| |
When she’d been in hospital, Beth had asked Jody if she could see the newspaper obituary Luc’s mother had placed, as well as any records that would help her authenticate the events she’d been absent from. The impersonal eulogy had been barely two column inches.
Beth’s mother had never hidden her disapproval when she’d married Luc, but she’d dutifully attended the ceremony in Rouen. She’d given Beth the funeral service pamphlet she’d retained and a copy of Ouest-France. Much of the newspaper’s space had been given to a cover story about the French Ecology Minister, Christiane Vipond, having had a heart attack. The crash had been relegated to a space smaller than the local obituary.
The scant details had only reinforced how Beth had felt about her presence within the collision. But just as she’d been feeling as if Luc’s passing had barely intruded on the world he’d inhabited for thirty-three years, it now appeared the incident had made a media ripple of the very worst kind after all.
Jody had tentatively informed her about the accident site clips having been posted on YouTube, but it had only been on the journey home to his rented home in Stockwell that he’d told her they’d actually gone viral.
There’d only been eighteen spectators on the exchange-student coach that had stopped at the roadside, but the five phones that had recorded the aftermath meant hundreds of thousands of people had been privy to Luc’s last moments.
While Beth had been comatose, people had watched it all over the world, searched for it on their PCs and handhelds to relieve boredom during lunch hours or when there was nothing better on TV. Their suffering and her violent outburst had been entertainment for scores of the curious and the morbid. Celebrity? It had been a repulsive joke. Jody had said under YouTube’s privacy policy, the clips could be potentially removed within five days. They’d already been out there for months, but he’d said he hadn’t taken any action yet because he thought when she was ready, she might want to see them before they were taken down.
After scaling the steps at the front of the Edwardian property, and then another flight to his first-floor flat, Beth was trembling. She didn’t know if it was the exertion or what she’d just been told.
Jody carried her bag into the tiny box room with the single bed in it and placed it on the rug. “It’s more a cupboard, but it’s at the back of the house so it should at least be quiet. I’d give you my room, but you wouldn’t thank me for that. I’ll let you unpack.” He left and carefully closed the door behind him.
Unpack? Beth seated herself on the single bed and lifted her tiny case, containing her handbag from the crash site, a few clothes, toiletries and the new pyjamas night gear her mother had brought to the hospital, onto the duvet. She didn’t usually wear anything in bed with Luc, but she took them out now and laid them carefully across the pillow.
She tried to remember exactly what she’d worn for their last night out. They’d both showered together after the make-up sex they’d had following their brief foray into a familiar argument. They’d washed each other and Beth had started to respond to his touch again, but they’d had a reservation at Oubliez Demain and they’d already been late.
They’d never made it, and now she imagined the candle lit at their table and the chairs empty for the entire evening.
It had been the first time they’d stayed at the cabin in the winter. The January air had been chilly. She knew she’d put on her sapphire blue knitted dress with the empire bodice. She could remember slipping on her black tights and suede heels but couldn’t recall if she’d taken a coat. The clothes had probably been cut from her in casualty.
Her last vivid memory of Luc before the crash was of him looking meditatively at her in the mirror while she applied her eyeliner.
She heard Jody turn on the TV in the lounge and hurriedly tidying up while he waited for her to come out. When she did, he told her to sit down in one of his leather armchairs and said he’d order them some Chinese food when she was ready. She said OK, but that she had to pee, and headed to the bathroom even though she didn’t need to.
She wanted to put off the moment of them both sitting through some junk soap like nothing had happened. Standing in front of Jody’s tiny, toothpaste-spattered mirror, Beth painfully peeled off the last gauze plaster and surveyed her new appearance. The area suddenly exposed was a wrinkled, swollen and anaemic square on the left-hand side of her chin. She touched it lightly with her fingertips and the skin prickled. Victim-support counsellor? She barely knew where to begin with herself.
She’d been told the swelling would go down and that the lacerations would partially fade – particularly if she applied cream and massaged the scarred area. She couldn’t work out which of the crescent wounds had been caused by the crash and which by the insertion of the plates.
Her curls that she’d had cut boyishly short and dyed a deep raspberry shade for their trip looked similarly lifeless, a faded, barely pink tinge as her light brown hair had grown out. It now lay in a low fringe over her dark eyebrows and hung in uneven fronds down to her shoulders. It was distressing to imagine herself lying insensible while it had got so long. It was even more distressing to feel as if she’d seen Luc less than a week ago.
Everyone said that she could have come off a lot worse. That she was lucky to be alive.
She looked different. Not just physically. She saw something absent from her hazel eyes as they reluctantly caught themselves in her reflection. The doctors said there was no discernible brain damage, but Beth wasn’t the person that had left the UK with Luc anymore. However, although her appearance alarmed and upset her, she was almost glad the crash hadn’t left her unscathed.
There had to be some physical manifestation of Luc’s removal. Some side effect of being fleeced of the life she’d known. It was like another mugging, only this one was more brutal than any physical assault. It had made off with everything that was valuable to her.
Stalled feelings were locked away so deeply they didn’t register anywhere in her expression. She still hadn’t processed what had happened like everyone else had. They were months ahead of her. As far as she was concerned, the crash was a very recent memory. She was outside of the people she knew, dislocated, and didn’t know if she would ever feel part of their world again.
