Brianna reacts by shoving the car into gear and reversing out of the space.
For the first mile or two, Brianna focuses on the traffic, but once they enter the city outskirts, her driving becomes increasingly erratic. She appears to get angrier as she drives. When an accident outside Redditch reroutes them onto small B roads, she thumps at the wheel in frustration. Any delay ingetting to her aunt Lorraine’s house is clearly a delay too long for her. Tears stream down her face in frustration. She compensates by accelerating around tight corners and taking routes through built-up areas too quickly.
‘Brianna. Can you pull over, please?’ Heather says, her voice insistent. ‘I think it’s time for me to drive.’
Brianna rams the gear stick into first as she pulls away from the traffic lights.
‘I’m driving.’ Her voice is tight with suppressed rage.
‘Brianna. Honey, you need to slow down,’ Heather says as the road narrows and their small car swerves to avoid an oncoming motorbike.
Brianna overcompensates by driving too close to the grass verge, then adjusts their path jerkily into the middle of the road.
‘Brianna—’
‘He was meant to drive me!’ she shouts into the windscreen.
‘Honey. I don’t know what you mean,’ Heather says, watching as the road winds alarmingly ahead of them.
‘Dad! Dad was meant to drive that night. Mum had a migraine and asked Dad to pick me up from ballet, but he got tied up at work and said she had to go. And that’s why she crashed. She felt like shit and she was probably drugged up and she didn’t even feel safe to drive, but she didn’t have a choice. Because of him. And he never, ever told me that!’
Brianna accelerates round a tight bend.
‘My mum died, and she didn’t need to. He always told me it was Leon’s fault. But it wasn’t. Not entirely. Because if Dad had come home when he said he would, he’d have picked me up and he’d probably have managed to avoid Leon’s car when it went into that skid.’
‘You can’t know that for sure, Brianna,’ Heather says, willing the girl to slow down.
‘No. You’re right, no one can know for sure. But Leon told me it was discussed at the court hearing. It’s obviously the reason Dad refused the mediation, because somehow, somewhere deep inside, he believes the blame lies with him. That’s what I want to talk to my aunt about. See what she remembers.’
Brianna glances at Heather at a critical moment when a lorry, also travelling too fast for the road conditions, comes around the corner in the opposite direction. Brianna screams and swerves into the ditch.
And the world goes black.
SCOTT
It’s like watching the re-run of a horrific film. A phone call from his sister-in-law: ‘There’s been an accident. Just outside Stratford. Come as soon as you can.’ An accident involving the woman he loves and his baby girl. But he’s stuck on an airplane during the slowest disembarkation exercise on the entire planet. And there’s nothing he can do. Nowhere he can go. His only choice is to sit tight. Wait. And use his phone to hire a car so it’s waiting for him at the airport when he does, finally, get off the sodding plane.
Once off the plane, he arranges for Luca to pick up his bag and bike from the baggage drop off area, picks up the car (thank God he has his driver’s licence with him), and loads the pinned location Lorraine sent into his sat nav. Every traffic light is agony. Every roundabout torturous. Every slight delay, every speed bump, every traffic calming measure feels like it’s been sent to taunt him. Who does he think he is, expecting to have it all – again? Fool. Every speed reducing measure builds the tension in his chest cavity and makes him scream at the roadwayto hurry the fuck up. Within ninety minutes, he arrives at the tailback of traffic caused by the accident.
The yellow and blue flashing lights in the horizon are reminiscent of seven years ago. Scott has no option other than to ditch his car at the side of the road, ignoring the protestations of other drivers as they realise his car will be yet another one blocking the road. He filters out the screams of dissent, and runs. “That’s my kid in there,” he wants to shout at them. But he doesn’t. He needs his energy for the sprint.
There are crowds of hi-vis vest wearers and local onlookers swarming around the periphery of the crash site which is now cordoned off with police cones and plastic tape which flaps disconsolately in the wind.
‘Restricted access, sir,’ says a junior looking police officer when he arrives.
‘It’s my family,’ he says. ‘My daughter and—’ he hesitates at the word ‘—girlfriend.’
The plastic tape is pulled upwards, and Scott shimmies underneath.
His eyes skim the site. An upturned car in the ditch. A wide load lorry on the other side of the road, steam still venting from its engine. One ambulance. One fire engine. Two police cars. He disregards superfluous sensory information and maintains his focus. He’s looking for Heather and Brianna.
‘Over here, sir.’ The junior officer follows him into the thick of the crash site and takes his elbow, gently directing him further up the road, beyond the wrecked vehicles.
A sob escapes him, and tears race down his face when he sees them. They’re both there, at the side of the road, wrapped in the ludicrous foil capes they give to runners post marathon, drinking cups of something warm, because he can see the steam licking their nostrils. And another familiar figure.
Lorraine.
He runs up to them and swoops Brianna, then Heather, into his arms. Their faces are milk-bottle white, and their bodies shake against the solidity of his embrace.
