Clare Mackintosh: I Let You Go

‘Sorry.’ Kate swallowed and gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I promise I won’t always be like this.’

‘Hey, it’s okay,’ Ray said. ‘We’ve all been there.’

She raised an eyebrow. ‘Even you? I didn’t have you down as the sensitive type, boss.’

‘I have my moments.’ Ray squeezed her shoulder before taking his arm away. He didn’t think he’d ever actually shed tears at a job, but he’d come pretty close. ‘You going to be okay?’

‘I’ll be fine. Thank you.’

As they pulled away, Kate looked back at the scene, where the CSIs were still hard at work. ‘What sort of bastard kills a five-year-old boy, then drives off?’

Ray didn’t hesitate. ‘That’s exactly what we’re going to find out.’

2

I don’t want a cup of tea, but I take it anyway. Cradling the mug in both hands I press my face into the steam until it scalds me. Pain pricks my skin, deadening my cheeks and stinging my eyes. I fight the instinct to pull away; I need the numbness to blur the scenes that won’t leave my head.

‘Shall I get you something to eat?’

He towers over me and I know I should look up, but I can’t bear to. How can he offer me food and drink as though nothing has happened? A wave of nausea wells up inside me and I swallow the acrid taste back down. He blames me for it. He hasn’t said so, but he doesn’t have to, it’s there in his eyes. And he’s right – it was my fault. We should have gone home a different way; I shouldn’t have talked; I should have stopped him …

‘No, thank you,’ I say quietly, ‘I’m not hungry.’

The accident plays on a loop in my head. I want to press pause but the film is relentless: his body slamming onto the bonnet time after time after time. I raise the mug to my face again, but the tea has cooled and the warmth on my skin isn’t enough to hurt. I can’t feel the tears forming, but fat droplets burst as they hit my knees. I watch them soak into my jeans, and scratch my nail across a smear of clay on my thigh.

I look around the room at the home I have spent so many years creating. The curtains, bought to match the cushions; the artwork, some of my own, some I found in galleries and loved too much to leave behind. I thought I was making a home, but I was only ever building a house.

My hand hurts. I can feel my pulse beating rapid and light in my wrist. I’m glad of the pain. I wish it were more. I wish it had been me the car hit.

He’s talking again. Police are out everywhere looking for the car … the papers will appeal for witnesses … it will be on the news …

The room spins and I fix my gaze on the coffee table, nodding when it seems appropriate. He strides two paces to the window, then back again. I wish he would sit down – he’s making me nervous. My hands are shaking and I put down my untouched tea before I drop it, but I clatter the china against the glass tabletop. He shoots me a look of frustration.

‘Sorry,’ I say. There’s a metallic taste in my mouth, and I realise I’ve bitten through the inside of my lip. I swallow the blood, not wanting to draw attention to myself by asking for a tissue.

Everything has changed. The instant the car slid across the wet tarmac, my whole life changed. I can see everything clearly, as though I am standing on the sidelines. I can’t go on like this.

When I wake, for a second I’m not sure what this feeling is. Everything is the same, and yet everything has changed. Then, before I have even opened my eyes, there is a rush of noise in my head, like an underground train. And there it is: playing out in Technicolor scenes I can’t pause or mute. I press the heels of my palms into my temples as though I can make the images subside through brute force alone, but still they come, thick and fast, as if without them I might forget.

On my bedside cabinet is the brass alarm clock Eve gave me when I went to university – ‘Because you’ll never get to lectures, otherwise’ – and I’m shocked to see it’s ten-thirty already. The pain in my hand has been overshadowed by a headache that blinds me if I move my head too fast, and as I peel myself from the bed every muscle aches.

I pull on yesterday’s clothes and go into the garden without stopping to make a coffee, even though my mouth is so dry it’s an effort to swallow. I can’t find my shoes, and the frost stings my feet as I make my way across the grass. The garden isn’t large, but winter is on its way, and by the time I reach the other side I can’t feel my toes.

The garden studio has been my sanctuary for the last five years. Little more than a shed to the casual observer, it is where I come to think, to work, and to escape. The wooden floor is stained from the lumps of clay that drop from my wheel, firmly placed in the centre of the room, where I can move around it and stand back to view my work with a critical eye. Three sides of the shed are lined with shelves on which I place my sculptures, in an ordered chaos only I could understand. Works in progress, here; fired but not painted, here; waiting to go to customers, here. Hundreds of separate pieces, yet if I shut my eyes, I can still feel the shape of each one beneath my fingers, the wetness of the clay on my palms.

I take the key from its hiding place under the window ledge and open the door. It’s worse than I thought. The floor lies unseen beneath a carpet of broken clay; rounded halves of pots ending abruptly in angry jagged peaks. The wooden shelves are all empty, my desk swept clear of work, and the tiny figurines on the window ledge are unrecognisable, crushed into shards that glisten in the sunlight.

By the door lies a small statuette of a woman. I made her last year, as part of a series of figures I produced for a shop in Clifton. I had wanted to produce something real, something as far from perfection as it was possible to get, and yet for it still to be beautiful. I made ten women, each with their own distinctive curves, their own bumps and scars and imperfections. I based them on my mother; my sister; girls I taught at pottery class; women I saw walking in the park. This one is me. Loosely, and not so anyone would recognise, but nevertheless me. Chest a little too flat; hips a little too narrow; feet a little too big. A tangle of hair twisted into a knot at the base of the neck. I bend down and pick her up. I had thought her intact, but as I touch her the clay moves beneath my hands, and I’m left with two broken pieces. I look at them, then I hurl them with all my strength towards the wall, where they shatter into tiny pieces that shower down on to my desk.

I take a deep breath and let it slowly out.

I’m not sure how many days have passed since the accident, or how I have moved through the week when I feel as though I’m dragging my legs through treacle. I don’t know what it is that makes me decide today is the day. But it is. I take only what will fit into my holdall, knowing that if I don’t go right now, I might not be able to leave at all. I walk haphazardly about the house, trying to imagine never being here again. The thought is both terrifying and liberating. Can I do this? Is it possible to simply walk away from one life and start another? I have to try: it is my only chance of getting through this in one piece.

My laptop is in the kitchen. It holds photos; addresses; important information I might one day need and hadn’t thought to save elsewhere. I don’t have time to think about doing this now, and although it’s heavy and awkward I add it to my bag. I don’t have much room left, but I can’t leave without one final piece of my past. I discard a jumper and a fistful of T-shirts, making room instead for the wooden box in which my memories are hidden, crammed one on top of another beneath the cedar lid. I don’t look inside – I don’t need to. The assortment of teenage diaries, erratically kept and with regretted pages torn from their bindings; an elastic band full of concert tickets; my graduation certificate; clippings from my first exhibition. And the photos of the son I loved with an intensity that seemed impossible. Precious photographs. So few for someone so loved. Such a small impact on the world, yet the very centre of my own.