Rob sat back and Matt and Alex exchanged a bemused look, both pretty certain there was probably an easier way home than going into town first and coming back out. Matt looked happy enough though, and turned up ahead into the long tree-lined street Rob had mentioned.
It was wide and empty, a long gentle curve sweeping in towards the town.
‘Go faster,’ Natalie said. ‘Faster, faster.’ Matt put his foot down and got a jubilant response from her. He smiled and Alex noticed they were still only doing forty. It felt faster and Natalie was happy.
He liked the way she got drunk. She was never completely out of her head. She seemed to hit merry halfway through the evening and then stay there. The first few times he’d seen her like that he’d wondered if she was putting it on but it was genuine, he knew that now.
‘I’ve never been here,’ said Alex, just for something to say.
Matt kept his eyes on the road but said, ‘No, nor me.’ Alex waited for some comment from the back but there was silence. Maybe they were getting tired.
Something moved near the edge of the road. Alex tried to see what it was but before he could even process the initial movement it had catapulted out into their path. He shouted something but wasn’t certain what and then the figure was in front of the car, a person running.
Matt shouted too. It looked for a second like she’d made it past the front of the car but then she flew upwards, like a gymnast leaping through a floor exercise. She hit Matt’s side of the car with a sickening thump, muffled, hard, and for a second Alex saw her face tear past, chalk pale. And then she was gone.
Matt hit the brakes, too late. A brief burst of shocked expletives gave way to silence as the car came to a stop, and then Will said, ‘What the fuck was that?’ He already sounded panicked, as if he knew exactly what it had been and what it meant.
Matt turned to Alex and said, ‘There was no way I could have stopped.’
‘I know,’ said Alex, ‘She came out of nowhere.’ The three in the back all started talking at once and Alex turned in his seat and said, ‘Okay, stay calm. I’ll go back there and see if she’s hurt.’
‘Of course she’s fucking hurt,’ said Rob, laughing slightly but in shock now.
‘Oh Jesus!’
‘Stay calm,’ said Alex, aiming it at the three of them in the back, conscious that Matt seemed to be holding it together. ‘I’ll be back in a minute.’
Alex got out of the car, looked up the street behind them and started walking, taking deep breaths of the cold air as if it were pure oxygen, listening to his own steps on the road surface and the faint sound of the engine turning over behind him. He was looking hard into the darkness, at the road ahead and along its shadowy edges.
He couldn’t see anything. He looked back and tried to calculate how far they’d travelled after hitting her. The impact had been too hard for her not to be here. He couldn’t believe she’d walked away from it but he was still walking and he couldn’t see anything on the road.
He heard the noise of a car door opening behind him and turned. It was Matt. Alex watched as he got out of the car and inspected it. After a quick check Matt looked up the road and saw Alex and shrugged theatrically before making a more detailed inspection.
It was as if they hadn’t really hit someone at all. That was what Matt had to be thinking and from where Alex stood it was looking that way too. He tried to think whether it was possible that they’d seen it wrong, that perhaps she had made it past but had thumped the car in anger.
It was impossible though. He’d seen her hit the car twice, fly into the air like she’d been yanked up by wires, like a stage trick. Alex turned and kept walking and almost immediately felt sickened. There was a body lying in the middle of the road up ahead.
He picked up his pace and within a few seconds he was standing over her. He couldn’t believe she’d been thrown so far. She was lying on her back, and he guessed the back of her head was smashed in because there was a pool of blood forming around it.
She was dead, he knew it. Her eyes were closed, her face perfect and reposed, as if she’d fallen asleep there, nothing more. He knelt down and tentatively put his hand on her neck. He couldn’t find a pulse but kept his hand there for a second or two anyway, hoping.
He tried to look at the underside of her head, grimacing at the sight of it. It looked really bad, her hair swimming in blood. He wondered if that had killed her or the impact of the car - not that it mattered. He sat back on his heels and looked at her, trying to think what to do, distracted then by a smell that was coming off her.
What was it? Something sweet, peaches perhaps. Peach schnapps. He looked at her body and noticed the liquid-dark patch around the pocket of her winter coat. He carefully pulled the edge of the pocket, the smell growing stronger, the broken glass grating in the confines of the pocket.