Penny Vincenzi - The Best Of Times

It happened just before four p.m. after a brief thundery shower. The Friday traffic had packed the M 4 in both directions, heavy enough to hold cars in the fast lane just within the speed limit, light enough to keep all three lanes moving. Viewed on the CCTV cameras, everything looked orderly and under control.

At one minute to four, a lorry travelling eastwards swerved suddenly, and then accelerated towards the central median, cutting through it with lethal force, and then turned in on itself, its trailer twisting and half rearing before falling onto its side, slithering along the road into the oncoming traffic and finally coming to a halt just short of the hard shoulder. It burst open, not only the doors, but the roof and sides, discharging its burden of freezers, fridges, washing machines, dryers, some tossed into the air with the force, some skidding and sliding along the motorway, a great tide of deadly flotsam, hitting cars and coaches in its path.

A minibus driving westwards in the fast lane became impacted in the undercarriage of the lorry; a Golf GTI immediately behind it swung sideways and rammed into one of the lorry’s wheels. A vast, unyielding dam of vehicles braking, swerving, skidding was formed, growing by the moment.

On the eastbound side of the carriageway, the cars immediately behind the lorry smashed into it and one another; one hit the central median with such force it became embedded in it, and the dozen or so after that, with an advantage of two or three seconds’ warning, skidded into one another relentlessly but comparatively harmlessly, like bumper cars in a fairground.

The freezers and refrigerators continued on their journey with enormous force; one car hitting them head-on made a hundred-and-eighty-degree turn, and was struck by an oncoming motorbike; another shot sideways and hit the central median.

Up and down on the road, then, stillness formed, and a strange semi-silence overtook the road, engines stopped, horns hushed, but replaced by other, hideous sounds, of human screaming and canine barking, and through it all the absolutely incongruous noise of music from car radios.

And then a hundred mobiles, in hands that were able to hold them, called the police, the ambulance service, called home. And even as they did so, the chaos spread out its great tentacles, reaching far, far down the road in both directions so that hundreds were unable to escape from it.

Within the space of thirty or forty seconds, chance, that absolutely irresistible force, had taken its capricious hold on the time and the place. It had disrupted the present, distorted the future, replaced order with chaos, confidence with fear, and control with impotence. Lives were ended for some, changed forever for others; and a most powerful game of consequences was set in train.

Laura Gilliatt often said-while reaching for the nearest bit of wood-that her life was simply too good to be true. And indeed, the casual observer-and quite a beady-eyed one-would have been hard-pressed not to agree with her. She was married to a husband she adored, Jonathan Gilliatt, the distinguished gynaecologist and obstetrician, and had three extremely attractive and charming children, with a career of her own as an interior designer, just demanding enough to save her from any possible boredom, but not so much that she could not set it aside when required, by any domestic crisis, large or small, such as the necessity to attend an important dinner with her husband or the nativity play of one of her children.

The family owned two beautiful houses, one on the Thames at Chiswick, a second in the Dordogne; they also had a time-share in a ski chalet in Meribel. Jonathan earned a great deal of money from his private practice at St. Anne’s, an extremely expensive hospital just off Harley Street, but he was also a highly respected NHS consultant, heading up the obstetric unit at St. Andrews, Bayswater. He was passionately opposed to the modern trend for elective caesareans, both in his private practice and the NHS; in his opinion they were a direct result of the compensation culture. Babies were meant to be pushed gently into the world by their mothers, he said, not yanked abruptly out. He was, inevitably, on the receiving end of a great deal of criticism for this in the more vocally feminist branches of the media.

The beady-eyed observer would also have noted that he was deeply in love with his wife, while enjoying the adoration of his patients; and that his son, Charlie, and his daughters, Daisy and Lily-his two little flowers, as he called them-all thought he was absolutely wonderful.

In his wife he had an absolute treasure, as he often told not only her but the world in general; for as well as being beautiful, Laura was sunny natured and sweet tempered, and indeed, this same observer, studying her quite intently as she went through her days, would have been hard-pressed to catch her in any worse humour than mild irritation or even in raising her voice. If this did happen, it was usually prompted by some bad behaviour on the part of her children, such as Charlie, who was eleven, sneaking into the loo with his Nintendo when he had had his hour’s ration for the day, or Lily and Daisy, who were nine and seven, persuading the au pair that their mother had agreed that they could watch High School Musical for the umpteenth time until well after they were supposed to be in bed.

The Gilliatts had been married for thirteen years. “Lucky, lucky years,” Jonathan said, presenting Laura with a Tiffany eternity ring on the morning of their anniversary. “I know it’s not a special anniversary, darling, but you deserve it, and it comes with all my love.”

Laura was so overcome with emotion that she burst into tears and then smiled through them as she looked at the lovely thing on her finger; and after that, having consulted the clock on their bedroom fireplace, she decided she should express her gratitude to Jonathan, not only for the ring but for the thirteen happy years, in a rather practical way, with the result that she got seriously behind in her school run schedule and all three children were clearly going to be late for school.

Laura had been nineteen and still a virgin when she had met Jonathan: “Probably the last in London,” she said. This was not due to any particular moral rectitude, but because until him, she had honestly never fancied anyone enough to want to go to bed with him. She fancied Jonathan quite enough and found the whole experience “absolutely lovely,” she told him. They were married a year later.

“I do hope I’m going to cope with being Mrs. Gilliatt, quite an important career,” she said just a little anxiously a few days before the wedding; and, “Of course you will,” he told her. “You fit the job description perfectly. And you’ll grow into it beautifully.”

As indeed she had, taking her duties very seriously; she loved cooking and entertaining, and had discovered a certain flair for interior design. When they had been married a year, and their own lovely house was finished to both their satisfaction, she asked Jonathan if he would mind if she took a course and perhaps dabbled in it professionally.

“Of course not, darling, lovely idea. As long as I don’t come second to any difficult clients.”

Laura promised him he wouldn’t; and he never had. And neither, as the babies arrived, in neat two-year intervals, did they; for many years, until Daisy was at school, she simply devoted herself to them, and was perfectly happy. She did have to work quite hard at reassuring Jonathan that he still came absolutely first in her life, and was slightly surprised at his impatience and near-jealousy created by the demands of the children. Clearly her mother had been right, she reflected-all men were children at heart. For the first few years, therefore, she employed a full-time nanny; for the demands of Jonathan’s professional life on her time were considerable, and he liked her to be totally available to him.