I pursed my lips, feeling them strain over my teeth as I sucked hard. I thought about Luke and what would happen if I told the police the truth. It was him. It had to be. He was watching me, waiting for me to fall. I shook my head. ‘I don’t know – seconds,’ I said wearily, watching as my child was given the all-clear. I wanted to draw him close. To smother him in kisses and never let him go. I could blame Luke all I wanted. This was my fault. Right now, I was the biggest threat to my child.
PC Bakewell smiled at Jamie, lowering her voice as she gave me words of advice. ‘Visibility is very bad with all this rain. Your son could have been killed.’ The tone of her voice told me she placed the blame solely on my shoulders. ‘I’ve seen too many incidents like this with horrific outcomes. Don’t take your eyes off your child again.’ She looked at me with eyes that spoke of the memories of incidents she preferred to forget. ‘Anyway’ – she offered up a brief smile – ‘I’m glad that luck was on your side. Don’t let it happen again.’ After a quick word with the paramedic, she bid me goodbye. Jamie was going to be OK, but I would not be going into work today. After I had promised to make it up to him with ice cream, we headed home. I needed to tell Alex what had happened before he heard it from anybody else. I looked at the keys in my shaking hand and I wondered if I could trust myself to drive. After tucking Jamie into his car seat, I slid behind the steering wheel. I caught my reflection in the mirror, barely recognising the person staring back at me. My eyes were bloodshot, my face chalk white with shock. This would not be the end of it. Social services would now have a record of my carelessness and I would have to explain myself all over again. How had I allowed my child to toddle across the car park in the pouring rain, resulting in him almost being run over? What sort of mother did that make me? What sort of person? After all we had been through to have our beautiful child . . . I pushed my key into the ignition. I had to force these feelings away and concentrate on calling home to break the news. Alex could barely look me in the eye as it was. Had it been an accident, or had my past reared up to greet me once again?
CHAPTER FORTY
ALEX
2017
My phone’s ringtone drilled into my brain, resurrecting the sense of dread that had been keeping me company all day. I was plagued with a premonition that had made it near impossible to catch up with my work from home. It seemed crazy to worry about such a simple thing as Emma taking Jamie to nursery, but when I came home from Leeds she was so paranoid and upset, I wondered if there was more to her state of mind than she was letting on. I could not bear to confront her about Luke, at least not until I had the DNA results in my hand. Now, as her name flashed up on the screen, I knew I had been right to feel worried.
The first thing she told me was that she was at the shops with Jamie, picking up ice cream before they came home. This deviation from the usual routine quickened my pulse, and I could tell from the tremor in her voice that, despite her reassurances, something was very wrong. Slowly she relayed what had happened, her voice growing hushed as she told me about the accident. Jamie piped up in the background, asking her to hurry up so he could eat his ice cream at home. I stood, my heart in my throat as the papers I had been holding fell to the floor. Emma calmly spoke as if she had been reading the words from a prompt. I took a breath, grounding myself as I absorbed the news. ‘Are you sure he’s OK?’ I said, imagining Jamie in the back of an ambulance while I was casually browsing over figures between puffs on my vaporiser.
‘He’s fine; we both are,’ she said as I strained to hear over the beeps of the checkout till in the background. ‘He’s been checked over by the paramedics as a precaution, and he’s none the worse for wear. Can you get the heating on? Light the fire? We’re soaked through. I’ve promised him Ben & Jerry’s and his favourite programme on TV.’
I peered through the window and watched the rain hammer down. ‘Why didn’t you call me when it happened?’ I said, unable to comprehend the logic. ‘I should have been there. He must have been terrified.’ A frisson of annoyance rose up inside me as Emma continued to reassure me in a ridiculously calm tone. What had she said to the police and paramedics? Now we had a social services referral to worry about too. Mum would be horrified. This sort of thing may have been the norm in Emma’s family but . . . I pulled away from the window, bitter seeds of disgust blooming inside me. How could she leave me in the dark when our son could have been killed? Or did she think that I could wait, given that I was not his natural father?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘Look, this isn’t the time. We’re both soaking wet, and we need to get home. We can talk about it then.’
My fury remained long after the call ended. Jamie was little more than a toddler; why hadn’t she been watching him? I had accepted that Emma had her own struggles to contend with and was not always as focused as she should have been. But this was different. This involved our defenceless child. Was she fit to look after him at all?
As we lay in bed that night, I stared up at the ceiling wondering what had happened to our happy home. Had it ever really existed at all? I turned towards Emma, touching her hair and smoothing it. ‘Are you awake?’ I said, knowing she was.
Her steady inhalation of breath paused as she considered her response. After a couple of seconds she turned to face me, her eyes wet with tears. I felt a soft, warm pang in my heart at the sight of the woman I loved so upset because of something I had said. Our argument had been whispered, so as to protect our son. But that did not stop my words cutting her to the bone. I had witnessed the pain in her eyes as my accusations found a home. We had been through some tough times, and she had done a terrible thing, leaving Jamie alone in the car. But I was her husband and the day I took my vows I had sworn to stay with her through thick and thin. What sort of a man was I, abandoning her when she needed me the most? ‘I’m sorry,’ I said, ‘I shouldn’t have taken my anger out on you. Jamie is fine. That’s the most important thing.’
She nodded, biting down on her bottom lip as she held in a sob. The light of the moon filtered in through our window, displaying the remorse etched on her face.
‘We’ll get through this,’ I said, wiping away her tear with my thumb. ‘What’s done is done. We have a whole new life in front of us, you, me and Jamie. He needs us to be strong.’
‘That’s all I want,’ she said quietly. ‘Our little family. I promise. I won’t take my eyes off him again.’
At least she wasn’t trying to shift the blame any more. That’s what had riled me in the first place. Instead of being sorry for leaving him, she had used Luke as an excuse rather than face up to her responsibilities. It was Luke who had opened the car door, just as it was Luke who had made the silent call and rapped on our window the night before. It was a good job I had not told her about the dead mouse I found in the kitchen today, or she would have blamed Luke for that too. Had Emma convinced herself that everything was his fault? According to Luke, the only person I should be worried about was my wife, who had some serious mental health issues. I had tried to question Jamie tentatively, but he had clammed up, no longer willing to speak about it.
‘Do you think you forgot to lock the car?’ I said, keeping my tone gentle so as not to sound like an accusation. ‘Is it possible you might not have pressed the central locking button?’
‘It was pouring with rain,’ she said. ‘I was fiddling with my umbrella as well as the change for the car park. I’m sure I locked it. I heard it click.’
I interlocked my hands behind my head as I lay on the pillow, trying to make sense of it all. ‘You might have pressed the button to open the doors by mistake? That makes a clicking sound too.’
Silence passed between us, and all I could hear was the soft brush of the wind against the windowpane. Somewhere in the distance, an owl shrieked. A wave of tiredness overcame me.