‘We have to get out,’ he says, and I drag my gaze over to him and see that he’s bleeding, his hand cut sharply by glass from the fractured windscreen. ‘It might – she might—’
I’m unfastening my seatbelt, opening the door with hands still shaking so much I can barely wrap them around the handle. As soon as I see her I know there’s no hope, but I drop to my knees anyway and bend forward, forcing myself to look. Her arm is unnaturally twisted, flung across the length of her body. The right side of her face has caved into a bloody mass, lacerated almost to the bone. She’s young. Sixteen, seventeen. A dark line of mascara is pooling down the untouched side of her face and her green silk scarf is streaked with red. The impact has knocked her scarlet high-heeled shoes off her bare feet. She’s completely still. Her eyes are half open. Every detail comes in flashes – brutal snapshots, fired one after the other, then snatched away.
He’s checking her pulse, bending his head. I don’t have to ask.
For a few moments, we’re crouching there together in silence in the dark. My mind is blank and buzzing. ‘What do we do?’ I ask. ‘What the hell do we do?’
His face is white, drained. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I suppose we have to call the police.’
I nod slowly, fighting for breath. Now, my thoughts are working at a hundred miles an hour, cycling frantically through what is going to happen. I’ve gone out driving in the dark, several units over the limit, miles away from my family, with another man. And now this girl – this girl with the green scarf and the long, dark hair and the make-up that she probably applied carefully in her bedroom only hours before – is dead. I’ve killed her. I’ve killed her.
‘Caro,’ he’s saying, and his tone is harsh and almost angry. ‘You need to go.’
I raise my eyes to his. ‘What are you talking about?’ I whisper.
‘You need,’ he says, ‘to get the fuck away from here, as soon as you can. I will call the police. I will deal with this. Do you understand?’ When I don’t reply, he draws in breath sharply. ‘This car is hired in my name,’ he says. ‘The hotel room is booked in my name. There’s nothing to connect you with this. There’s no reason for you to be involved.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I’m almost screaming, and suddenly tears are pouring down my face. I’m choking, vomit rising bitterly in my throat. ‘I can’t do that,’ I gulp. ‘I’m responsible for this. I can’t just—’
‘For fuck’s sake, Caro!’ he shouts. We’re both standing now, surreally facing each other, the girl lying there at our feet, the road deserted, the wind whistling coldly between us. ‘You’re not stupid,’ he bites out. ‘You know how this is going to go for you. You’ve been drinking. I knew it, and like an idiot, I still let you get in the car. You’re not going to get off. You’ll go to prison, maybe for years. You’ve got your son. You’ve got a life. I’ve got fuck all. And I’m sober. It was an accident. It makes sense!’ he shouts, and his voice is roughly edged with hysteria. Standing before me with his fists clenched, he looks incredibly young. ‘You know it does, so don’t try and martyr yourself. Just get out of here. Please.’
‘And then what?’ I force out. The tears are still streaming down my face, and they feel cold now, the wetness collecting damply on my skin.
‘Then nothing,’ he says. There’s a moment of silence. ‘This is it,’ he says. ‘It’s over. It’s time to say goodbye and walk away.’
The words hang between us, draining the energy out of the air. The dark landscape shifts and sways around me, and for a moment I think I’m going to faint. ‘You don’t mean that,’ I whisper. ‘We have to do this together. We can’t do it without each other. We can’t just—’
‘Yes, we can,’ he interrupts. With horror, I hear the determination in his voice – the steely edge to it, the warning that there is no point in arguing. ‘This is the only thing to do,’ he says. ‘It was always going to happen. And now it needs to happen more than ever. I mean it. No calls, no texts. You need to keep completely away from this. From me.’
‘I love you,’ I say, and it’s not how this was meant to be – the sourness still in my throat, the shocking, hot scent of blood in the air, my body shuddering with trauma. ‘I love you.’
‘Caro,’ he says quietly. For the first time, there’s a tenderness trembling in his voice. ‘I don’t think you should say that. There’s … there’s no point.’ He frowns minutely, passes a hand across his forehead. ‘I don’t know,’ he says. ‘I think I love you, too. But that’s partly why this has to happen. And I’m not going to change my mind.’
It filters in slowly. A strange, dreamlike sense of calm descends. I realize I can’t fight this. Everything has ground to a halt around us. My eyes flick to the road again. She’s lying there, the blood still pooling from her head and soaking into the granite. I’m half waiting for her to raise her head, open her eyes. But it doesn’t happen and my tears have stopped and I’m quivering with shock and nausea, and taking the first step away from her.
I look up straight into his eyes and I see the pain cross his face, raw and visceral. I can barely believe this is all happening. Before I know it, I’m raising my face to his and his lips are on mine. I close my eyes. He’s kissing me slowly and gently, and I know that it’s the last time.
When it’s over, I feel a bizarre lift of hope, the senseless thought that I must still be able to turn this all around, find some magic words that could bring the girl back to her feet and catapult us back into the future I’d planned, the one that was so close I could almost touch it. But there’s nothing that can change this, and I’m turning and walking down the dark, empty road, every step echoing in my head.
When I reach the next bend, I look back. He’s facing away from me, and I see the screen of his phone shining as he raises it to his ear. I try to think about the words he will be saying. Think about how it will be for him when they arrive: the blunt inquisition, the looks of disgust and suspicion and reproach. I can’t get my head around it. I’m still walking, one foot after the other. The nearest train station is five miles away. It will take me over an hour. And when I get there, there’s no place to go but home.
Still walking. I’m on my own. I don’t yet know how it will be. I don’t know about the dozens of messages I’ll send and receive no reply to, about the dreams that will shake me from my sleep, about the sense of helplessness and guilt that will pulse through me so hard and so relentlessly it feels impossible to survive. But I know that some things burn their way into you and scar you from the inside out. No recovery, no escape. The only way out is going to be to bury these memories so deep underground they are almost impossible to access. Find some way of pretending to start again. And with a jolt of sick surprise, I realize this will be possible. That it’s almost frighteningly easy. Already, it feels as if the last ten minutes have belonged to some other life. That woman back there in the car – already, she’s disappeared. It wasn’t me. It wasn’t me. I’ve left her there with him, and she’s gone for good.