Kate raises her head, takes in Audrey’s thinning white hair, her remarkable yet aged grey eyes. They’re full of genuine concern for Kate, who didn’t mean to drag this up now. But it’s time she took responsibility, too, just like Audrey is. For her parents’ deaths, her role in them. And it’s time she was more honest with Audrey, time she returned her trust.
She sits forward on the edge of the navy armchair as Ozzie approaches, rests his head between her knees, offering his oversized, glossy ears as treatment for Kate’s trembling hands.
“I was driving the car when my parents were killed,” she says. “I let you believe I was a passenger. But it was my fault.”
Audrey tuts. “I’m so sorry, dear. That must be a terrible burden to bear.”
Kate shakes her head, finally looking up at Audrey. Their chairs used to feel much farther apart.
“But terrible accidents happen every day, Kate. You—”
“Except it wasn’t an accident. Not really.” A chill runs through Kate despite the heat emanating from the fireplace. “It’s far, far worse than that.”
Chapter 28
Kate
LUTTERWORTH, ENGLAND | FEBRUARY 2010
Give me the keys, Dad,” Kate said, holding out her gloved hand as they made their way down the path from her aunt’s house to the street. The surprise birthday party for her mother’s sister had been a success, but the champagne flowed like a new faucet and her dad had been half in the bag an hour before the cake had even been brought out. Kate hated it when he got like this. She spent most of the party sitting in a corner, sipping a ginger ale to ease the nausea and refusing the seafood canapes her uncle thrust at her on a metal tray.
“Ah, yeah. Here,” her dad said, rummaging around in his trouser pocket.
“You sure you don’t mind, dear?” Kate’s mum asked vaguely. She wasn’t generally much of a drinker, but the festive air of her sister’s sixty-fifth birthday seemed to have gotten the better of her too.
“It’s fine,” Kate said, trying to keep the irritation from her voice. When she agreed to ride with them to Lutterworth, she suspected this might happen. And now it would be past midnight when they got back to London. “But what would have happened if I hadn’t been here?” she asked, unlocking the car with a chirp that cut through the cold winter air.
Her mother didn’t answer, just climbed in the back, leaving the front passenger seat for Kate’s dad.
Kate stopped outside the driver’s side of the small red Toyota and checked her mobile. Sure enough, there was another text from Adam, even more petulant than the last three volleys had been. She didn’t know whether to laugh or scream.
You’ve known what my job is like since before we got married. You knew what you were getting into. I’m doing this for all of us. Why can’t you see that?
He was supposed to join them tonight, but this afternoon Kate had told him not to bother. Adam had a demanding advertising job in the City, but he’d been telling Kate he would start dialing it back, refusing extra work and events that weren’t strictly necessary. But he hadn’t, and Kate couldn’t tell whether he was addicted to it or just didn’t want to spend time with her. They’d been arguing for the past two days, and the last thing she wanted was to be confined in a car with him, both of them seething, for a four-hour round-trip plus a family function where everyone would be fawning over how happy they must be. The truth was that they were happy—most of the time. But when they weren’t—like now—the lows were low.
Kate threw herself into the car and replied.
Except there won’t be an “us” if you’re never home.
She tossed the mobile back into her purse and set it down on the console beside her.
“You know the car will talk to you now, eh?” her dad said, eyes sparkling with champagne as he buckled himself in on the second try. “You just hook it up and—”
“Yeah, thanks, Dad,” Kate said, angrily adjusting the seat and mirrors. The last thing she needed was for her parents’ car to read out angry texts from her husband.
Both of Kate’s parents had fallen asleep by the time she merged onto the M1. Traffic was light this time of night, but the earlier snow had turned to freezing rain, and the motorway was slick. A wind gusted from the west and Kate fought the wheel as her mind replayed the ongoing fight with Adam.
Twenty minutes later, she heard her phone vibrate inside her purse. She reached over and felt around for it, pulled it out, then glanced down.
Is that some threat to leave me if I don’t cave to you? WTF
Kate bit her lip hard to stop herself from shouting. Anger and resentment churned in her chest as she stared at the screen. She managed to type out three words with her thumb before something the size of a train collided with them. They spun, and Kate knew a brief, terror-stricken sensation of weightlessness as the car flipped over and everything went dark.
She wasn’t sure when she woke up in the hospital, only that she did. It was a while before the sounds she heard—women’s voices calling to one another, the tinny tones of an intercom, the rattling of wheels on a tile floor—nudged her to open her eyes.
The blue and green pattern of the curtain beside her came into view, but it was out of focus. Adam was standing at the end of her bed with a tall man in what she took for a police uniform, and a shorter blond woman wearing bottle-green scrubs. Kate couldn’t make out the details of any of their faces. She needed her glasses. The blur in her eyes was as thick as the fog in her mind that dulled her senses. As she watched the group converse in low tones for several long moments, she struggled to piece together what had happened, why she was in a hospital bed with an IV in her arm. Her cheek and arm stung like hell, and her hips ached. Looking down, she saw that her forearm was wrapped in gauze, and panic began to sift its way through the cracks in her confusion.
Adam was saying something. Asking something. The woman in green responded, nodding a lot as she did.
Adam paused, then swore, reached an arm out and leaned his weight against the beige plastic bed rail.
“But is the baby okay?”
A grave silence followed, punctured by the incessant beeping of the heart monitor beside Kate, confirming that she was still alive when she might not want to be.
Chapter 29
Kate
ALNWICK, ENGLAND | DECEMBER 2010
When Audrey told Kate about the bombing of Hitler’s car, Kate’s body had run cold, her systems paused, as though everything inside her needed a moment of respite. She feels similarly as she finishes her own story, finally surrendering it into Audrey’s keeping.
“The other driver was fine. He was in a lorry. The only witness was the driver of a car far behind us. She said we both tried to change lanes at the same time. But I didn’t. I drifted because I wasn’t paying attention.” More tears fall, coursing down the length of the scar on her cheek, a river of regret. “We’d just started to tell people I was pregnant. And every time we looked at each other in the weeks and months afterward, we just saw the child we were supposed to have. Blamed each other for everything.” She blows her swollen nose. “We stuck it out for a while, into the summer, but when the, er, when the due date came round, that was really the end of it, I think. All that loss, just…” Her mind casts out for the right words, comes back to what Audrey had said: an incomparable guilt. “We couldn’t bridge the gap it made. We weren’t enough for each other anymore. And I think there just wasn’t enough will left in either of us to try.”
