Abby
Abby
Abby stares straight ahead at the groups of mourners, incapable of focusing on any single, specific thing, as though to pull the world into focus would be to view it in all its current horror. She does not dare lift the lid on the emotions raging inside her, knows how dangerous it would be to open those floodgates. For now, she must anaesthetise herself if she is to survive the minutes, hours, days ahead.
Next to her on the bench, Clio’s phone vibrates, and she pulls it from her pocket, clicks on something, reads whatever is on the screen.
‘Mum, look at this.’
Clio holds out the phone, and Abby does not have the strength, nor the will, to tell her to put it away, that this is neither the time nor the place to be looking at messages. Instead, she watches as her hand reaches out, takes hold of the mobile, as though her limbs are operating of their own volition.
Looking at the screen, she sees a local newspaper report from a neighbouring borough, experiences a sense of disorientation as her eyes scan the headline.
Teen Joyrider Sentenced while Accomplices Escape Punishment
‘Why are you showing me this?’ Abby hears the rebuke in her voice, does not want to read about joyriders who have been caught and punished while her daughter’s killer remains at large.
‘Just read it.’
Clio’s voice is impatient, insistent, and Abby turns back to the screen, does as her daughter asks, too beleaguered to resist.
On Thursday morning, eighteen-year-old Ryan Marsh was sentenced to 11 years and 7 months in prison for causing death by dangerous driving. The teen joyrider had been at the wheel of a stolen car at the time of the offence. In her sentencing, Judge Cayburn pronounced Marsh ‘a heartless and irresponsible young man who has failed to demonstrate any remorse during the course of the trial’.
In August last year, Marsh and two accomplices were seen running from the scene of a collision after a stolen vehicle crashed into a lamppost on the junction of Heathfield Road and Browning Avenue. A passing police car chased the offenders, arresting two of the culprits. A third was identified later that evening. Shortly before crashing the vehicle, Marsh had knocked down twenty-seven-year-old Hayley Everson – a promising young barrister at St Mark’s Chambers – and had fled the scene of the crime. Everson later died from her injuries.
The two accomplices – both aged fourteen at the time of the offence, who cannot be named for legal reasons – were last month tried in court. Both escaped without custodial sentences. One of the teens was issued with a two-year youth rehabilitation order. The second – who was described as a promising young student of prior exemplary character, and who Judge Cayburn concluded had been ‘coerced’ into participating in the offence by Marsh’s ‘aggressive and intimidating’ behaviour – was given a six-month youth referral order.
The family of Ms Everson said in a statement that while they were pleased about the sentence handed down to Marsh, they were disappointed that his accomplices did not face custodial punishments: ‘If you knowingly get into a stolen car with someone, you’re aware of the potential threat you’re causing to other people. Being fourteen should not have abnegated them from all responsibility for their actions.’
Abby finishes reading, does not understand why Clio is showing this to her, today of all days. ‘Clio, I don’t want to—’
‘For god’s sake, Mum, just read Shani’s message.’
It takes a moment for Abby to pull Shani’s identity from the recesses of her memory: a friend Clio met on an art course last summer.
Clio swipes at her phone, hands it back to Abby. Abby reads the message, the words hammering in her brain until she can no longer hear her own thoughts.
Looking up and across the cemetery gardens, her eyes find Jenna placing an arm around Callum’s shoulders, pulling him close: the perfect image of the grieving ex-boyfriend.
Before she knows what she is doing – before she is conscious of her legs lifting her from the bench, her feet making contact with the gravel path – she is striding across the garden, grief and fury pounding through every footstep.