‘Is that you?’ asked Fiona, pushing her glasses back up her nose for closer inspection. Libby didn’t reply. ‘It is, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, definitely,’ Muriel added.
Libby saw herself dip her hand into her bag, remove the phone she still used today, and begin to talk. It was her mum who had called, Libby remembered, checking whether she would be travelling home to Northampton the following weekend for Father’s Day. Her mum had been planning to cook a Sunday roast for the three of them. Libby had informed her that she was on emergency call that weekend. Even as the lie tripped off her tongue, Libby hated herself for doing it. But spending even a minute in that house made her want to run a mile.
As she ended the call, two women and a pushchair across the road caught her eye. It was their laughter that drew her attention and Libby found herself wishing she and her mum still had that kind of relationship. She couldn’t recall the last time they’d joked together.
The women turned sharply and, from behind a parked car, began to cross the road, unaware of a moving vehicle ten metres away from them. Libby expected the car to swerve and stop – there was time and space even if it meant colliding with a stationary vehicle. Instead, it braked sharply but didn’t veer from its course. She opened her mouth to shout a warning to the women but before the words could escape it was too late. As the vehicle skidded to a halt, it ploughed into them like a bowling ball into skittles, sending them flying.
The younger of the two women took the direct brunt and was scooped up and into the windscreen, before being thrown high above the car and landing on the road behind it. The older one was dragged under the front. Meanwhile the pushchair was shoved many metres along the road and the baby ejected, its tiny body sliding across the asphalt.
From the inquest room, tears pooled in Libby’s eyes as footage from a second camera played, this time attached to the dashboard of the vehicle involved in the collision. Libby relived the moment she dropped her bag to the pavement and heard the glass jars holding her candles shatter as she ran towards the injured. Her first instinct was to aid the baby but a woman with more medical knowledge than her was clearing the child’s airways and giving her mouth-to-mouth. Somehow, she was alive.
She turned to the woman caught under the front of the car. Libby crouched over her; the victim’s cropped grey hair was matted with blood from gashes to her forehead and crown. Her eyes were wide open but her stare was glazed and lifeless.
Libby’s attention turned to the opening of a car door and a Passenger slowly alighting, his mouth wide open and his skin as pale as a ghost. He was around the sameage as Libby and she could see his windscreen contained computer games graphics. She assumed he had been playing as the accident occurred. ‘The car … it drives itself … it’s not my fault …’ he muttered.
Now aware of the commotion, more people gravitated towards the scene, shouting and screaming and calling for the emergency services. New footage, this time taken from a glasses cam, showed Libby hurrying towards the third person who’d been thrown over the vehicle. Several people gathered around the woman, unsure of how to assist. Libby pushed her way through them and immediately noted how the victim’s limbs were contorted and misshapen, her eyes wet and her mouth bloody. Pink spit bubbles oozed from her lips with each shallow breath. Libby used her first aid training to check the woman’s vital signs, then slipped her fitness tracker ring on the woman’s finger and checked the results on her mobile phone. Her pulse was barely detectable, her heart almost at a standstill and her stress levels at a maximum. It would require a miracle to turn around her fortunes.
‘My daughter …’ she gasped, a fine, bloody mist coming from her mouth. Libby took hold of the hand that didn’t look broken. It was icy cold. ‘My little girl …’ she said again and Libby held the hand close to her own face to offer her warmth. ‘She’s safe,’ Libby lied. Now was not a time for honesty and the woman appeared momentarily pacified. ‘And Janice?’ she asked.
‘She’s going to be okay, she’s just a little bruised,’ Libby replied. ‘What’s your name?’
The woman coughed and more blood, thicker this time, appeared in the corners of her mouth. ‘I need … to see them but I can’t move …’ she said anxiously.
‘You’ve probably fractured a few bones,’ Libby replied, but it was clear there was so much more to her injuriesthan that. ‘I’ll wait here with you until the ambulance arrives, then once you’re in hospital, you can see your family. How does that sound?’
‘Do you promise?’
Libby forced a smile, quietly willing herself not to cry and give away the truth.
With sirens announcing the impending arrival of emergency services vehicles, Libby watched helplessly as any remaining fight gradually drained from the woman. Her hand went limp.
‘Stay with me,’ Libby begged. ‘What’s your name? Tell me what your name is.’
Her reply was a dying breath as her head lolled to one side.
Libby remembered each second with clarity. Over the days that followed, she called a former colleague who now worked in ICU regarding the baby. The accident had left her with terrible injuries, including a desperate need for a new liver. But before a donor could be found, she lost her battle.
Libby had chosen not to attend the coroner’s court, but made a statement by video about what she had witnessed. Months later, when she learned the vehicle had been completely exonerated from blame, she was furious. She knew what she had seen. The car had had the opportunity to avoid those pedestrians but it had chosen to put its Passenger first.
Her phone calls, letters and emails to the courts were ignored and each time she posted about it on social media or message boards, they had been swiftly deleted. Eventually she had little choice but to give up. Then when it was announced that Level Five cars were to become mandatory on all British roads, she lent her support to petitions, marches and demonstrations. But they too had all been for nothing.
Watching the footage for the first time didn’t bring back any forgotten memories for Libby. Not a single one had left her in the intervening years.
Matthew reached into his briefcase and removed a packet of tissues, passing them to her. She nodded her thanks and dabbed at her eyes. She felt the warmth of his hand through her blouse as it momentarily rested on her shoulder.
‘I remember that case,’ said Muriel. ‘Terribly, terribly sad. Three members of the same family wiped out, just like that.’
‘And all because they were too busy gossiping to watch where they were going,’ said Jack.
‘That car had time to avoid them,’ Libby replied firmly.
‘That’s not what the evidence suggested,’ Jack replied.
‘I was there, you were not.’
‘Well, I think that explains your disrespect for our process, Miss Dixon. With your bias, you should never have been allowed on this jury. If it were up to me, you’d be out of here.’
