Cath Staincliffe - Blink of an Eye

A bus trundled past, over the speed bumps, pulled into the stop and disgorged its passengers, who streamed up to the main entrance.

I rang Suzanne.

‘Mum?’

‘She woke up; your dad and I were there. She recognized us, she talked, only a word or two, but it’s really good news.’

‘Oh good,’ she said, but there was a shade of something in her tone that didn’t fit.

‘What?’ Was something wrong with Ollie? Or was the whole thing just too much for Suzanne?

‘The police are here.’

‘Oh God!’

‘I’d better go,’ she said.

I told Phil. ‘They’ll want to talk to all of us, I imagine,’ he said, ‘and Naomi of course.’

‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘She’s not fit.’

‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I’m sure the staff won’t allow it until she is.’

I nodded, barely reassured.

The sky was unbroken blue, the sun warm again, but I shivered, cold to my bones.

Alex was in a four-bed room, asleep in a semi-upright position when we reached him. He looked terribly pale, his skin blue-white like skimmed milk. He had a cast on his left arm and one on his right leg. There were bruises like plums on his forehead and his jaw, and cuts peppered his face and hands.

‘Alex?’

He opened his eyes a little bit and there was a bleary, drugged look to them. He was probably on strong painkillers.

‘Hi, you feel up to visitors?’ I said.

He swallowed, nodded. ‘You thirsty?’ I offered him some water. He nodded again and I passed him the cup. He sipped, coughed, sipped some more.

‘How’s Naomi?’ His voice was hoarse when he spoke.

‘She’s hanging in there.’ I discerned the tremor in Phil’s voice, and his careful choice of words. I understood we should be gentle with the boy, gentle with the truth. But I needed to hear his account.

‘She’s very groggy. No one can tell us exactly what happened,’ I said.

He stilled. I saw him press his lips together, make a strange movement, balking as if he would retch.

‘We’re so sorry, Alex,’ Phil said.

‘Yeah,’ he said huskily.

‘If you’re not up to talking…’ Phil said.

I will rip your head off , I thought in my desperation.

Alex dismissed Phil’s offer with a shake of his head.

‘You thought Naomi was safe to drive?’ I said.

He frowned. ‘What?’

‘Suzanne said she’d been drinking.’

‘No!’ He shook his head again, frowning. ‘Early on maybe, but she’d offered to drive. I was celebrating.’ He almost lost it then, the muscles around his jaw spasming with the emotion.

‘Celebrating the job,’ Phil said.

‘She was fine with it, the driving.’

So they’d discussed it at the party. ‘She wasn’t drunk?’ I said.

‘No.’ He looked from me to Phil and back. ‘I’d never have let her… She wouldn’t do that, she wouldn’t.’ Oh, thank God. He sounded absolutely certain, and it reflected what I’d thought when Suzanne first said Naomi had been drinking. The pressure in my chest eased as though someone had taken their hand away. I knew this didn’t change everything – it was still a tragedy – but at least if Naomi had been sober, then she was less to blame.

‘So – the accident?’ I prompted him.

‘We were on Mottram Lane,’ he said.

I nodded, my fingers laced together tightly. ‘Where it bends round?’

‘Yes,’ said Alex. ‘Naomi, she took the bend too quickly…’ He stopped, his Adam’s apple moving in his throat. ‘This… there was a girl on a bike.’ He closed his eyes.

‘Was she crossing the road?’ I said.

He opened his eyes, his brow creased as if to focus. ‘No,’ he said.

My heart sank.

‘No, she was at the side, my side.’

‘Waiting to cross?’ I couldn’t let it go, so keen was I to comprehend, to find mitigating circumstances.

There was a kerfuffle in the room as visitors arrived and called out to the patient in the bed in the corner.

‘Riding along,’ said Alex.

‘At the side of the road?’ Phil said.

‘Yes. Going the same way as us. Naomi had gone too far over on the bend; she must have tried to compensate. We swung to the left. I don’t know whether she saw… We hit the bike,’ he said dully, ‘then…’ He took a breath in, shaky.

Phil put his hand on mine. I unclenched my fingers, held his hand.

‘… she was thrown into the air.’

He was so young, I thought, as I watched him sitting in that bed, young and vulnerable, wounded.

‘Naomi braked really hard and we spun round. The road was dry, but…’ He shook his head.

‘I brought you some decent food,’ one of the visitors was saying in ringing tones so we could all hear. ‘Not the rubbish they give you in this place.’

I wanted to slap her. Couldn’t she tell from our tense little tableau that there were hard things being discussed? That we had no need of entertainment?

‘We hit the gatepost – there’s a school there – and the airbags went off and we flipped right over.’ His mouth trembled and I feared that he’d cry. I wanted to tell him it was okay, that there was no need to pretend a stoicism he didn’t have, but at the same time I wanted him to keep talking.

‘We went right across the road on the roof, towards the river. The railings stopped us, they ripped through the back. I was shouting, I remember shouting, but Naomi, she was…’ He blinked, put his good hand to his forehead, a fist next to the swelling. ‘She was… she didn’t answer, she couldn’t. I undid the seat belts, got my door open and went round and tried to get hers open. There was this really, really strong smell of petrol.’

Phil squeezed my hand. I put my other hand on his arm, needing more contact, more connection.

‘I got her out, pulled her away from the car. She, erm…’ Now his eyes glistened and he opened his mouth, a silent cry. After a few moments he spoke again. ‘She wasn’t doing anything, not breathing. Her eyes… I thought she was dead.’ He dipped his head and sniffed. ‘There was no heartbeat. Her face was bleeding. The bike was on the railings like it had fallen from the sky and the little girl, she…’ He covered his eyes. I looked at Phil, tears welling in my throat. ‘The petrol tank, it blew. And I rang the ambulance.’

There it was. The facts.

Unbearable.

‘You saved her,’ I told him, reaching out to touch his arm. ‘You got her out.’

‘Alex,’ said Phil, ‘you’ve no idea how much that means to us.’

‘I thought she was dead,’ he said again, and he began to cry, silently, his shoulders shaking, tears spilling down his pale cheeks.

I was delighted when Naomi met Alex. The boyfriend before had been very full of himself from what I’d heard, and unreliable. He’d let her down on several occasions. She’d get all excited about some arrangement, a concert or whatever, and at the last minute he’d rearrange or bring extra friends or be horribly late. If she complained, he accused her of being a whiner. He made her unhappy.

I tried telling her to talk to him calmly about it in between any actual crises, but she dismissed me. ‘He won’t listen, he hates that sort of thing.’ Being told his behaviour is unacceptable? ‘He just doesn’t think.’ Doesn’t care, more like.

You can’t tell them how to live their lives, much as I sometimes yearn to.

Alex was a ray of hope. He’s exactly a year older than Naomi; they share the same birthday. ‘How cool is that!’ Naomi crowed when she told us. His parents are divorced and his dad, who’s American, lives in the States. Alex is quiet, quieter than Phil, say, or Jonty, but not shy. He’s clever, too, intelligent. I guess he’d have to be to study law.