Martin – 4.25 a.m.
Despite the violence of the storm outside, the low thrum of the tyres on the wet road, along with the persistent drumming of rain on the car’s roof, acts as white noise to Martin. It lulls him into a state of reminiscence – which is at least better than a state of a panic – and fills his head with memories of those first few months after Connor entered their lives.
He sees the party where Amy got so drunk she threw up all over her new dress and had to be carried home. He sees Jessie – a different side of her emerging following the news of her mum’s cancer – taking her first drag of a joint and becoming so pale and out of it that he’d wanted to call an ambulance – and would have, if the others hadn’t stopped him. He sees the fight that broke out near the bandstand in the park after a boy made a lewd comment to Amy. Connor hit him so hard that blood gushed from his nose and turned his grey T-shirt a deep shade of crimson. And he sees Connor, turning up at Jessie’s birthday party and presenting her with a bottle of vodka stolen from the supermarket, the white security cap still in place. Moment upon moment of teenage recklessness, their lives transformed by the presence of this new person. They were the sort of firsts many kids experience – the first time they get drunk, do drugs, see a fight … Martin wasn’t such a prude that he didn’t recognise such behaviours as normal for some kids, in some towns. But it hadn’t been normal for them, until Connor arrived.
To the girls, Connor was a tour guide, taking them to new places, introducing them to new people and new things – here, drink this, smoke this, swallow this. And there could be no denying that sometimes they had a good time, that it felt like a door had been opened to a more grown-up world they were being given early access to. But often things went too far. Someone needed their hair holding back while they threw up in the toilet, someone had to call their parents for a lift home because they had missed the last bus. Somebody got hurt.
And then there was the kiss, and what happened afterwards.
A pair of red lights materialise out of the darkness up ahead. Martin comes back to himself in time to hit the brakes and there’s a moment of vertigo-inducing weightlessness as his internal organs lurch forward in his ribcage, and for a split second he thinks this is it, this is how I die …
Instinct takes over. He turns the wheel and narrowly avoids colliding with the back end of the SUV that has, for some insane reason, abruptly stopped in front of him. There’s a screech of tyres as he swerves into the outside lane, and he somehow manages to wrestle control of the car before it smashes into the central reservation. He straightens up, eases off on the accelerator, heart pounding, adrenalin pumping.
‘You’re OK, you’re OK,’ he tells himself. He inflates his cheeks, blows out a long puff of air to slow his breathing.
Fuck, that was close. If he hadn’t reacted as quickly as he did, that could have been nasty. It’s dangerous out here. The rain is a constant, thunderous shower that hits from all sides, limiting the view in front and behind. Nobody should be driving in these conditions.
He’s unharmed, but he’s shaken, and newly annoyed. Not at Jessie – not even at Frank – but at the world, for having conspired to make tonight such a shit show. And perhaps at Connor too, who is still on his mind, and who, he is in no doubt, was at least part of the reason Jessie returned to Westhaven.
He dials Jessie’s number, not expecting her to answer, but keen to hear her voice.
‘Hi, this is Jessie. I can’t take your call right now, but if you’d like to leave me a message, I’ll get back you.’
‘Hey, it’s me,’ he says, after the beeps. ‘So, guess who’s on their way to their favourite place in the whole world? That’s right, I’m driving to your dad’s. It looks like he left Freya’s inhalers in the car and you’re … wherever you are. But don’t worry, I’ve got her spares right next to me on the passenger seat. I’ll be there in a few hours and hopefully we’ll be eating breakfast together fairly soon. Hope you’re OK. Call me as soon as you can and … I suppose I’ll see you when you get back. Love you, honey.’
He hangs up, not sure if hearing the voicemail and leaving the message has made him feel better or worse, just knowing that it felt like something he had to do. He feels a little calmer now at least.
It would be ridiculous for him to still be annoyed at Jessie because of the kiss she shared with Connor when they were teenagers. She’d just found out her mum had cancer; she was lost, desperate for human affection, and Connor had just happened to be there. It would be childish and petty of him to still be pissed off at her because of a mistake she made all those years ago. After all, she went on to marry and have a beautiful little girl with him, not Connor.
What does piss him off though, is how Connor has managed to remain a part of their lives for so long. There were a few years, when they first moved away from Westhaven and Connor was still in prison, when he thought they’d escaped his influence entirely, that they had moved beyond the reach of his gravitational pull. Connor belonged to the past, like their schooldays, or the bands they used to like when they were teenagers that had long since broken up. He was nothing but a bad memory, his name occasionally brought up in conversation, but mostly consigned to history.
Then Amy’s parents reached out to Jessie, and she began working on Born Killer. Soon, Connor’s voice would drift down the hall from her office as she edited his interviews. She would talk to him on the phone for hours, trying to keep his hopes up. His name would reverberate through the house.
Martin could have coped with all of that – could have accepted that Jessie’s drive to make things right meant that Connor would be a presence in their lives – if Connor had deserved it. But Connor Starling was not, and never will be, a good person. He was trouble then, and he is trouble now, and as Martin closes in on his destination, he can’t help thinking that if Jessie is in some sort of trouble tonight, there’s a good chance Connor has something do with it.