Chapter 26
MARTIN
People assume the moment everything changed for me must have been the accident.
But that isn’t quite true.
My life didn’t fall apart all at once. It happened in stages.
The accident was simply the beginning. The fracture line.
Everything that came after spread slowly from there.
When I think back to before, I was happy. Things were simple, but there was no drama. I liked my job and I loved my girlfriend. And yes, perhaps I took everything for granted at times, but I think it’s true for most of us that you don’t really appreciate what you really have until it’s gone.
I wasn’t the one driving when it happened.
That detail matters to me, even if it doesn’t seem to matter to everyone else.
When people look at my face, at my scars, they see the consequences of that night.
The recklessness, the speed. That split moment of miscalculated judgement.
But I wasn’t the one behind the wheel.
My friend, Darren, was driving. I was simply the passenger.
The road had been slick after rain and a car coming the other way had been travelling too fast on the bend.
I remember a moment of headlights filling the windscreen and in my head I hear the sound of metal folding in on itself, but the truth is I was already unconscious. That part is probably my imagination.
I do know that it happened so suddenly, there was no time to brace. No time to react.
The driver of the other car walked away with nothing more than bruises, while Darren was lucky to escape with a fractured wrist and concussion.
I was the one who remained in hospital for weeks.
Luck, apparently, is a matter of perspective.
The surgeons did what they could. They repaired the bones that had shattered in my face and reconstructed what the collision had destroyed, but there are limits as to what the best surgeons can restore.
Skin heals, scars fade.
At least, that’s what they told me.
Unfortunately for me, I suffer from keloid scarring, which is a result of abnormal healing. The ugly red, raised, jagged lines will never disappear entirely.
I remember I avoided mirrors at first, not able to bear looking at my reflection.
It wasn’t a vanity thing. I knew I wasn’t classically handsome, but I had never been ugly either. But add a few scars, and a tightness around my mouth, where the skin pulls taut and is slightly uneven so that when I smile it looks creepy and a little grotesque, it changes things.
People always notice it.
Some pretend not to, trying hard to ignore it, while others respond with curiosity and questions.
Both reactions are equally obvious and annoy me.
I never asked for any of this.
When I was eventually discharged from hospital, I had hoped things would go back to normal, but I suppose that was wishful thinking. The life waiting for me outside no longer fitted as comfortably as it once had.
My girlfriend, Claire, tried to be supportive. At first, she visited every day, encouraging me as I recovered. She told me the scars weren’t as bad as I thought. She even said she barely noticed them.
But I knew she was lying.
I could see it in the way her eyes kept straying towards the side of my face before she remembered she wasn’t supposed to look.
Deep down, I know she tried, but I also realise she did so out of guilt.
The space that grew between us was gradual. It was small things at first. She would hesitate when I reached for her, reluctant to be intimate, and there was always a quiet excuse if I suggested going out somewhere where we would be publicly seen together.
Eventually, she told me she thought we both need a fresh start.
I just smiled blandly and agreed, determined to hold on to my last shred of dignity. There was no way I was going to beg her to stay.
Work helped.
I was employed by a home maintenance company. Plumbing, heating, electrics. A bit of this and a bit of that. It was all good experience and I enjoyed the work, keeping my head down when I was in people’s houses, not wanting the attention.
Luckily, we were often sent out as a team of two. I would focus on the actual work, not wanting to be noticed, while my colleagues would be the face of the company. Building my skillset, left to my own devices.
Houses are easier to understand than people. They don’t judge you and they behave predictably. When something goes wrong, there is always a cause.
People are less straightforward. Especially when they are trying to pretend everything is normal.
For a while, I kept mostly to myself outside of work. I still had a friendship group, but it had dwindled. Probably because of my bad moods. My mates, they didn’t understand. They had learned to look past my scars once they became used to them, and they didn’t understand why I couldn’t move on.
Still, some stuck by me, and Friday nights in the pub were one of the few precious highlights of my week. After a while, though, I craved female company.
The problem was, I didn’t exactly have women throwing themselves my way.
I had once considered myself okay looking, but the ugly scarring had ruined everything and now I was too cowardly to try to date again.
But it didn’t stop me watching. Or wanting.
Most people follow patterns. They visit the same places, walk the same routes, sit at the same tables and order the same things.
There was the girl who came into the pub on a Friday night.
She always met her friend for a pre-weekend drink.
Then there was the blonde who I would see on her lunch break.
She often ate in the cafe across from her office, sometimes with friends, other times alone, but her order was almost always the same: a cup of peppermint tea and a flapjack.
There was the woman in my gym. Always intensely concentrating, AirPods in as she ran on the treadmill and pumped weights.
She never saw me. Never realised that I would stay later on a Tuesday and Thursday so I could follow her home.
And then there were customers too. The single women who lived alone.
They never noticed me. But I always noticed them.
Routine is comforting and predictable, and if you pay attention long enough, you begin to notice things. Little details that others overlook.
The way someone pushes their hair behind their ears or bites their bottom lip when they are concentrating.
How their expression softens when they are alone with their thoughts.
The tiny gestures that hide moments of self-doubt.
People reveal more of themselves when they believe they are unobserved.
It became a bit of a pastime for me.
Watching.
Not interfering, just noticing.
Some might find the idea unsettling, but I figure it’s not really that different to reading a book. You observe a character from a distance, learning their habits, their moods, the small details that make them who they are.
The only problem I’m finding is that watching can only satisfy for so long.
Now, I need for it to be more.
My thoughts turn to Poppy.
She doesn’t belong here. Not really.
You can see it in the way she moves – careful and slightly guarded. She is not an attention-seeker, and there is something about her that suggests she would prefer to blend into the background.
Most people wouldn’t look twice. But then, most people aren’t paying attention.
She spends a lot of time at the villa. Working on her laptop. Occasionally reading, and she likes watching the sunset, sat on a lounger by the pool, with her legs folded beneath her.
She believes she is alone most of the time. And that assumption is understandable. The other villas along this road are empty for most of the winter. Their owners won’t return until the warmer months. It gives her privacy. But, also, she is secluded.
Her isolation suits me perfectly.
Sometimes I sense she knows I am close by.
Perhaps it’s simply a shift in the air or a moment where instinct tells her she might not be as alone as she thinks.
I enjoy those moments as curiosity draws her in, and she looks towards the pool or the olive trees beyond the terrace wall.
Watching is its own kind of knowledge. I like seeing how she reacts to uncertainty and how quickly she tries to fill the gaps.
Some people become cautious, others fascinated. Poppy is definitely the former.
My job as a maintenance manager reassures a lot of people. People trust me and no one ever questions why I am always pottering around in the background, fixing things. Homeowners always give my name as a point of contact to any guests.
But little does she realise that my job gives me access to everything.
People rarely look too closely at the man who is there to help.
Eventually, she will come to understand that.