“Hattie,” I screamed, running across the road. “Hattie.”
I watched as she blundered out from the crumpled, steaming vehicle, heard the sound she made when she looked in the road. Her terrible scream. Then guttural noises as she lurched backward. She hadn’t heard me calling. She only had eyes for Dan, inert, in the road, Gus whining and nudging him.
She was staggering backward when someone appeared from the darkness, a man in a dressing gown hushing her, steering her gently to the pavement with soothing words. A woman joined them, others opened doors and windows, footsteps, urgent words.
It was only when I was standing a meter away from her that she took in my presence.
“Emma . . . Emma!” Her voice was strangled, choked.
The two strangers looked at me as I stared down at her, my chest heaving up and down, up and down, my breath a cloud in the air as I shouted, “You killed him, you fucking killed him!”
The words streamed from my mouth, ugly, accusatory, spittle flying, eyes rolling. Every awful thing vomited her way, intended to hurt. I hadn’t realized I’d advanced on her, clawing at the air as I furiously shouted. “You. You . . . oh my God.”
She looked numb as the man in the dressing gown moved, clamped onto my arms, wrenched me back from her.
“Get off,” I screeched, “What the fuck, Hattie, what the—” I didn’t recognize the voice I was shouting in, high, frantic, furious.
“Stop, stop this.”
Voices, other hands, someone was kneeling in the street, someone else was shouting instructions into a mobile phone. In the distance a siren could already be heard as I strained and bucked against the people restraining me.
She was barely registering it, repeating phrases, words, her eyes fixed on the road, hugging her body tight. “I . . . oh my God. Emma. I . . .”
I realized she was only wearing a T-shirt, thin cotton pajama bottoms. Her teeth were chattering, her eyes wild as she struggled to get any words out.
“I left, I left him. The baby—he said—next time—next time it would be . . .” She broke at that point. Disjointed and rambling. “I drove here but there was ice, the car . . . then the dog—I didn’t want to hit the dog, but the man, I felt him . . . I felt . . .”
I wasn’t listening to her, just staring, my face screwed up in fury. Hattie. The driver being comforted on that first night by these people was Hattie. Hattie had been the one to kill him. Without her, that first night, this whole thing would never have begun. It was her fault—all of this, every time I lived through this day, it was her fault. If she’d never been here, Dan would never have died the first time and set this never-ending day in motion.
“And it was Dan, I saw him, Emma. Oh my God. It was Dan.” Her face filling with the agony of it.
Hattie had killed Dan. Hattie. Hattie who we loved and trusted and left in charge of our children. Hattie, the first to phone in a crisis, the first to come over with ice cream and wine, the first to offer to babysit if we were ill. Hattie. His own sister. None of this would have happened if she hadn’t run him down, none of it.
Then another sound broke into my head, a voice I knew too well. Shrill, terrified. And then a scream.
“Mum. MUM!”
Hattie struggled to her feet too, both of us reacting to the voice.
Something twisted in my gut as I turned and saw my young daughter, oversized unicorn slippers absurd in this moment. Her face was a terrible mask of pain as she rushed forward, took in her father, the grotesque angle of his limbs, the blood that had leaked farther, a lake of it, the glaze of his eyes. Gus sitting dolefully at his head, still waiting for his master to get up.
Oh my God.
Hattie was moaning as she saw her too. “Poppy, I . . . oh God, Poppy.”
“Don’t touch her!” I screamed as Hattie stepped forward, Poppy tumbling into my arms.
Hattie froze beyond and I stared at her over Poppy’s shoulder, soothing, circling. “I’ve got you, I’ve got you,” I repeated.
The ambulance arrived, paramedics spilling out of the side door, jumping into the road with their bags of equipment and serious faces, lit by blue flashes as they bent over Dan in the road. Poppy shuddered as she watched them check Dan, their movements becoming less urgent when they realized he was dead. Wailing, she squirmed out of my arms, a paramedic intercepting her and drawing her to one side.
I should go to her but I was still staring at Hattie, the woman I loved who had ruined our lives.
The police were seconds behind, the street slowly filling with different emergency vehicles stopped at angles, squeezed into the narrow street. I saw neighbors pointing at Hattie. A policeman moved toward her, handcuffs swinging on his belt, his hat obscuring part of his face. They would arrest her. She deserved it, I thought, fists curling. She deserves whatever happens.
She seemed somewhere else, her eyes fixed on Dan’s body, her arms hugging her own. She was barely aware of the policeman now standing in front of her as she turned to me slowly. “Emma, he can’t be dead, he can’t be . . .”
I couldn’t respond, taking two steps backward, anger filling me up as I looked at her wretched face.
I had to go to my daughter, now held by the paramedic. She was snot and whimpers and fear. I had to go. I had to get her away from this scene.
“This is the driver who killed him,” I said to the policeman, voice shaking. I lifted a finger, anger making my hand tremble as I pointed it at her. “This is the woman who killed my husband.”
I bent and picked up Gus, his body heavy, a whine: not wanting to leave Dan’s side.
Hattie’s legs gave way and she sank to the pavement as I moved away. As Poppy called out for her dad.
I walked in the opposite direction, back to my ten-year-old baby, to hold her, comfort her, knowing that nothing would ever be the same again. I didn’t think my heart could fracture any further.
Hattie.