The Two Lives of Lydia Bird(25)

‘You asked me to come here today,’ I say, rubbing my hand over my forehead. ‘You asked me to come here, and then you throw this … this bomb in, knowing exactly what it’s going to do to me.’

He’s shaking his head even as I speak. ‘You didn’t come, Lydia. I waited for you and you didn’t come, and everyone was talking about the people they’d lost and, I don’t even know why, I started talking too. It felt safe, I guess.’

I look at him, at the words falling from his mouth.

‘You didn’t mention the radio once at the inquest …’ I’m shaking my head, because ever since the accident I’ve taken Jonah’s brief account of what happened in that car and tried to piece together Freddie’s last moments. It was officially recorded as accidental death, one of those freak moments you just can’t predict. There was mention of slippery weather conditions; it had been a particularly cold snap and there could well have been ice. I listened, allowing it to come down to something as mundane as the weather, but now the scene I’ve built in my head is fragmenting in front of my eyes.

‘You lied,’ I say. ‘You lied to a room full of people, Jonah.’ I look at Nell beside me. ‘He didn’t tell them about the radio. He didn’t.’

‘People do strange things for good reasons sometimes,’ she says. ‘Maybe if Jonah could tell you a little bit more …’ She looks apologetically at Jonah, who swallows hard.

‘I didn’t lie,’ he says. ‘I didn’t. There could well have been ice on the road and it had definitely been raining.’ He looks at me. ‘You know that’s true, Lydia.’

‘But you’ve never mentioned the radio …’

Everyone else at the table is quiet now, even Maud. Beside me, Nell sighs and covers my hand for a second, squeezing my fingers. I’m not sure if she’s offering sympathy or asking me to calm down.

Jonah makes a guttural, frustrated sound, and his hand clenches into a tight ball on the table. ‘Why would I? What difference would it have made? It was just Freddie and me there that night, no one else got hurt. There was no fucking way I was going to let the last thing anyone ever said about him be that he caused it himself, that he was careless for even a fraction of time.’ He glances around the table at the others and shakes his head. ‘Sorry,’ he sighs. ‘For swearing.’ His eyes are overbright when he looks back at me; I can see he’s hanging on by a thread. ‘I didn’t want to read it in the paper, for them to print that his death was needless, for people to use his story as a cautionary tale to be more careful.’

Something’s happening inside me. It’s as if my blood is heating up. ‘But you could have told me,’ I say slowly. ‘You should have told me.’

‘Should I?’ He raises his voice a little and Camilla flinches at the sight of his pain. ‘Why? So you could feel even more anguished than you already do, so you could curse him for being such a prat, so you could replay the image of him going a couple of miles over the speed limit and scrabbling around with the stereo?’

And then I can see it exactly. Freddie’s foot on the accelerator, his eye momentarily off the road.

‘Going too fast to get to my birthday dinner, you mean? You didn’t mention he was speeding, either.’

Jonah looks out of the window towards the school gates. So many years the three of us spilled in and out of those gates, carefree and sure that life would last for ever. I can almost see us, hear the echo of our footsteps and our laughter.

‘None of this really matters,’ he says. ‘It doesn’t change the fact that he’s gone.’

‘But it does matter,’ I say, fired up by Jonah’s ignorance of my feelings. ‘It matters to me. You let me think he died because of the weather and somehow that dull, everyday reason made some kind of stupid sense.’ I cast around, trying to understand and articulate my feelings in real time. ‘And now you tell me he’d still be here if he’d just been more careful, and that he was speeding?’ I break off, anguished. ‘Don’t you dare tell me it doesn’t matter, Jonah Jones. He should have just come straight home. None of this would have happened if he’d just come straight back.’

‘Don’t you think I know that?’ he whispers. ‘Don’t you think it’s the first thing I think every single bloody day?’

We stare at each other. Jonah bites his lip to stop it shaking.

‘I never wanted you to know all this,’ he says, gaunt, drawing my eyes to his scar as he scrubs his hand over his forehead. ‘You were late … I didn’t think you were coming.’

‘I wish I hadn’t,’ I say.

‘Me too,’ he says, his hands clasped together in a knot in front of him.

A hush falls around the table. I think it’s time for me to leave.

‘My son died a year ago.’ Maud stares at the ceiling. ‘Hadn’t spoken to me for thirty-six years. All over something and nothing.’

I don’t reply, but her words make it into my head anyway. Thirty-six years. They were both alive, and yet they allowed something trivial to push them far enough apart that they never spoke again.

‘That’s very sad, Maud.’ Camilla reaches out and pats Maud’s forearm.

Maud sets her lips in a thin line, all out of pithy comebacks. I don’t think she came here today to talk about her errant husband at all. I’m not sure if she offered the information about her son to help me, but she has, sort of, because I know that if I get up and walk out of here now I might not see Jonah Jones again for thirty-six years, or ever again.