Penny Vincenzi - The Best Of Times

“Right.”

“But like I was saying, it’s all beginning to hit me now. And I wouldn’t point the tiniest finger of blame in your direction. Not the tiniest.” There was a silence; then she said suddenly, “Except… why were you so late, Barney? I’d quite like to know. Seeing it cost me my wedding.”

Barney felt his stomach lurch.

“Tamara, it was the crash that cost you your wedding.”

“No, it wasn’t. It was because you left so late. If you’d left in time, you’d have been there hours before the crash. I mean, you were going to have lunch with the ushers, weren’t you?”

“Yes. Well… the thing is, Tamara… I… He… that is… Toby wasn’t very well. He kept throwing up. All morning. We really couldn’t set out before. It was impossible.”

“Oh. Oh, I see… Poor old Tobes. Something he ate, I s’pose. Or a bug. I mean, you wouldn’t have let him get drunk, obviously, it wouldn’t have been a hangover.”

“No, of course not,” said Barney.

“He didn’t actually mention any of that… Well, thank you for telling me. I feel better now.”

“Good,” said Barney. He found he was sweating. The champagne was wonderfully cold; he drank down half the glass gratefully.

“Anyway, obviously I’m not going to raise it with Toby, or anything like that. He’s feeling guilty enough, poor darling.”

“Guilty?” said Barney. He was genuinely shocked.

“Yes, course. Barney, of course he’s feeling guilty. I mean, of course he shouldn’t, and I did tell him that, but… well, he does; he can’t help it. I mean, wouldn’t you? If it had been yours and Amanda’s wedding?”

“I don’t think so,” said Barney, “no.” He couldn’t take any more of this. “Anyway, Tamara, I must go. I-” His phone rang. “Excuse me. It’s Amanda. Hi, darling. You all right?”

“I’m fine, Barney. But… Carol Weston’s been on the phone, wants to talk to you. Some bad-ish news about Toby’s leg, I’m afraid. I think she’d like you to ring her. And are you going to be late? Because if you are-”

“No,” said Barney. “No, I’m leaving right now.”

Georgia was sitting in the kitchen in Cardiff, grazing through the newspaper, and wondering if she should get a job in a bar for the next two or three weeks until Moving Away went into production. (It was one of the good days.)

“Oh, my God!” She thought she might be about to throw up.

She stood up, staring at the paper, open at a page of minor news items, the largest of which read, “Mystery on the Motorway” and continued with a story of a “so far unconfirmed report” that the lorry driver who had crashed through a barrier on the M4 the previous week, causing a seven-mile tailback in both directions and killing several people, had spoken of a second and unidentified person in his cab who had subsequently vanished.

“This is the first indication that there might have been a passenger in the cab. The police refuse to confirm or deny it, and there have been no further reports. If such a person does exist, then he or she could clearly have valuable information that would go a long way towards establishing the original cause of the crash, something police are very eager to settle.

“Although many of the injured are recovering in the hospital and some have returned home, there is still anxiety over the fate of Toby Weston, the young bridegroom who sustained serious injuries in the pileup, and never reached his wedding. The bride, Tamara Lloyd, told our reporter she was ‘absolutely distraught with worry’

“The crash, which is still being investigated by the police, was one of the worst in years.

“There have been several calls recently for lorry drivers’ hours to be more strictly regulated. While British drivers adhere strictly, for the most part, to the rules, drivers from the continent often drive twice as many miles in a week, and break the speed limit for heavy vehicles. This can lead to acute tiredness and dangerous driving. The lorry driver in question was British…”

“Very carefully written,” said Freeman to Rowe, when it was brought to his attention. “Plenty of suggestion that the crash was caused by dangerous driving on the part of the driver, without actually saying so. Nothing we could actually object to.”

“It’s disgraceful,” said Rowe, “hardly going to make the poor sod feel better, is it?”

“No,” said Freeman, “but it’ll probably make the TV people more interested in our case.”

“The PR people were more interested in the dog,” said Rowe.

Toby was very low: two days to go. He’d rung Barney in the office; Barney had decided to go down that evening. He found him sitting in bed, pale and morose.

“I’m shit scared,” Toby said.

Tears formed in his eyes, rolled slowly down his face; Barney reached out and gripped his hand.

“Oh, Tobes. You’ll be all right. I know you will.”

“I don’t. Oh, God. Barney, what am I going to do; how am I going to face it? It’s so fucking unfair. Just five more minutes and we’d have been OK. We should have left earlier, shouldn’t we? Tamara keeps saying that.”

“Oh, really?” Cow. Bitch. How helpful. How totally helpful…

“Still, you did your best, I know.”

“Yeah, I did. And, Toby, we couldn’t have left much earlier.”

“We couldn’t?”

“No. Course not.”

“Why?”

“Toby, you had to go and see that girl-”

Toby suddenly looked different: wary, almost suspicious.

“Barney, that so didn’t happen. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Yes. Yes, its OK, Toby; don’t worry, mate. “He drew his finger across his throat, grinned at him determinedly. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“It’s not funny,” said Toby. “Not a joke. OK?”

“Yes, OK.”

“Just… didn’t happen.”

“No, all right.” Barney began to feel mildly resentful. What did Toby think he was going to do, tell Tamara, his parents?

“But, Tobes, there is something else. The tyre. You remember?”

“What tyre?”

“The one that blew.”

“Oh… yes.”

“I didn’t… well, I didn’t say-to the police, that is-about its being soft.”

“Was it?”

“You know it was. And we didn’t put any air in; you didn’t want to wait-”

“Oh… Christ, no. We don’t want to tell them that. Start looking for trouble-”

“No. Good. Well, I just thought… they’re bound to interview you when you’re out of here. Important we’re singing from the same song sheet.”

“Yeah, OK. Pretty obvious, I’d have thought.”

“Right.” He felt irritated suddenly, almost angry. He’d been making himself sick with worry over this whole business, and Toby was treating him with something close to arrogance.

Suddenly he couldn’t bear it any longer.

“Look, Toby, I must go. Got to get back. But I will be here on Wednesday. Promise.”

“Yeah, I know. Oh, Barney… you’re… well, you’re all right, you know that?”

He reached across the bed and shook Barney’s hand; the sheer stiff-upper-lipness of the gesture made them both grin, slightly embarrassed.

“Right. See you then. You won’t be here much longer. We’ll have a party, Tobes, biggest fucking party ever, when you get out of here. We’ll have you dancing on the tables…”

Barney felt very upset as he left the hospital, almost physically dizzy at the horror of what might lie ahead, and-he had to be honest with himself-Toby’s behaviour. Of course, he was ill and scared shitless, but he didn’t have to treat him like some kind of wanker who was going to sell him down the river. He sat down suddenly on the steps, trying to pull himself together, fumbling in his pockets for his cigarettes.