Penny Vincenzi - The Best Of Times

She sounded more her old self, seeing Mary as some sort of elderly child. Well, it was better than being an adulteress…

Linda decided to watch the news while she waited for Georgia. She felt she needed a glass of wine; she was just pouring it when a familiar, a horribly familiar scene presented itself…

The children were all in bed when Maeve arrived home, still deeply upset at Patrick’s behaviour. Her mother told her to go and sit down in the front room while she made some tea. She brought it in on a tray, together with some biscuits and the remains of a box of chocolates, and then joined Maeve and suggested they watch TV for a bit.

“Put your feet up, darlin’; it’ll do you good. This’ll soon be over, the news, and then we can watch-Oh, my God. Maeve, do you see what they’re doing…”

For there on the screen was some old footage from the crash: the horrible, horrible footage of Patrick’s lorry, the trailer lying on its side, and the cars scattered about it like toys, and then there was a quick rundown about it, when it had been, how many people had been involved…

“But two weeks later, there is some good news. The lorry driver is recovering well and is expected to be out of intensive care in a few more days; the baby boy born prematurely is thriving and is going home this weekend; and the famous golden retriever who was lost in the chaos turned up at a farm and has been reunited with her owner. In fact, you can see Bella for yourselves in a couple of minutes; we have her in the studio with one very happy owner. But before we do that, there is one rather more serious matter. The police are still gathering evidence on events leading up to the crash and would be interested in hearing from anyone who may have seen something they feel is relevant that afternoon: a car or van possibly driving erratically-or perhaps some debris on the road…

“All calls would be treated as confidential. They are particularly interested in a young girl who-”

“Oh, my God,” said Maeve. “Oh, my dear Lord.”

“Laura, put the telly on quickly. Channel Eight, the news. Don’t ask; just do it…”

“… a young girl who was seen by several people at the scene and is thought to have been possibly travelling in the lorry, and who has not yet come forward…”

“Hi, Linda, I brought you a bottle of-Oh, my God, what’s that about…? Oh, my God…”

“So if you know anything of this girl, or you think you know where she might be, please do get in touch with the police-in confidence. They do stress that there is no suggestion of anything suspicious, merely that in a crash as big as this one, there must be no stone left unturned in the subsequent investigation. And now, as promised, we have Bella and her owner, Jenny Smith, from Northamptonshire…”

“Oh, Mother Mary and all the saints,” said Maeve.

“Oh, I do hope Maeve is watching,” said Mary.

“How extraordinary,” said Laura.

Georgia made an odd sound; Linda looked at her. She was absolutely ashen, her hand clasped over her mouth. She suddenly sat down, as if her legs wouldn’t hold her any longer, her eyes still fixed on the screen.

“ Georgia,” said Linda very gently. “ Georgia, was that… you?”

The story had come out haltingly, punctuated with much weeping and sheer blind terror at what she had done-and concealed-through two long, dreadful weeks.

She had quite simply panicked: Linda had tried to tell her that it was not so unusual, not so terrible a thing to do. But Georgia would have none of it: “It was horrible, awful. He’d been so kind to me, and there he was unconscious, with God knows what injuries, and did I try to help? No, I just ran. It was disgusting of me, Linda; I’m so, so ashamed. But somehow the longer I left it, the worse it seemed. And do you know what my very first thought was? After we’d crashed? That I’d miss the audition. Can you imagine anything as awful as that?”

“You were in shock; it brings about some very strange behaviour.”

She had felt dazed at first, she said, not sure what she was doing, and, “I felt very sick and dizzy. Two men by the lorry asked me if I was all right and I couldn’t speak to them; I threw up right there in front of them; it was horrible. And then I had to sit down for a bit. Everyone was much too busy looking after people who were really hurt to bother about me. After that I climbed over the barrier, by the hard shoulder, and slithered down the bank and started running. All I could think of was getting away; does that sound crazy?”

Linda shook her head. “Not at all.”

“There were all these cars crashed into one another, and huge white things everywhere. I didn’t know what they were then, but of course they were Patrick’s load, fridges and freezers and stuff. I just turned my back on it all and ran-towards Cardiff. That was all I wanted: to get home. I found a sort of track thing and followed that, and when I couldn’t run anymore I walked, on and on. Every yard I went, I felt less frightened; I was farther away from it all; I felt… safer. How weird was that? I cut up into that bloke’s land, that farmer guy who was just on the TV, and then on to a village, and then I hitched a lift in a car going to Bristol.

“The driver said he’d been avoiding the M4, that there’d been a terrible crash, miles and miles of tailback, and I had to pretend to be surprised. Oh, God…”

In Bristol she had eventually managed to get a lift in a lorry going to Cardiff. “I was scared of being in another one; I thought he might crash too-”

“And… tell me, do you think Patrick went to sleep?”

“No! Of course he didn’t go to sleep. It wasn’t his fault in any way at all. In fact…” She paused, gathered her breath, then said in a desperate shaky tone, “In fact, if it was anyone’s fault it was probably mine.”

Shaking, clinging to Linda’s hand, she rang the programme help line, who said they’d get the police to call her.

“Pretty soon, they said… Linda, I feel sick. I feel so awful. What will they think of me; what will they do to me? I’m disgusting; I deserve to be… to be put away somewhere. Oh, dear. Can I have another cigarette?”

It was a measure of her distress and of Linda’s intense sympathy with that distress that Linda had actually agreed to let her smoke. She loathed not just smoking, but smokers. To allow Georgia to smoke in her flat was akin to handing round glasses of wine at an AA meeting.

It was she who took the call; she passed the phone to Georgia.

“It’s a Sergeant Freeman.”

“Thanks. Hello. Yes, this is Georgia Linley Yes, I did. Of course. Yes, I think I can help. I’ll… I’ll ask… Um, Linda, they want us to meet them at some police station in the morning. They’re going to ring back with the exact address. Is that OK?… Yes? Hello. Yes, that’s fine. Thank you. What? No, it’s not my mum; it’s my agent. No, I’m fine, thank you. I’ll be there in the morning.”

She put the phone down and looked at Linda, her face somehow gaunt, her dark eyes red with weeping, her small, pretty nose running; she wiped it on the back of her hand. She looked about six.

“You will come with me, won’t you?” she said with a tremor in her voice.

Linda held out her arms and said, “Of course I will. Come here, you.”

And Georgia went to sit next to her on the sofa, resting her head on Linda’s shoulder, and said, “I couldn’t do all this without you, you know.”