My life changed the split second Brian Stuart’s lorry shattered Mum’s car. Everything previous to that moment is before and everything else is after. The walk home is a strange limbo time but if I had to choose I would put it in the after category. Everything had changed; it’s just that I hadn’t been told. When I think about myself walking the hour-long walk home I’m furious with that person for not knowing, for not working it out somehow. For not knowing that everything had changed. But there was no way I could know until I walked into our house to see my dad sitting in his chair with a look on his face that I will never forget. There was no warning shot and there were no sirens. There should have been a sign painted across the sky telling me my life had changed for ever. But there was nothing. The flowers still stood in the garden and my key still fitted the lock. I walked down the hallway, like I had done a thousand times before, only this time every step took me closer to the end of my old life and the start of a new one that I didn’t want. I didn’t learn from this though. It didn’t teach me anything. I thought that was my big moment, my life’s tragedy, and I got sloppy and I relaxed and I wasn’t prepared when I should have been.
I was home from school and I threw my bag down in the kitchen as usual and idly picked up the letter that was left lying on the corner of the table and read that new information has come to light and due to this information available to us we need to re-examine the records and statements and see if we arrive at the same conclusions. I read that they would need to speak to Mr Gerald Redridge and a meeting had been arranged for Wednesday the 15th at 11 a.m. I read that they did understand that this would be upsetting for all parties concerned and they apologised for this upset caused. They hoped that he understood that they were trying to establish the facts of the tragic road-traffic accident that occurred on Crofts Bank Road on April the 11th of this year. They said that another inquest would be held at a date yet to be decided. I didn’t understand. What was to be investigated? What new information and how did it matter? She was dead. Brian Stuart was dead. There was nothing left to investigate.
And then I thought of my dad. He would have got home from dropping me at school at around 8.45 as usual. The letter would have probably been waiting in the hallway and he normally opened the post before he went to his workroom. I counted the hours in my head: one two three four five six seven hours and ten minutes since he’d read it. I listened carefully to the house. It sounded empty.
I tried to be hopeful; I checked the workroom first. It hadn’t been unlocked. I walked back to the house, heading for his bedroom. I didn’t rush. His bedroom door was open and I could see him from the landing – I could see the lower half of his legs lying stock still on the bed. Shoes still on. I took a deep breath and walked two steps into the room. He was lying face down, spread-eagled on the bed, arms hanging over the sides. The room smelt of whisky and damp. I walked over to the bed and sat down on the edge, next to his head. His back rose and fell an inch. I was about to walk away, to let him sleep it off, when he turned to me and said, ‘Hello, Luke.’ He put his arm around my neck and pulled me down to the bed and we lay side by side. The room darkened quickly and he fell asleep.
It was midnight. We were sat at the kitchen table. We both had a coffee. He was explaining. ‘Your mum had stopped taking the lithium.’ He blinked and looked at me.
‘So?’
‘Well, the lithium kept her stable, didn’t it?’
‘It kept her quiet,’ I said.
He nodded. ‘It did, but it also controlled the highs and lows, didn’t it? When she was on the lithium she was never manic and she never …’
He smiled and shook his head and said, ‘Crashed.’
I asked if he’d known that she’d stopped taking the pills but he shook his head.
‘It’s only come out now. Dr Hanson was on leave at the time of the accident and the inquest, but when he came back he heard about it all, and checked his files and found out that your mum hadn’t picked up her prescription for a couple of week before the accident.’
‘So what are they thinking?’ I asked. I knew what they were thinking. But I wanted him to say it, so the words were spoken and out and in the air. I wanted to hear exactly what they sounded like, to experience their journey from his mouth to my ear.
He sighed and said, ‘They think that if she’d stopped taking the lithium, she may have been depressed, and if she was depressed she may have caused the crash deliberately.’
I said it. ‘They think it was suicide.’
My dad nodded.
‘Yes, they think it might be suicide.’