The woman spoke again, and this time her tone was softer, almost kind. ‘Harry, I’m sorry, but it’s very difficult for us to hear what you’re saying when you’ve got your head down like that. Could you look up, please?’
He chose the window ledge to the left of Fran’s head and fixed his eyes on that. He continued, ‘By the time I got outside, she was in the car.’ Her face turned away from him.
‘How could you?’ Jess had said fiercely.
‘How could I “what”?’ he’d asked. But Harry knew – screwing around with your best mate’s girlfriend behind your own girlfriend’s back, with one of her best mates.
‘You and Tish. Tish!’ Jess’s voice rose and cracked. ‘Well?’ She was swallowing down tears as well as anger.
‘It meant nothing.’
She shook her head.
What to say next? How much should he confess to? Harry had weighed it up. Not wanting to hurt Jess, or himself, more than necessary. Not wanting to be found out and look bad. Not wanting her to dump him. Not wanting to be the one in the wrong.
Someone had left a Perspex lunch box on the windowsill. Inside it he could see a banana that was going brown. The thought of it made him feel queasy. He could feel them waiting for the rest of the story. ‘Jess was upset. She’d seen me and Tish kissing in the video Mo had filmed at the party.’
‘Did you deny it?’ Fran.
‘No.’
Jess had passed him the phone. He’d clicked the arrow on the screen and the video had played. And there – in shaky high-res – was the evidence that damned him. Alice’s front room, a sea of bodies, the pulsing disco lights and Jake looming up close to the camera, a big, stupid grin on his face. Just another night out. It could have been any house, any party, any weekend, any group of friends anywhere. The tunes coming through the phone speaker into the dead night air of the car park had sounded tiny, distant. As he watched, Harry spotted a couple, strobed by the lights, leaning against the back wall, not dancing or talking or drinking. A fine-looking couple; the girl in a sparkly top, the lad in a tight T-shirt. A couple who were all over each other.
‘No. I didn’t deny it.’ Because he couldn’t, and because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to lie to Jess, not to her face. He’d never actually lied to her – he’d just not told her the truth. What he did with Tish, occasionally, when one or both of them were drunk or horny or bored, was nothing to do with how he felt about Jess. That was separate. She was never meant to find out – would never have found out – if it hadn’t been for Mo.
He went back to the story, wanting to get the telling of it over and done with. ‘The others appeared.’ Running towards them across the car park. And he’d lost it. Mad at himself, he’d let fly at Mo. ‘Mo and I had a row. I blamed him. Unfairly.’ Mo. The only one of his ‘friends’ who’d come to see him in prison and kept coming, despite the cost and the inconvenience. Mo, one of the nicest people Harry knew, and the one who had started it all. ‘There was a scuffle.’
‘A fight?’ The woman asked.
‘No. I never hit him.’ But he had wanted to.
‘Then what happened?’
‘Tish started yelling at me.’
‘Yelling what?’
‘To stop.’
‘And did you?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you still threw Mohir’s phone across the car park.’ The woman. A stickler for correct details.
‘I was upset that I’d upset Jess.’
‘And while all this was going on, what was my daughter doing?’ Fran’s voice was forceful, demanding.
‘Crying.’
The room went quiet, each of them imagining Jess sitting in the front seat of the car, distraught…because of him.
Harry needed to keep going, to put into words the next twenty minutes of that night – the last point when things could have turned out differently and all their lives could have gone on, maybe even recovered from the mess he’d created. ‘I went back to the car. Apologised to Jess for losing my temper. Tried to comfort her, but she said she wanted to go home.’ Fran swallowed a sob. ‘Tish and Jake got in and we drove off.’
‘What about Mo?’
‘We left him behind.’
The atmosphere in the car had been poisonous. No one talking except Jake, who was yakking total gibberish. Tish’s eyes had drilled into Harry’s every time he glanced in the rear-view mirror. Jess had been stony silent, her face turned away.
‘Then what happened?’
He’d driven them home, fast, wanting the night to end, for the anger and panic in his gut to subside. Just wanting to get back. To get rid of Tish and her silent accusations. To get shot of Jake and his pissed-up ignorance. To park up on a dark side-street with Jess and try and explain. To make her look at him, so that she would see how sorry he was. For him to get her to understand that Tish meant nothing to him, compared to what he felt for her. To tell Jess how he couldn’t cope without her. That he would never do it again. That he loved her.
He never got the chance.
‘We were nearly back.’
Maybe that was why she finally turned towards him, her eyes big, her expression bereft, and asked him, again, ‘Harry, how could you?’
And he’d looked at her and felt terrible and trapped and guilty and angry all at the same time. He knew that he owed her an explanation, but he couldn’t answer her because there wasn’t any good reason why he’d cheated on her. He just had – because he was a selfish prick. It didn’t mean he didn’t love her. He did. But he didn’t say that. He didn’t say anything. He’d looked back at the road, heard Jess shout, ‘Harry!’, saw something flash in front of the car, jerked the wheel and lost control.
‘Then the car crashed?’ The woman again, stating the horrific obvious.
Harry nodded. He really didn’t want to have to describe the rest of it – the knowing that the car had become a missile. That they were going to crash. That there was nothing he could do to stop it.
Then the bang.
The pain.
The blank.
Then the screaming.
No, he couldn’t.
Fran was staring at him, her hands balled into fists on her knees. ‘So she was heartbroken in the last few moments of her life – because of you.’
‘Yes. I am so sorry. So very, very sorry. I never meant to hurt anyone, especially not Jess. I loved her.’
There was a second or two of stillness as his confession settled and took root.
He had loved Jess and he had killed her.
Fran slowly got up from her chair and crossed the room towards him. The moderator stretched out her hand – a discouraging or comforting gesture, it was hard to tell. Regardless, Fran ignored it. She stood over Harry, her stomach moving in and out, deep, steadying breaths. Harry tilted his face and looked up at her. She stared at him, her eyes full of tears, drew back her hand and slapped him hard across his face.
Chapter 72
THE FLAT of Fran’s palm connected with Harry’s face. It stung. She hoped it hurt him more. How dare he?
Kerry, the moderator, leapt out of her seat and put her hands on Fran’s arms, pulling her backwards.