Blink of an Eye

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Carmel

I pictured Alex and Naomi leaving. They’d parked opposite, outside the second of the detached houses on the cul-de-sac, not the one that had been sold. Julia had said something about Fraser helping the neighbours, the dog people, to move some stuff. Had he noticed Naomi leaving? I rang to ask him. He hadn’t – he’d gone home by then, the bulk of the job done. The couple, the Langhams, had given up their kennels and moved to the coast, Blackpool. Setting up a bespoke holiday company for people wanting something special from a weekend in the resort beyond a trip to the Pleasure Beach and a stick of rock. It seemed like a bizarre switch of field. Julia didn’t have their number, but she gave me the business name and I found them online.

As soon as Mrs Langham realized I was not a potential customer, she became impatient. I imagined they were under considerable pressure, the first few weeks into running a new business, especially as the recession showed no sign of abating. And the leisure industry relied on people with disposable income, which was in ever shorter supply for most of us.

No, she said, she hadn’t noticed the car, or anyone driving off in it. She exhibited absolutely no interest or curiosity about my call.

I asked to speak to her husband. ‘Neville’s out,’ she said.

‘I can ring back.’

She gave a gusty sigh and told me to try after eight. I did, and finally got to speak to him. He wasn’t as brusque as his wife, but he was sorry he couldn’t remember anything particular. He’d been ferrying their furniture to the new house much of the time. Disappointment rolled over me like a bank of cloud. I was thanking him prior to hanging up when he said, ‘Did you already talk to Larry?’

‘Larry? No.’

‘My brother-in-law. He was giving us a hand.’

Larry lived in Birmingham. He sounded suspicious at first: as soon as I introduced myself, he launched into a spiel about not wanting cold callers. Then he cottoned on to what I was asking: had he seen a couple drive away in a Honda Civic, the day of the removals, about eight in the evening?

‘Yes,’ he said, ‘bloody idiot nearly pranged my rear end. Had to brake sharp, like. It was a hire van, so the last thing I needed was shelling out the excess on the insurance. I’m a loss-adjuster myself, but these van hire firms, there’s no leeway if you cause any damage.’

Oh, Naomi. If only she had bumped his van. The ensuing kerfuffle would have delayed them leaving, Larry or Alex would have seen she was unfit, and Lily Vasey would still be playing out and giggling with her schoolmates and watching telly or having bedtime stories with her family.

‘You saw them get in the car?’ I said.

‘Yes.’

‘Could you tell she was drunk?’

‘She was, by the looks of it. But the way he shot backwards, he wasn’t exactly sober himself. Or maybe he’d not passed his test.’

My heart stood still and there was a roaring in my ears. ‘He was driving?’ I said, dozens of objections crowding in the back of my head.

‘Yes. Why?’

I began to cry, and poor Larry didn’t know what to do.

‘I’m sorry,’ I squeaked. ‘I’ll have to go, but I’ll be in touch. Please, remember what you’ve just told me.’

Phil was in the living room, the day’s paper, crossword almost completed, on the floor beside his chair. Eyes closed. ‘Phil?’

He heard me and stirred, came to. ‘Yeah,’ sleep thick in his voice. He must have seen how I was shaking; his manner abruptly changed. He shot to his feet. ‘What?’ Came towards me. ‘Carmel what is it?’

The words were like a clot in my throat, painful, filthy.

Phil’s face was riddled with incomprehension.

I began to explain, tripping over phrases and fighting against the chattering of my teeth.

He made me sit down and poured me a glass of water. ‘Have a drink.’

Tears were streaming down my face.

‘Naomi’s still out?’ I checked, anxiously.

He nodded. ‘Back soon.’ Becky and Steve had taken her to see The Artist, an award-winning homage to silent film. Something safe; so many things were treacherous nowadays. You never notice how much death is in our stories and films and dramas until you try avoiding the topic.

After. When the world turned sour and the scales fell from our eyes.

Naomi

‘Alex was driving!’

‘What?’

Mum’s face is livid with intensity and her eyes are blazing. ‘Alex was driving – one of the people moving out across the road, they saw him. He got in the driving seat.’

What the fuck? My guts cramp and I feel sick in the back of my throat. Suddenly I wobble, nearly fall. She grabs me, pulls out a chair and sits me down. Blood thunders in my ears. Alex was driving? So… I wasn’t? I wasn’t driving? It wasn’t me who… Something collapses inside me, falls away.

I stare at her, the words all bitty and choppy in my mouth. ‘But Alex said-’

‘He lied,’ she says, crouching down, her hands on my knees. ‘He lied, Naomi, he blamed you.’ She starts to cry, then tries to stop, half laughing and wiping at her face with the heel of her hand. ‘And Monica lied too.’

I feel giddy, darkness filling my eyes, confusion like choking smoke. He loves me. No, Mum’s got it wrong, she’s raving, she’s desperate. ‘He wouldn’t do that. How can you say that?’

‘It’s true!’ And she talks fast, all about how things fit together. ‘It makes sense, darling, don’t you see. You told Alice he was driving and you kept on drinking, you didn’t care because you weren’t going to drive. And Alex – he made it look like he was abstaining… like he was on fruit juice, but he’d got vodka in it…’

She gets up now, talking even faster, and I’m finding it hard to take it all in. ‘He was drinking secretly because he must have promised he’d drive back.’

A little glow of heat grows in me, small and uncertain as a birthday candle, barely alive, but there’s also a gale blowing, a gale of horror and bewilderment. He lied? My Alex. My lovely Alex. He blamed me and he told them all, all the world.

Dad looks at me, disbelief bright in his eyes, as if I can give him the nod and say, Yes, that’s right, I was the passenger. But how can I? I can’t frigging remember.

Then Mum’s calling Don and he promises to come round. There’s this tension in the air and Dad just keeps shaking his head. And I really do feel sick. I just get to the toilet in time. Puke my guts up, till my throat is sore and there’s a bitter taste that doesn’t go even when I’ve brushed my teeth.

Everything’s so unsteady. Like I’m standing on dry land after months at sea and the ground is roiling beneath my feet. Balance shot. That fleeting look of relief I saw when I broke up with him – was that because of this, because it would be easier to keep up the act without me by his side?

No. She must be wrong. There must be a mistake. Alex – he just would not do that. He’s a good person. Perhaps we stopped on the way and changed seats? The person who saw us might have got the wrong end of the stick – like if Alex opened the car door for me and the guy assumed he was going to get in but Alex gave me the keys. That would make sense. And so Monica did see-

‘Naomi!’ Mum says it sharply, like I’ve been ignoring her. ‘Get the door!’ She’s on the phone to Evie.

Don listens, and he’s typing on his iPad like mad and he gets all the details from Mum and rings this Larry bloke there and then even though it’s late. He says who he is and why he’s calling and he tells the guy he’s a key witness and is there any chance he can come up to Manchester to make a statement.

Larry must stress about it, I think, because then Don offers to come to Birmingham if that’s easier. I make tea while this is going on. I think about that image I have of the glossy food and grope about in my head in case there’s anything after that about us leaving, about this new version of how it went, me getting in the passenger seat, Alex at the wheel, him dragging me out of the passenger side, not the driver’s side. Blank. A big fat blank.

‘Naomi, it’s stirred enough.’ Mum takes two of the cups for Dad and Don. I bring ours.

‘He’ll be here just before lunch tomorrow,’ Don says. He’s almost breathless. ‘With his account I can go to the barrister – it will almost certainly mean approaching the CPS and getting them to consider whether to proceed.’

‘But wouldn’t it just be this Larry’s word, and Alice’s, against Alex and Monica?’ I say.

‘Larry is an independent witness; that adds extra significance to his account. An independent witness has no stake, no vested interest. That goes for Alice too.’

I don’t know what I feel. Puzzled, mainly. Shell-shocked. Lost.

‘And your collarbone,’ Don says, looking across at me, ‘the left-hand side: the mark of Zorro.’ Has he lost the plot? He draws a zigzag on his body. ‘Where the seat belt cuts into you – different depending on where you sit.’

‘And the bruising, there,’ Mum says quickly.

‘Why the hell didn’t the police consider that?’ Dad frowns. ‘Or you, Don?’

Don shrugs. ‘If it looks like a fish and it swims like a fish… They’d no reason to doubt Alex’s account, and nor had I. There are huge variation in injuries in these situations; for every case that proves a point, there are others that contradict it. And we’d no forensics to speak of from the car.’

‘We believed him,’ Mum says.

‘But we can add this medical evidence to the new witness evidence – even more for the CPS to consider,’ Don says.

‘I thought he loved me,’ I say. ‘He was…’ I blow my nose. ‘And the job and everything. Why would he do that?’

‘To save his own skin,’ Dad says.

‘And that little girl, everybody thought…’ I hit at my head; it feels like it’ll burst. ‘Why can’t I remember?’

‘Shush, shush.’ Mum pulls my hands down.

‘What if you had?’ Dad says. ‘There’s something weird here. Because you might have come round and it might all have been clear as day and he’d have been exposed immediately.’

‘The amnesia was a gift for him,’ Mum says, spitting mad. ‘And we told Monica, remember?’ She whips round to look at Dad. ‘That first time we went to visit, he wasn’t there but Monica was. We told her Naomi couldn’t remember anything.’

‘Everyone believed him,’ I say. ‘I believed him.’

We sit up very, very late after Don has gone; nobody wants to go to bed. We talk about safe stuff, old stuff from when I was little or Dad’s punk rock days. Every now and then one of them leapfrogs forward to now and the bombshell, thinking of another angle on what’s happened. Another clue we should have spotted. I don’t have any of these eureka moments. I’m stunned on top of being doped up. And I really can’t believe it. Any of it.

I can’t believe I drove the car too fast and swerved and hit the girl.

I can’t believe he did.

Or that she died.

I can’t believe he said it was my fault.

I can’t believe his mother lied too.

I can’t believe he let me think I killed her.

It’s all unravelling, but it’s like I’m watching from the sidelines, an observer, seeing myself, studying my own reactions, or lack of them.

I thought he loved me.

Carmel

My first feelings were shock and sadness. Alex had lied: from the moment of impact he’d told everyone that Naomi was driving, he’d blamed everything on her. It seemed so callous, so selfish, and I found it hard to equate with what I knew of him.

I pictured his face that day at the hospital. The effort of telling the story. A story that was a sham, smoke and mirrors. On the heels of my sorrow came a roaring tide of anger. Not content with the devastation of the accident, with the cost of a nine-year-old’s life, he had then allowed Naomi to be pilloried, causing the rift with Suzanne, her own guilt and shame, her depression and unhappiness, her attempted suicide. And his bloody mother had held his hand every step of the way. Prepared to sacrifice my daughter to save her son.

It was like turning a picture the right way up. Or seeing writing reflected in a mirror, impossible to decipher until you face the other way and see the words plain and clear. The moment when a puzzle gives up its secret: the little twist that releases the metal ring, the answer that completes a crossword, the rotation that solves the pattern on the cube.

Naomi drinking without any caution, believing Alex was driving them home. Alex apparently declining alcohol with a glass full of vodka and orange. People assuming he’d drive. And he had.

We did finally go upstairs. Phil was practically foaming at the mouth. ‘That little shit,’ he said as he got into bed.

‘I guess once he’d said it, there was no going back. He was trapped.’

‘Is that an excuse?’

‘No, just an observation,’ I said. ‘And he must have told Monica the truth pretty early on. She told us about passing them in the car and tooting the horn before we’d even seen him, remember? Setting herself up as a witness. Backing up his story.’

‘How did he ever think he’d get away with it?’

‘He did for long enough. Oh Phil, what a mess. Poor Naomi.’

I shifted over to his side and we kissed. I wrestled myself into a comfortable position, my hand on his chest, taking comfort from the beating of his heart.