The two women were mostly silent on the way back into Milngavie. On each bend of the road, Jenna again wondered if this might be the one where the accident happened. She had planned, long ago, to drive along here and work it all out, where exactly the tragedy had unfolded, but a tragedy of her own had intervened, meaning she hadn’t truly put to rest one of the worst periods of her life.
‘You okay?’ she asked Hazel. ‘You’re really quiet.’
Amanda looked out of her window, then back to Jenna. ‘It’s just so sad,’ she said. ‘What a waste of a life. Every one that was touched by … this guy’s death has never really recovered. Sandy’s wracked with guilt, the mum and dad died in a car crash, of all things, this Luke fella sounds like he’s still affected by it, and you. All these years later and you’re still trying to make sense of it all.’
‘True,’ Jenna replied.
‘And what happened to the siblings? Where did they go?’
‘Poor kids.’ Jenna looked at Hazel. ‘It’s the ones left behind that suffer most, eh?’
‘You don’t want to look them up? Find out what they remember?’
‘They were just weans,’ Jenna replied. ‘I’m not sure they’ll be worth talking to.’ Something in Hazel’s expression made her add a qualification. ‘About the accident, I mean.’ She focused back on the road, wondering if she’d imagined the look that passed over Hazel’s face. It was as if she was taking this all too personally.
She glanced back, and the woman looked very relaxed, her eyes ahead and her hands on her lap. She gave herself a mental ticking off. She was seeing problems where there were none.
Her mobile rang. She looked at the screen and saw that it was Luke.
‘I’ll just ignore it,’ she said to Hazel. But as she spoke, she had to negotiate a bend in the road on a rise that was so steep, she couldn’t see if anything was coming towards them. As they reached the top, she found she’d taken it too fast, and the car pulled towards the centre of the road. With a sigh of relief she noted that the way ahead was clear. Perhaps this was where the accident had happened.
‘I don’t mind,’ Hazel said. ‘If you don’t have hands-free, pull over if you want to talk to him. Whatever you think.’
In truth, Jenna wasn’t doing much thinking at this point. Her heart and mind were a tangle of half-formed thought and soured emotion. And the day had been going so well until he phoned.
Sandy had been very helpful, willing to tell his version of events – a version that begged the question, why was there a two-hour discrepancy between the time when he saw the men in the car to the time when the emergency services were called?
She felt a chill at this, and she wished she’d never bumped into Luke Forrest. Going to him for therapy was a waste of time and money, and why did he come into her shop? Her life had been swimming along just fine before he showed up. And now she felt she was lost at sea, in a whirlpool, being buffeted by waves, ears and eyes full of water, entirely unable to work out in which direction to kick, and where to find the surface.