He let himself out through the side-door and set off walking. The cop car was turning at the end of the street. It slid out of sight, with a blink of its indicators. Harry felt no relief at seeing it go. He knew this was only the beginning. The long weeks of waiting had been bad enough, but he knew it was going to get worse. He’d been expecting the police to charge him. The conversation with them had gone exactly as he’d imagined. The laying of guilt squarely at his feet. The direct request for him to pick it up. The temptation to do exactly that. Then the full-throttle response of his dad. Dom believed that attack was the best form of defence. And he was right, when it came to dickheads on a football pitch; but in real life it was a crap philosophy, and it clearly hadn’t gone down well with the police. Watching the senior copper and his dad square up had been depressingly predictable. As they’d butted heads, Harry had sat there, mute. He might as well not have been in the room. Their machismo performances had underlined how much the accident had taken away from him. Not least, any sense of who he was any more.
Harry walked aimlessly. He had nothing to do, no one to see, nowhere he’d be welcome. Not now. Not after what had happened to Jake and Tish and Jess. At the end of the avenue he turned right, at the junction right again, then left, then across the road, then second right. By now he knew where he was heading, knew it was stupid, knew he shouldn’t, but he kept going anyway, aware of how pathetic it was, and how risky. He’d been told to go nowhere near Marcus and Fran’s house. He understood why, but his feet kept moving and his destination grew ever closer. It was a route he’d walked so many times he could have done it with his eyes closed. In fact, he used to. When he was a little kid – walking back to Fran’s house from school – he used to pretend that he was blind. He would hold Fran’s hand and shut his eyes, squeezing his eyelids tight to ward off the temptation of peeping. Jess would sometimes play along, too. Fran used to get involved with the make-believe, warning them when they were coming up to a kerb, asking them if they could hear the cars, the birds, the ice-cream van, and so on. Harry remembered the edge of fear that came from walking along with your eyes closed, but he trusted Fran – she would never have let him walk into a lamp post or onto the road. Years later, when he and Jess were trading childhood memories, she’d laughed at Harry, saying that she’d never done it properly, but had kept peeking, to make sure she didn’t bump into anything.
The house was visible as soon as he turned the corner. Halfway up the hill. A red-brick box slotted into a row of very similar boxes. Solid, square, not special. A blue front door, a white porch. Fran’s old Audi parked up behind Marcus’s Renault out front. So they were home on a midweek morning. No one, and nothing, was back to normal.
Harry slowed, wanting to get closer, but afraid to. Jess’s bedroom faced onto the back. It didn’t matter that he couldn’t actually see her window; he could imagine her room easily enough, he’d been in it hundreds of times. Her pinboard of mementoes – she was a believer in all that ‘making memories’ mush. Her collection of cacti – such a Jess thing. They’re cute, but spiky. Like me, she’d joked. Her ‘hurt your eyeballs’ choice in duvet covers. Psychedelic, hippy-dippy patterns – she called it having eclectic tastes. The smell – a nice, girly, fresh scent. Her bedroom door that didn’t quite shut properly, because it caught on the carpet. A safe, Jess-styled haven.
He’d tried to summon up Jess so many times since the accident, wanting desperately to travel back in time to a point of ordinary happiness, but he’d always failed. Now, walking towards the one place where he’d always felt safe, Harry could. It was as if being near her house had unlocked the part of his brain that had been stubbornly, resolutely closed off to him.
Jess. Alive and whole. And full of it. Lying crossways on her bed, on her stomach, her feet jigging around in the air behind her. Jess talking. Always talking. Enthusiasm for this, passion for that, indignation about something or other. Full of energy. He hadn’t always listened. How many times had he sprawled in the chair, looking at his phone, flicking through mindless crap that – at the time – had been more deserving of his attention than her? He’d sometimes laughed, at the wrong moment; offended Jess with his indifference or his mockery. He’d had slippers, rulers, pillows – any missile that came to hand – hurled at him in his time. Her hairbrush once caught him slap bang in between the eyes. She’d been horrified. Scrambled off the bed in a panic as he faked concussion. He’d hammed it up, claiming to feel dizzy, seeing stars, demanding sympathy. She’d laid him down on her bed, fetched a damp flannel for his head. Happy times.
Seduced by his daydream, Harry hadn’t been paying attention. He found that he’d drifted up the road and was standing right outside her house. It was not what he’d intended. Yet it was so hard to walk on by. He stood still, swaying slightly. More than anything he wanted to open the gate, walk up the short path, knock at the door. Have Fran open it, welcome him in, offer him a snack – she knew Harry was always hungry. Have Jess bounce downstairs, smiling, then lead him upstairs to the one place he’d always felt ‘right’. If only that could happen.
As if summoned by his thoughts, the door opened and Harry heard her. ‘I’ll see you later. Bye.’ The same inflection, the same voice – coming from Fran.
He bolted. Broke into a run. Kept going until he was off their street.
Was he a danger to others? A threat to their happiness and wholeness?
Yes. Guilty as charged.
Chapter 40
SAL WAS very reluctant to agree to the police coming to the house, but the alternative was a trip to the station, and that was out of the question. Their refusal to say why they needed to see Tish was worrying.
When she told Tish the police wanted to speak to her again about the accident, she swore, slid back down the bed and pulled the duvet up around her. But given that refusing to get up, not washing, hardly eating or talking in single-word sentences was still normal behaviour most days, her reaction didn’t really surprise Sal.
At least it meant that on the morning of the visit Tish had to get up and dressed, after a fashion. She appeared downstairs in sweat pants and a T-shirt, hair tied back – to Sal’s surprise – emphasising the damage to her face. Her mood was, as ever, low, with an edge of nerves. They both stared at the TV, waiting for the police to arrive, neither of them really watching, but it was better than silence.
Eventually there was a knock at the door. The officers came in and sat down. Sal didn’t offer them tea. They weren’t welcome guests.
‘Thank you for letting us come and talk to you again, Tish. How are you getting on?’
Sal felt a sudden, strong impulse to intervene and actually answer their question with the truth. They hadn’t been near for weeks – very few people had. This woman didn’t really want to know whether Tish was coping; it was one of those stepping-stone questions they put down, in order to tempt you to cross the river.
Tish touched her face self-consciously. ‘Okay, I suppose.’ That was all she was going to give them. Good on her.
‘The reason we needed to come and speak to you is that we want to ask a few more questions about what happened the night of the crash.’