Split Second

CHAPTER FIVE

Louise

She tried to gather her scattered wits by the time they reached the hospital café. Frame yourself, as her grandma would say whenever Louise was slow or reluctant to do something. She framed herself now. Began by apologizing to Andrew Barnes. ‘I’m sorry I bit your head off. You must think I’m cracked, but my mind’s in bits. And your boy, Jason – I’m so sorry.’

He nodded, then stared down at his coffee.

‘He saved Luke’s life, doing what he did.’

Andrew nodded again. Not giving much away. Trying to hold it all in, perhaps fearing that if he started talking it might all come rolling out, like a bag of marbles tipped over, clattering every which way.

‘I’m so very sorry,’ she said again. She was painfully aware that she still had Luke. Upstairs, resting, getting stronger every hour. She still had such hope that he’d get well and come home, and although things would never be like they were before, there would still be everything to look forward to. The man opposite had none of that.

‘Have the police told you anything?’ she asked, testing her cup with her fingers, still too hot to drink.

He shrugged. ‘Not really.’

He was a wreck, she thought, greying hair dishevelled, unshaven. She guessed he was in his late forties or early fifties, something like that. The skin on his face blotchy, his eyes bloodshot, stubble peppering his jaw. A pleasant face beneath the stress, but no more than that. His clothes were decent enough, but it didn’t appear that anyone was looking after him. Maybe he wouldn’t let them. She had clients like that, people who felt that accepting help was a sign of weakness, that it undermined their independence, reduced their selfesteem, or those who were so angry at their failing abilities that they wouldn’t countenance assistance, denying there was a problem, bitter and hurt.

She’d showered today, washed her hair, even put a load in the washing machine. Seemed like a big deal at the time, functioning. But her clothes weren’t ironed and she knew she looked wiped out too.

‘Did he know them? Luke?’ he asked.

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘But the descriptions,’ he went on. She saw a glint of anger in the cast of his eyes. ‘You read them?’

‘Yes, it didn’t sound like anyone I could think of.’

‘So you think it was random? They picked on him out of the blue?’

‘I don’t know.’

A man dressed in a Santa suit wandered up to the counter, setting off banter among the staff and customers. Louise wanted to weep.

She wondered why Andrew Barnes expected her to have any answers. What had driven him to come and see Luke? Surely he’d enough going on dealing with his own situation. She felt a flare of irritation with him. Edgy, she moved her drink towards the middle of the table. ‘I’m just going out for a smoke, won’t be long.’

He dipped his head, picked up his own drink.

She had to go outside and across the road to escape all the no-smoking notices. Other people ignored the exhortations near the entrance and clustered there; she could see two women sucking hungrily on fags and a man in a wheelchair and another youngish lad with a drip. She didn’t feel proud of smoking again and she didn’t want to flout the rules. The first drag made her cough and her mouth felt dry, her tongue rough; she wished she’d brought her drink out with her.

When she went back to the café, Andrew Barnes had gone.

The man probably didn’t know whether he was coming or going. His son had died trying to help Luke; maybe he’d needed to see the cause of his bereavement. She wondered if he had spoken to Luke and what he’d said. She could have asked Andrew about the fight if she’d only taken the chance instead of running off for a fag. It had been at his house after all. How had it started? Thinking about that, about Luke’s fear and the violence of what they’d done, made her stomach turn.

She hadn’t seen Carl since Saturday, when he’d rung first then come round with takeaway and a couple of bottles of wine. They’d kept in touch by phone, but there had not been any time and she needed to concentrate on Luke and Ruby for now.

She asked him to take the Christmas tree away – see if anyone he knew could make use of it. Ruby stayed close, as if she was frightened to leave Louise. ‘You can go round to Becky’s,’ Louise had told her, ‘or she can come over.’ Thinking that seeing her best friend might be a break for the girl; but Ruby shook her head.

They’d watched a film on telly, a mindless rom-com. Carl laughed too loudly at the slapstick and she wished he’d leave.

At midnight Ruby went to bed and Carl asked Louise if she’d like him to stay. She shook her head and hugged him, said she’d barely slept but wanted to try and get a good night tonight. Thanked him for the food and the wine.

After he’d gone, she stood in the back garden to have the last fag of the day. There was a full moon rising, bright and luminous, a ring around it, mother-of-pearl. It illuminated the whole of the landscape, bouncing magnesium white off the blanket of snow. The lights in Angie’s were off now; Angie would be sleeping in the warm fug of the living room, Sian upstairs.

Louise had wondered about her clients. All the people she’d missed seeing and would miss in the coming week. Some of them – Miriam and Terence and Mrs Coulson (who preferred the formality) – would have got her a Christmas present like last year. Not easy for them to arrange when they were stuck in the house. Miriam’s delight at keeping the gift secret from Louise (who had access to her cupboards and drawers in the course of looking after her) had been present enough. Mrs Coulson had flourished a crumpled parcel wrapped in half a mile of Sellotape, and Louise had thanked her, keeping her face straight when she fought her way into it and discovered the packet of assorted mints that Mrs Coulson herself had received for her birthday back in April. As for Terence, he’d arranged for his daughter in Cornwall to buy and post a beautiful pair of sheepskin mittens. They must have cost him a few bob. ‘It’s perishing out there,’ he’d said. ‘Don’t want you getting chilblains, eh?’ They’d be disappointed not to have a chance to give her their presents. She had not bought theirs yet – always last-minute.

Would they know what had happened? Would some replacement carer tell them about Luke, or would they just be told Louise was off sick?

Louise had dropped her cigarette and heard the hiss as it went out, stooped to pick it up and put it in the wheelie bin. The wind blew even harder, buffeting the fence. Across town, just a couple of miles away, Luke lay still. Alone. ‘Night, night, darling,’ she whispered. And went in.

They stopped the sedation on Tuesday morning. Louise and Ruby had been warned that it was impossible to predict what would happen. ‘Some patients open their eyes almost immediately, others can take hours, days. And some remain unresponsive.’ Persistent vegetative state. Someone had used the term at some point, but she wasn’t going to think about that. He was going to wake up.

There was nothing very dramatic to the withdrawal of sedation, just the unhooking of a drip and a note in his charts. It would take several hours for the sedative to clear from his system. Then they could try rousing him. He was breathing on his own, which they said was really good.

The past three days of bedside vigils had forced Louise to find something to do while she sat there. There was only so much chattering she could manage while Luke lay calm and quiet and so very still. Was he running in his mind? Climbing and ducking and diving? Flying even? Unfettered. She liked to think so, but no one could tell her if he was even able to dream.

So, incapable of reading, her concentration in shreds, and unwilling to sit there like a lemon, she had ransacked the roof space for her rag-bags, pulled out all the cotton pieces and the old card templates and started on a quilt. She’d no clear idea yet whose bed it would go on. There might only be enough for a single, in which case it would be Ruby’s. Or maybe she’d hang it on the wall like a picture. The project meant she could sit with Luke, cutting and tacking hexagons. Threads of cotton and scraps got all over the floor but were easily cleared up.

Ruby had loaded an MP3 player with all Luke’s favourite tunes and rigged it up to a little speaker so they could play it to him. They had it on for a while. Ruby brought some homework to do – a history project. It was one of the few subjects Louise could help her with if needs be, unlike maths or French. Grandad had been big on history and some of it had stuck.

When it got to mid-afternoon, the nurse looking after Luke came in and checked his vital signs again. There was a whole scoring system used to rank a coma. Based on how easily they opened their eyes, verbal ability, and whether they moved when given pain. Below eight was a coma. Luke had ranked five before the operation.

‘Have you tried waking him?’ the nurse asked.

Louise shook her head. They had been told they could, but part of her was fearful of trying, thinking what harm in waiting another few minutes, after she’d tacked the next patch, or the next. The nurse seemed to get this. She gave a little nod and said, ‘When you’re ready, just call his name, touch his shoulder or squeeze his hand. Try it two or three times, and if there’s no response, leave it. We don’t want to overload him. It’s very common not to get a reaction immediately; it doesn’t mean it won’t happen eventually. Otherwise just chat to him like you have been.’

‘We’ve been playing him music as well,’ said Ruby.

‘That’s great.’ The nurse smiled. She changed his IV fluid and checked his catheter bag and left. Her kindness disarmed Louise, made her feel weepy. She closed her eyes and waited for the feeling to recede.

Eventually she put her sewing down. She moved her chair up even closer to Luke and put her hand on his shoulder, his skin smooth and warm. She could feel the bones solid beneath, the muscles. Perfect. She leant her head close to his ear. The bandage concealed all the top of his head. The swelling on his cheek had gone down a bit; a small Steri-Strip crossed his torn eyelid and she could see the scab where it was knitting together. The bruises were yellower now, not as obvious.

He was so peaceful. If she woke him, would he start to feel pain? Would they be able to tell?

‘Luke.’ She shook his shoulder. Ruby watched intently, her hand over her mouth.

‘Luke, it’s Mum. You can wake up now, Luke. Come on, Luke, wake up.’

Louise watched for the faintest flicker on his eyelids, any tremor on his face. There was nothing. She picked up his hand and held it in her own. His beautiful hands, long, slim fingers. There were still traces of blood under his fingernails and cuts on his knuckles.

‘Luke. It’s Mum. You’re in hospital. I’m here and Ruby’s here and it’s time to wake up now.’

Time to wake up now. All the mornings she’d roused him, reminded him, yelled at him, dragged him out of bed and fed him and made sure he got where he was supposed to be going.

He lay unmoving.

Ruby sighed, ‘She said it might not happen straight away.’

‘Yeah.’ Louise’s throat hurt. ‘I’m going to see about giving him a wash. Do you want to go and get a drink? A burger or something?’

Ruby nodded.

The nurse gave her a bowl and a bottle of special cleanser to use in the water and some cloths. They wouldn’t turn him over, but anything she could reach, she could clean.

Louise drew the blanket down. It was some years since she’d seen her son naked, but she felt no embarrassment, though she imagined he would. ‘I’m giving you a bath, Luke. You don’t like it, you can wake up.’

She swept the cloth over his stomach and down his thighs. Over his shins and round his calves. Counting the old scars: the pale oval on his knee where he’d fallen down the promenade steps at Prestatyn beach, the puckered skin on his arm where he’d burnt himself mucking about with a bonfire. She wiped his feet, amazed that he wasn’t writhing around, unable to bear the tickling. She wiped his groin, being careful with the catheter, and then brought fresh water and used a new cloth over his chest and along his arms. She wiped his neck and then his armpits. She could smell his body odour, sharp and musky; she soaped at the tufts of black hair there.

She replenished the bowl again and bathed his hands, lifting each one into the water and letting them soak a few minutes, then running her own fingernail under his to dig out the curls of dried blood. His nails were growing long.

A libation; the word came to her. Something to do with oils and death and purification. The story of Mary Magdalene weeping on Jesus’ feet and washing them with her tears, wiping them dry with her hair. ‘Opiate of the masses,’ Louise muttered, echoing her grandad. She wasn’t washing the dead.

She had a hazy memory of her own mum sharing a bath with her. Four or five she must have been, and the bubbles filled the tub. Her mum scooping up handfuls and sculpting a crown on her own head, then Louise’s. And singing. The memory never got any clearer. There was no one to ask about it; they were all gone.

She changed the water once again, got a fresh cloth. Finally, very gently, she cleaned his face, stroking between the bruises, around his mouth, his chin, up along the edges of the bandage. ‘You’ll do,’ she whispered. And kissed him. Oh Luke, she thought, if love could bring you back, you’d be running round the ward, spinning breaks, turning cartwheels. Crowing with joy. And so would I.

Emma

Emma’s skin felt sticky, clammy, and her heart kept missing a beat, like it was tripping and losing its rhythm. She’d felt like that when she had the interview for the job, and each time she had her six-monthly review. It wasn’t as bad as talking in front of lots of people, but it was still gruelling. And the worst thing was when her brain just seized up so she couldn’t even find the right words.

Her throat was sore too, tickly, and she thought she was coming down with something.

The man interviewing her was very nice. He said it must have been traumatic for her to see the incident on the bus and then to learn what had happened. He thanked her for getting in touch and then he asked her to talk him through her journey home that day, starting with leaving work. What time had that been? Did she always get the same bus?

Emma explained, and described where the bus had got to when the three chavs got on. Except she said ‘the three of them’, not wanting to sound rude. He asked her lots of questions about who said what, were those the actual words? Then it dawned on Emma that they must have the CCTV of it all but without any sound. They could see who did what but not who said what.

The man got even more interested when she told him about the names they’d called Luke, the racist stuff, and again when they’d made threats about the knife. Who did they say had a knife? Was she sure? Did she see any knife?

It was clear in her head, like a film trailer, but as she remembered it all, she also caught the cold, sick feeling inside. Frozen, not wanting to do anything and look stupid, just wanting it to stop.

‘It was really, really scary,’ she said, needing to explain. ‘No one knew what to do. They were so horrible,’ she said, ‘really aggressive.’

The man nodded as he wrote.

‘Then Jason came downstairs.’ Saying his name like she knew him, had some connection. But he was just a stranger on a bus. She described the scuffle, felt herself blush, flames in her cheeks as she repeated the swear words. And she described the chase along the pavement. She had to say it in little short bits because she felt like crying. She felt small then, and wrong, and she wanted him to go.

He read back what she’d said and asked her to sign that it was a true record. He told her she might need to give evidence in court. God, no! It was bad enough telling him just sitting in her own place; it would be ten times worse in front of a load of strangers.

The officer got a diagram out, a plan of the bus, explaining it was the exact same layout as the bus Emma had been on. He had some small Post-it notes too. He asked her to write on the notes all the different passengers so he could see where everyone had been. Emma quite liked doing that. It reminded her of the diagrams people had to include for some of their claims, where they had to describe the damage from a leaking dishwasher or what had been broken in a robbery or destroyed by fire: broken window, all our DVDs melted or carpet ruined, and underlay. Laura once had an old man ring up in a state because burglars had gone to the toilet on his rug (number twos) and he didn’t know if he should include it on the form as it wasn’t a very nice thing to have to put.

Emma wrote the labels: Old Couple, Asian Man, Woman 1, Woman 2. Students, 1, 2, 3, 4. Mother and Baby. She put Large Man instead of Rugby Player. She set them out neatly. Put herself opposite Luke.

He asked her at what point the verbal insults had turned physical.

‘Well, they pushed Luke back into his seat as soon as they got on,’ she described. ‘Then when he hit him, actually punched him in the head, that was when Jason had come downstairs; I think he saw it and that’s when he got involved.’ She felt a wash of shame. ‘I didn’t know it would end up like that,’ she said. ‘No one was saying anything.’ Her cheeks were boiling. ‘I didn’t know.’

He spread one hand, palm up. ‘How could you? These things are so unpredictable.’

I might have got killed, she reminded herself. If I had said anything, they might have come after me with the knife. I might have been dead now. She thought of her parents getting the news, standing by her grave. She had been telling herself that over and over. She was just a girl, a fat girl who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. How could she have said anything? But whenever she put herself back there, or heard the name Jason Barnes, saw the bits on the news, or the pictures in the papers, she didn’t feel relieved that she’d sat by and done nothing; she just felt ashamed.

Andrew

Martine wanted to talk to them. She settled Val and Andrew in his parents’ living room.

‘One of the items we found on Jason was a bus ticket. We traced the bus that it was issued on and recovered CCTV footage.’ Martine spoke slowly, with a sing-song tone, as though they were children.

Val nodded, her mouth slightly ajar, tongue tucked into the side of her teeth, a familiar gesture of avid concentration, her eyes eager. She’d never had much patience, Andrew knew. She was quick and competent and swift to pass judgement. Her own strong work ethic, her fierce intelligence, her certainty meant she’d little time for people who floundered. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear; she was still lovely, he saw, even with the dark circles under her eyes and her hair tangled. She had a Nordic type of beauty, with her white-blonde hair, lightly tanned complexion, eyes a grey-blue like sea ice. He could sense her impatience singing in the air.

‘The investigating team have examined the tape, and it now appears that the incident began on the bus.’

‘What happened?’ Val demanded.

‘Three youths, matching the descriptions you have given us, can be seen behaving aggressively towards Luke Murray. This was on the lower deck. Jason, who was travelling upstairs, intervenes when he comes down to get off the bus.’

Val covered her mouth. Andrew swallowed.

‘At that point Jason was pushed away and Luke ran off the bus, followed by the three youths, and then Jason.’

‘Can you see who they are?’ Andrew asked, hope giving him a rush of energy. ‘You’ve got them on film.’

‘The images aren’t brilliant, but they will be a great help to us. We may be releasing stills along with the e-fits after the holiday.’

‘Why wait?’

‘People are away, the papers don’t come out Christmas Day and Boxing Day’s a Sunday. We want to maximize the impact, reach as many members of the public as we can. How are the arrangements coming?’

Andrew saw Val react to the clumsy change of topic, a little roll of her eyes and a blink before she replied. ‘Okay, thanks. Thursday the thirtieth at midday.’

Jason’s funeral.

They moved back home.

‘Stay till after Christmas,’ Andrew’s mother had begged. ‘You don’t want to be on your own.’

But Val was adamant. They went on Christmas Eve. Beforehand, Colin had spoken to Andrew, offering to make a visit, check the place out.

‘The chair.’ Andrew saw Jason tipping forward, the shocking stain glistening on the back of the armchair.

Colin blanched. ‘We’ll get rid of it. Check the fridge and that. Mum’s putting together some groceries.’

‘I can shop,’ Andrew said.

Colin smiled and shook his head. Big brother. Andrew felt a rush of affection and gratitude. He used to joke with Val about how dull and predictable Colin was, never putting a foot wrong, never veering from his chosen path, but now he relished that dogged, undramatic reliability.

He and Val arrived at lunchtime. Andrew felt selfconscious, exposed and raw, like the fleeting sensation on emerging from a darkened cinema into the bold glare of daylight.

‘Oh, look,’ said Val. Their fence was a riot of colour, a shrine to Jason. Andrew parked in the drive. There was nothing to see on the lawn; the snow had long since melted, and with it the stain of Luke’s blood.

‘Come and see,’ she said, walking round to the pavement. There were flowers in cellophane wrapping, some already withered, blackened by frost, and cards and trinkets, ribbons and photographs, pools of wax on the ground where candles had melted, a red glass lantern still glowing crimson from the guttering flame inside. The wind was cold, ruffling and crackling the shiny wrappers of the flowers and the scraps of paper. Someone had used a hammer-tacker to staple some of the cards up, though fragments of Sellotape were visible too. Andrew guessed it had been Colin. Thoughtful, organized.

They read all the cards, though many were illegible, the writing blurred by the rain that had fallen. Some of the names were familiar: friends from school, friends who’d known Jason since National Childbirth Trust coffee mornings, since nursery. There were even a few from people Val worked with at the town hall. Somebody had taped a packet of chewing gum to the fence. Val made a little sound as she pointed it out, halfway between a snort and a sob. She had hated Jason chewing gum, both because of the mess when he left it stuck to the side of his bin or she found it trodden into the carpet, and also because of the sight of him chewing. ‘It makes you look sloppy and insolent,’ she’d said on one occasion. Jason had cracked his gum by way of reply and Andrew had laughed and earned a reproachful look from Val.

‘Oh, Andrew.’ Val turned to him and buried her face in his neck. He closed his eyes and held her, emptied his mind and drank in the simple physical comfort.

Inside, the house was warm. The wood-burning stove was lit and there was a trace of wood smoke on the air and the scent of oranges and cloves from the pomanders Val had brought back from the Christmas markets in Albert Square.

Without talking, they went into the living room. The chair had gone. The floor was clean. There was nothing to see.

‘Do you want a tea?’ Her voice was husky.

‘Yes please.’

Piles of mail on the kitchen table: cards, letters, bills. They sat together opening and sorting them: Christmas greetings and condolence cards. Val making a note of people who had yet to be told, friends who lived abroad and weren’t in any of the loose networks who passed on the news.

‘They might want to know about the funeral,’ she said about one family who came back to the UK most holidays, getting her phone out.

‘It’s Christmas Eve,’ he said.

She glanced at him, then accepted that it wasn’t a good time to ring anyone.

‘There’ll be time after,’ he said.

Now he couldn’t settle. He and Val had emptied their holdalls of the assortment of clothes and toiletries that had accumulated at his parents’ house, then picked at the casserole that was in the fridge. Val was adding to her lists. He fed another log into the stove.

‘His room,’ she said, and Andrew’s head swam. ‘Can we just leave it?’

‘Yes, of course.’ He imagined it would be messy: the bag Jason had brought home only half unpacked, crusted cereal bowls and dirty coffee cups strewn around the place. ‘He might have pots need bringing down.’

She smiled and nodded, faltered, her eyes brimming. ‘I can’t bear it.’ She ran her hands through her hair, pulling at it, her face crumpled.

‘I know.’ He went to hug her.

‘We’ll have a look,’ she said.

His heart beat hard in his chest as they went upstairs. Jason’s door was ajar. Val moved ahead of him to push it open. That’s how she copes with it, he thought; she says she can’t bear it, but then she meets it head on.

The door swung open. There was the bag, jeans and dirty socks on the floor. The smell of him there, the smell of Jason. Posters on the walls: the Gorillaz Plastic Beach album, a Guinness ad, photos of Jason and his mates mucking about in Cornwall, a Peters projection world map.

There were no cups or bowls or plates, no apple cores. No chewing gum wrappers.

‘His bin’s empty.’ Val frowned.

‘Colin – he’ll have cleared up.’

Val sat down on Jason’s bed.

‘I’m going to lie down for a bit.’ She bent to pull her shoes off.

‘Shall I wake you?’

‘No.’ She swung her legs up on to the bed, pulled at the duvet.

‘Okay.’ He shut the door.

Desperate for distraction, Andrew plugged in his laptop. The first time he’d checked his emails in days. The inbox filled: 4… 11… 28… 36… 41 new messages. His junk box gobbled up most of them. Three were from colleagues or acquaintances expressing sympathy. He skimmed them quickly, not wanting to engage.

There were two messages from the hospital speech therapy unit, referrals for the New Year. He replied acknowledging them, feeling unreal. Impossible to imagine being back there, though what else could he do?

He thought about the Facebook site for Jason. He’d still not looked at it, though Val did. She kept mentioning it and had even added her own thoughts and some pictures. She’d tried to read them to him, but he had left the room, unable to stand with her on this. She had sought him out later, wanting to talk about it, began with, ‘It helps me, Andrew, to see how many people care, to read about him.’

He didn’t answer.

‘It’s as if you don’t want to remember-’

‘It’s not that.’ He cut her off. ‘I can’t do it this way.’ Wallow, he wanted to say, but it felt so cruel he bit it back. ‘Not yet. I’m sorry.’

‘I need to be able to talk about him, like we do with your mum and dad – all of us, even the kids.’

Two evenings where in some sort of wake they had sat up late sharing stories. His parents, Val and him, Colin and Izzie and their kids. He had wanted to stop their mouths and cast them out, silence the peals of laughter and murmurs of soft fond recognition. Watching their eyes shine with affection and sparkle with tears, hands moving with gestures to illustrate their tales, he had seethed with rage. Did she not notice that he had said little, contributed nothing, drinking steadily, way more than anyone else, and been the first to leave, escaping with ‘a bad head’ or ‘need to lie down’?

He closed the laptop, took a tea bag out of the jar, found a cup, stared at it, then put it down. He fetched his coat and hat and gloves and set off in the darkening light.

Louise

‘Hello.’

It was Andrew Barnes again.

‘I hope you don’t mind,’ he said.

Louise stared at the man. What did he want with them? She hadn’t mentioned his earlier visit to either Ruby or Carl. Didn’t know how to put it. It seemed private somehow, and puzzling.

‘How is he?’ He looked anxious, apprehensive, as though he feared she might send him away.

‘The same,’ she said.

Andrew gestured to his own face, then at Luke. ‘He’s not got the mask.’

‘He’s breathing on his own but nothing else.’

‘But he still might…’

She nodded quickly. ‘Yes, it’s totally unpredictable. They say that the longer time goes on, the less chance there is that people’ll wake up, but it’s still quite early on, really.’ Seven days. Only three since they stopped sedation, she told herself. No time at all.

‘Yes,’ he said quietly.

It felt stupid, him standing across the other side of the room. She pointed to Ruby’s chair. ‘If you want to…’

‘Thanks.’

He didn’t look any better than last time, she thought, and knew she looked worse. She’d caught sight of her reflection in the visitors’ toilets, shocked to see grey in her hair. She had always thought that was a myth. And marks like bruises under her eyes. ‘They asked for pictures,’ she said. ‘The police: before and after.’ The memory was bitter in her mouth. ‘They used them in the appeal.’

He nodded.

She had known immediately which picture of Luke she would give them. Ruby had taken it when they were in Ibiza the summer before last. Luke at the restaurant table, relaxed, smiling. Rush matting and grapevines in the background, a knickerbocker glory with sparklers in front of him – his birthday. They’d teamed up with her mates Fee and Deanne and their kids to go. Deanne had got them a good deal because the apartment was her mum’s timeshare. The cheap flights meant travelling at god-awful hours both ways, but it had been a brilliant week for them all. Louise had worried about Luke; it was not long after he’d been in trouble over the graffiti, and before that the fireworks, and he’d been bunking off school. He was the eldest of the kids in the group but he was really good with the others, and then halfway through the week he’d met a girl from London, a holiday romance. Louise hoped they were taking precautions and said so to Luke, who grimaced. ‘Leave it out, won’t you,’ sounding a bit cockney himself. Louise hadn’t warmed to the girl, who had a habit of smirking at her whenever they met. She was glad when there was no mention of her after they got home.

‘They sent someone in here to take a photo.’ She gestured at Luke. She had sat there feeling furious, though not sure why, as the man had adjusted lights and moved drip stands and used a camera with a huge lens on the front then checked to see what he’d got on his screen.

‘The fight,’ Louise said, a cramp in her guts. ‘What happened?’ Putting together what the police had told her and what had been reported in the news, it was still so patchy. She knew there were three people involved, thought to be in their late teens, two boys and a girl. All white.

‘They think it started on the bus,’ Andrew said. ‘There’s a stop near the house. Jason was coming back from town.’

Had Luke been on the bus? A lurch in her stomach as the possibility struck. Declan said he had gone into town for some Christmas meal with his day-release course. If he had got the number 50 back instead of one of the buses down Wilmslow Road, which he sometimes did, then he could have been on the same bus as Jason. Then what? He’d made some smart comment, stared at them the wrong way? Or they’d homed in on him – a mixed-race kid, someone to taunt, to bully.

‘They didn’t tell you?’ Andrew said.

‘No.’ Why not? She was angry that no one had seen fit to keep her informed.

‘They didn’t give us many details, but they were bothering Luke first, then they all got off, Jason as well.’ He hunched his shoulders over, looked down at his hands. ‘I was in the house,’ he said. ‘By the time I got outside…’ He shook his head. ‘My wife Val, she saw some of it, she called the police. The three of them were…’ He hesitated, swallowed. ‘They were kicking Luke. Jason went for one of them, he managed to pull him off, then as I came out he was pushing the smaller of the boys away. Then they all ran off. We don’t know who used the knife.’

She sat for a moment trying to picture it, constructing it from what he had told her but at the same time not wanting to. ‘Just instinct, isn’t it?’ she said. ‘You see a fight, you want to stop it, especially if it’s three on one. Natural reaction.’

‘Is it?’ He looked peculiar. She couldn’t tell whether it was anger or some other emotion; fear maybe. But there was a tremor in his eye, a gleam of something sharp.

She thought of instances: kids brawling outside school, a scrap at a wedding, the pockets of violence on the demos her grandad had taken her on, a set-to once in the off-licence. Always that churning inside and the urge to separate the warring factions, calm them, admonish them. Stop them. ‘Yeah, it is. People do it all the time.’

He looked stricken. His son had died doing it. She felt a rush of sympathy, then the grip of guilt. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she said. ‘You must wish he hadn’t.’

‘My wife thinks he was very brave.’ There was a tension to him that made the hairs on Louise’s arms stand up.

‘And you?’

He frowned hard, the furrows deep on his forehead, the skin along the edges of them bleaching.

If it had been reversed, Louise wondered, if Luke were dead, murdered because he’d intervened for this man’s son – what would she feel? Torn open, harrowed beyond sound judgement.

After a moment he took a breath. ‘But the stories you hear, people standing back, turning a blind eye, letting it happen…’

She remembered fragments of stories: a girl raped on a train, a homeless man set alight. She chose her words carefully, the atmosphere dense between them, his need magnetic. ‘Maybe you only hear about them because they’re so unusual, out of the ordinary. Or when something goes terribly wrong, like this. All the other times, when someone knocks it on the head and it’s over, that’s not newsworthy, is it? “Man breaks up fight, trouble nipped in bud, brawl averted.”’

There was the faintest hint of a smile on his face.

‘The papers were there when we got back on Monday, soon as they’d released his name,’ she said. ‘All these vans and cars, people with microphones, the phone ringing off the hook. It was like being under siege.’ She recalled the sensation of being harried, trapped. They wanted her to come out and speak to them; they wanted to pick apart her feelings for the nation to see. She and Ruby had had to sneak out the back and ring a cab from Angie’s to take them to the hospital the next day. ‘Have you had them?’

He shook his head. ‘We’ve been staying away; we’ve only just gone home.’

Of course, she could have kicked herself. ‘Home’ was where it had happened; how could they have remained there in the aftermath? There was a silence. She looked at Luke. After a while, she spoke again. ‘It’s not knowing I find hardest,’ she said. ‘Who they are, why they picked on Luke.’

‘Jason walked into the house,’ he said. ‘He…’ His voice shook, his grief bloomed between his words and Louise felt her back stiffen. ‘He didn’t know he’d been stabbed. We didn’t know until it was too late.’ He paused. ‘I keep seeing him.’ He stole a glance at her.

Louise didn’t speak.

‘I don’t believe in ghosts,’ he said.

‘No,’ she agreed. She wondered whether he’d told his wife. If she saw Jason too.

He gave a heavy sigh and sat back in the chair, rubbed at his throat. ‘Is there anything else they can do?’ His eyes, pained, moved to Luke.

‘No,’ Louise said. ‘It’s just a waiting game now.’

‘Jason was in here – well, next door, St Mary’s – when he was born. Premature. He was having fits. For a while it looked like he wouldn’t-’ He broke off.

Louise tried to think of something to say, keen to divert Andrew from his suffering. ‘Luke wanted to go in the army,’ she said. ‘I made him wait. Didn’t want him in danger. You never know, do you?’ If she’d said yes, would he have been safer?

‘Mum?’ Ruby was back from the café. Louise was relieved to see her. Andrew stood up.

‘Ruby, this is Andrew, Jason Barnes’ dad.’

Ruby swallowed, nodded.

‘I’ll be on my way,’ Andrew said.

‘Perhaps we could swap numbers?’ Louise said. ‘Then if you hear anything else…’

‘Of course.’

‘What did he want?’ Ruby asked when he’d left.

I’m not sure, Louise thought. ‘To see how Luke was.’

Ruby sat down. ‘There’s carol singers downstairs collecting for the WRVS. What’s that stand for?’

As Louise told her, she thought more about Andrew Barnes, wished there was something she could do to ease his pain, and knew there would never be any way to make amends for the terrible sacrifice Jason had made. The sacrifice that had saved Luke’s life.