Chapter Four
The car juddered and slowed before it stopped completely.
I held my hands up in front of me; they were shaking. I stared at them, half expecting to see blood.
“Clutch,” James said, pulling the handbrake up.
“What?”
“Put the clutch down.”
I looked at him, then at the floor for a moment, confused.
Then, “It’s down,” I said. The clutch and the brake were still pressed as far down as they would go from my belated emergency stop.
James took the car out of gear, and I let the pedals up.
The airbag was already deflating and we sat for a moment in silence, looking at the cracks across the glass in front of us, radiating out from the central point of impact.
A spider’s web of cracks, you could say.
I stared at my hands, unable to stop the shaking. My breath was loud and uneven. James stared straight ahead, his face blank, his hands wedged between his legs.
“We killed a rabbit,” I whispered.
“A rabbit?” James said. “That was a hundred times the size of a rabbit.”
“A badger?” I suggested.
“It was too tall for a badger.”
“A deer? Oh no.”
The sign for deer crossing wasn’t for another mile or so, but they could definitely be on the road here instead. A deer could easily have jumped out in front of us. “What if it’s still alive and it’s injured?” I asked. “What if it’s got a fawn waiting for it?” It was the right time of year.
I wanted James to say, “I think it will be alright; we weren’t going fast. I’m sure it will get up in a minute and run off with just a few bruises.” But he didn’t and we sat for a moment longer, until what James actually did say was:
“We’d better go and see what you’ve done.”
I watched with dread as he opened his door and got out. As he exited, a toy spider lay harmlessly where he had sat.
James is scared of spiders. I used to find it endearing, now I just found it ridiculous. I’d put it there ages ago, for another occasion as auspicious as this one and then, for one reason or another, hadn’t sprung my trap. I’d forgotten about it until the moment it fell from the visor.
My legs were wobbly as I made my way round to the front of the car.
They nearly went from under me when I saw James crouched over a shape in the road.
Fragments from the headlight cover lay around, shattered like glass, reflecting the glow of the uncovered lamp in a thousand tiny sparkles.
The bumper hung loose, touching the ground.
The shape had two legs and ears at the side of its head, and it was wearing clothes. It was a man. I screamed.
The man groaned.
“He’s still alive!” I said, almost hysterical with the gladness of not having orphaned a fawn and the terror of having hit a human. “I’ll call 999.”
James held up his hand. “Great idea if you want to go to prison,” he said. “They’ll want to breathalyze you and you’ve been drinking.”
“I only drank a bit. I was careful.”
“You want to test that theory against a breathalyzer, do you? I saw you knocking back half a bottle.”
“No, I didn’t. We have to call an ambulance,” I said, but I was nervous about a breathalyzer. I had been careful, I was sure, but my calculations weren’t scientifically tested.
Maybe my panic would metabolize it more quickly and bring the reading down? Maybe they’d take that into account when they decided if I’d been safe to drive? Maybe, maybe, maybe.
“There’s someone coming!” I yelped, as headlights appeared over the hill a mile or so away.
“Turn the lights off, then help me get him in the car,” James said.
“What? We can’t move him. You’re not supposed to move injured people.”
“Get him in the car. We’ll take him to hospital.” He grabbed the man’s upper half, but I couldn’t bring myself to move. “Daisy!” The headlights flashed again, and I grabbed the man’s legs.
“Hush, hush,” I said as he cried out in pain. “It will be alright. We’ll get you to the hospital.”
We turned our lights off and stuffed him in, then waited for the other car to appear at the top of the slope, my heart racing. But the car didn’t materialize and a moment later, I saw the beams heading off to the right.
I exhaled. “They’re going to Little Beadington.” I pointed at the lights as they faded into the distance.
I heard James let out a “phew,” then he made his way to the front of the car and pulled the bumper fully off. “Help me clear this up,” he said.
Whoever would have thought that in a match between a human and a car, especially a high-end model, the car would have come off so badly? Together, we picked up the pieces of the smashed headlight. A satchel, presumably the man’s, lay in the road as well. James picked it up and flung it at me.
“I’ll drive,” James said and made his way to the driver’s seat.
I got in beside him, clutching the bag. After the flurry of activity, I found myself reacting to the shock; I felt cold and queasy. I heard the rasping breath of the man in the back seat. I looked up into the mirror—no monk—and then behind me at the man.
I shone the light from my phone on him to see if his eyes were open and realized his head was bleeding. I realized something else as well: The man was Lennie.
“Oh, Lennie,” I said to him, biting back tears now. “I’m so sorry.”
He grunted. I didn’t know if he was replying to me or if he was just in pain.
“It was an accident,” I said. “Really. We’ll get you to a hospital and get you patched up. You’ll be as good as new.”
He stared at me; he looked unconvinced.
I tried to cheer him up. “I can help while you’re in hospital.
I can run errands. I could water your houseplants if you have any.
Do you have a pet? I could feed it. I could walk a dog.
I volunteer at the donkey sanctuary.” I used to.
I looked after a donkey who was also called Daisy, but she left to be a companion to a race horse and I never bonded with another donkey in the same way, so it petered out.
Lennie continued to stare at me, the blood trickling close to his eyes.
I remembered we had a cloth in the glove box for wiping the windshield with. I took it out and gave it to him to stanch the flow. He didn’t seem to know what to do with the cloth, either that or—worse—he wasn’t capable, so I had to twist myself round and hold it there for him.
“Would you like me to phone someone for you?” I asked.
“No, he would not,” James butted in. “He wouldn’t want people to see him like this. He wouldn’t want to worry them.”
“Wouldn’t you?” I asked Lennie. “Most people would.” Although truth to tell, the last person I would want if I’d been in an accident was James. I wouldn’t want him hanging about, asking if it was time to switch off the life support yet.
I waited for James to turn the car round and head back toward town, to A&E, but, headlights on low beam, he continued away from Great Beadington, toward Upper Iffley and Langley Hall.
“The hospital’s the other way,” I whispered.
“Daisy, what are we going to say at the hospital? We found this man in the road, and just by coincidence, our headlight is smashed, so is our windshield, there’s a dent in the bonnet, the bumper’s come off, and we’ve both been drinking. And whatever else we haven’t noticed yet.”
I hadn’t thought about that, but I was sure that, if we did the right thing, we could still smooth it over. Accidents happened, mistakes were made. That’s what the coroner said last time.
“The best thing would be to get him into the house and have a proper look at him,” James continued. “He might not need to go to hospital at all.”
I looked back at Lennie, doubtful.
“Look how fat he is,” James said. “I expect all that blubber cushioned the impact.”
“His breathing doesn’t sound very good.”
“I bet he’s like that all the time.”
I would have bet he wasn’t, but I kept my mouth shut as we approached the house.
Once the car was safely parked in the garage, I tucked Lennie’s bag under one arm and we hauled him back out of the car and into the house, not an easy job to do in a cocktail dress and heels. I fell halfway across the drive.
James snapped at me, “Stop messing around!”
We dragged Lennie to the drawing room and laid him out across the dust cover over a chaise longue, his bag on the floor next to it.
He lay, shivering, his eyes half-closed, his skin pale, but the blood didn’t look so bad now, just a cut on his forehead, and no broken limbs sticking out at sharp angles.
His eyes opened fully and he began to speak. I couldn’t hear what he was saying.
“Water?” I guessed. “I can get you some water.”
He tried to speak again.
“Cup of tea?” I tried. “You look cold.” I draped my jacket over him. “Are we going to call an ambulance now?” But I knew from the look James gave me that the answer to that was no.
“Why don’t you go and get the first aid kit?” he asked me.
“I don’t think we have one.”
“A glass of brandy then, maybe?” James said. “I think we have some somewhere. We can revive him with it.”
Well, I hadn’t seen that technique on Casualty and some might say enough alcohol had already been consumed for one night, but I wanted to be out of the room and away from them as much as anything.
I headed for the kitchen and started looking for supplies.
I knew we didn’t have anything as sensible as a first aid kit, but somewhere in this house we did have plasters, antiseptic, painkillers, maybe a bandage or two, and perhaps something we had bought years ago and forgotten about that would now come into its own. And James was right: We had brandy.
I returned a few minutes later with gauze, Vaseline, aspirin, a bottle of Courvoisier, and a blanket as well to find James rising from the chaise longue. He jumped when he saw me but recovered himself.
“He’s gone,” James said, somberly. “I was checking for breath.”
I gazed down at Lennie, his eyes closed, his body motionless, his skin waxy. He looked very peaceful.
“Are you sure?” I asked.
James nodded.