Chapter 9
JESS
I parked Vera outside the main entrance to St Mede’s, cut the engine and reached for my phone before exhaling deeply.
Nothing. I didn’t know what I’d been expecting, but certainly not this total lack of response.
Absolutely nothing. Dean mustn’t have arrived back from work yet.
Hadn’t realised I’d spent all afternoon packing his bags, leaving them behind the kitchen door with a note saying sorry, but I just couldn’t do this after all.
I’d then asked Mum to pick up Lola from school and take her back to her place for tea so she wasn’t around when Dean did get back.
Mum had said she was happy to drive Lola over to Kamran’s – a good opportunity for Lola to meet her new step-grandfather-to-be (Mum had giggled the words almost girlishly) but really didn’t want to be imposing a dog on her future husband, just yet.
I’d dithered. (I seemed to have been doing one hell of a lot of dithering recently.) Should I pack up Arthur, together with his new bed, bowls and smart leather leash, neatly placing the whole dog package next to Dean’s bags, his top-of-the-range toiletries (only Clinique and L’Occitane for Dean), his newly ironed shirts (yes, I’d done that for him) and his golf clubs?
Arthur had looked at the packed bags before gazing up at me, knew he was being abandoned once more and, sighing heavily, had lain down next to Dean’s cases, head on his front paws, accepting his fate.
* * *
‘Stupid bloody idiot.’ I muttered the words under my breath and then, looking through the rear-view mirror, saw the kid on the motorbike, black balaclava covering his face, turn and head back towards me, revving the engine and accelerating into a wheelie as he passed within inches of Vera’s offside mirror.
Although the clocks had gone forward, the sky was leaden with dark clouds, and the rain that had been threatening all afternoon was attempting headway on my windscreen.
I set the wipers going and watched as a couple of kids – presumably Robyn’s drama group – exited the main school entrance, hoods up, laughing at something, sharing a packet of crisps as they walked.
A group of four followed in their wake and then another five or six.
The rehearsal was obviously over and I peered through the rain, not wanting to miss Robyn and Sorrel.
I’d texted both of them in turn, suggesting a drink at The Green Dragon after the rehearsal – something I’d never done before – and wasn’t surprised when my phone now pinged twice.
The Green Dragon? For a drink? What’s up?
From Robyn.
And, from Sorrel:
Ooh can we have tea there? I’m starving.
I broke off from scrolling through my texts and was starting to reply when I heard the motorcycle returning at speed.
The kid must have been doing 60 mph or even more, the girls from the drama group jumping back from the road in panic before yelling furiously towards the bike rider’s back, the cyclist raising a middle finger over his shoulder in response.
He accelerated once more, turned and came back at such a speed I actually put my hands over my eyes.
‘You effing stupid wanker!’ one of the girls shouted loudly as the bike came perilously close to the pavement before, with a full throttle, it sped off once more.
A vehicle came through the school’s main entrance and I recognised Mason Donoghue’s distinctive black BMW as it paused to give way before driving off, away from the group of kids and the motorbike, in the direction of Beddingfield village.
Another car, also black – but this time a sleek, low down sporty little number – made to exit and also paused before turning slowly towards my van.
At the same time, the motorcycle reappeared, round the corner of the school’s high boundary metal fence, accelerating into a wheelie but now actually on the wrong side of the road.
I knew I’d never forget the sound of metal grating on metal, the unearthly shriek of something – a human voice screaming, my own or another?
– as the motorcycle crashed into the black car at what must have been 70 or 80 mph.
Its rider, with just the black balaclava to protect skull, brain and neck, catapulted at least four metres into the misty evening air, landing with a sickening thud against my windscreen and then onto Vera’s bonnet before sliding unceremoniously off and into the road.
Everything was a bit of a blur after that, a bit like watching a Sunday evening drama or Casualty, with the accompanying caterwauling of sirens, the blue light of a police car and then another and another as well as a crowd that couldn’t be persuaded to leave the scene.
Mason Donoghue was somehow magically back in the road and both Robyn and Sorrel were there telling me I was in shock, a blanket appearing from somewhere and placed round my shoulders while Arthur cowered and visibly trembled on the backseat of the van.
Vera now sported a smooth, almost symmetrical hollow dent but, apart from that, there appeared little damage.
‘Is he OK?’ I whispered over and over again. ‘Is he OK?’
‘Shh,’ Robyn kept saying through the open window, not letting me out of the car.
My legs felt strange, like the savoury aspic jelly round the pork pie I’d been experimenting with earlier that day.
Jelly legs. I’d never be able to eat a pork pie again – and I adored pork pies – without hearing the whump of the rider hitting the van’s windscreen at speed before sliding, broken, into the road in front of me.
And then more blue lights – the first of two ambulances – and the child, Blane Higson (because he might be fourteen but he was, after all, still a child) was being attended to in the road by three paramedics.
I needed to get out of the van, felt hot and sweaty now, shocked even more when Robyn had gently explained the kid was actually Blane, but I had to see what I could do to help.
Robyn was talking to Mason who was, in turn, talking to two young female police officers who looked no older than Sorrel.
And then two more police officers – men this time – walked towards the van, bending to open the door, helped me out, asking if I was able to answer questions.
I spent the next thirty minutes sitting in the back of the police car like someone being done for drunk driving while the two PCs took statements and the first ambulance finally moved off with Blane inside it. Did I need to go to hospital myself?
I declined.
And no need for one of those accident signs in the road asking the public for further information of the incident at such and such a time on such and such a date.
I was obviously a witness, but so were the drama group kids and the speeding police car that had been alerted to Blane’s crazy handling of the bike, forcing him to turn, corralling himself and the stolen machine into the black car.
Blane was going nowhere in this life any more.
It was after 7 p.m. before Robyn and Sorrel were allowed to take me home. Except I didn’t want to go home, didn’t actually know where I wanted to go. Anywhere that might somehow remove the psychedelic pictures that were continuing to play in my head like a stuck horror movie.
‘Come on, Jess,’ Robyn said, ‘let’s get you home. Mason’s going with the police to tell Blane’s mum. I wouldn’t be in his shoes for anything.’
‘I don’t want to go home.’ I could hear myself sound like a mulish five-year-old.
‘OK, do you want to come back with me to the cottage? Maybe get a takeaway?’
‘Robyn, I can’t be doing with small talk, with being polite. I’ve packed Dean’s stuff up…’
‘Bloody hell, have you?’ Robyn and Sorrel both stared.
‘So I don’t want to go home. Don’t even know if Dean realises what I’ve done yet.’ I looked at my watch.
‘Where’s Lola?’ Robyn asked.
‘With Mum. Gone to Kamran’s for tea. If Dean’s there, back at home, waiting for me, I just can’t do with any more stress. Any more argument. Any more of him pleading his case to stay.’
‘OK,’ Robyn said once more, putting out a hand to me. ‘The police want you to leave your van here. Forensic I suppose.’
‘They’re not blaming me for his death?’ I looked up, my face aghast. ‘I was parked on double yellow lines waiting for you two. I mean, if I hadn’t parked where I shouldn’t… Oh Jesus…’
‘No, of course not. But they need to know how Blane actually died, I guess.’
‘Poor Blane, poor, poor kid. And I killed him!’
‘Oh, don’t be ridiculous, Jess, of course you didn’t.’ Sorrel was having none of it.
‘I mean, what chance did he ever have?’ I went on. ‘A heroin addict for a mother? His dad and brothers long gone? They should have let him stay with me a bit longer when you brought him home from school that time and I put him in my back bedroom for the night.’
‘Jess, you didn’t want to foster any more kids, you know that. Especially a stroppy teen already entrenched in organised crime and county lines.’ Robyn’s voice was firm.
‘I could have made a difference.’ I was crying now.
‘Bloody stupid effing idea of being a top chef in a new restaurant. I’m far better up at Hudson House, looking after the old dears or fostering kids.
Kids who need a home. That’s what I’m good at.
’ I rubbed at my face. ‘Oh hell,’ I went on. ‘I just want to get rip-roaring drunk.’
‘But you hardly drink, Jess,’ Sorrel pointed out. ‘And it’s a school night.’
‘Hardly drink?’ Robyn retorted. ‘You didn’t see her up at Kamran’s place the other night…’
‘A one off,’ I interrupted irritably. ‘And I’d rather you didn’t remind me of it. Or the hangover. And it may have escaped your notice, Sorrel, but I don’t go to school any more.’
‘All right, a work night then,’ Sorrel conceded.
‘I don’t have any work any more either.’ I felt a fat tear run unheeded down my cheek. ‘Not really, since Bex appears to think she’s now in charge at Hudson House.’