Whatever You Love (21 page)

*

It is dark outside. I decide to give myself the evening off. I open a bottle of wine and go to the cupboard that houses the posh glasses we never used and find the most expensive glass in it, a large globe on an ultra-thin, twisted stem – the sort of glass that people hold up in restaurants and turn in the light to see the true colour of the wine. I put them both on the tray and then it occurs to me, like a light coming on, that I could have a smoke – in my own house, another transgressive thought. I seem to be having a lot of them recently. Rees is away. No one need ever know. I have two cigarettes in a packet of ten at the back of the drawer where I keep the old instruction leaflets to white goods I discarded years ago. Eventually, I find the packet, a little crushed, beneath the warranty for an electric sandwich toaster. The cigarettes in it are ancient and dry. Despite what I pretended to David, I was never a serious smoker, any more than I was a serious drinker. It was a just a rebellious gesture.

I put the bottle of wine and the expensive glass and cigarettes and hob-ring lighter on a tray, then walk through to the sitting room. I put the gas fire on full, turn on the television, then turn the sound up, drink my wine and smoke my fags, too quickly, one after the other, tapping the ash on to the tray, my feet up on the sofa even though my shoes are still on.

*

Some time later, I jump awake and, as I do, spill wine on myself. I have fallen asleep with the television blaring, the two cigarette stubs on the tray, my expensive wine glass clutched between my fingers and balanced on my chest. That is what has woken me, its tipping – luckily there was only a little left in it. I sit up, disorientated. The wine bottle is two-thirds empty. The room smells of the cigarettes – disgusting, I think. On the television, a group of people in a studio are crammed together on a lurid yellow sofa, shrieking like hyenas. I fumble for the remote control and flick the TV off. Suddenly, I am back in my house, in the semi-dark, alone, surrounded by everything that has happened. I want to sink back down but force myself to stand, unsteadily, and put down my wine glass on the tray, pick up the tray and turn towards the kitchen. The start of it awaits me there, the ritual, the slow but certain process of closing down the house for night-time, checking doors, turning off the lights, acknowledging to myself I am alone. I perform it. I make myself, although all I want is Betty’s bed, the whisper of her duvet cover as I pull it over my shoulder, the hypnotic wheeling glow of the orange starfish light, my thoughts of her. I don’t want to do anything but think of her.

*

Unusually for me, I sleep, and in the morning I am bleary and sluggish. I wander slowly downstairs in my dressing-gown. Coffee and two bites of toast fail to revive me. My home phone rings as I am halfway up the stairs, on my way to get dressed. It stops by the time I get back downstairs but starts again a moment later.

‘Laura, hi, it’s Toni.’

I am in such a flat, distracted state, that it takes a moment or two to register. ‘Toni,’ I say.

‘Are you okay. You sound sleepy. Did I wake you up?’

‘No, no, I’m fine, just haven’t been up long. Had a lie-in, for once.’

‘Good.’

I smile to myself. Toni, my mother hen.

‘Are you in for the next half-hour?’ she asks.

‘Yes, sure, I’m not even dressed yet.’

‘Great, I’m going to pop round. Is it all right if I bring a colleague with me?’

‘Yes, sure, I’ll put some clothes on.’

‘Well, you don’t have to for us.’

I look at my watch. It is mid-morning already. ‘Did you call me yesterday?’ I ask. ‘On the mobile, several times in a row, just missed calls?’

‘No, I would always try your home phone first or leave a message.’

‘Oh, okay.’

*

Toni looks around as she steps in the door.

‘Rees is staying with David for a bit,’ I say.

‘Yes, I know,’ says Toni.

I look at the colleague Toni has brought with her, a junior- miss version of Toni, younger but with the same direct look and choppy fair hair. Her eyes are twinkly and very round. She looks like one of those perky, efficient young women to whom nothing really bad has ever happened, although I try not to be judgemental. I should know, of all people, how deceptive appearances can be. ‘Rees is my son,’ I say.

‘Hi, I’m Jane,’ she says. ‘How old is your son?’

‘He’s four,’ I say.

Jane stops in my hallway and says, ‘I like this mirror.’

‘Thanks,’ I say, smiling a little to myself as I turn to the kitchen. It is a perfectly ordinary mirror. I have got used to certain police-officer traits, thanks to Toni, chief of which is the way they observe things out loud all the time, in order to demonstrate how observant they are. Maybe it’s a technique they are taught to relax relatives or victims and to unsettle suspects, one that becomes such an ingrained habit that they do it without realising. We are all the same to them, ultimately, the people they deal with – the civilians, the not-Us. I think of how the child lock was on in the car the night they drove me to hospital, how they walked behind and in front of me across the hospital car park, as though I could turn into a suspect at any time.

Toni is carrying a dull-blue cardboard folder and I guess immediately this means this visit is more formal than her previous ones. I decide not to bother with the offer of hot drinks and feel a reflexive if brief anxiety that the young officer, Jane, will think me rude. As we sit down, the three of us, Toni puts the folder on the table and launches into a prepared speech. ‘Laura, you know that Mr Ahmetaj was initially arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving.’ It occurs to me that Toni thinks I am getting better, getting strong enough, perhaps, for what she is about to tell me. Outside in the garden, from somewhere close by my back door, comes the wailing of a neighbour’s cat.

Toni turns to Jane. ‘We’ve kept Laura informed as much as possible. I’ve been popping round on a weekly basis.’ She smiles at me. ‘We’ve had a few cups of tea over the last few weeks, haven’t we?’ I smile back, but uneasily. ‘Laura knows that causing death by dangerous driving is a Category A offence and she also knows that because of that, we have to gather evidence for such a serious charge. We’ve also talked a bit about the difficulty of prosecuting charges like that, the burden of proof and so on.’ I don’t like this Toni. I like the one who had a sneaky fag in my garden.

‘The car was impounded, wasn’t it?’ asks Jane. The two of them are off on some sort of police officers’ riff together, as if they are on a training exercise, which in some ways I suppose they are. There is an obvious hierarchy between them, a sense of deferral on Jane’s part and guidance on Toni’s. This annoys me. It reminds me I have a defined role as well.
Hello
, I want to say,
remember me? The name is Laura
.

‘Yes, we took the clothes too, and the drink and drugs tests were negative. Toni turns to me. ‘Do you remember I explained that the driver was released on police bail while we gathered evidence?’

I nod.

‘Well, that’s what we’ve been doing. We’ve taken the statements from Ranmali and her husband, obviously we did that a while ago, and there were skid marks on the road. We’ve had the vehicle examined. But the problem we have is that there were no other witness statements. There was Willow, of course, but she was unwell for a while, and then we lost her. This is difficult, but, we’ve come to the conclusion that there is no firm evidence he was driving dangerously.’ This is not a shock to me. Toni warned me weeks ago that the charges might be reduced to causing death by careless driving, a much less serious charge. ‘He gave us a statement and under our new family charter, you have a right to see it. It’s here.’ I look down at the folder on the table. ‘I can leave it here with you, if you like. I can read it to you, now if you like, or leave it with you, then you can call me later if you want to talk things through.’

They are both looking at me. Now I understand the formality, why she has brought a companion. I have rights. Maybe I am going to complain, or sue them in some way. Maybe I am going to hire a lawyer.
I am on my own
, I think.
This is the
beginning of the end of their interest in me. They are cutting me loose
.

Toni is watching me. ‘As a result of our investigations, the charges against him will be downgraded. Laura, I hope you understand, we’re sorry but this was always a possibility and it’s what often happens in a case of this type. A lot of people do get upset at this point, and I know it’s hard for you to comprehend when you’ve lost someone you love but the truth is there’s…’

I cut her off. ‘What will he be charged with?’

‘Failing to stop at the scene of an accident.’

‘Which means, what?’ Suddenly, I begin to hyperventilate, great deep gulping breaths. ‘What? What will happen to him? What?’

‘Probably a two hundred pound fine and points on his licence.’

Briefly, I am returned to the night she came to take me to the hospital to identify Betty’s body, the sense of unreality I felt as I walked along the endlessly strange and compulsively familiar corridors – my gentle but abiding conviction that I was dreaming.

They are both looking at me. There is a long pause. They have said what they came to say. They are nice people and concerned for me. They want to leave me with the impression that they are there to serve me, help me and are trying to imply by their silence that they are at my disposal but I can feel their desire to leave as flat and solid as the table at which we are sitting. I know they will not go until I dismiss them, so after a while, I say, quietly, ‘I would like you both to leave now, please. Thank you.’

They rise from their chairs, leaving the folder on the table. I remain seated. Toni lifts a hand, the same way she did that night, a gesture to indicate she would like to touch my shoulder but does not want to be presumptuous. She was expecting tears, I think, anger, maybe even hysteria – she would probably have preferred them to my unnatural calm. I can feel the strain in their quiet movements, their determination to be appropriate. At the kitchen door, Toni turns and says softly, ‘I’ll call you later, when you’ve had time to look at the statements.’

I still don’t look at her, but I nod, very slightly. They leave me sitting there and let themselves out, to walk to their car in silence, to breathe sighs as they get in, to talk about me as they drive back to the police station, to get on with the rest of their job, their lives.

*

Mr A’s statement is written in a scrawled but legible hand by whichever police officer took it down but it is in the first person, from Mr A’s point of view. The reason he was driving down Fulton Road was that he had been to visit the school, Betty’s school, my daughter’s school. He had an appointment with the head teacher.

The school my nephew goes to is very bad. We heard the other
school was a good school but they would not let my nephew go.
They say he must wait
. I know the school he means, St Michael’s, a small, single-intake primary on the side of town nearest the clifftop rise. I’ve had some professional dealings there, with the special-needs co-ordinator. She has had to refer several children to us, or their GPs. It’s an area of high economic deprivation and over a third of the children who go there are on the special-needs register, although technically it’s a mainstream school. They have to suspend Year 6 children, eleven-year-olds, for smoking in the playground. There has been a lot of trouble between the children of the migrant workers and the children from the local estates.
My nephew was having problems there
, the statement continues,
some very bad boys. We went to the
other school to see
. There is more about how bad St Michael’s is. It was clearly a matter that had preoccupied Mr A.
This is
the best town we live in but the school for my nephew is a big
problem for us. We go to speak to the teachers many times, my cousin goes and says to the head teacher about how unhappy my
nephew is in the bad school. The head teacher there is a woman
who is not listening to what we are saying. We do not want to
leave the town. We have business here now and apart from the
school things are the best, so far. We do not understand why my
nephew cannot go to another school as it is our only problem,
our difficulty. So we make a meeting with the head of the other
school, to see
. Mr A is not the only one to be confused by the vagaries of the schools’ admission system. Betty’s school is in a residential area of Edwardian semis. Even though it is double intake, the waiting list is long. We are twenty minutes’ walk away and only got Betty in because her entry year had a freakily low level of siblings.
We spoke to the teacher there. We had
to wait in the office
. The head teacher of Betty’s school is a Mr Coe, a short gruff man much beloved by the children but disliked by most of the parents, including myself. He is red-faced and short-tempered and to me it is a mystery why the children like him – Betty always talked of him in tones of adoration.
Normally my cousin, a woman, would go but that day was late,
so I go in the car with my nephew. I want him to see that my
nephew is a good boy, works hard, always polite. We talk to the
man. He is a nice man, reasonable, but he says he cannot help. As
we come outside the school, my nephew runs. He kicks at a thing,
you know, a triangle. He fell
.

As they were leaving the school, the nephew was playing with and tripped over a plastic traffic cone which someone had left in the middle of the pavement and hit his forehead on a low brick wall. His head was bleeding heavily as Mr A drove hurriedly down Fulton Road and around the corner. As he did, two girls ran out into the road. There was no time to avoid them. Neither he nor his nephew were wearing seatbelts. Mr A slowed the car and stopped as soon as he could safely. He didn’t know what to do. He saw the woman run out from the shop in his rear-view mirror. His nephew was screaming and had blood on his face. He drove on. He didn’t know what to do, so he took the nephew back to the camp, to his mother, and the women took him to hospital, then Mr A had a conversation with the other men. That was the way they always did it. When there was a problem, they would get together to discuss what was the best to do for everybody. Later, he came to the police station. At this point, the police officer has used official language.
Later I presented myself at the police station
where I was arrested
. It has always seemed odd to me when that phrase gets used in the newspapers, that people should present themselves at police stations and meekly submit to arrest, offer themselves up on a platter. Arrest has always implied physical violence to me – a car chase, or a door being broken down, maybe a scuffle.