Imogen is screaming for me to help her. She’s given up trying to reach Toby through the windscreen and she’s tugging again on his car door, the one that didn’t receive the impact, but it won’t budge. She keeps calling his name, but he doesn’t move.
“He’s dying,” she yells. “Give me your phone again.”
Imogen calls 999 once more and puts them on speaker, her voice desperate, pleading with them to get here as quickly as they can.
“I’m afraid they’re dying,” she says.
“Help is on the way,” the operator replies. “They’re very close. Are the victims breathing?”
“I don’t know. I couldn’t reach him to feel for a pulse. Mark, is the woman breathing?”
“It’s Ruth,” I say. “She had a faint pulse.”
“Ruth?” she says. She looks up from the phone and at me. “Toby’s Ruth?” she asks. I think she’s cracking. This is too much for her. I need to take control of the situation. A young girl shouldn’t have to deal with this, not when she has so much more trauma to come and has suffered so much already. I don’t want my daughter to be broken beyond repair. But she doesn’t move.
The operator is still talking to us via the speakerphone, the voice disembodied and strange. “We’ll check if the male is breathing,” I say. “We know you’re coming.” I hang up.
“Sweetheart,” I say to Imogen, and I force myself to sound gentle though I want to scream at her to get away from this mess. The sounds Ruth is making are bothering me. “You need to go in.”
She ignores me and climbs into Ruth’s car.
“Imogen!” I shout.
She starts talking to Ruth, her head right alongside Ruth’s, telling her to hang in there, that it’s going to be okay.
I lean into the car. I’m going to drag Imogen out of there and make her go back to the house. This is all wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
I try to grab Imogen but she lashes out at me, hard and unexpectedly. It’s the shock more than the force of her reaction that causes me to fall onto my knees beside the car. I feel disoriented. Why won’t Imogen obey me? She’s supposed to do what I tell her.
I haul myself up and reach for her again and this time she reacts more savagely than before.
“Get off,” she screams.
“Imogen,” I say. “I’m your father.” She’s breaking my heart. She doesn’t respect me.
I get hold of her, finally, and grip her so tightly she’ll never be able to get away from me. I drag her out of the car, and she fights it, twisting, raining blows on me however she can, but I succeed and pull her close enough to wrap my arms around her and envelop her. For a moment her body slackens and she feels as vulnerable as a young doe, or a colt that has just taken its first few steps. But when I try to hug her tighter she goes crazy again, hitting me, shouting at me.
“Mark!” Her voice sounds strange, and I release my grip. It was too tight. I see that now. A mistake. “I’m sorry,” I say to her. “I was just trying to protect you.”
She coughs, her hand on her chest, and the look she directs at me makes me feel inhuman. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forget it.
“Please, Imogen, call me Daddy. I did a DNA test. I’m your daddy. I’ll have the results soon, it should be any minute now, sweetie, and then you’ll see that it’s true.”
She backs away from me. There’s blood on her face and on her hands.
And there’s nothing loving in her expression at all.
“What is it?” Jayne asks.
She’s exhausted by Emily’s flip-flopping from friendly to hostile, exhausted by the fact that Emily might be lying, now. She nearly left after Emily screamed at her, but she promised Mark that she would support Emily, and she will.
“I’m scared.”
“I know you are. I am, too.”
“You are?” Jayne nods.
“Were you scared when we were at the barn? Or were you really that cool about the letter?”
