but not all. Those who did speak to their kids directly did so hurriedly, urgently, telling them to stay put until they could be fetched safely home.

Five miles away in the home of Alice Mitcham – whose parents were away in Crete for the week – the party came to a juddering halt. The music stopped, the drinking stopped, the fun stopped. All of them suddenly felt stone-cold sober. Someone switched on the big light and the party-goers huddled together under its unforgiving glare, hugging each other. Names were whispered, roles assigned, motivations attributed. And so it was that the story of the night took root and began to grow. There was relief when the first cars started arriving to take them home. They left one by one, two by two, quietly, obediently, young adults returned to childhood by the shock. When the last person had gone, Alice sat, on her own, amidst the remnants of the party, her phone clutched in her hand, looking at the messages, wishing her own parents home.

By 2.30 a.m. the whereabouts of most of the kids was known. Most – but not all. Because, for a small handful of parents, there was no response to their frantic calls and messages. No wordless reunions and fierce hugs. These parents – the truly unlucky ones – plunged headlong into the awful realisation that their child had been involved in the night’s events.

Chapter 2

SAL REYNOLDS, Tish’s mum, was at home, on her own – as she always was nowadays – when the posts started appearing. Her instant reaction was to assume that Tish was one of those hurt. The recorded message telling her that the phone she was calling was switched off made her feel sick. Sal had little faith in fate not to dump an unfair proportion of crap into the lives of those already struggling. And Sal was used to crap happening. It was Tish and her against the world. That’s how they got by. The thought of something bad happening to her only child made Sal feel deeply, shakily afraid. She rocked, she paced, she dialled and re-dialled. Nothing. After half an hour of panic she simply couldn’t stand being trapped in her small living room, not knowing, any longer. She put on her coat and set off for the crash site, compelled to go, but terrified of what she was going to find. As she hurried through the tight grid of streets that led down to the ring road, she noticed how many of the houses had lights on. Different families – the same fear.

Sal arrived quietly, unannounced, and stood behind the police cordon with the growing congregation of horrified, curious bystanders, her stomach clenched so tightly that she had to stoop to accommodate the pain.

Jake Hammond’s three older brothers, Sonny, Charlie and Ed, also made their way down to the ring road. They drove – a couple of beers didn’t count.

The minute they’d heard about the accident they’d felt a fizzing compulsion to find out what had happened. They’d gathered back at home, summoned by the frantic calls from their mum, Anita. As she cranked herself up into a frenzy of worry, they’d offered to go and double-check that Jake wasn’t involved. Jake often stayed out until four or five in the morning; he was bound to be at a different party or in a bar somewhere. They were confident that he wouldn’t be heading home this early on a night out.

They arrived at the crash site in plenty of time for the scene to have lost little of its excitement. Their hearts thumped in response to the lights, the crackle of the police radios and the frenetic, but controlled focus of the fire and ambulance crews. The brothers were glad they’d come. People were going to be talking about this for weeks. They already felt a curious pride, knowing they’d be able to say that they were there. Instinctively they raised their phones and started taking pictures, zooming in, zooming out, trying hard to capture the drama and the scale of the carnage. Weaned as they were on the graphic simulations of Grand Theft Auto, the scene in front of them was nothing new, but what they were unprepared for was the dawning realisation that this was different – because this was real. This was what real speed did to a real car that had real passengers inside it. This was metal smashed with a bone-breaking impact, and glass exploded by the exertion of way too much force. This was the acrid smell of petrol and melted plastic, and the weird quiet of a closed road.

The car, or what was left of it, was embedded in the wall of the Gerard’s Fabrications building. A total write-off. It had once been a Seat Leon. A blue Seat Leon.

Harry Westwood drove a midnight-blue Seat Leon.

Harry was Jake’s mate – had been since primary school.

Jake and Harry went out together, a lot.

Their mum’s hysteria began to seem like a rational reaction.

Dom was driving back up to York from Birmingham after a long, tedious meeting and a late business dinner when Cheryl rang and told him about the accident. Dom’s company was looking into acquiring a new dealership group based in and around Edgbaston. It was pricey, especially given the state of the market, and the investors they had lined up were getting twitchy, but Dom thought they were being over-cautious. It was a good opportunity. The group was currently being run, badly, by a father, two sons and a nephew combo – some sort of Brummie mafia. They were stuck in the Dark Ages in terms of marketing and IT, but the showrooms were in great locations and the dealership had a large, loyal customer base. The deal had its problems, but it also offered a lot of potential. The last thing Dom needed at the end of a long day was this – whatever this was. Probably Cheryl panicking. She was a ‘molehill into a mountain’ merchant. That said, Dom drove faster after talking to her.

He instructed his hands-free to call Harry. He kept glancing at the display as it repeatedly, automatically, fruitlessly re-dialled his son’s number. Anxiety increased the pressure of his foot on the accelerator, but as he neared home he was forced to slow down. Suddenly there was traffic, which made no sense; he would normally have sailed round this section of the ring road at this time of night. The realisation that the hold-up was probably a result of the accident was sobering. Dom sat in the queue of cars and refused to allow himself to worry. Harry often ignored his phone, especially when he was out. That was the mantra Dom decided to stick to – his son’s all-round slackness, his ‘easy come/easy go’ life of friends and having a good time; Harry’s similarity to himself at that age. The phone tried again, and once again abandoned the call after eight attempts. Harry could very well have left his phone at home, dropped it down the loo – again – or just be ignoring his calls. All of which was highly likely. Dom drummed his fingers on the steering wheel and blocked out any possible connection between the crash, his son and his son’s new, midnight-blue, high-spec Seat Leon.

Shazia and Nihal sat together on the sofa in their front room, taking it in turns to ring Mo, and trying to convince each other that the fact the police hadn’t contacted them was a good sign, that there was still hope. But with every slow minute, their faith weakened and warped. They didn’t know what to do, where to be, what to think – other than that they must try and not think the unthinkable. They hadn’t wanted Mo to go the party. He had work in the morning, and he was a boy who needed his sleep. Not a boy, obviously; a young man now. University in September – all being well. Leaving home. He was not just growing up, but almost grown-up. But he was still a child in their minds, especially when he was hungry or grumpy with tiredness. And he would be more than tired by now. It was late. Later than he would ever normally stay out.

Where was he? And why hadn’t he been in touch to let them know he was okay?

Half a mile away Fran and Marcus were asleep, unaware of the panic racing through their friends and neighbours. Two bottles of red wine after a hectic work week had poleaxed them both. Jess was safe and sound, round at Gabbie’s – a girls’ night in. As the messages piled up on their mobiles, they snored, sighed and rolled over beneath the duvet.

They were oblivious…until the doorbell shattered their dreams.

Chapter 3

AFTER THE awful conversations with the police, the dash to the hospital, the slap of shoes on hard surfaces, the voices directing them up here, just along this corridor, through the door on the left, please – after all the rush and clamour – the sensation of being washed up on a far-away shore, isolated from events, was deeply disconcerting. Most of them had been brought to the hospital in squad cars driven by polite but monosyllabic uniformed officers. Dom was the exception; he’d insisted on driving himself, despite the very best efforts of the female officer who’d been assigned to him. She’d stood in his hallway, her radio crackling, advising him that the shock might make driving an unwise option. He had ignored her.

Now, gathered together in this small room, they looked at each other and saw their own panic made flesh. Anita was crying and talking uncontrollably – Jake this, Jake that, Jake, Jake; how she could maintain such a constant flow of tears and words was beyond most of them. The recognition that they were not going to swerve this tragedy, that they were going to be hit full-tilt by it, had stunned the rest of them into silence. Tears were out of reach. To cry was a release, and there could be no release until they knew how bad it was for their child. Their child, not anyone else’s; there wasn’t space, yet,

for such empathy. Their panic was too raw and personal to be shared. Hence they stood, passive and acquiescent, in their pairs or alone, as the senior policeman confirmed their place at the front of the queue for this nightmare. In a clear, steady voice he told them that their questions couldn’t be answered – not yet, not until there was clearer information about the casualties – which would be available soon. So please, if they could be patient for a little longer. The medical staff would be in to talk to them shortly. The officer left the room, quickly, as if relieved to be away from them.

And then they waited.

Dave hugged Anita, while opposite them Shazia and Nihal sat immobile: poles of the same emotional compass. Fran and Marcus stood by the window, staring out at the orange halos of light in the darkness, trying not to imagine what might have happened to Jess, while Dom paced. And Sal? Sal sat on her own, near the door, hunched over her phone, lost in the world beyond the hospital, where the accident was a dramatic local news story, not a real event. Her croaky voice broke through their personal purgatories. ‘Christ! There’s so many photos.’

Dom went and sat next to her. She passed him her phone. The others watched as he swiped the screen – imagining what he was looking at. Fran couldn’t bear it. ‘Please, Dom, don’t.’ But Anita looked up and stretched out her hand. After Dom had seen enough, he passed her the phone. Anita’s and Dave’s faces creased and crumpled as they flicked through the images. Anita’s hand went to her mouth and the sobbing started up again. Dave offered the phone to Nihal, who reached out and took it, but Shazia’s recoil was so severe that he tossed the phone straight back at Dave. Dave then offered it to Marcus. Marcus’s ‘No!’ was so loud that they all jumped. Fran turned away and closed her eyes.

She knew them all, liked them all, but she wished at that moment that she’d never met any of them. Never spent a minute – never mind what felt like a lifetime – with Dom; never got to know and respect Sal; never learnt to appreciate Shazia and Nihal’s quiet humour; never found enough common ground with Dave and Anita to be around them, occasionally, for short periods without wanting to scream. In that claustrophobic room, waiting to hear just how bad it was, Fran wished, fervently, that Jess had never made friends with the children of any of these people.

Chapter 4

TWENTY MONTHS EARLIER

AS SOON as the date for the prom was confirmed, Dom stepped up and offered to host the ‘pre-party’. No one put in a counter-bid. The other parents were happy to leave him to it. Marcus did jokingly question since when had a pre-prom party become a thing – but he got shouted down by Jess and Fran. Fran informed him, semi-seriously, that the high school prom was an important rite of passage, a step over the threshold from childhood to adulthood; and, she confessed, coming closer to the truth, that she was looking forward to seeing them all in their finery. Marcus smiled and tuned out the subsequent discussion about the pros and cons of spray-tans and whether ‘hair up’ or ‘hair down’ was the way to go.

Five months later they were glad Dom had offered to host the party. The staging was idyllic. There were clusters of silver helium balloons, platters of posh canapés and trays of real champagne in crystal flutes. The weather was just what the girls’ dresses demanded, balmy and still. And the sunlight was exactly right, soft and pink-tinged – perfect for the hundreds of selfies that were being taken. It was typical Dom, totally over the top and unnecessarily costly, but at the same time all very, very lovely. As the booze flowed and the kids laughed and shimmered around on the immaculate lawn, the mood was upbeat.

They all looked great. The lads suited and pointy-toe-shoed, the girls transformed by false lashes, fake tan and imitation designer dresses. It was like watching a group of children playing dress-up and pulling it off. Fran found herself surprisingly moved to see them all together, possibly for the last time. Most of them had been friends since primary school; Jess, Harry and Jake went even further back, to nursery and playgroup. They’d shared sleepovers, chicken pox, multiple birthday parties and a seemingly never-ending round of car journeys to out-of-the-way running tracks and football fields. She knew them all, had been part of their growing up. Indeed, it was down to the kids that the adults knew each other at all. The shared experiences and responsibilities of being parents of kids who were similar ages had bred friendships that would otherwise never have flourished.

Take Anita and Sal. They were hardly bosom buddies – a world apart in attitude and volume – but there they were, standing side-by-side, both smiling, sharing the moment in Dom’s sun-dappled back garden. Dom himself was ‘circulating’, chatting to everyone, orchestrating the mood, topping up drinks; rather too quickly for Fran’s liking – they were only fifteen and sixteen, after all. Fran could hear him cracking jokes about prom-night traditions that strayed perilously close to being in very poor taste. This was a side of Dom that Fran was very familiar with, but could do without. The showman who – given an audience, and any audience would do – couldn’t stop himself playing to it. It was the Dom that most people saw: brash, loud, confident. It was not the gentler, occasionally vulnerable Dom who had few real friends, but whose friendship, once earnt, was fiercely loyal.

Dave, Jake’s dad – who was downing champagne like it was beer – laughed raucously at one of Dom’s jokes. Another man’s man. Through the melee, Fran met Marcus’s eye and smiled. It was a moment of marital understanding that made her feel simultaneously mean-spirited and understood. Jake was also laughing, horsing around as usual. He looked resplendent in a dark-red three-piece suit. Jake had always been a little sod, prone to being in the middle of any trouble, but there was such an energy, a lust for life, about him that it was hard not to warm to him. His spivvy suit was the perfect choice. Harry also looked sharp, but in a much more understated way. Harry was the cool one in the group. Popular, without having to make an effort. As he drank his beer and lounged in a deckchair listening to one of Jake’s stories, Fran tried to marry this version of Harry with the little boy who used to follow her around her house.

After Harry’s mum, Adele, upped and left, Harry lost a lot of confidence – understandably; it was a very confusing, upsetting time. Overnight he went from being a boisterous, scabby-kneed seven-year-old, indulged by both his parents, to a cautious child. Being caught up in the middle of a domestic war was not a good place for a little boy. Fran had absorbed a lot of the childcare responsibilities for Dom during those sticky years when his marriage had imploded. She’d seen, close at hand, how both Harry and his three-year-old sister Martha had struggled with the sudden separation from their mum, and with the acrimony that had erupted around the divorce and the custody arrangements. It had been a vicious, vitriolic mess – which Dom had emerged from, eventually, as the victor. He was fierce as a father, as well as a friend. Harry had coped, but there had been a price to pay, a new-found introspection and watchfulness that were unusual in a child.

But look at him now! What, in a little boy, had been a worrying sign of sadness and separateness had transformed into a quite distinctive breed of coolness and self-reliance. Yes, Harry had done all right, despite everything. If Fran felt a sense of pride at being part of that survival and transformation, who could blame her? She’d been his surrogate mum, when he needed her. And though their relationship was no longer as close – which was natural and as it should be – there was still a special bond between the two of them, and she hoped there always would be.

She was jolted out of her reverie by Harry himself meeting her eye, smiling and raising his beer bottle to her in mock salute. Yes, at sixteen, Harry was no longer anyone’s child.

A sudden, very loud crash on the patio drew everyone’s attention.

Mo got to his feet, held up his hands and started apologising. Dom made his way over and righted the fallen heater, his mouth set in a forgiving smile. To be fair to Mo, the need for three huge copper heaters on an early summer’s evening was questionable, but that was Dom – ‘go big or go home’. Fran swallowed another mouthful of champagne and reminded herself to stop being so ungracious. Commotion over, and apologies flapped away, Narinder, Mo’s ‘date’ for the prom – small, bossy, resplendent in cerise – pulled him away from the tables of bottles and glasses and food, obviously not trusting him not to cause another accident. They joined the other kids down on the lawn, adding more colour, life and noise to the gathering.

Fran felt the music from the outdoor speakers enter her spine. She swayed to the beat, feeling the old urge to dance come pushing back up: a sure sign that she was relaxing, or getting gently oiled. She smiled. It was turning out to be a lovely occasion. A chance for them all to celebrate – the kids to blow off some steam at the end of exams; and the parents to take a moment to appreciate getting their offspring through high school intact.

As she breathed in the relaxed atmosphere and the general goodwill, her eyes sought out her daughter. Jess had, as always, put her own very personal spin on the proceedings. A short, dark-purple skater dress and a new pair of pristine white hi tops. She was jittery with excitement, already bopping around the garden – like mother, like daughter – her arm linked with Gabbie, her ‘date’ for the evening. Gabbie was rocking a ‘vintage’ – that is, charity-shop – confection in patterned brown and gold and a pair of sparkly Docs, which Fran knew had cost her more than a new prom dress would have done. Jess and Gabbie seemed young compared to Sal’s daughter, Tish. She looked stunning. She’d opted for a fitted floor-length, off-the-shoulder, pure-white dress that clung to her figure. Jess and Tish were only a few days apart, in terms of birthdays, and yet Tish already had an ownership of, and confidence in, her body that was rare for her age. She was aware of her power and happy to use it. This evening – stunning in her Greek-goddess dress – Tish was absorbing most of the attention from the boys and, somewhat more unsettlingly, some of the dads, but at least it took the heat off the other girls. For that, Fran was grateful. Sixteen was too young. If Jess stayed this side of adulthood for a little while longer, so much the better.

On the lawn the kids drifted, coalesced, photos were taken, then they floated apart and the pattern reconfigured again. Fran felt buzzy with the booze, and it was only 6 p.m. She turned away from the party and headed back into the house, intending to stick the kettle on for a brew.

Dom’s house was as lovely as his garden, remodelled after Adele’s departure and redecorated every eighteen months or so ever since. Dom was never satisfied with anything for very long. The end result was chic and uber-stylish, but the thought of all that deciding on colours and fabrics and furniture, and the pressure of living ‘your best life’ in a virtual show home, made Fran feel tired. What Dom was still trying to prove, she wasn’t altogether sure. She filled the kettle, put it on, then wandered further into the house. The noise of the celebrations followed her, muted by the soft furnishings.

‘Hello there. I was wondering where you’d got to.’

Martha was lying on one of the sofas in the snug, reading The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. She was twelve now, going through that gawky, awkward stage. Fran felt for her. Martha sat up and folded a corner of a page down to mark her place in the book.

‘Are you enjoying it?’

Martha gave a diffident shrug. Fran should have known better than to ask such a direct question. Martha studied the front cover of the paperback as if the picture would give her the right answer. ‘It’s okay. I’m not sure I understand what it’s going on about really.’

Fran sat down beside her. ‘Give it time. It’s one of those books that makes more sense when you’ve read it all.’

Martha pushed the book under one of the cushions, as if embarrassed to be caught reading.

Fran changed the topic. ‘Aren’t you going to come outside and see them all in their glad rags?’

Martha shrugged again, her collarbone moving beneath her pale skin. The vest she was wearing accentuated her thinness. Fran felt a maternal urge to make her a sandwich, but it wasn’t her place, not any more. Though perhaps – she reflected – she should mention Martha’s weight to Dom; another time, when he wasn’t in full party-host mode. Martha wriggled her feet along the couch, bringing her toes to rest against Fran’s hip.

Instinctively, Fran reached down, lifted them up and put them in her lap. ‘They’re cold.’

Martha smiled. ‘You always used to say, “Cold feet, warm heart”.’

Fran smiled, touched by Martha’s reference to their shared history. They sat in comfortable silence as the sounds from the party drifted through the house. Fran could understand why Martha might prefer a book and a room on her own to a garden full of beautiful people. The role of ‘embarrassing little sister’ was not an appealing one. And in many ways Martha was a young twelve-year-old. Physically she was still very much a child; emotionally too, Fran suspected. Her immaturity was unsurprising. Three years old was too young to lose your mum; four, too little to be caught between two warring factions; five, too soon to learn that people can let you down; eight, too young to barely see your mother, aside from high days and holidays. Where the divorce had toughened Harry, it had weakened Martha. She seemed to have lost a layer of protection, and that had made her vulnerable. Fran pulled the end of a throw over Martha’s toes and rubbed them. She heard the kettle click in the kitchen. ‘Do you fancy a cuppa?’

Martha shook her head, but when Fran stood up to go through to the kitchen, the girl followed her.

They talked in fits and starts about high school and how Martha’s riding was going. She obviously still loved visiting the stables. Fran listened patiently about a new hack that Martha and her instructor had discovered, in the valley, which led down to a stream that Sable, Martha’s regular ride, was nervous of crossing. Fran nodded, sipped her tea and half-listened. The draw of the laughter outside grew. Surreptitiously she glanced at the clock. The limo would be arriving soon and the youngsters would be off. She really wanted to take her tea outside and re-join the party. Deep down, a part of her resented having to sacrifice this special time with her own daughter for time with Dom’s. She loved Martha, but her pre-teen shyness made conversation hard work. Fran decided that she would make a move.

‘I think they’ll be setting off soon. Are you sure you don’t want to come outside, just for a little bit?’

Martha pulled at her lip.

Fran tried another tack, one that gave Martha the chance to hide in plain sight. ‘It would really help if you could take a few photos of them all for me. I’m useless. I never seem to catch people right.’ She offered Martha her phone, and was pleased when the girl took it from her outstretched hand.

They walked through the house back out into the garden. The sunlight blinded them both, so that for a few seconds they saw only stars.

They were just in time. Anita was getting everyone gathered for the big group shot. There was a lot of self-conscious silliness about who should stand next to who. Anita was insistent that they had to organise themselves into a boy/girl, boy/girl sequence. Martha went down onto the grass and took her place at the end of the line of parental paparazzi. At last the kids got themselves into an ‘Anitaacceptable’ formation. The girls fussed with their hair and fiddled with the straps on their bare shoulders, and the lads buttoned up their jackets across their puffed-out chests. Behind them the balloons twisted and glinted in the still air.

At last Anita shouted, ‘Okay. Everyone ready? One, two, three… Shout “Prom”!’

A ragged chorus of ‘Prom!’ went up.

The best photos were the ones Martha took of the line disintegrating as they collapsed into each other, laughing.

Chapter 5

HARRY HAD expected it to be crap. A party in a local hotel – the bar closed, with all the weirdos and squares from school, patrolled by the Year 11 teachers – that finished at midnight: it was never going be great. And for the first hour it had been totally awkward. Everyone sitting around in their little cliques, drinking warm Coke out of plastic cups, not eating the ‘sad as hell’ buffet. Harry didn’t feel the remotest bit sad about leaving high school. He couldn’t wait to get away from the staff, the other students, the school itself, with its petty rules and high expectations. He was done with it. Period. And then the Prom King and Queen thing! That had been totally embarrassing. All that clapping and foot-stomping, like it mattered. What the hell was he supposed to do with a cardboard crown? But Tish had insisted that he wear it, had crowned him herself, a knowing smirk on her face. She had looked smoking, as always, even with the cheapo plastic tiara plonked on top of her elaborate ‘updo’.

It was all so clichéd.

But something about the spotlight and the cheering had crept up on him; that and Tish grinning and twirling and laughing with him up on the stage, mocking the whole thing even as she revelled in it, and in them. The golden couple. Prom royalty. The official seal on their position at the top of the people-pile. It was so cheesy, so naff, so childish – but also so seductive. And when the DJ started playing the bangers, it had shifted up another gear. Jess had dragged them all onto the dance floor and, before he knew it, they were all bopping around, not giving a damn. As the beat took over, Harry forgot that this was just another cheap high school prom – the scene of his last, lame moments at Raincliffe – and started to have fun.

Jake was being Jake, pogoing away quite happily in a bubble of his own sweat and excess energy – Chloe, his ‘date’, long abandoned. That was no surprise really, Chloe was pretty, but she was also a total yawn. Jake had only invited her for one reason, and even that seemed to have been forgotten. Then there was Jess and Gabbie – both barefoot – belting out the lyrics, daft grins plastered on their faces. And Mo – Mo was the real revelation. Watching him throwing shapes with nerdy Narinder was both wrong and totally hilarious.

It felt good to be at the heart of it.

When the DJ put on the power ballads at the end and the crying started, they all linked arms, forming a tight circle. Harry, Jake, Tish, Mo, Narinder, Jess and Gabbie. A sweaty bundle of mates, glued together by time and familiarity. A unit. And as the glitter ball twirled and they all swore allegiance to each other, for ever, they meant it. They were friends and always would be.

Nothing could tear them apart.

Apart from the music stopping.

The lights going on.

And the teachers calling, ‘Time’.

Chapter 6

THE NIGHT OF THE ACCIDENT

DOM’S NAME was the first to be called. It came as no surprise to the others, but it did cause a bitter spike of resentment. Why Dom? Why not them? Why should he be the first to discover what had happened to his child? The not knowing was excruciating, the waiting a test of endurance. How come Dom got to be released from such suffering before they did? But as Dom followed the nurse out of the waiting room, the others started to rationalise. Perhaps it wasn’t a good thing to be summoned first. Perhaps it was a sign of bad news. It had been impossible to deduce anything from the nurse’s composed, bland expression. Either way, as the door slowly closed, Sal had an overwhelming urge to run through it and demand to see Tish. She had as much right as Dom, didn’t she? This polite, humble patience was surely the wrong response. Perhaps it was time to start shouting and demanding action, and access. Wasn’t that what a parent should do? Fight tooth and nail to be with their child, not sit on their hands waiting to be given permission to leave the room, like obedient school children.

But the door clicked shut, and Sal found that she hadn’t moved.

The disturbance of Dom’s departure over, they went back to staring into the spaces between each other.

Dom was told that Harry was on a ward up on the fourth floor. The nurse – who seemed too old still to be working – wasn’t very forthcoming about what state he was in. As they waited for the lift, Dom held himself rigid.

The police arriving at the house had blown apart his refusal to think the worst. He’d had to reset. The policewoman had spoken slowly, calmly, clearly. A car had crashed, at speed. They believed the car to have been Harry’s. There were casualties. Harry was one of them. The occupants of the car had all been taken to St Thomas’s. Dom had listened, processing everything, saying little, building up resistance. Faced with the reality of the situation, he’d swapped his earlier defiant optimism for a realistic dark pessimism. It was better to be prepared. A full-on crash, into a brick wall, at speed. The driver would, undoubtedly, have come off worse. Dom had asked about the injuries sustained by the people in the car, specifically the driver, but the policewoman couldn’t, or wouldn’t, give him any personal information about who was involved or what state they were in. Dom had turned away from her and begun thinking through the practicalities. Martha! She was asleep. Should he wake her? And tell her what? That her brother had been in a crash, that he was in hospital, that he was injured – how badly they didn’t know. Dom went up and checked on her.

She wasn’t asleep. His conversation with the police officer must have woken her. Martha was sitting up in bed, looking bewildered. He minimised the news, said that nothing had been confirmed, but she still started crying. She scrambled out of bed and began searching for her clothes, sitting down and standing up randomly. Dom hugged her to a stop, reassured her – then lied to her – saying that she couldn’t come to the hospital with him. The reality was that he couldn’t cope with Martha and with whatever had happened to Harry, at the same time. He never had mastered the knack of parenting both his children simultaneously. He laid the blame for Martha not being able to go the hospital on the police. He promised to ring her the minute he had any news. He told her not to worry. That Harry was big and daft enough to look after himself. Then he said that he was going to drop her round at Cheryl’s on his way to the hospital, so that she didn’t have to be on her own. And, finally, he told her that she must NOT look at anything anyone was posting about the crash on social media. It was all speculation and nonsense. She nodded and promised him faithfully that she wouldn’t. He didn’t believe her. He made a mental note to ask Cheryl to monitor her phone use.

Daughter sorted, he turned his attention to the fate of his son.

Yet, as Dom followed in the wake of the frustratingly slow nurse, he found himself still worrying about Martha. She and her brother were close, unusually so for an eighteen-year-old and a fourteen-year-old. It made sense. When your mum abandons you, you cling on harder to those left behind. Dom hated Adele for many reasons, but top of the list was the way she’d left, the mess that followed and the impact it had had on Martha. It had turned her into a worrier. She was often anxious about small, irrelevant things, always fearful of what might happen. That was all Adele’s fault. Christ, how was Martha going to deal with this? What if Harry really was badly hurt? Or worse? Why couldn’t the nurse just tell him, one way or the other?

They came out of the lift and turned left. They seemed to be heading away from the action, into the quieter, calmer hinterland of the hospital. Dom rationalised that this must be a good sign. They were not going to A&E or the operating theatres; they were going to a ward. ‘Here we are.’ As the nurse laboriously punched numbers into the keypad, Dom tried hard to quell his mounting frustration. At last the door buzzed and they were through. She led him onto the ward. It was a long, old-style room with a lot of beds, many of which were filled with sleeping, unidentifiable forms. Dom spotted Harry straight away. He was sitting in one of the cubicles with the curtains open. The angled wall lamp cast a tight circle of light around him. Dom’s first instinct was to shout ‘Harry!’, rush over and hug his son, but something stopped him – respect for the other patients, the presence of the nurse, or was it something else? He wasn’t sure.

He asked the nurse if she might be able to find someone to talk to him about Harry’s injuries and treatment – effectively dismissing her – then took a few moments to compose himself. Dom found that he wanted to assess the situation, examine his son, get a grip on his emotions, before he was ready to move. Harry was sitting on a plastic chair, staring at his feet. He looked in one piece. In fact he looked remarkably normal. He certainly didn’t look as if he’d just been in a bad car accident. This reality shook Dom, bringing with it a rush of pure, powerful relief. He wouldn’t have to smash Martha’s world. Thank God.

And yet still he hesitated, processing the night’s events.

Harry hadn’t moved. Why hadn’t his son moved? Why was he frozen to the spot?

Dom crossed the room. On his approach, Harry looked up. The expression on his face stopped Dom in his tracks. Harry’s face wasn’t full of relief. It didn’t flood with love at the sight of him. It was blank. Totally devoid of any emotion. Instead of embracing his son, Dom put his hands in his pockets.

Perhaps that was the moment – that fraction of a second when neither of them reached out to the other in their need and shock – when it all started to go wrong.

‘You okay?’ Dom asked, as if it was nothing, as if the last three hours hadn’t been some of the worst in his life, and Harry’s.

Harry seemed to have to think before answering. ‘Yeah.’

Dom leant awkwardly against the bed and looked his son over. A quick scan revealed a scatter of cuts and abrasions on his face and neck, a bandage around his right hand and dressings on both his arms. That was it. Given the photos of the crash, the state of the car, the amount of broken glass and bent metal, the lack of physical damage was a miracle. So why weren’t they celebrating? Why weren’t they clinging onto to each other, crying with love and gratitude?

Harry had gone back to looking at the clumpy bandage.

‘Harry!’

‘What?’

Dom asked the only question that seemed relevant, ‘What happened?’

Chapter 7

JAKE’S PARENTS were the second family to be called.

They were escorted down to the bowels of the hospital, to the operating theatres, the place where the emergency cases were treated. The thought of her youngest being cut and stitched behind one of those frosted-glass doors made Anita feel nauseous. They walked the full length of the building, past one, two, three sealed-off areas, imagining the worst, until they were finally led into a curiously hushed and calm recovery bay. Anita ran and actually skidded across the room into the trolley in her rush to get to her son. The jolt made Jake open his eyes. ‘What the hell, Mum!’ His voice was gravelly. He was battered and bruised. But he was alive. After so many hours of not knowing, the reality of being with him, seeing him alive and hearing him speak, was overpowering. It was not so much a relief as a release.

He was half-sitting, half-lying on the trolley, his right leg hoisted up and attached to a complicated shiny contraption that arced over the bed. The pulleys and weights on the frame were wired into bolts that had been driven deep into his skin. Dave tried to avoid looking at his son’s smashed leg, but it was hard not to. There were patches of what looked like blue felt-tip marks around the holes and bolts in his skin. The sight made Dave feel light-headed. It was better to focus on his son’s top half. There was a drip in Jake’s arm and monitors attached to his bare chest, which was covered in sickly brown marks, like rust stains. There were cuts on his arms – some dressed, some not. He looked like some sort of weird hybrid creature: half-human, half-Meccano.

‘Oh my God, Jake,’ Anita sobbed.

‘Hey there, Bud.’ Dave’s emotions were too big to allow for anything other than small words.

‘Hey, Dad. Hey, Mum. Whoa! It’s okay, Mum. Calm down. I’m okay.’

Dave didn’t know where to touch his son. Every bit of him seemed claimed by the hospital equipment. Anita stroked Jake’s hair across his forehead and kissed his face. ‘Are you in pain?’

Jake rested his head back against his pillow and actually smiled. A dopey, very familiar expression. ‘Nah. They’ve given me the good stuff.’ He did sound high. ‘But I think I’m a bit fucked for the match.’

Despite everything, Dave and Anita laughed.