Chapter 49.
Then
It was a wild storm, that night. A violent August thunderstorm brought on by days of crackling heat.
Lara had just passed her driving test, and – for reasons known only to himself – her dad had congratulated her with an old sports car he’d bought cheap from a mate instead of a card that said Well Done .
It was a miracle she’d even been insured – a staggering error of judgement that was for ever being affirmed by her growing tally of near-misses. The bodywork got a new dent every time she went out. One night, she accelerated too hard out of a bend and ended up in a hedge.
But she seemed to think it was amusing. I guess the more you survive, the less scary things feel. But I was afraid she would hurt herself, or worse. A fear so dark, I couldn’t even voice it out loud.
Jamie was still interning in London, but he and his parents were in Norwich for the weekend. It was his grandmother’s eightieth birthday, and the four of them were going out for one of those big-deal dinners at a swanky restaurant. I’d been fortunate enough to secure a second internship with Kelley Lane that summer – but I was also working at the pub down the road again and had a shift, so I couldn’t make it. Not that I was entirely sure I’d have been invited anyway.
The rain was savage that night, so forceful it made us pause for breath just watching it. A relentless, liquid whipping of the trees, pavements, rooftops. We had a leak in the flat roof of our bathroom which had already filled three buckets. The weather was so bad, the wait for a cab was nearly ninety minutes.
Jamie had been at our house all day, working on an A&L brief – concept plans for an intergenerational housing project – and had lost track of time. Already stressed, he was growing increasingly flush-cheeked and agitated, his panic always disproportionate whenever his father was involved. ‘I’m so late. Dad’s going to hit the roof . I’ve got four missed calls from him already.’ He turned to Lara. ‘I’ll never get a cab. Will you give me a lift?’
‘Sure,’ Lara said, no breath of hesitation. Any opportunity to jump in that car.
The rain was belting the windows so hard I was half expecting the glass to give way. I could hear the rush of the leak in the bathroom, the vicious crack of thunder close by. I had a bad feeling, one I couldn’t put words to.
‘Wait for a cab,’ I said. ‘Or get the bus. You can’t drive in this.’
Lara laughed. ‘You are such a square about my car, Neve.’
‘Well, you do keep crashing into things.’
‘More fun that way.’ She winked at me and jangled her keys. ‘Come on then, posh boy.’
‘Jamie,’ I said, trying to make eye contact with him, to communicate my fear.
‘Relax,’ he replied. But he wouldn’t meet my eye.
It was the first time he and Lara had ever been a team against me. ‘Well, please drive slowly,’ I implored.
As if on cue, lightning sliced through the sky.
Lara did something then that she’d never done before. She rolled her eyes, looked at Jamie then back at me, and said, ‘All right, Mum . Chill out.’
She’d never mocked me before, ever. Had never tried to make me feel small.
I became suddenly speechless, hot with humiliation.
‘What do you reckon, Jamie – top down?’ Lara said, laughing.
I wanted to remind her the roads would be dangerously slippery after a long spell of no rain at all. I wanted to ask if she’d ever checked the tread on her tyres. But her words had stolen the voice from my throat.
The bad feeling persisted. I could feel it clinging like a creature to my back.
It was strange, when they left the house. Jamie and I kissed, and he put his arms around me. But oddly – for the first time ever – he seemed unable to say, I love you .
I convinced myself afterwards that, somehow, he’d known it was our last goodbye.
Which was why the call, when it came later that night, wasn’t even a surprise. Lara had lost control of the car on a corner of the ring road. Jamie hadn’t been wearing a seatbelt and had been flung through the windscreen, into the path of a delivery van. Lara escaped with only minor injuries.
He died that night. The love of my life, the man I thought I would live out my days with. I would never again get to hold him, share a smile with him, kiss him, make love to him. I remember the physicality of the shock I felt – or maybe it was fury. The force of my feelings reverberated through me for days afterwards. I felt like a human earthquake. I would shake uncontrollably, whenever I looked at his photo, or a pair of his jeans, or his empty side of our mattress. I spent hours over the ensuing days sitting in ill-advisedly hot baths, trying to sweat the convulsions from my body.
When Lara came to see me after the accident, I wouldn’t let her in the house. We faced each other, just once, on the doorstep. She still had nicks of dried blood on her face, and the vast purple petal of a bruise around one eye. Her skin was pale as candle wax, and she seemed unsteady on her feet, kept placing a hand on the brickwork for support.
‘I’m sorry, Neve.’ She was saying the words, but not even looking at me.
It took everything I had not to shove her backwards with both hands. ‘I asked you not to take him. I warned you about the weather, and you laughed at me.’
‘Neve.’ She was crying now. ‘It was an accident. It all happened so quickly—’
‘He knew,’ I said, my voice cracking. ‘Jamie knew something was going to happen, I could see it in his eyes.’
She moved out, after that. I think we both understood that we couldn’t live together any more. I stopped taking her calls, and eventually, she stopped making them.
I couldn’t face asking to view his body at the mortuary. The funeral was a family-only affair, and it was made clear I would not be welcome. I’d had to steal the items of his I’d wanted to keep before Chris swept through the house and cleared out all Jamie’s stuff, letting himself in with Jamie’s key without even asking me first.
Back then, I thought this was because they blamed me, somehow: Chris had said I was bad news all along, and now his youngest son was dead. But I realise now it must have been because they knew about Heather, and felt too ashamed to look me in the eye.
There was a police investigation, but Lara was never charged with anything. The conditions had been atrocious that night, and there was no evidence to suggest careless or dangerous driving. It was, they concluded, just a terrible accident. At the inquest, the coroner simply recorded Jamie had died from a road traffic collision.
I wasn’t completely wrong about that last ever look Jamie and I shared, though. Because it was a final goodbye. But not because he could foresee the accident. It was because he was leaving me for someone else, and he didn’t even have the guts to tell me.
I wish Lara had found a way to let me know sooner who Jamie really was. Because maybe then I’d have been able to forgive her, and we wouldn’t have lost so much time.
But we can’t undo the past. The world has moved on. Some people have died, others are dying.
And others have yet to really live.
And that’s what I intend to do now. I’m sorry Jamie died – I’ll always be sorry for that – but I refuse to waste another moment mourning him or chasing ghosts, dwelling on questions I will never have the answers to.
It turns out that – against all the odds – my mother was right. You can give your heart and soul to whoever you want, but very few people will actually be worthy of it. And now, at last, I know who that person is.
What I had with Jamie was magic while it lasted, but he never deserved me. And now – if it’s not too late – I finally get to be with someone who does.