“Not sure. Neither of us could recall their faces. Sergeant Kamdar reckons our memories will return in a day or two.”
Radio silence. Tom was about to check if Connor was still on the line when Connor spoke. “If you’re sure? Xanthe’s dropping hints that she wants help with wedding prep, though that’s honestly the last thing I can be arsed doing. But I can come back if something’s wrong.”
“No need to worry. I’ll let you know if anything develops. Amel—my friend’s about to leave, but she’ll let me know if she remembers anything.”
“Okay, well keep me posted, yeah?”
“Will do. Wait, Connor?”
“Yeah?”
“Have you taken anything from the library recently—a book of family history stuff?”
“Didn’t know there was one. Why do you ask?”
“Just couldn’t see it there this morning. No big deal.”
He ended the call, regretting making it. Connor was the kind of guy who carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Tom would bet good money, if he had any, that Connor wouldn’t be sorry to see the back of the place, even after his efforts to save it. No bottle of dodgy brandy would erasehismemories.
Amelia’s car started, and Tom watched until it disappeared from view. He picked up the glass paperweight, running a finger over its rough, irregular planes. Miss Havisham groaned. “I know, I know,” he said. He couldn’t help feeling like a coward, for planning not to be here to look the old girl in the eye as the wrecking ball hit, or whatever method of execution they were planning. He wouldn’t be at all surprised if she screamed.
He’d told himself he’d feel nothing but relief to be liberated of the house and its baggage. To have time for a life of his own, rather than spending his days worried simultaneously about dry rot and regular rot, and knowing that even if he somehow eliminated those, another two issues would swiftly take their place at the top of the crisis list, like an eternal Tetris game. To pay no heed to what had gone before or what would come next, or whether he was doing justice to both. Live a life that was just his.
As he emptied the vacuum into the rubbish bin, his mobile beeped. A voice message from the sergeant. He set it to play, almost feeling his blood pressure rising. Maybe she’d bumped into Duncan in the village and they’d had a big old laugh.
“Tom, I’ve checked in with the poisons people, and they say you and Amelia absolutely shouldn’t drive for another twenty-four hours. There’s still a risk of blackouts and hallucinations. And eat and drink loads, to flush out the toxins. But just water and juice, though, yeah? Take care, pet.”
Tom rubbed his eyes. Even if Amelia had mobile coverage, he didn’t have her number. He could probably catch her up though. She’d have just made it to the road, and she’d be taking it slowly in the creeping fog.
And the idea of spending another day with her wasn’t an unhappy prospect. In fact, he’d been about to suggest she waited until the fog cleared, but he’d stopped himself. Plenty of people drove that road every day in fog, whether they were familiar with it or not. It was just an invented excuse to delay the inevitable. But now he had a real excuse.
As he clicked the dust box back into the vacuum cleaner, something rolled out of the mechanism. He picked it up. A small emerald, from an earring, perhaps. Amelia’s? There was also something stuck in the filter. He reached in and tugged it out. A clump of shaggy gray hair. He dropped it on the desk, blinking stupidly at it. The same sort of hair they’d seen peeping out of the rug. The hair they had supposedly hallucinated. He touched it again, super quickly, just to be sure. It was matted together with dried blood and dirt.
From outside came a distant screech. Locked car tires skidding on gravel. Amelia. Tom waited a couple of seconds, hands fisted, blood heating, and then it came—a sickening metallic crunch.
Chapter 9
Tom
Even as Tom raced outside, he wondered if this could be a hallucination, his mind flashing back to another damp, foggy day, seventeen years ago. The squeal of tires, and one smashing crunch after another. The feeling in his veins was the same—that the blood had seized, even while his heart pumped hard enough to burst.
After a moment’s hesitation, he took off on foot. The crash had to be on the same bend as last time. It’d be quicker to speed-run the shortcut through the trees than take the car.
He yelled Amelia’s name, but the thick air seemed to swallow his voice. There had only been one crunch this time. She’d hit something, but she hadn’t rolled off the cliff.
He slalomed through the beech trees in the glade, with the prickly sensation of his fifteen-year-old self racing beside him. He’d been slower off the mark back then, had wasted time trying to find his grandfather after hearing the crash, only minutes after he’d heard Connor’s car leave. He could feel the same hollow guilt from having bitten his tongue when he should have begged Eddie and Connor not to drive to the village—he’d seen them nicking bottles from the cellar earlier that day—but he hadn’t wanted to be the uncool little brother. He should havelistened to his instinct. Just as he should have listened to his instinct to stop Amelia from driving in the fog.
Back then, he arrived at the crash site to find his grandfather and Duncan already there. A neighbor had gone for the police and ambulance. Deep in the gully across the lane, Connor’s little Vauxhall Corsa was hardly recognizable as a car, like a giant had crushed it into tin foil. But by some miracle, the boys were alive. Connor sat on the stony ground, head in hands, rocking, confused about where he was and what had happened, blood from a cut on his cheek coating his face and neck. Eddie, dazed and smeared with blood from a head wound, rambled about a ghost. Duncan wrapped his scarf around Eddie’s wound, Eddie fighting him off.
This time, when Tom burst through the tree line onto the gravel road, the tire marks didn’t head straight off the cliff, not quite. They led to a young oak overhanging the chasm, in which Amelia’s white hatchback was neatly caught, just its rear wheels touching the ground. Beyond, the gully was filled with fog. A sickening groan rose—from the tree or the car, Tom couldn’t tell. The car lurched forward.
“Amelia!”
He sprinted across the road, his body fueled with heat and cold at once. As if it had heard his warning, the car halted, teetering. The air was eerily quiet but for a rhythmic groan and scrape as the car swung slightly in the tree. Either the engine had stopped of its own accord or Amelia had turned it off. As Tom reached the back of the car, it shunted forward again. Several branches gave, in a rapid-fire of snaps. Tom had helped Duncan plant a row of oaks after the first crash, to save a repeat, but they were still little more than saplings. It wouldn’t hold for long.
“Amelia!”
What if she was unconscious? Knocked out by the steering wheel? He’d have to crawl in and pull her out, while not unbalancing the car and sending them down the cliff.
