Losing You (22 page)

But he wasn’t like her. He never
never
got into a car after he’d had a drink. His father had pushed the seriousness of it home to him so hard that Oliver had become a joke amongst his friends, because he’d never let them drink and drive either. His father had even made it a condition of paying his and Charlie’s uni fees, and of buying their cars. If either of them ever contravened the agreement they would have to pay back every penny their father had shelled out for their education – no matter how long it took – and whether they were charged or not their cars would be taken away.

Oliver never wanted to see a car again in his life.

All he wanted was to know that the girl was all right, that none of this was as terrible as it felt and that somehow, in some way they would both survive it.

He couldn’t even begin to imagine how that was going to be possible.

He wanted to cry like a baby, but his hands were clamped tightly to his head as though to hold it all in. It stank in here, the mattress was stained with other people’s filth, the toilet had no seat, the window was too high and too thick to provide any sort of view. They’d taken his shoes and belt, his phone, money, everything he’d had in his pockets. He was a prisoner, a criminal, a pathetic no-hoper whose future was ruined before it had even begun.

Hearing keys going into the door he tensed even tighter. He had no idea what was going to happen now, who might
be coming in – maybe it would be a rank, mouthy drunk who wouldn’t be able to see straight to piss, or lie down without throwing up.

He was a drunk too. It was why he was here.

‘OK, young man,’ the custody sergeant barked, ‘we’ve got a bit of a lull so you can make your call.’

A lull? Behind the stable of locked doors, trapped, human animals were yelling, spitting, hissing, vomiting, maybe shitting themselves or even dying.

He followed the sergeant into the corridor. The strip lights were blinding and harsh, making the walls gleam like mirrors and the air feel putrid and hot.

He was put in front of a wall phone and told how to contact the duty lawyer. The number was there, chiselled into a plaque.

‘Does it have to be a lawyer I call?’ he asked.

‘Up to you, but just one call,’ the sergeant told him and walked back behind his desk.

Oliver stared at the number, then the keypad. He was thinking of his father and how angry and disgusted he would be, disappointed and ashamed. His mother’s shock, panic and drunkenness would make everything even worse than it already was. Charlie would try to help, but what could he do?

He started to dial, and kept on dialling until it was time to wait for a ringtone. When it began it stopped almost immediately. ‘Oliver?’

His father’s voice, sharp and surprised, was so comforting and yet so terrifying that Oliver almost hung up. He bowed his head as though it would prevent him having to confront his shame. ‘Dad, I ... Something’s happened ...’

‘What is it? Where are you?’

Squeezing his eyes tightly closed, Oliver forced himself to go on. ‘I’ve ... I’ve been arrested and ... I’m really, really sorry ... I didn’t mean ... It wasn’t ... Oh God, Dad ...’ He was suddenly sobbing so hard that no more words would come.

‘It’s OK, son, it’s OK,’ his father said firmly. ‘Pull yourself together now and start by telling me where you are.’

After taking several breaths Oliver finally managed to
say, ‘I’m at a police station. They’ve arrested me for drinking and driving and I’m ...’

In a terrible voice his father said, ‘Oliver, please tell me you didn’t just say that.’

Clutching an arm round his head Oliver said, ‘Dad, I’m sorry. It wasn’t ... I swear, I wouldn’t have ...’

‘I’m not bailing you out of this, you know that don’t you?’

Trying to brace himself, Oliver stammered out, ‘Dad, I ran someone over ... I think I might have ...’

There was an awful silence before his father said, ‘You need to tell me where you are,
right now
.’

Oliver looked around. ‘I’m in a police station. I don’t know which one ...’

‘Put someone on who does.’

Looking at the custody sergeant, Oliver was about to ask when the sergeant came towards him and took the phone. After giving the address of the station –
Knowle West
, one of the most dangerous areas in Bristol – the sergeant passed the phone back to Oliver and walked away.

‘Are you there?’ his father barked.

‘Yes, I’m here.’

‘OK, I’m going to call Jolyon Crane now. You remember Jolyon, don’t you?’

Oliver’s heart was thudding with dread. ‘Yes,’ he said. Jolyon Crane wasn’t only his father’s friend, he was a really big lawyer. If he needed someone that important then this was as bad as he feared.

‘If Jolyon can’t come himself, he’ll send someone who can,’ his father was saying. ‘You’ll need to tell them everything that happened, and I mean everything, do you hear me?’

‘Yes,’ Oliver replied.

‘Do you have any idea how badly injured the person is?’

‘No, but I think it’s serious. It was a girl ... She ... she was unconscious ... Oh Dad, I’m sorry,’ he choked, breaking down again. ‘I didn’t see her ...’

‘All right, son, all right,’ his father said briskly. ‘I’m on my way.’

*

By the time Emma and Andrews had arrived at Frenchay Hospital Lauren had already been taken into surgery. They’d been given little information then, because there had been almost none to give, apart from the surgeon’s decision, following a CT scan, to operate right away. After that they’d been brought here, to this waiting room, with its dull but comfy chairs, twin casement windows with tight, opaque nets and notices advertising the services of nurses, charities and God.

The last time Emma had looked at her watch it had been a quarter to six. It shocked her now to see that it was almost seven. Maybe she’d dozed off, or more likely she’d fallen into a stupor where time had no more meaning than the whispering, waking world going on outside this room.

Why was everything taking so long? Was it good or bad that they were still operating on Lauren more than two hours after they’d begun? Merely to think of her precious girl undergoing something as drastic and
invasive
as brain surgery made her own head reel and cower from the images that kept flashing in front of her. She must stop tormenting herself, shut it all down completely, and go on telling herself that it didn’t matter how they saved Lauren, just as long as they did.

Clive Andrews was sitting quietly in one corner, next to a pile of blankets. His arms were folded over his chest, his legs stretched out in front of him and crossed at the ankles. His eyes were staring at nothing, unless she moved, when he instantly became alert again.

He must be exhausted. She wondered when his shift might end and how she would cope when it did. She’d come to see him as her link to Lauren, so if he went there would be nothing left to hold on to – apart from Polly, who was here too, sitting quietly beside her, half dozing, but also seeming tuned in to Emma’s every move. She’d caught up with them not long after they’d arrived, and wasn’t going to leave, she’d said, until Emma did.

Emma wanted to go now, this minute, and take Lauren with her. She wanted it all to be a nightmare that she could wake up from to find Lauren safe and fast asleep in her bed; or coming sheepishly in through the front door, having
forgotten to let her mother know she was staying out all night.

Will was on his way; so was Berry. She’d called them herself, about an hour ago, having delayed in the hope of being able to tell them that though it was serious Lauren was going to pull through. In the end, Clive Andrews and Polly had persuaded her that as her father Will must be told. Emma kept thinking about her mother and wondering whether she should call her, but she hadn’t yet, and wasn’t sure that she could. If only all she had to tell her about was a compound fracture, some internal bruising and scratches to Lauren’s face, but these injuries were so minor in comparison to the trauma Lauren’s brain had suffered that they weren’t even being attended to yet.

‘Would you like some more tea?’ Polly asked, as Emma suddenly got to her feet.

‘No thanks,’ Emma answered. She didn’t know where she was going, or what she wanted to do, except she’d found herself unable to stay sitting any longer.

‘Would you?’ Polly asked Clive Andrews.

He shook his head. ‘I’m good, thanks,’ he said.

Emma looked at him. Oddly, he reminded her of her brother, though she couldn’t think why when they were nothing alike. Perhaps it was his kindness – Harry was always kind. Should she have rung him? He’d be upset that she hadn’t, but what could he do? ‘Thank you for waiting,’ she said to Andrews, trying and failing to smile. ‘I expect you should have left a long time ago.’

With a gruffness she was coming to know – maybe that was how he and Harry were alike – he said, ‘I’ve called my missus, she won’t be expecting me until there’s been some news.’

Feeling his words punch at her heart, Emma looked away. Her hands clenched and unclenched, her temper rose and fell. ‘I don’t understand what she was doing on that road,’ she said for the seventh, eighth, ninth time since Andrews had told her where the accident had happened. It didn’t make any sense when Lauren had been going into Bristol for the evening, with Melissa, and as far as Emma knew coming straight home from there. The road where the
accident had happened was in completely the opposite direction.

‘I’ll have another chat with Melissa when I get home,’ Polly assured her again.

Polly’s first call to Melissa had elicited only a denial of knowing anything at all about where Lauren had been, followed by cries of shock and tears for her friend when Polly had told her how serious Lauren’s injuries were. Her second call hadn’t got her much further.

‘She must be able to throw some light on it,’ Emma insisted.

‘This is the trouble with kids,’ Andrews ventured, ‘they don’t tell us everything.’

Emma wanted to say that Lauren wasn’t like that, but how could she when she was unable to offer any kind of an explanation as to how Lauren had come to be on a country road in the middle of nowhere, and
out of her car
in the dead of night. Why on earth would she have stopped in such a remote spot and got out of her car? Andrews had said no one else was with her, and a first inspection had shown no flat tyres, so maybe the stalling problem had recurred.

‘If there was something wrong with the car,’ she said shakily, ‘I don’t understand why she didn’t call me. I’d have gone to get her.’

‘It could be that she tried and couldn’t get a signal,’ Andrews suggested.

It made sense, but it was awful to think of Lauren stranded and alone in the depths of a countryside she barely knew, and unable to make contact with anyone.

Far worse was thinking of where she was now.

‘The car that hit her,’ she said, feeling horribly lightheaded. ‘Where’s the driver? Did you see him or her? Were they injured too?’ Why hadn’t she thought of this before? It seemed odd that it was only coming to her now.

‘It was a young lad in his early twenties,’ Andrews told her. ‘He was breathalysed and taken to the station.’

Emma’s eyes turned glassy as she registered the words. ‘He’d been drinking,’ she said incredulously. ‘He was over the limit?’

Andrews nodded. ‘I’m afraid so.’

She was speechless, had no idea how to articulate her fury. ‘Then he shouldn’t even have been on the road,’ she cried savagely.

Andrews didn’t deny it.

Unable to bear the hatred rising up in her, she clapped her hands to her head and began sobbing with a terrible despair.

Coming to embrace her, Polly urged, ‘Don’t think about him now. Lauren’s all that matters. We have to use all our energy to will her to pull through.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Emma whispered, nodding her gratitude. ‘That’s absolutely what we have to do.’

Russ watched Jolyon Crane come out of the police station into the murky post-dawn drizzle over Knowle West. He was a tall, striking man in his mid-fifties with an air of authority about him that could be either intimidating or reassuring, depending whose side he was on, and most wanted him on theirs.

‘Thanks for coming,’ Russ said, as they shook hands. ‘How is he?’

‘Bearing up, but as scared as you’d expect. He’ll be out in a minute, he’s just collecting his things. Before he comes, though, I think there’s something you should know.’

As a grip of dread clenched Russ’s insides, he watched a sorry-looking bride limping her way out of the station to a waiting car.

‘The reason Oliver was driving last night,’ Jolyon began, ‘was because his mother rang him and what she said led him to think that she was about to commit suicide.’

Russ’s face tightened in shock; a beat later his eyes were burning with fury. ‘Are you saying he was on his way to, what? Rescue her?’

Jolyon nodded. ‘It looks that way. The point is, this could, to some degree, help in his defence.’

‘Well, that’s just great,’ Russ tried not to shout, ‘when if it weren’t for her he wouldn’t bloody well need a defence. Does she know yet what she’s done?’

Jolyon tightened the scarf at his neck. ‘I’m not sure. Oliver
tells me the police went to check on her after he’d explained why he was driving, but whether they told her what had happened, I’ve no idea.’

Still fuming, Russ said, ‘So my son, thanks to his drunken mother, has put an innocent young girl in hospital and his own future ...’

‘Here he is,’ Jolyon broke in quickly. ‘Go easy on him now, this has been a huge shock.’

Turning around, Russ peered through the dull, grey light. As Oliver came out from behind a police van, he felt such a fierceness to his love and despair to his anger that all he could do was clasp his son in his arms and hold him tight as Oliver tried stoically not to break down.

‘I’m sorry, Dad, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,’ he said shakily. ‘I know I shouldn’t have ...’

‘You’re damned right you shouldn’t,’ Russ growled, ‘but Jolyon’s explained what made you ... For Christ’s sake, why didn’t you just call me?’

‘I didn’t think. I got the call and I ... It was like I had to get to her ...’