The Club(52)

A ‘HIT AND RUN HORROR CRASH’ the local paper had called it. The other vehicle’s fault entirely – the other vehicle, which, given the damage, must have emerged without stopping from a side road at well over the speed limit and which, with no attempt whatsoever to slow down before it hit them, had crushed their car like a Coke can with Jess and her mother and her father inside it. Five and a half hours it had taken emergency services to extricate her mother’s broken body from what remained of their little Peugeot. The other vehicle? As far as Jess could remember (or anyone had been able to determine since), it had driven away – she could recall the crunch of glass as it reversed then sped off – with barely a dent in its bumper.

Perhaps in some ways, Jess had often thought to herself, guiltily, it would have been better if her mum had been killed that night too. Killed outright, as her father had been. Then at least she would have been spared those weeks, those months, those years of waiting for her mother to wake up, to come out of the coma, to open her eyes and say something, to open her eyes and smile. Then at least she would have been spared all those weeks, all those months, all those years of false hope. Of her mother being simultaneously the funny, vibrant, enthusiastic woman that still lived in Jess’s head, and the waxy, shrunken, intubated, tucked-up husk that she was now. Every day she used to go – with her aunt, after school – and sit with her mum, and talk to her, and tell her everything that had gone on that day, and hold her hand, and squeeze it. And she and her aunt would brush her mum’s hair, or play her music, or do her nails, and her aunt would tell Jess what her mum had been like when she was little, and how proud she would be of her daughter, doing so well at school, being such a good girl. And every day they would have to gently prise Jess’s fingers from her mother’s at the end of visiting time, and promise her they could come back tomorrow, and every day she would plead for just five more minutes, because those might be the five minutes when she was there to spot her mother’s eyelids significantly flutter, when her lips would meaningfully twitch.

Keep talking. I can hear you. I can’t respond but I am listening. Keep talking. I am here and I can hear you and I love you.

That was what she tried to make herself believe her mother was thinking, as she lay there. And every day Jess wrote in her diary everything that had happened at school, everything that had happened in the world, so that she could give it to her mum when her mum eventually woke up, so that even if she had not really been listening, even if she could not remember anything Jess had told her, she would be able to read it all, to catch up on everything she had missed. Occasionally, very occasionally, Jess’s mum would let down a tear, and it was never clear if it meant anything or it was just her eyes leaking. Occasionally her hand would clench around Jess’s, and Jess would tell herself it meant something. And there could never be any question, for her, while her mum was alive – or whatever this was – of moving away. There could never be any question of living more than an hour or so from the hospital.

And all those years, Jackson and Georgia Crane had just been getting on with their lives as if nothing had happened. Making films. Making money. Parading down red carpets. Lending their star power to worthy humanitarian causes. Bantering playfully on Twitter, sharing cute pictures of each other sleeping or curled up with one of their dogs on Instagram. Basking in the world’s affection. How endearing everyone had found it when they had actually turned up in person at the VMAs to collect their award for being the world’s sexiest couple. How romantic when they had been pictured ice-skating together in New York at Christmas, or holding hands in Rome.

And all that time, as it turned out, the whole thing had been a lie.

And eventually the police had announced that they were closing the case, or rather that they would no longer be actively investigating the crash that had killed her father outright. Despite several public appeals for witnesses, despite repeated requests for anyone with any information they thought might be relevant to come forward, anyone who had been in the area on that night, seen a vehicle matching the highly distinctive one she had described to them, they reminded Jess they were still no closer to making a positive ID on the driver of the car, the passenger she claimed to have seen, or the vehicle itself. If new evidence arose, they promised, they would be very happy to reconsider their decision. But until then . . .

Jess had never told her mother about that. She could never get the words out.

Because they did have a witness, the police, to the incident that night, and they always had done. And she had told them, Jess had told them, what had happened. Described the vehicle for them. The colour of it, the size of it, she had even drawn them a picture of it in felt tip. And she had told them what had happened after the collision, about the sound the big black car had made reversing, about the raised voices she could hear, a man’s voice and a woman’s voice, screaming at each other. She had described the woman’s voice, and told them everything she could about the woman herself, a beautiful woman, dark-haired, pale as a ghost. She had told them about the man, too, about the way he had got out of his car and made his way over to theirs – crunch crunch crunch, the sound of the glass under the soles of his shoes – and the way he had looked in through the broken windscreen and then made his way around the concertina of their car, squatted down and squinted in at her father and her mother, and run a hand over his face, and wobbled a little on his haunches. And he had looked at her father, and he had looked at her mother, but he had not seen Jess there, in the back. Yet she had been there, holding her breath, not wanting him to see her, terrified of what he might do, absolutely paralysed by fear and shock. And she had heard him swear to himself, under his breath. And she had watched him walk back to the car, and say something to the woman. And then the car’s engine had started up. And then the car had turned around and driven away.