Declan looks at me sadly. ‘I meant moan with pleasure.’
‘I know exactly what you meant.’ I abandon any attempts to make tea. ‘Those days are gone.’
‘They don’t have to be,’ he says. This is the closest I have seen Declan come to begging. ‘I’ll prove to you that I am worthy of your love again.’ Now I think he has really lost it. A grovel too far. ‘I’m going to pay off all our debts.’
I decide not to point out that they’re only our debts because he tricked me.
‘The company will be even bigger and better,’ he states triumphantly.
‘But with money in the bank account,’ I remind him.
‘Yes.’
‘And somehow you’re going to get me my job back,’ I say.
Declan retreats to the other side of the work surface. ‘You should take them to court for unfair dismissal, Emily.’
‘I should take you to court for fraud,’ I say.
Declan has the grace to pale slightly.
My sigh finally escapes. ‘But I’m not going to do that either.’
Declan tries one of his winning smiles. ‘Can’t we just put this behind us as one big mistake?’ he says.
‘It wasn’t my mistake, Declan.’
‘We could start all over again,’ he urges. ‘Maybe we should have done more things together as a couple.’
I hesitate to suggest that maybe we should have done less.
Declan must have read the expression on my face, for he says, ‘I mean shopping and stuff.’
‘Ah yes. The couple who shop together stay together,’ I say. ‘I’m sure that regular excursions to Harrods is the answer to all our problems.’
Realising that he’s on a losing streak, Declan changes tack. ‘Say that you don’t love me, Emily,’ he instructs and puts on his little boy lost face.
He is beautiful. His chocolate-brown eyes fill with tears and his perfect teeth bite his full, sensuous lips nervously.
He is beautiful. But there is nothing beneath it, not for me. I’ve seen the hardness of his heart and I can never forget it. ‘I don’t love you,’ I say.
Declan looks shocked as if a sharp pain has stabbed his body. His eyes are hurt. ‘You mean it, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ I say with a melancholy sigh. ‘I do.’ As I look at him my anger dissipates and I feel nothing but sadness for the loss of our relationship and the cruel gash it has cut through my basic trust of others.
Declan edges away from me. ‘I’ll go then.’
I have no fight left in me at all. ‘I think that’s for the best.’
Declan walks out of the kitchen and towards the front door. I follow uncertainly. He opens the door and turns as if to leave. ‘I still love you,’ he says.
I say nothing as he walks out of the door and back towards his car. This probably isn’t a good time to mention that I might just be in love with someone else.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Adam was driving the company Vectra. Cara sat in the passenger seat huddled into her coat for warmth in the absence of a working heater. The windscreen wipers were losing their battle as they tried valiantly to swash the rain away. What had started out as a cold, bleak winter’s night had turned rapidly into a cold, bleak, rain-lashed and deeply unpleasant winter’s night. Adam was hunched forward, tense, his knuckles white on the steering wheel.
‘Nearly there,’ he said, and flashed a quick glance at her.
Cara nodded.
Fatalities, the report had said. A coy term for dead people. Mangled dead people. Innocent people killed in a car crash. People who had loved ones waiting for them – perhaps anxious now, watching the clock. People who wouldn’t be going home. No matter how long she had been a journalist, dealing with the aftermath of a road traffic accident was never easy. It was all part of the job, but Cara always had the feeling that it was none of their business to be there. Was it so important to report a story that they had to intrude, lurk on the fringes of other people’s suffering? Couldn’t it all wait until the pain had died down?
Adam’s lips were set in a tight line and Cara wondered what he was thinking. She wanted him to hold her hand, to comfort her. But he was silent, grim and grey-faced in the half-light of the car.
Blue police lights flashed brightly in the raindrops on the windscreen and told her that they had arrived at the scene. The police had set up a road block and Adam pulled up on the periphery of it. A lone policeman was directing traffic and was lucky, in a bizarre way, that it was such an awful night as it meant there was little traffic on the road. He was hunkered down in his waterproof coat, struggling to retain an authoritative presence in the face of the elements and he waved a few rubber-necking drivers on with an irritated expression.
There were two tangled wrecks of metal in the middle of the road. One looked like it might be a Renault. Goodness only knows what the other had been. The front was completely ripped away, leaving its innards spewing out into the road like a scene from a sci-fi horror movie. Thick, black oil trickled away like seeping blood.
Even though Adam had stopped, he kept his grip on the steering wheel for a moment as if bracing himself against the horror to come. There were three police cars, a big red fire engine, as jolly as any children’s toy, and an ambulance which had its back doors open, providing a slash of warm light to the miserable night. Their Day-Glo yellow and blue checked decals looked too cheerful in the middle of the gore.
The rain pounded down, obliterating their view. Ice was a fairly rare phenomenon in London, but if the temperature continued to plummet, the roads would be like skating rinks by tomorrow morning.
‘Ready?’ Adam said, knowing full well that neither of them were.
‘Yes,’ Cara said wearily and pulled her voluminous bag from the back seat.
Adam scuttled round to the rear of the car, grabbed his camera gear from the boot and joined her in the rain. ‘What a filthy night,’ he said, reverting to the British necessity to comment on the weather no matter how inane it might be or how adverse the circumstances.
‘Come on,’ Cara said, gritting her teeth. ‘Let’s get this over with.’
They flashed their Press Cards as they walked past the policeman on traffic duty, who nodded curtly in response. Most policemen viewed journalists and photographers as necessary evils – neither side appreciating that they were both only brought together at times like this because they had a job to do. The firemen were usually more pragmatic about their role. Perhaps they were kept sane because they occasionally still had nice jobs to do like rescue kittens from trees for dear old ladies.
Adam pulled up his collar but, despite the rain, neither of them rushed. They both surveyed the scene with mounting dread.
‘I’ll see you back here in ten minutes,’ Adam said briskly. And, starting to undo his camera bag, he disappeared into the depths of the crash scene.
Cara stopped next to a policeman who looked like he needed a cigarette.
‘Alcohol,’ he responded flatly when she asked him what had happened. ‘Same as it always is. They were on their way home from that new wine bar. Why is it they never learn that drinking and driving don’t mix?’ He wore the weary expression of someone who had seen this far too often and just wanted to be at home, in bed, next to his wife and out of the rain and away from the crushed cars.
He gave her the facts. Only one fatality. Anthony Scarborough, nineteen years old, from Stanmore. Driver of the Renault Clio. Died on impact. Multiple injuries. Three passengers. He reeled off their names from a list. Sustained minor injuries. Other car, a Peugeot 406. One passenger. Male, forty-three. David Smith. On his way to Accident and Emergency at the Royal Free Hospital. Suspected fractured ribs. Lucky escape.
Cara jotted it all down. ‘Thanks,’ she said, and moved away. The policeman nodded and returned to his impassive stare.
One fatality. They were lucky, judging by the amount of wreckage. The firemen were packing up now, ready to leave and head back to the warmth of their stati
on, their job done for the night. They’d had to cut one of the youngsters out of the car. Nothing too bad, though.
She followed the light towards the ambulance, her stomach tensing as she approached, the sound of sobbing growing louder. As she craned her neck round the open door, she saw three teenagers, a fresh-faced, ashen boy wearing a torn Nike T-shirt, and two girls, both wearing sparkly outfits, high heels and very little else. There would be no more partying for them tonight. The girls’ faces were streaked with blood, mascara and lipstick smears, bright mocking colours against the chalk-white of their skins like some sort of sick carnival masks. Cara felt the bile rise in her throat. One of the girls sat silently, holding her blood-stained dress together, as the young man squeezed her hand distractedly. The other girl, looking younger and more scared, was responsible for the steady sobbing and was having her head bandaged by a portly paramedic, who was softly cooing platitudes at her. A red, sticky mark had already oozed out to mar the whiteness of the dressing, just as the memory of this night would mar the purity of whatever they did in the future. They would always remember that they, at least, had a future. One fatality, but three youngsters with their innocence dead inside them.
Cara eased herself into the back of the ambulance. ‘All right?’ she said.
‘Flesh wounds,’ the paramedic said. ‘These are the lucky ones.’ The sobbing intensified. His face softened in sympathy. ‘Their friend wasn’t so fortunate.’
She wanted to say something to the stricken-looking children who had grown up in the space of the last hour. But what words could she use? She didn’t know them at all. She was simply here to do her job. And her job was to report the facts of the crash, not the fact that so many lives would be blighted by something as simple as one drink too many and a bend being taken too fast.
She took their names and addresses, scant details to titillate the masses and their version of this tragic night out. Cara was as brief and professional as she needed to be, but she wanted to hug them all to her before she left. Muttering some pointless pleasantry about everything being all right, she escaped from the disinfectant smell of the stark ambulance and plunged back into the night.
Clutching her notebook to her in an attempt to protect it from the rain, Cara picked her way through the bits of metal and glass strewn across the road – hubcaps twisted and torn, fragments of red brake-light casings, a lone door handle. And then, sadder than anything, a shoe. Anthony Scarborough’s shoe. Trendy, expensive, and lying on its side, shredded on the road. There was blood on it. Not oil blood, but real blood. Red, spent lifeblood. Steam escaped gently into the night as the cars breathed their last gasp.
This is where he had died. Anthony Scarborough, aged nineteen, of Stanmore. Crushed, in the middle of the road, presumably from driving too fast under the influence of alcohol. Multiple injuries. It was a cruel and silly way to die. Cara’s stomach was churning. How many of us optimistically planned for the future, she thought, yet could never really know whether we would make it home safely to our bed each night? Life was a very fragile commodity; it could be snuffed out by a moment of unthinking madness.
Adam was on the other side of the car, snapping away, taking photographs as if on auto-pilot. He too looked tired and drawn. Cara went to move towards him. She had finished here and all she wanted to do was get out, get back to the office and do what she had to do to fulfil her duty.
Skirting round the dismembered wheels and their tattered tyres, treading on the muddy grass verge to avoid the worst of the debris, her feet were soon wet through and freezing cold. Cara looked down at them, thinking how unsuitable her shoes were for a night like this, and as she did so, she noticed the stains on them. Not dirt or rain or oil, but blood. Dark patches that had soaked into the leather and had crept over the edges, bleeding into the flesh tones of her tights. She gasped for breath. How had it happened? In her need to get nearer to the wreck, she must have walked in a pool of blood. Was it Anthony Scarborough’s blood defying the elements, that had clung to her? The thought made Cara’s legs buckle beneath her and, curling up in the gutter, lashed by the unrelenting rain, she was violently sick.
Adam was swiftly at her side, kneeling in the rain. ‘What happened?’ he shouted.
Cara sobbed as she wiped her mouth on the sleeve of her coat.
‘Oh shit,’ Adam said and fished through his pockets until he found a tissue. He tried to straighten it out before he gave it to her, but abandoned the idea and dabbed at her ineffectually with it instead. Cara cried louder. For the loss of Anthony Scarborough. For the loss of herself. For Emily. For Declan. And for Adam.
‘Let’s get you back to the car,’ Adam said, a note of panic in his voice.
He wrapped his arms round her, gathering her up from the gutter, and she felt herself go limp in his embrace.
‘Fucking hell,’ she heard Adam mutter as he hoisted her up and carried her like an ungainly sack of King Edward’s potatoes in a wobbling gait back to the waiting Vectra. After that everything went blissfully black.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
I feel really shaken up by Declan’s visit, and indulge myself in two cups of Tetley’s finest, swiftly followed by several glasses of Jacob’s Creek’s finest. But I’m still feeling rattled, if a little more blurred.
What is this love thing? I’d like to know. Declan says he still loves me, but what does that mean in his book? In all the years we’d been together, I’d hardly ever met his parents. Shouldn’t that have told me something? He was never very big on family occasions. I went to most of mine on my own as my dearly beloved could always find some work he needed to do. I’d assumed Declan was ashamed of his mother and father or something in his background, but perhaps he was ashamed of me. I don’t know.
We never went to garden centres together either. How weird is that? Whenever we needed shrubs I had to go and buy them on my own. Don’t couples normally share the pain and expense of horticulture? The closest we ever got to commitment, apart from our joint astronomical debt, was the fact that after six months he presented me with a neatly word-processed list of his family’s birthdays and I had, ever since, become responsible for their cards and presents. But isn’t that always the way? Show me a man who sends his own birthday cards and I’ll show you Callista Flockhart trying to struggle into size fourteen jeans. It’s not going to happen, is it?
I’ve tried phoning Cara, but her office phone goes straight to voicemail and her mobile’s switched off. She’s probably having a high old time in the staff canteen with Adam. That girl could not wait to get to work to see him! I tell you, she was like a teenager off to an S Club Seven concert – knicker-wetting levels of excitement, scattered hormones and a face-full of war paint. Never in the history of journalism has anyone chosen their clothes so carefully for a night-shift. And, I have to say, after my rather brief conversation with him the other night, he did sound a little bit yummy.
Cara is convinced that all her spells are finally doing their business, and I can only hope she’s right. Cara is a dear, dear friend, but a total pain in the arse once she gets a bee in her bonnet. If this Adam doesn’t give in gracefully, then the full might of all sorts of things will be brought down on his head. Cara will be up the garden gathering eye of newt and toe of frog before you can say ‘RSPCA’. This is a woman who is against all cruelty to animals, unless, of course, it involves them being put in a magic potion. She’s already rented The Witches of Eastwick on video. Twice. I’ll end up living in the middle of a coven if I’m not very careful.
I wanted to do girly bonding with her and whinge about Declan and The Unknown Hunk, but after fourteen attempts, she’s still not there. That’s friends for you.
Taking the second bottle of Jacob’s Creek upstairs with me, I decide on an early night. Tomorrow, I really ought to think about bracing myself to make an appointment with Sebastian Atherton, photographer to the nearly-clothed. It is a very sobering thought. Well, not quite.
As I climb onto my bed, the soft fluffy
duvet welcomes me, embracing me like a long-lost lover. I take a lingering glug from the bottle of wine and let it dangle over the side until it finds the floor, then I roll over and curl my knees up and hug them. I’m just going to have forty winks before I do the getting undressed thing and take off my make-up. My pillow gently cradles my head, sucking me down into deep, deep sleep. Getting undressed can wait.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
‘Cara!’ Adam said, gently shaking her shoulder. ‘Come on – wake up.’ He’d driven straight to Cara’s place, which seemed like a good idea at the time as he hadn’t a clue what else to do with her. She’d gone spark out the minute he’d picked her up, and had shown no signs of coming to all the way back here. Maybe he should have taken her to one of the paramedics, but they seemed to have their hands full with rather more pertinent matters than passing-out journalists.
It had been a particularly gory crash scene and Adam had, unfortunately, been forced to cover rather more than he cared to remember in his long career as a photographer. Even he’d felt faint, so no wonder Cara had flaked out.
‘Cara,’ he said again. ‘Time to wake up.’
Her eyelids flickered briefly as if she was in REM sleep and then her eyes opened fully. ‘What?’ she said, dazed.
‘We’re here,’ Adam said softly. ‘We’re back at your house.’
The journey had taken ages. As always after covering a fatal crash, Adam drove like he was on his driving test for the next week or so – push-pull steering, mirror-signal-manoeuvre, sticking resolutely to one mile below the speed limit. Eventually, the demands of his career would require him to fly round the place like a mad thing and all his carefulness and consideration to other road-users would be forgotten and he’d be back brewing with road rage like the rest of them.
Cara looked out of the window to confirm that they were, indeed, outside her front door. Then she sank back against the seat.