Penny Vincenzi - The Best Of Times

“What’s wrong with that?” said Rowe.

“Nothing. It’s the responsible thing to do-especially if you’re thinking of driving rather fast. But the point is, Mr. Fraser told us he hadn’t done anything at the service station except get fuel.”

“Well, I expect he just didn’t mention it. Forgot.”

“Rowe, you don’t forget things like that. Especially when x minutes later your tyre bursts and contributes to a major accident. No, I think we should perhaps talk to Mr. Fraser again. Ask him about it. Or-which might be cleverer-talk to the bridegroom. Get a separate account.”

“You can’t do that yet,” said Rowe. “He’s very unwell. I thought they said he might be having major surgery on Monday.”

“Mr. Connell is also very unwell. We learnt quite a lot from him.”

“That’s true. Although it was pretty muddled. All that stuff about feeling sleepy and eating jelly babies. And the second person in the van.”

“I’ve told you before, Rowe, the devil’s in the details in this game.” If he said that once more, Rowe thought, he’d thump him. “The very fact that he was talking about jelly babies, not just chocolate, could be important. If he can be precise about his sweets, then we can take more notice of the rest of his testimony.

“Now, it could be his confusion, this second person in the van. But put together with-what-three reports now about this mysterious girl at the scene of the crash, I think it bears a very close look indeed.” He paused. “You know, Rowe, I’m wondering if we can get the media interested in this one. We’d get more eyewitnesses to what actually happened. And in particular, who else might have seen this girl, and a second person in the lorry-who, of course, are not necessarily one and the same. I think I’ll talk to the PR department first thing Monday. See if they can get it on the news.”

“So how would we go about it?”

“Oh, we-or the PR people-contact one of their researchers, give them the story, make it sound as interesting as we can; after that it’s up to them. Bit of a beauty contest, really-”

“I wonder if they ever found that missing dog,” said Rowe suddenly, “the golden retriever. That would be the sort of thing they’d like…”

There was a silence; then Freeman said, slightly grudgingly, “It could be, yes. Why don’t you check it out, Rowe?”

Georgia was beginning to feel she had two heads. Or two selves. It was very odd. There was the Georgia who had just got a part in a prestigious TV series, who was feeling pretty pleased with herself; and there was the other Georgia, who was scared and miserable and ashamed of herself, who didn’t remotely know what to do to make things better. Or rather who did know, but seemed to entirely lack the courage to do it.

She could be walking through Cardiff, going to meet a friend, listening to her iPod, and looking in the windows of Topshop, and without warning the terror would be there, the terror and the awful despair. She would stand still, shaking, feeling she would never move again, trying to set aside the memories and the guilt, and then she would have to call the friend, plead illness, and go home again, creeping under her duvet, crying, sometimes for hours at time.

And then, equally without reason, it would go again, and she would find herself able to say, Well, was it really so bad, what she had done? And no one need ever know, and one day, yes, one day she would go and see Patrick-who was, after all, still alive-and say she was sorry…

Only… she knew she couldn’t. She really, really couldn’t.

“Wednesday’s the big day now,” said Toby. He had rung Barney at work; his voice was painfully cheerful.

“Yeah? For… what?”

As if he didn’t know.

“Oh-this final washout thing. If they don’t think it’s working then-”

“Well, then, they’ll try again,” said Barney.

“Mate, they won’t,” said Toby.

“Course they will. They’re not going to give up on you.”

“No. Just take the leg off. Or some of it.”

“Oh, Tobes. Of… of course they’re not. Whatever makes you think that?”

“Because the fucking doctor told me so. He was very nice, very positive, said he was fairly confident that it would be OK, but we had to face the fact it might not be. I’ll have to sign a consent thing, apparently, before I go down. Shit, Barney, I’m scared.”

There was a silence; then Barney said, “So… have you told Tamara?”

“Oh, no, no. I thought it would upset her too much.”

“Well, that’s very brave of you,” Barney said carefully. “What about your parents?”

“No, I haven’t told them either. Poor old Mum, she’s upset enough as it is.”

“Well…” Barney sought wildly round for something to say that might help. “Well… tell you what, Tobes: would you like me to come down on Wednesday? Be there when it’s done? Not in the operating theatre, of course-don’t think I could cope with that-but I’ll spend the time beforehand with you, be there when you come back. With two good legs, obviously.”

“Shit, Barney, you are the best. Would you really? Yeah, that’d be great. They said it’d be the afternoon probably. I was thinking what a ghastly long day it would be. But… you’ll be-”

“I’ll be there…”

Sometime, when Toby felt better, Barney thought, they should discuss the little matter of the tyre. Just so that they were saying the same thing. If anyone asked Toby. Which they probably wouldn’t…

Patrick was in the grip of a horror and fear that had a physical presence, that were invading him as surely as the pain had done on the day of the accident. Somehow talking to the police had made it worse, had made him more certain that he had gone to sleep; just hearing his own voice, describing it, made it seem impossible that there had been another explanation. He had killed all those people, ruined all those lives; it was his fault; he had blood on his hands as surely as if he had taken a gun and shot them all.

And not being able to remember anything made it worse, rendered him completely out of control. They’d told him it would come back, his memory, but the more he tried to remember, the more difficult it got; it was like trying to see through a fog that was thickening by the day. Even the other person in the van seemed to be disappearing into that fog. And even if someone had been there, he had still been at the wheel…

The horror never left him; he lay for hours just wrestling with it, woke to it, slept his drugged sleep with it, dreamed of it. There was no room for anything else: for hope, for calm-just the horror rendering it ugly and even obscene. It was all going to go on until he died; there was no escape anywhere. He reflected on all the skill and care that were going into his recovery, or his possible recovery, and there seemed no point, absolutely no point at all in any of it. He wished it would stop altogether; he wished he could stop.

And then in a moment of revelation, it came to him that actually, if he really wanted that, he could.

“You look tired, Mum; why don’t you go through and watch TV. Gerry’ll help me clear away, won’t you, Gerry?”

“Oh… no,” said Mary. Her heart thumped uncomfortably. “Look… I’d like to talk to you both about something. The thing is… well, look, dears, this may come as… well, as a bit of a surprise to you, but you know I was on my way to London last week? The day of the crash? I wasn’t entirely honest about the reason. I was going to meet someone.”

“Yes, you said… A friend.”

“Indeed. But he was a little more than a friend.”