Chapter 36
SCOTT
Lorraine edges into the parking space and pulls on the handbrake.
‘So remember. Keep an open mind. Say your bit and listen to what he has to say.’
Scott can’t look at her; he stares out the window at the Victorian bank-cum-office-block he is about to enter as if he’s a teenager and it's exam day and they both know he’s not prepared.
‘I’ll come in for the second bit, okay? You’ve got this bro.’
Scott doesn’t think Lorraine has used the term “bro” her entire life. He reaches across and squeezes her hand. He wouldn’t be here without her and they both know it.
He gets out of the car and stands by the entrance of the building.
Lorraine has done it. Brianna has done it. Now it’s his turn.
He takes the steps one at a time. Previously he would have sprinted up them. He’s somehow slower since his accident. His left knee aches in a way it never has done before.
The lady on the reception desk, dressed in navy, so not quite funereal, takes his name and directs him to a row of four utilitarian grey plastic chairs.
A screen at slightly above eye level broadcasts morning TV on mute with the subtitles running.
Scott closes his eyes as news about war zones, paedophiles and environmental catastrophe plays out.
At least there’s nothing about wife killers; that would probably be enough to make him stand up and walk straight back out again.
‘Mr Reynolds?’ He opens his eyes when a gentle voice in an Eastern European dialect says his name.
Ursula, the mediator, is small, bespectacled and around his age. Her face is a refuge of calm reassurance. Her hand extends towards his own. He stands and accepts it. Her hand is so tiny he almost needs to counsel himself not to crush the bones under his terror-induced grip.
‘Shall we go into the interview room?’ she asks. He follows her down a long beige corridor and through a chipped grey door.
The room assigned to family mediation is cold and sterile, containing four wooden chairs with dark green cushioning and a low coffee table. The plastic covering of the two furthest away chairs is ripped slightly and the dull foam interior springs from its encasement like a wart.
Scott sits on the chair closest to the window, furthest from the door.
A poster on the wall showing the Lake District curls at the edges and does little to lift the mood.
A box of tissues sits on the table. If ever there was a place to signal you were going to pour your guts out and be diminished into an emotional wreck, it’s here.
‘So let me take you through what to expect,’ Ursula’s voice is gentle, her eyes drip with empathy.
‘In a few moments, if you’re happy, I’ll go and get Leon.
You won’t shake hands. I’ll ask him to sit down straight away.
As the victim, you’ll talk first. I’ll ask you about the night of the accident, how it affected you, and how you’re currently coping with things.
I’ll ask Leon not to respond to your comments.
Today is for opening up and beginning the dialogue.
The conversation will happen later, if at all.
After you’ve spoken, then it will be Leon’s turn to talk.
I’ll ask him the same questions. We’ll give him a chance to reply and as before, it won’t be a conversation.
Just a simple sharing of information, thoughts and feelings.
’ Ursula pauses and scrutinises his face. ‘How do you feel about that?’
How does he feel? Panicked? Traumatised?
Like he wants to run out of this room and never come back?
‘Yep. Cool,’ he says. Ursula nods and slips out the room.
Leon is tall, around six foot, with short dark hair and a streak of acne scarring across both cheeks. The slight pudge he carried in his late teens has disappeared and his chest has broadened.
‘Leon,’ Ursula says as he sits, ‘this is Scott. It was his wife and daughter who were in the other car that day.’
The young man’s face crumples instantly, his elbows drop to his knees and his long body folds in two. The fake bravado he exuded in the pub before Scott's accident was fuelled by vodka and has now completely evaporated. It has been replaced by a visible shuddering in his torso.
‘So, Scott. Do you want to tell us about that night. What happened from your perspective?’
Scott talks through his recollections from that evening as though he is narrating a movie script.
He describes the phone call he received at work; his half-crazed drive through the night to the crash site; his relief at seeing eleven-year-old Brianna, still in her tutu and unhurt save for a small cut on her forehead; and his utter, utter horror at the sight of Lucy, crumpled like a rag doll and being worked on by paramedics.
When he arrives at the description of Lucy’s eyes landing on his, about the promise he made to her and the slow, gradual lowering of her lids, his voice is trembling.
‘She was my life. My entire life. And I lost her that night.’
Scott glances down at his hands. His knuckles are white, his sinews prominent, his veins bulging.
Leon looks up from the carpet, a trail of snot dribbling from his nose, the capillaries in his eyeballs visible.
He respects the rules of the mediation and maintains his silence, but if ever a look conveyed a thousand words, it is this one.
Something shifts in Scott and a tiny glimmer of compassion fires in his gut.
This young man, a kid at the time, made a terrible, terrible decision which wrecked numerous lives.
To say his expression is haunted is a gross understatement. The guy looks tortured.
Scott leans forward in his chair, grabs a wodge of tissues and blows his nose noisily. The sound echoes around the room.
Ursula shifts ever so slightly in her chair.
‘So Scott. You’ve told us, from your perspective how things played out that night. What about afterwards, how did that night affect you?’
Scott’s voice lowers in tone; he bundles the tissues into his fist and looks up to meet Leon’s eyes.
‘I lost my soul mate, my home, my sister-in-law, my friends. I struggled at work, regardless of how much support they gave me. And my daughter lost her youth.’
Ursula nods.
‘And what about your feelings, Scott? How were they affected?’
Scott fills his lungs, feels his chest expand. He forces himself to sit more upright. He’s done the work, he knows there’s no shame in this next admission.
‘My mental health collapsed, I found it impossible to trust again, I was unable to hold down a relationship of any nature until …. well until very recently.’
‘And now, Scott. How are you coping?’
Scott scrunches his eyes closed. Is it treachery to admit that he’s now learnt to live with the pain? That it’s always there, never gone, but that other parts of life have expanded into the void.
‘I’m slowly learning to love again,’ he says.
‘So, Leon, you’ve heard what Scott’s got to say. Now it’s your turn to respond.’
Scott looks up from the wodge of tissues crammed into the ball of his hand and tries to focus on the young man’s face. It is, however, blurred by his own tears.
‘I … I …I …’ the lad stutters.
Scott blinks in an attempt to clear his vision.
‘Do you need a moment, Leon?’ Ursula asks, her tone level, calm, reassuring.
Scott can’t be sure, but he thinks Leon must nod, because the next voice is Ursula’s once again.
‘Let’s have a quick recess, then. Can we get you anything, Scott?’
Scott attempts to shake his head, but even the slightest movement causes more snot to flood from his nostrils. Who would know that a body could produce so much mucus?
There’s a pssh sound as air moves into the cushioned padding on the two seats opposite him, and a gentle clunk as the door closes behind Leon and Ursula.
Several minutes later, another person enters.
Scott is in so much pain that he doesn’t register who it is until a hand grips his arm.
It's Lorraine, who he has already identified as a potential supporter.
‘I’ve brought us some water,’ she says. She must reckon he’s lost a gallon of fluid through crying. It certainly feels like it. ‘With your permission, I’d like to be in this next bit. If you think it will help?’
‘Of course.’
She kneels on the floor beside him and pulls him into a tight embrace. Their tears mix as she touches his cheek with hers. She doesn’t even seem to care about the snot. They stay, locked in position, until the new sobs which wrack his body subside.
Afterwards, Lorraine gently prises the clump of sodden tissues from his hand and places crisp, clean replacements on his knee.
He bundles them into a ball and uses the mass to wipe ferociously at his nose.
He wipes his eyes with his shirtsleeve. He’d put on a shirt and tie today, for crying out loud, that’s how out of control he was feeling.
When did he last wear his suit? An interview in the early two thousands?
But no, it wasn’t then. Scott catches his breath as a desperate, chilling thought descends.
It was Lucy’s funeral.
And then again at the court hearing. The irony. The sheer fucking irony that the last time he wore this outfit, he was also in a room facing Leon and in absolute bits. You couldn’t make it up.
He yanks at the tie and opens the top button.
‘I’m gasping,’ he says.
Lorraine hands him the water glass. He downs it in three swallows.
‘Oh my God, Lorraine. I can see why I’ve avoided this all these years. This is so … so … fucking painful.’
Lorraine takes the glass from his hand and returns it to the table. She drains her own before responding.
‘Would you believe me if I told you the first time is the hardest? That it does, actually, get easier?’
Scott leans his elbow on his thigh and lowers his head onto the tips of his fingers. He moves his head from side to side.
‘I cannot believe I let you talk me into these sessions. How many are there again? Four?’
Lorraine clears her throat.
‘Six.’
Six. Jesus wept. Can he do this five more times?
‘You’ve done the hardest bit, believe it or not. You told him how completely and utterly his actions shattered your life. Did you explain how you lost your wife, your job, your home, your security, your friends and neighbours, your co-parent. Everything. Because of one stupid, selfish act.’
Scott looks up.
‘I did.’
‘And how did it feel? Telling him?’
Scott hesitates. Because it hurt like hell. But it was also cathartic, to a point. The lad’s eyes, before they were obscured by his own tears, were haunted.
‘It felt awful. Traumatic. But necessary and peaceful at the same time. If that makes any sense at all?’
Lorraine nods; It makes perfect sense.
‘I wonder if he got it,’ he says to his sister-in-law, who’s barely left his side over the past three weeks. In the time they have talked, reminisced, healed and even, on occasions, had the audacity to plan. Because that’s what Lucy – Lorraine’s twin and his darling wife – would have wanted.
‘Yes, I imagine Leon got it,’ Lorraine says.
There’s a gentle knock on the door.
‘Are you ready for us to come in?’ Ursula asks.
Scott nods, and the young man with the haunted eyes and the tear-stained cheeks looks him straight in the face and begins to talk.
He outlines the guilt, the horror he feels every day, the shame he brought on his family, the rift that has formed between him and his friends, how he has been blacklisted from the community. How one stupid, adolescent decision wrecked all their lives and haunts him every second of every day.
Scott finds his eyes drying and the hatred he expected to feel morphing into something altogether different.
Pity. Lucy has gone and he will continue to miss her every day, but he also holds some hope for the future now.
The tentative possibility of a new romance, a stronger bond with his daughter, a re-kindled relationship with his sister-in-law.
The boy in front of him has none of that.
He has lost his freedom, his confidence, his purpose and his sense of integrity.
Those might be harder things to rebuild in the long run.
The air in the room shifts infinitesimally as the four of them stand at the end of the session.
‘So we’ll see you same time on Thursday?’ Ursula says.
Scott nods and realises he doesn’t find the idea quite as horrific as he thought he might mere minutes ago.
***
The next time Scott and Leon meet, it feels easier.
The time after that easier still.
And by the sixth visit, Scott, Leon and Lorraine stand and shake hands.
A snap decision made by an immature, adolescent brain led to a hideous accident that destroyed all their lives. But now there is a chance for reconciliation. A chance to re-build. And a chance for a new beginning.