Violent Possibility

Eighteen years ago, I was twenty-one years’ old and on my way to London’s Leicester Square to meet my new boyfriend when I knocked a pedestrian down.  I was driving alone.  The stereo would have been blaring R&B but I don’t recall the soundtrack; when I replay that night in my mind, there is no sound at all.  I drive my dad’s red Sierra past the train station, the rush of people spilling out, shouting silently.

As I make my way over the hill, a man in a dark suit walks out in front of me.  It is the first – and only – time I ever have to perform an emergency break for real.  But, it isn’t enough.  I don’t remember what part of him shatters my windscreen first – perhaps his forehead, perhaps his chin – but I’ll never forget the twist of his body flying over the bonnet and the way his eyes stare into mine for an eternity before the inevitable happens.  I’ll never forget the smear of his blood over the glass or his crumpled body thrown in a heap on the road.

I’d like to say that I run straight out of the car to perform CPR, or at the very least ring for an ambulance.  But I don’t do either.  I stand in the middle of the road while white noise fills my head and escapes out of my open mouth along with my soul, floating up in the night air towards the stars.  There must be people around to account for the witness reports and the arrival of both police and ambulance services.  When I close my eyes, I sometimes see a kindly woman taking me by the arm and sitting me down on the roadside, although I may have invented this memory.

I’m ashamed to say that I’m not really thinking about him, that man lying on the tarmac.  Not really.  I’m thinking, I have killed a man.  I’m not thinking about his wife, sitting at the kitchen table in her purple towelling dressing gown, staring at the wall clock, waiting for his return.  I’m not thinking about the kids tucked up in bed, waiting for daddy to tip toe in and kiss the tops of their heads while they pretend to be asleep.  I’m thinking, I have killed someone and I am going to prison.  I’m waiting for the police to handcuff me and manhandle me into the back of their van, to be locked in a cell with a cold hard floor and left to rot.  I’m thinking in pictures.  I’m not thinking at all.

Several years later, a friend of mine is driving down the motorway when blonde twin boys decide to play chicken.  She reports the story matter-of-factly, not breaking eye contact with me all the while.  She describes how one boy’s scalp ripped off on impact; blood, hair and skin everywhere.  She was stronger than me; she got out of the car and tended to the boys, performing basic first aid before dialling 999.

I’m put in a police car but I’m not driven to the station.  Instead, I’m driven home, where my mum’s eyes widen as she watches her daughter cry hysterically on the doorstep.  She makes the policemen a cup of tea and they tell her that witnesses say I was only doing twenty miles per hour, the street light was down, he stepped right out in front of me and I braked, there was nothing else I could have done.  I sit uncomprehending, waiting to be taken away.  They sip tea from my mum’s best china.  They are relaxed, laughing even.  The man has been taken to hospital but it looks as though he’s fine.

He was drunk, says the younger cop, grinning.  Had one too many beers after work.  He’ll probably wake up with a bump on his head and wonder what happened.

The next morning, the police pop round to update me.  The man is absolutely fine, after all.  That’ll put him off the booze, they joke and leave.  My boyfriend – someone must have called him yesterday – arrives to pick me up in his car.  I get in.  I fidget in the passenger seat while he drives us to a friend’s wedding.  All those cars on the road.  All those people stepping on and off pavements.  My heart in my mouth at every turn of the wheel, every press of the accelerator.  He asks if I’m okay.  Years later, I make him promises wearing a white dress.

When the windscreen is fixed, I drive my dad’s Sierra again.  My parents never doubt my ability to drive safely but when I tell people about the accident, some ask, Were you drinking?  I don’t think much about the incident for years until my friend tells me about the detached scalp.

We are the victims, she says, you and I.  I stormed into that hospital room to visit those boys.  I screamed at their mother, Do you know what your sons have put me through?

The twins were okay.  It is through luck alone that our stories had happy endings.  I drive for another four years and then one day I stop.  Maybe it is because my rusty old Fiesta is beyond economic repair.  Maybe it is because it is silly to own a car in London.  Maybe it is because it is cheaper, greener and healthier to walk.  Or maybe it is because the roads are too full of reckless pedestrians.  Violent possibility.  Now, my husband and I have a four-year-old son who likes vroom-vrooming toy cars round the living room.  People keep asking me when I am going to get a little run around.  You’ll need one when he gets older, they say and I shudder.