Blood Sisters(65)

‘Has something happened?’ she asks.

‘Tell you when I’m there.’

And then I begin to drive. I don’t turn on the radio. Because there’s a tune that’s singing loudly in my head. I don’t know where the music came from. But the words are as clear as any well-known lyric.

Bad blood will out.

Like father, like daughter? Who knows.

Stefan didn’t get away with his crimes.

But will I get away with mine?





51


August 2001


Ali


I’d never been inside a court before. It was bigger than the assembly hall at school. When I was called to the witness box, I could almost pretend I was walking up to the platform to get another prize from the headmistress.

Except that, this time, I needed to give the performance of my life.

‘In your own words, Miss James, please tell us exactly what happened,’ said the barrister.

I’d already given a statement to the police at the hospital after the accident. But the story was getting clearer now in my mind. I’d had time to work it out more thoroughly. Or so I hoped.

‘We were late.’ I told the hushed court. ‘Kitty was being … difficult because she was nervous about playing in the school concert. She and her friend Vanessa had had an argument about something. I’m not sure what. Vanessa had been walking ahead of us. But then she came back and was all friendly again.’

I managed a half-smile. ‘Best friends can be like that. Mum says it’s a girl thing.’

Some of the women on the jury nodded in understanding.

The air was electric. It was like that bit in a book or film where the dialogue seemed friendly but you just knew that someone was going to deliver a bombshell.

One of the jury smiled at me. Encouraged, I continued.

‘Then, suddenly Kitty decided to cross the road at a different place from usual. I tried to hold her hand but she shook it off. Her action made me stumble into her and we lost our balance for a minute.’

I took a deep breath. It was as close to the truth as I dared go.

‘She kept telling me to “get off” and that she wasn’t a baby.’

I glanced at Mum. She was nodding her head solemnly as if this made perfect sense. David looked as though he believed me too. Kitty wasn’t easy. A mind of her own. Which was far harder to read now than it had been before.

Another deep breath. ‘Then this car appeared. It was going fast. It had an L plate on the front. I recognized the registration. It belonged to the Wright family. I knew them, but not very well. I’d gone to one of their parties recently. Then … then.’

I could only whisper the next bit.

‘It headed straight for us.’

There was a high-pitched moaning when I got to this point. Vanessa’s mother.

My sister’s friend was always boasting about how her mum used to be a model. She certainly looked amazing. ‘That woman never has a hair out of place,’ my mother would sometimes say with a touch of envy. But now she looked like a different woman. Those high cheekbones appeared to have sunk with grief. Her hair was scraped back. Her shoulders were slumped and she was hanging on to her husband’s arm as if she would otherwise fall to the ground.

‘My daughter was the most important person in the world to me,’ she cried out. ‘And you took her away from me.’

Her husband winced as she spoke. I wondered what he’d thought about taking second place.

A ‘safety expert’ was being called now. Yes, she insisted. Those girls had done nothing wrong in crossing at that point. If Crispin Martin Wright hadn’t been exceeding the speed limit – 50 mph in a 30 mph area – he might have stopped sooner. Wouldn’t have run into poor little Kitty and her friend Vanessa.

More moaning. From Mum and David too. Bile flooded my mouth. Bitter. Sickly.

And then Crispin took the stand. Hollow-eyed. Dark suit. Avoiding my face. ‘The girls were scuffling in the road, right in front of me.’

‘But the tyre marks show you were too close to the kerb.’

Still nothing.

‘Could you have stopped if you were going at the proper speed?’

He said nothing.

The lawyer had made his point.

When I had been cross-examined earlier by Crispin’s lawyer, he had pressed me on the same issue.

‘Were you scuffling in the road when the car came round the corner?’

‘No. Like I said before, we lost our balance for a bit, but that was well before the car appeared. We were just waiting to cross the road.’ A sob broke out of my mouth. ‘The car was coming so fast. When she pulled away from me, Kitty … she didn’t have a chance.’

Killer schoolboy driver sent to prison, the local paper had screamed when Crispin was convicted.

Was that what I had done to him? (Mind you, the paper had also declared that long sentences could be reduced for good behaviour.) Too late now to say something. If I did, they might put me behind bars as well.

‘At least I still have you,’ wept Mum as she held me in her arms.

‘You have Kitty too,’ I sobbed.

But we both knew it wasn’t true. Kitty, as we knew her, had gone.

Now I had to avenge her memory. Because that’s what a good sister would do.