Dany Atkins - Fractured

‘Yes, that’s fine. I’ll see you around 2 o’clock?’

He nodded then and sighed, as though some dreaded task had been accomplished, which only served to heighten my curiosity further. I guessed I would have to wait until the next day to find out what was on his mind.

He wasn’t sure if the sirens were for him, but he wasn’t prepared to wait and see. After the last time, he knew he’d not be getting off again with just a caution. The sensible thing would be to ditch the car in a side street. The really sensible thing would have been not to steal it in the first place. But when had he ever done the sensible thing? He pulled hard on the wheel to make a turn, narrowly avoiding running the car into a lamppost when he misjudged the angle.

With his fisted hand he punched the controls on the stereo and the vibrant pulse of loud rock music filled the car. He glanced down at the speedometer . . . sixty-five miles an hour. Fairly good, but now he was curious as to just how much faster he could get it to go before he had to abandon it.

Laughing out loud, he swung wildly around another corner and headed for the hill in the high street.

The waiters had just arrived with the laden plates and begun to set them in front of us. Straightening up in his seat, Matt removed his right arm from where it had been resting around my waist, pausing to plant a firm kiss unexpectedly on my lips before pulling back.

‘Pleeeease . . . people are trying to eat round here!’ groaned Sarah, pretending repulsion.

I grinned back at Matt and held my face very still while he tucked a wayward strand of hair behind my ear. It was just a chance inconsequential action, but later I would wonder what might have happened to us all if he hadn’t been leaning so closely towards me and seen the car first fly over the crest of the hill.

With a cry of gusto he powered the stolen motor up the incline and shouted out loud when all four wheels momentarily left the tarmac before bouncing squarely down with a bone-jolting shudder. The momentum and the speed caused the powerful car to swerve slightly to the left and he jerked on the wheel with unnecessary force in an attempt to correct this. The car responded by instantly hurtling at ever-increasing speed down the hill onto the wrong side of the road, where a small red hatchback was already half-way emerged from a side turning. The hatchback slammed on its brakes in a squeal of rubber and by some miracle avoided being hit by the GTi by the narrowest of margins.

Once again, roughly jerking the wheel, the powerful car scraped alongside a parked vehicle, causing a shower of sparks to emerge from the glancing impact.

Yet still he kept his foot on the throttle.

Ricocheting away from the grazing of metal on metal, the GTi headed straight across to the other side of the road, this time catching a chrome bumper of another parked car before powering away further down the long steep hill.

The sirens in the distance sounded closer. And recklessly ignoring the necessity to slow down for the looming dog-leg bend at the foot of the hill, he slammed down hard on the accelerator pedal until the speedometer read over eighty miles per hour.

‘What the hell . . . !’ cried Matt, catching the insane manoeuvre of the car as it shot, as though from a cannon, over the top of the hill.

I turned swiftly to follow his gaze, but it wasn’t until the long rubber scream of brakes from the hatchback filled the air, that the attention of the rest of the group was alerted. Even from the first impact, Matt somehow seemed to have assessed what was happening far sooner than the rest of us. The car was still high up on the hill, but at the speed it was travelling, that distance was being swallowed up by the second. When the GTi shot across the road and hit the second car, Matt was already getting to his feet.

‘He’s lost it! He’s out of control. That car’s going to crash! Get away from the window! NOW!’

For the first time we all seemed to notice the vulnerability of our position, seated beside the large window at the front of the restaurant. Separated from the road by only the narrowest of low pavements and sited on the corner of a very tight bend at the foot of the hill, the inevitability of the danger suddenly seemed glaringly obvious.

After avoiding major impact and merely clipping the second car, the reckless joy-rider yelled out loud at his driving prowess. He’d really thought he was going to lose it back then.

Spurred on by his lucky streak and the inevitable appearance of flashing blue lights behind him, he tightened his grip on the leather-bound steering wheel, and proceeded at irresponsible speed towards the hairpin bend.

I felt Matt’s tight grip on my shoulder as he got to his feet, screaming out his warning. The panic became infectious as people around us also began to shout. I noticed distractedly the waiter dropped two of our plates of food on the floor before retreating hastily away from our table.

‘ Well that’s made a horrible mess, ’ I found myself thinking stupidly.

It wasn’t as though I couldn’t see what was happening; or that I hadn’t fully understood my boyfriend’s cry of warning. It was just that everything had suddenly and strangely slipped into slow-motion. There seemed to be no immediate rush; there was plenty of time to get away from the table. No need to have dropped two perfectly good dinners in the process.

Around me was a blur of movement. I saw Jimmy and Sarah get out of their seats and was aware of them running over to where Phil was standing, screaming out for the rest of us to move. Matt’s hand remained embedded in the hollow of my shoulder as I felt him half drag me from my chair. With his other hand I saw him begin to propel Cathy, who was standing beside him, away from the table.

The chaotic scramble of flung-back chairs and knocked-over wine glasses could only have taken a second or two, but in that time I did something really dumb: I turned to look back through the window at the approaching car. Still coming way too fast, the vehicle, its engine roaring like a banshee, erratically straddled the centre line of the road, heading straight towards the bend – and the front of the restaurant – with no sign of slowing down.

And that stupid moment, when I stopped to check the car’s approach, was when Matt lost his grip on my shoulder. When I turned my horrified face back from the window, I saw that he and Cathy were already some distance from the table. I stumbled forwards to follow them, but somehow when leaving, Matt’s chair had been knocked over and was now wedged firmly against the pillar beside me. My exit was blocked.

Frantically I pushed at the fallen wooden obstacle, succeeding only in wedging it further between the edge of the table and the pillar.

‘Rachel!’ screamed Sarah at the top of her lungs ‘Get out of the way!’

Gasping in terror, I knew that from where they stood they must be able to see the car heading straight towards the window, beside which I was now trapped. I pushed and kicked at the chair with every ounce of strength, fear and adrenalin coursing through me, until the sounds of the restaurant diminished and all I could hear was the roar of the blood in my ears.

In desperation I looked up to Matt, and saw him begin to move back towards me and then, unbelievably, Cathy grabbed onto his arm and held him back.

‘No Matt, no! There’s no time! You’ll be killed.’

I heard that alright, and crazily part of my brain, the part that wasn’t busy trying not to let the rest of me get killed, even had time to absorb what I’d just seen Cathy do. If she thought I was going to let that pass, she was very much mistaken.