‘Who was at the wheel? Yvonne?’ My voice comes out high-pitched. ‘Jo, what are you talking about?’
‘Listen, I don’t want to cause you alarm unnecessarily—’
‘It’s a bit late for that!’
‘—so I’ll ring Ian and see what he can find out and then ring you back.’
‘No! No! Don’t hang up on me! Jo! Jo, just tell me—’
‘I’ll ring you straight back. I promise.’
I’m torn between keeping the phone line clear and ringing Iris. I get up and pace up and down, phone in hand, and then I call Iris. But it goes straight to voicemail.
It seems like an eternity before Jo rings me back. I answer without registering the caller ID.
‘Hi, Mum.’ It’s not Jo. It’s Iris. For a few seconds, I’m so stunned I can’t say anything. ‘Mum, you rang. I’m returning your call?’ she says. Her intonation rises, as if she’s asking me a question.
‘Iris! Where are you?’
‘We’re on our way home.’
‘You’re not—’
‘I’m not driving, no, Mum,’ she says. ‘Tom is.’ I imagine her rolling her eyes at Tom Fischer.
That’s not what I was going to ask, although I do warn Iris all the time not to touch her phone while she’s driving. I was going to ask if she was hurt. The aborted conversation with Jo, if you can even call it a conversation, has caused all sorts of wild ideas to streak through my head. Jo said something about an overturned car and she mentioned Yvonne, but it wasn’t clear to me if she meant that Yvonne had flipped her car. If so, why did she ask where Iris was?
‘OK,’ I say. ‘Go slowly.’
‘I’m not the one driving, Mum,’ she reminds me. ‘And we are going slowly, like really slowly. We’re stuck behind a tractor.’ She giggles.
‘Are you on the link road?’
‘No. There was a sign up to say it’s closed.’
‘Why’s the link road closed?’
‘How should I know?’ she says. I need to get Iris off the phone and get hold of Jo, find out what’s going on. ‘Are you all right, Mum?’ Her tone has softened.
‘Yes, sweetie.’ I force myself to sound normal. ‘I’ll see you when you get home.’
I end the call with my daughter and try Jo once, but it goes to voicemail. I resume my pacing, but some of the tension has left my shoulders. Whatever spooked Jo, it was a false alarm. Iris is fine. I try to piece together the snippets Jo gave me. An overturned car. Yvonne at the wheel. Where does Iris fit in? It doesn’t make sense. What’s taking Jo so long?
The ringtone doesn’t even sound on my mobile when Jo finally gets back to me – I answer the phone as soon as I see her name flash up on the screen.
‘I’ve just spoken to Iris,’ I say. ‘She’s on her way home after a swim with a friend. They’re not on the link road.’ It all comes out in a gush. ‘What’s going on, Jo?’
‘Oh, thank goodness,’ she says. I hear her sigh with relief and a wave of relief breaks over me, too. ‘Well, Iamon the link road and there has been an accident.’
‘A car accident?’
‘Yes. The traffic is completely stationary in front of me and behind me. But seconds after we came to a standstill, this car came racing through on the other side of the road, swerving all over the place and I could have sworn it was Yvonne Knoll. It was the last car to come through from the other direction. It’s all blocked in both directions now.’
‘That’s strange.’
‘I know!’
‘But I don’t get it. Why did you ask about Iris?’
