Now, gathered together in this small room, they looked at each other and saw their own panic made flesh. Anita was crying and talking uncontrollably – Jake this, Jake that, Jake, Jake; how she could maintain such a constant flow of tears and words was beyond most of them. The recognition that they were not going to swerve this tragedy, that they were going to be hit full-tilt by it, had stunned the rest of them into silence. Tears were out of reach. To cry was a release, and there could be no release until they knew how bad it was for their child. Their child, not anyone else’s; there wasn’t space, yet,
for such empathy. Their panic was too raw and personal to be shared. Hence they stood, passive and acquiescent, in their pairs or alone, as the senior policeman confirmed their place at the front of the queue for this nightmare. In a clear, steady voice he told them that their questions couldn’t be answered – not yet, not until there was clearer information about the casualties – which would be available soon. So please, if they could be patient for a little longer. The medical staff would be in to talk to them shortly. The officer left the room, quickly, as if relieved to be away from them.
And then they waited.
Dave hugged Anita, while opposite them Shazia and Nihal sat immobile: poles of the same emotional compass. Fran and Marcus stood by the window, staring out at the orange halos of light in the darkness, trying not to imagine what might have happened to Jess, while Dom paced. And Sal? Sal sat on her own, near the door, hunched over her phone, lost in the world beyond the hospital, where the accident was a dramatic local news story, not a real event. Her croaky voice broke through their personal purgatories. ‘Christ! There’s so many photos.’
Dom went and sat next to her. She passed him her phone. The others watched as he swiped the screen – imagining what he was looking at. Fran couldn’t bear it. ‘Please, Dom, don’t.’ But Anita looked up and stretched out her hand. After Dom had seen enough, he passed her the phone. Anita’s and Dave’s faces creased and crumpled as they flicked through the images. Anita’s hand went to her mouth and the sobbing started up again. Dave offered the phone to Nihal, who reached out and took it, but Shazia’s recoil was so severe that he tossed the phone straight back at Dave. Dave then offered it to Marcus. Marcus’s ‘No!’ was so loud that they all jumped. Fran turned away and closed her eyes.
She knew them all, liked them all, but she wished at that moment that she’d never met any of them. Never spent a minute – never mind what felt like a lifetime – with Dom; never got to know and respect Sal; never learnt to appreciate Shazia and Nihal’s quiet humour; never found enough common ground with Dave and Anita to be around them, occasionally, for short periods without wanting to scream. In that claustrophobic room, waiting to hear just how bad it was, Fran wished, fervently, that Jess had never made friends with the children of any of these people.
Chapter 4
TWENTY MONTHS EARLIER
AS SOON as the date for the prom was confirmed, Dom stepped up and offered to host the ‘pre-party’. No one put in a counter-bid. The other parents were happy to leave him to it. Marcus did jokingly question since when had a pre-prom party become a thing – but he got shouted down by Jess and Fran. Fran informed him, semi-seriously, that the high school prom was an important rite of passage, a step over the threshold from childhood to adulthood; and, she confessed, coming closer to the truth, that she was looking forward to seeing them all in their finery. Marcus smiled and tuned out the subsequent discussion about the pros and cons of spray-tans and whether ‘hair up’ or ‘hair down’ was the way to go.
Five months later they were glad Dom had offered to host the party. The staging was idyllic. There were clusters of silver helium balloons, platters of posh canapés and trays of real champagne in crystal flutes. The weather was just what the girls’ dresses demanded, balmy and still. And the sunlight was exactly right, soft and pink-tinged – perfect for the hundreds of selfies that were being taken. It was typical Dom, totally over the top and unnecessarily costly, but at the same time all very, very lovely. As the booze flowed and the kids laughed and shimmered around on the immaculate lawn, the mood was upbeat.
They all looked great. The lads suited and pointy-toe-shoed, the girls transformed by false lashes, fake tan and imitation designer dresses. It was like watching a group of children playing dress-up and pulling it off. Fran found herself surprisingly moved to see them all together, possibly for the last time. Most of them had been friends since primary school; Jess, Harry and Jake went even further back, to nursery and playgroup. They’d shared sleepovers, chicken pox, multiple birthday parties and a seemingly never-ending round of car journeys to out-of-the-way running tracks and football fields. She knew them all, had been part of their growing up. Indeed, it was down to the kids that the adults knew each other at all. The shared experiences and responsibilities of being parents of kids who were similar ages had bred friendships that would otherwise never have flourished.
Take Anita and Sal. They were hardly bosom buddies – a world apart in attitude and volume – but there they were, standing side-by-side, both smiling, sharing the moment in Dom’s sun-dappled back garden. Dom himself was ‘circulating’, chatting to everyone, orchestrating the mood, topping up drinks; rather too quickly for Fran’s liking – they were only fifteen and sixteen, after all. Fran could hear him cracking jokes about prom-night traditions that strayed perilously close to being in very poor taste. This was a side of Dom that Fran was very familiar with, but could do without. The showman who – given an audience, and any audience would do – couldn’t stop himself playing to it. It was the Dom that most people saw: brash, loud, confident. It was not the gentler, occasionally vulnerable Dom who had few real friends, but whose friendship, once earnt, was fiercely loyal.
Dave, Jake’s dad – who was downing champagne like it was beer – laughed raucously at one of Dom’s jokes. Another man’s man. Through the melee, Fran met Marcus’s eye and smiled. It was a moment of marital understanding that made her feel simultaneously mean-spirited and understood. Jake was also laughing, horsing around as usual. He looked resplendent in a dark-red three-piece suit. Jake had always been a little sod, prone to being in the middle of any trouble, but there was such an energy, a lust for life, about him that it was hard not to warm to him. His spivvy suit was the perfect choice. Harry also looked sharp, but in a much more understated way. Harry was the cool one in the group. Popular, without having to make an effort. As he drank his beer and lounged in a deckchair listening to one of Jake’s stories, Fran tried to marry this version of Harry with the little boy who used to follow her around her house.
After Harry’s mum, Adele, upped and left, Harry lost a lot of confidence – understandably; it was a very confusing, upsetting time. Overnight he went from being a boisterous, scabby-kneed seven-year-old, indulged by both his parents, to a cautious child. Being caught up in the middle of a domestic war was not a good place for a little boy. Fran had absorbed a lot of the childcare responsibilities for Dom during those sticky years when his marriage had imploded. She’d seen, close at hand, how both Harry and his three-year-old sister Martha had struggled with the sudden separation from their mum, and with the acrimony that had erupted around the divorce and the custody arrangements. It had been a vicious, vitriolic mess – which Dom had emerged from, eventually, as the victor. He was fierce as a father, as well as a friend. Harry had coped, but there had been a price to pay, a new-found introspection and watchfulness that were unusual in a child.