He sat. I stood. Lost. A hot ember of grief lodged so deep in my chest I thought it would never cool. I didn’t know what to say, or how to feel, other than crashing grief and guilt. I’d never be able to make it up to my sister now.
“Come,” he said, with a sad smile.
I went to him and threw my arms around his neck and rested my cheek against his big wide chest. As he stroked my head the years rolled back, except that Scarlet was no longer there to share them with me. Scarlet was a lonely shadow.
I pulled away, ran a knuckle underneath each eye. “How’s Nate?”
“In bad shape. Went to pieces at the hospital. I left him with his parents. There’s an FLO with him too.” Family Liaison Officer. I was fluent in my dad’s cop lingo.
“And now?”
“There will be an accident investigation followed by an inquest. Standard procedure.”
“What did you mean about organ donation? Scarlet believed in it so much.”
He let out a weary sigh. “I don’t know the RP SIO but, as a former police officer, I might be able to extract some inside information.” I dredged my brain. Dad meant Road Policing Investigating Officer. “It’s a confused picture but I got the impression that the police were holding something back. The fact that they want to prioritise the post-mortem indicates as such.”
I didn’t like the sound of this at all. I understood that reports could take a week or so, although initial findings could be disclosed earlier.
Dad continued, as if on autopilot. “Every fatality on British roads is treated as a suspicious death and in this instance there’s two. In the normal course of events, a Collision Officer will identify and preserve records and review witness evidence, and a Vehicle Examiner will check out the vehicles.”
I didn’t speak for a moment. I couldn’t. I tried to absorb the news. Failed. “Dad,” I said gingerly, “When will they find out what happened?” I had to know.
“Sounds like a high-speed collision.”
“You think Scarlet was driving too quickly?”
“Maybe.” He shook his head. “But don’t tell your mother I said that.”
I squeezed his arm; saw a flicker of fear in his eyes. We both knew that my mum would never recover from this. “It might or might not be a factor, but Scarlet wasn’t driving her car.”
“How come?” I said, puzzled.
“Remember that prang she had a month or so ago?”
“Hit a gate-post.” Which was right out of character, I remembered with a twinge of anxiety. Scarlet was a good driver. Smooth. Fluid. Safe. Not like me with my tendency to curb it and poke my nose out too far at junctions.
“The Golf was in for bodywork repairs. She’d rented an off-roader for the week.”
“Maybe she didn’t know how to handle it.”
“A possibility,” he agreed.
“How long had she had it?”
“Three days.” Yes, I remembered now. She was on her way to drop off her car and pick up the courtesy vehicle when I’d picked a fight.
“Surely, she’d take it steady simply because she wasn’t used to driving the vehicle.”
“I have to admit it does seem odd, especially as she was on the wide straight stretch on the Old Gloucester Road, after Hayden.”
I knew my sister’s regular route. The speed limit was 50 mph, but drivers often took it more quickly. Me included.
A hard lump swelled in my throat, making it virtually impossible to swallow. Still the tears wouldn’t come. “Was it really awful, Dad? Seeing Scarlet?”
He glanced away, jaw bracing, his normal dark colouring a pale imitation. When he spoke his voice sounded raspy, dry and old. “I’ve seen many dead bodies, but nothing prepares you for—” He shook his head. Broken.
“Here,” I said, clumsily handing him a tissue. He took it, dabbed his face and blew his nose. “We have to tell Zach.”
“My job,” he said, stoic and uncompromising. A pulse ticked in his neck, his expression reminding me of the bad old days when Zach was in thrall to his druggie friends. He hung out with crazies back then. Dad knew most of them in a professional capacity. It wasn’t so much what Zach was doing to his body, destructive as it was, as what he was doing to our lives, Dad’s especially.
He pulled out his mobile.
“Wouldn’t it be better and kinder done in person?” In any case, Zach never answered his phone and, rarely, if ever returned a call.
Dad opened his mouth to speak then hesitated, whatever he was about to say was interrupted by the sound of a loo flushing and running water.
“Let me tell Zach,” I murmured.
“No, I —’
“I want to, Dad.” I needed to be alone, to think and work out whether I was condemned to a lifetime of guilt. I shuddered to think that Scarlet was so upset by our row that she’d not paid attention on the road. Had I argued with her when she was already at a low ebb? Jesus Christ.
His sad eyes met mine. “Are you sure? You’ve had one hell of a shock.”
“Honestly, I want to help.” And do something of practical use. “It won’t be a problem. Promise.”
He clutched my arm. “Are you okay to drive?”
“Yes.”
“You’re sure?” His grip on me tightened.
“I am.”
Anxiously, his eyes darted to the en-suite. “I’ll take care of Mum. You go to Zach.”
My brother lived a simple life in the arse-end of nowhere. It took me forty-five minutes to get there and then another fifteen through winding roads, flanked by high hedges hissing with heat, to reach the commune where Zach had lived for a decade. Thoughts fastened solely on my sister, my eyes clouded at the thought of never hearing her voice, never seeing her smile again. By the time I reached the potholed drive that led to Zach’s home, I was shackled by grief.
Parking up on a patch of scrub, the ground rutted and dry from two months of hot weather without rain, a kaleidoscope of images clattered through my mind. Scarlet pale and clammy with shock. Scarlet bleeding. Scarlet dying.
Eventually, I forced myself to get out of the van towards what was effectively a scattering of ramshackle dwellings surrounded by vegetable patches, washing lines and pens with livestock.
Gareth, a skinny silent man from the Rhondda, was adjusting a halter on one of his horses. He supplemented his meagre living with woodcarvings and strange sculptures made from scrap metal. Nearby, two small children grubbed around in a makeshift sandpit. Think gypsy encampment meets Glastonbury on an unusually dry day and you get the picture. In front of the largest hovel, a raised piece of decking on which sat benches and old easy chairs with sagging bottoms, two semi-naked women sunbathed in the obliterating heat while Zach lay stretched out in a deckchair, legs apart, narrow feet bare. Clean for years and embracing abstinence with the same zeal with which he’d smoked crack cocaine, he looked reasonably healthy. If you didn’t know it, you’d never cotton on that he’d once been a hair’s breadth away from death.
He wore baggy shorts and a tie-dyed vest that exposed muscles rope-hard from manual labour. His weathered olive-skin looked as if it had been dipped