Chapter 15
Tom takes a mug out the cupboard and pours coffee into it from a cafetière on the table.
The mug has a picture of Snoopy on it wearing sunglasses, and the sheer incongruity of it makes Anna smile, albeit weakly.
Proper coffee for the first time in three years.
She used to throw double espressos down like they were water, not taking even a moment to relish the flavour.
Now, she rolls the rich brew around her mouth, appreciating every nuance of its taste, aroma.
‘I’ve missed this,’ she says.
‘I’ll bet. I don’t think there’s any way I could do without coffee.’
‘It’s surprising what you get used to,’ Anna says.
‘I guess so,’ he says. There’s silence between them for a moment as they savour their drinks. Tom puts his cup down on the table at last, an air of decision about him. ‘About what you were just saying,’ he says.
She knows immediately what’s coming, puts up her hand, turning away from him.
‘What you said just now, about swearing never to come back here. Why was that? Is it to do with your original conviction? Do you have family in Oxford?’
Her head’s down. She’s tracing a pattern in a splash of coffee that’s on the table in front of her, pulling it out into long spikes like a firework. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’
‘I know you don’t,’ he says.
‘One of the first rules of prison. You learn not to ask.’
‘You’re not in prison now, though.’
She glances up at him. The panic she was feeling before has subsided, but it’s left its trace, her heart still pumping faster than it ought to be, her breathing still ragged.
He meets her gaze and for a long moment they look at each other, the tension seeping out of the air.
He’s right, she’s not in prison anymore.
She remembers his words in the cell, that’s tough, a kinder judge than she’s ever been to herself.
She takes a deep breath. ‘Yes, I have family in Oxford. My sister. I nearly killed my nephew. The last I know of him, he was on life support. I didn’t mean to, but I did all the same. It was when I was a newly qualified solicitor. At one of the magic circle firms – you know what they’re like?’
Tom nods. ‘I escaped from Linklaters myself. I needed to get my life back.’
‘Then you know exactly. I spent my life cancelling on my friends, my family. I practically never spent time with my nephew. Sally – my sister – she insisted I commit to a weekend with them, to take Toby out for the day while they went to a wedding. But my boss was equally insistent I come into the office on Saturday, to finish up work on a contract. I told him I couldn’t, that I’d finish the document on the Friday evening and there was no way I could work longer.
But I was so stressed, I fucked it up. I mean, fucked up completely. ’
Tom nods again.
‘I couldn’t bear it. As soon as I realised what I’d done, I walked out.
I went to the nearest pub and drank myself stupid.
I don’t even know where the night went. I came round in my flat on the sofa, with my sister calling me to wake me up.
I shouldn’t have gone. I shouldn’t have agreed to drive.
But I’d let them down so many times before . . .’
‘Those years I was at Linklaters were the worst in my life,’ Tom says.
A humourless laugh. ‘I’d have said that before I went to prison.’
He doesn’t reply.
Anna suppresses a feeling of guilt – he’s trying to be understanding.
Now for the hardest bit. ‘I got to Oxford, got straight into the car with him. I was meant to be taking him to a bird sanctuary near Chipping Norton that he loved. I didn’t check the car seat properly. So when I lost control of the car on one of those country roads, he wasn’t strapped in.’
‘What happened?’
‘I don’t know exactly. I was knocked out by the impact.
The other driver said that I was well over on the other side of the road, going too fast for the bend.
It was a head-on collision. Because the car seat wasn’t properly secured, he went through the windscreen.
He broke his neck in the impact – they told us he’ll never walk again.
Not to mention the other injuries he suffered.
He might never even regain consciousness. ’
‘What’s his name?’
‘Toby,’ she says, barely forcing the word out.
Tom reaches out, takes her hand in his. She pushes it away but he persists, taking hold of her again.
‘You don’t have to be nice to me,’ she says. ‘I don’t deserve it.’
‘I can’t imagine having to live with something like that.’
She stares at his hand, the shape of the veins under the skin, the dark hairs on his wrist.
‘I don’t know if I can,’ she says, her voice lower still.
There’s a long silence. She’s looking at Tom, but it’s not him she’s seeing: it’s Toby, smiling at her from the back seat of the car as they drove off.
It’s his grieving, angry parents immediately after she was sentenced to six years for her part in his injuries.
‘Do you know what you’re going to do now?’ Tom says. ‘Now that you’re out.’
She starts laughing, can’t stop, a choking sound more like tears.
There’s a long pause. ‘There isn’t much family.
Only my sister Sally. My dad died years ago, and my mum just after I went into prison.
’ She pauses, swallows. ‘My fault, too – Sally told me, the last letter she sent me. I haven’t heard for years how Toby is doing.
He could be dead for all I know. It’s unbearable. ’
Abruptly, she pushes herself up to her feet and empties the contents of her holdall on to the hallway floor. Pausing only to tuck the miniature mobile phone into a pair of socks, she picks up the sheaf of letters she’s kept tied up with string, takes it into the kitchen.
‘This is what my family thinks of me,’ she says, unfolding the letters one by one, placing them in front of him, her actions stiffer and stiffer as the poison from the words leaks on to her fingers, back into her bloodstream.
IT’S YOUR FAULT. ALL YOUR FAULT
YOU DESTROYED HIS LIFE
NO ONE WILL CARE IF YOU KILL YOURSELF
I WANT TO KILL YOU
Tom looks through them, his expression grave. He pulls out the last one, puts it on the table in front of him.
‘That car last night? Do you think . . .’ He taps the letter, not finishing the sentence.
Anna bites her lip. She’s been avoiding the thought. For a moment the headlights shine in her mind, heading straight for her. She shakes her head.
‘No,’ she says. ‘It was an accident. It wasn’t deliberate.’
He raises an eyebrow but she shakes her head. ‘I refuse to accept it. He’s not a killer. Nor my sister. They’re family. They’re furious, but they wouldn’t try and hurt me.’ She’s not sure she believes it – saying it may make it so.
‘If you say so,’ Tom says, his voice sceptical. ‘I won’t push it. Tell me about these.’ He points at the pile of notes again.
‘These were the only letters I got when I was inside,’ Anna says. ‘For three years. One would turn up every couple of months. I don’t know how they got past the censors, maybe because they used envelopes from my sister’s company so they looked official.’
‘They’re horrible.’
‘They are. But I deserve them,’ she says.
He shakes his head. ‘This is why we have a criminal justice system,’ he says. ‘Otherwise we’d have the justice of the mob.’
‘Maybe we should,’ she says. She takes the letters back from him and folds them up, putting them back into their pile.
‘Your sister wrote them?’ he says.
‘Her husband. Toby’s dad. I know his handwriting. But it’s her office on the letterhead. It’s a joint effort.’
‘Have you tried getting back in touch?’
‘I ruined their son’s life, Tom. There’s nothing for me to say. The only news they want to hear is that I’m dead.’
She’s said it now, matter of fact as she can.
‘That can’t be true.’
She smiles at him. He has tried to understand, but still grasps so little. ‘I’ve come to terms with it. I had it all planned out.’ This last sentence said in a mutter.
He hears it, though. ‘What? What did you have planned?’
She’s not ready to reply. His phone starts to ring and with a sense of relief, she slips the letters back into her bag.
The relief is short-lived. He ends the call almost immediately, turning back to her, his expression sharp. ‘What did you have planned, Anna?’
She looks him dead in the eye, and something crosses the space between them, a communication of some sense of the bleakness she’s inhabited since the fatal crash all those years ago.
She’s out of words, exhausted by the revelations.
Tom must sense this. Without asking, he makes another pot of coffee, busying himself with rinsing out the cafetière and boiling the kettle.
He gets her a clean cup and opens a packet of chocolate digestives before sitting back down at the table and pushing the packet towards her.
‘What’s changed?’ he says.
‘What do you mean?’ The question startles her.
‘If that’s what you were going to do, why would you bother jumping out of the way of the car last night when it was heading straight for you.’
‘I . . . well, I guess it was instinctive,’ she says, noting his interrogative tone.
He nods, as if he guessed already that was what she was going to say. ‘Or why didn’t you just tell the police it was you who killed that poor woman? If you’re so keen to punish yourself, confessing to something you didn’t do would work well.’
Confronted with her twisted logic, Anna’s cheeks burn.
He continues his attack. ‘What were you planning on doing? You talked about going to London – were you going to throw yourself off a bridge or something?’
The words come unbidden to her tongue. ‘I was going to go to St Leonards and walk into the sea.’
He shakes his head, barely able to control a laugh. ‘Seriously?’
‘We used to go there on holiday when we were kids,’ she says with dignity. ‘I wasn’t just trying to copy Virginia Woolf.’
He shakes his head again, but the smile is fading. ‘I’m sorry,’ he says. ‘I know it’s not funny.’ He leans back on his chair, drumming the fingers on his right hand on the table.
The noise drills into her – she wants to slap his hand quiet, wipe the stupid smile off his stupid face. ‘It’s not funny at all.’
‘I’m sorry,’ he says again, and with that her indignation drains out. ‘Are you still thinking about it?’
‘It’s not like I have anything else.’
‘There’s always something else.’ He must be able to read her expression, because he continues, ‘Don’t worry, I’m no God-botherer. But I do believe that. Do you really believe that your time here on earth has run its course? There’s nothing unfinished left for you?’
Slowly, she shakes her head. ‘It’s how I was feeling then. Before.’
‘And now?’
‘I’m not sure.’ A voice rises unprompted in her head. I’m begging you. Help me. She swallows hard. ‘I think there might be something.’