Danny shrugs. ‘Dad said it was better to carry on as normal.’ He stops talking for a moment, his thoughts elsewhere, then adds, ‘I think I’m better off here.’
‘What about your mum?’
He looks surprised. ‘Mum lives overseas. She has a new husband, young kids. I stay with Dad so I can go to school here.’
I’m taken aback, and yet of course I don’t know the intricacies of all the students’ lives unless they are referred to me. ‘So, how do you feel about that?’ I ask him, as though we are in session.
He shrugs again. ‘It is what it is. Dad and I muddle along, I get holidays in the sunshine, and my little brothers adore me. It could be a lot worse. Anyway, I didn’t come here to talk about all that.’ He sits up straighter in his chair. ‘Mrs Turner, I don’t know how much I should be saying, or even if I’m right, but I think there’s something you need to know. About last night. It’s just, the accident . . . In the dark, it all happened really fast, and I feel guilty as hell about Sophia. You know, if she hadn’t moved, I think the car would have missed her, but she must have been confused. She tried to follow us rather than heading to the other side of the road, and she went right into the path of the car.’ He pauses. ‘But I don’t think the driver was aiming at her.’
I frown. ‘What do you mean, “aiming at her”? When Georgia spoke to the police last night she also said it all happened very fast – but she didn’t give the impression that the car was “aiming” at anyone. It’s so dark down the lane – I know when I drive there I’m easily startled by rabbits running out on the bends, sometimes it’s hard to avoid them.’
‘That’s just it,’ Danny says. ‘I can’t be sure either. In the beginning I was so shocked about Sophia that I didn’t have time to think about it. And now I feel slightly paranoid. But it’s kept me awake all night, and the thought keeps coming back to me. That car was behind us so quickly, almost like it had crept up on us – it’s so quiet down Vicarage Road that I’m sure we would have heard the engine if it had been going at speed.’
‘I’ve been wondering the same thing,’ I confess, relieved to have someone to discuss this with. ‘I wanted to ask Georgia for some more details this morning, but she set off for school before I could. The lack of noise has been bothering me too – and the headlights. Why did you not move faster when you first became aware of the car’s lights? I know there’s a corner not too far back from where Sophia was hit, but still, you were on a stretch of straight road.’
‘The police asked the same thing,’ Danny replies, ‘and I just said that by the time I saw the headlights, the car was coming too fast for us to get out of the way. But, looking back, I think there was a reason I didn’t see them sooner. I think the car was following us in the dark, and the driver only switched on the lights at the last second.’
Danny’s words chill me as I can’t help but picture the scene. The three of them on the road, with a car trailing them, hidden by the night. For what reason, though? What did all this mean?
‘Perhaps that’s why you were hit,’ I suggest, searching desperately for some kind of logic that would lift this crushing fear from my shoulders. ‘Perhaps the car had just set off, and the driver had forgotten to switch their lights on, so they didn’t see you in time.’
But even as I say it I know it makes little sense. Set off from where? There’s nothing that far down Vicarage Road, and no streetlights to fool you into complacency. Not even the laziest driver would be unaware they had forgotten to turn their lights on.
‘I don’t think so,’ Danny says, humouring me. ‘It’s not just the lights – the engine roared, too, as though the car was charging at us. In fact, on reflection that’s exactly what it felt like. It was on top of us without warning – we didn’t stand a chance.’
‘You think it was intentional – that someone wanted to hurt you?’
He looks down, and then says, ‘Yes.’
We sit in a silence so portentous that the pressure of it crushes my chest. I cannot bear the thought that these children have been targeted. Can we really be right? If so, what is our next move?
Then Danny says, ‘There’s something else.’ He catches my eye for a moment and glances away again, over my shoulder, towards the glittering lake in the distance. ‘When I lifted Georgia up I spun a whole hundred-and-eighty degrees – and the car missed me by millimetres. In hindsight, I feel as though the car changed direction slightly, because the driver saw that I was in the way and adjusted course to try to avoid me. I just can’t shake the feeling that it was aiming for one of the girls. I know that Sophia was hit, but I wonder . . . I’m sorry, Mrs Turner, but I think it might have been aiming for Georgia, and only missed her because I got in the way.’