Chapter 10
10
FOUR MONTHS EARLIER
Kate slammed through the doors of A he told her straight, gave her the facts. All Kate could grasp was the fact that he said spinal compression. When he spoke of permanent lower paralysis, and wheelchairs, Kate stopped listening. All she could think about was the promise she had made her newborn son, the promise of the two of them, together forever.
From that day to this, Kate had never been far from Jamie’s side, but the Jamie she knew was gone. The boy she saw that day, tubes everywhere, sleeping off the cocktail of drugs in the large white bed, his thick dark lashes fluttering against the white pillowcase, was not her Jamie. This boy was broken, fractured, beaten. His face, swollen from the impact, cut from the glass shards, was unrecognisable from the cheeky boy she had left, and she hated Neil for it. She hated him for not protecting their boy, not shielding him from danger, but he wasn’t the one she hated the most. It wasn’t the driver of the other car either, a woman on her way to the gym after the school run, now utterly ruined by that morning. It wasn’t her fault. Neil had been the one distracted, pulling into her lane, putting her life at risk as well as his own – and his only child’s. She didn’t hate them, she saved that venomous hate for somewhere far closer to home. For herself.