C.L. Taylor - The Accident

‘I’m sorry, Liam,’ I say. ‘I had no idea about any of that. Charlotte didn’t breathe a word.’

He sighs heavily, then crosses his arms and looks away. Conversation over.

It’s only when I’m halfway home that I realize I didn’t bring up the one subject I’d traipsed all the way over to White Street to discuss. Sex. There’s no way I can turn back and knock on the door again, not with Liam the way he was when I left. I don’t know what drove Charlotte to do what she did but I can’t help but feel that it was cruel, even for a teenager. But maybe Liam had done something to deserve it? Sometimes you have to escape from a relationship as stealthily and quietly as you can.

‘Here we are, Milly,’ I say as I fit the key in the lock, turn it and twist the handle of the porch door. ‘Home again. Home ag—’

My voice catches in my throat. There’s a postcard, picture side up, on the mat. I start to shake as I reach down to pick it up.

‘Stop it, Sue,’ I tell myself. ‘Stop overreacting, it’s just a postcard,’ but as I turn it over in my hands and look at the other side my ears start to ring. My vision clouds and I grab the doorframe, blinking hard to try and dispel the white spots that have appeared before my eyes but I know it’s too late. I’m going to faint.

Nearly two weeks since James told me he loved me and I still haven’t been to his place. All I know is that he lives in a three-bedroom terraced house near Wood Green. Hels is worried. According to her, you don’t date a man for six weeks without seeing his place unless he’s got something to hide. I told her that I wasn’t bothered – that going to hotels was exciting and staying at mine was convenient, but she knew I was bullshitting. You can’t be friends with someone since you were ten and lie to their face and get away with it.

‘Has it occurred to you that he might be married?’ she asked me over lunch the other day.

I told her it had, but there was no mark on the third finger of James’s left hand and he hadn’t slipped, not even once, and mentioned a wife or children. He hadn’t even mentioned an ex-girlfriend. I’d told him all about Nathan. I’d even told him about Rupert and the fact we’d had a drunken shag at uni, long before I introduced him to Hels and they got it together but he’d never so much as mentioned another woman’s name. Helen thought that was odd – that his silence meant he was obviously hiding something. I argued that some people are private and prefer to keep the past buried.

‘What then?’ she said. ‘Ex-con? Prisoner on the run?’ We both laughed. ‘Maybe he still lives with his mum and dad?’

I stopped laughing. That wasn’t such a ridiculous suggestion. James did keep running off from my place at the most bizarre hours, claiming he had ‘things to do’ and ‘stuff to sort’ and, no matter how much I interrogated him, he refused to expand on his vagaries, saying instead that what he had to do was ‘dull’ and I ‘really wouldn’t be interested’.

‘Definitely married,’ Hels said when I told her that. ‘Why else would he suddenly rush off and not tell you where he’s going?’

Before she went back to work she made me swear that I’d stop ‘fannying around’ and demand that James take me to his place or I’d end the relationship. I wasn’t sure about throwing ultimatums around but I promised her I’d bring up the subject when I meet him for dinner tomorrow.

I’m sure there’s a perfectly innocuous reason why he hasn’t invited me back to his place. So why do I feel so sick?

I come to on the floor of the porch. One of my cheeks is pressed against cold tile, the other is strangely damp. I glance up to see Milly standing above me, her big, brown eyes fixed on the empty dog bowl in the corner of the porch, her tongue dripping with drool. She senses me looking at her and smiles down at me before enthusiastically licking my cheek.

‘Hello Milly Moo.’ I sit up slowly, gingerly checking my body for injuries. Nothing appears to be broken, though by the way my left temple aches, I think I’m in for a pretty impressive bruise. For a split second I assume I tripped and fell but then I spot the postcard on the floor beside me and it all comes flooding back again. The image on the front shows James Stewart sitting on a step smiling a goofy smile whilst, behind him, a shadow of an enormous rabbit is projected on the wall. It’s an image from the film Harvey . The postcard could so easily be innocuous – a simple hello from one friend to another – only there’s no chatty text on the other side of this postcard, there isn’t even an addressee. There’s just a stamp, postmarked Brighton and an address, my address.

This isn’t someone forgetting to write a postcard and slipping it into the postbox with a handful of letters by mistake. That’s the explanation Brian would come up with if I told him about it. He’d give me a look, the look, the one that says ‘you’re going to have another episode, aren’t you?’ and then he’d throw it in the bin and tell me that everything’s fine and I’m safe. Only I’m not safe, am I? Harvey was James’ favourite film. I lost count of the number of times we watched that film together.

Milly startles as I kick out at the postcard, sending it spinning and scuttling under the shoe rack. If I can’t see it then maybe I won’t think about it. Maybe I’ll be able to ignore the fact that, twenty years after I left him, James has finally tracked me down.

I try as best I can to forget about the postcard but it’s like trying to forget how to breathe. Whenever my mind pauses, whenever it’s free of thoughts about Charlotte, Brian and what to cook for dinner, it returns to the porch, peers under the shoe rack and pulls out the postcard. No matter where I am in the house it haunts me from its dark, dusty corner. I want to visit Charlotte but I’m too scared to leave the house. What if James is waiting for me? If he’s been watching the house he’ll know I’m home alone but all the doors and windows are locked – I’ve checked three times – and there’s no way for him to get in. I’ve got my mobile phone in my hands, primed and ready to key in 999 if I hear the slightest noise.

There won’t be time to call for help if I leave the house and James attacks me. If he’s hiding in the bushes opposite the front door he could get me as I get into the car or, if he’s in a car down the lane, he could follow me to the hospital and attack Charlotte. It’s been less than twenty-four hours since I last saw her and I’m already consumed by fear and guilt because I haven’t seen her today. What if, deep in her subconscious, she knows I haven’t been to visit, and it makes her retreat deeper into her coma? What if she wakes up and I’m not there? What if she dies?

For the next couple of hours I don’t know what to do with myself. I jump when the phone rings and start when the wind rattles the letter box. When there’s a knock on the front door I run up to Brian’s study and peer down from behind the curtain, only to discover the electricity man pushing a card through our letter box. What am I doing? I’m allowing the memory of James to terrify me, to stop me from visiting my own daughter. I am not ‘Suzy-Sue’ – I haven’t been her for a very long time.

I return downstairs and fish the postcard out from its dusty hiding place with the fire tongs and burn it in the fireplace in the living room. I sit on the sofa, watching as the flames lick at the corners, dance across James Stewart’s lolloping smile and then envelop him. When he and his strange rabbit sidekick have turned to dust I sweep them up.