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‘Get in the car,’ Joseph says. He closes the boot, loads what they brought from the house on to the back seat and goes around to the driver’s side. Once he’s behind the wheel, he says, as calmly as he can manage, ‘We’re not going to bury him.’
Max twists around. ‘What?’
‘We can’t change what’s happened. But the choices we make from here have consequences. There are his loved one to consider, for a start. If we try to cover this up, they’re the people we’ll be torturing, because they’ll never find out the truth. There’ll just be this terrible hole in their lives. This awful abyss.’
‘What’re you saying?’ the boy asks. ‘I should hand myself in?’
Angry, Joseph shakes his head. ‘You think I want your life ruined over a single, tragic mistake? Because itwouldbe ruined, you’re right about that. A criminal record would slam shut the very door you’ve spent all these years in education trying to open. How many lives does the average trauma surgeon save in a career? Hundreds? Thousands? You think I’d get in the way of that?
‘Butthis… To pretend it never happened. To leave another family without answers. We have no right to do this. I can’t live with the thought of people suffering for the rest of their lives because we decided to cover this up. And I doubt you can, either.’
Joseph wraps his fingers around the steering wheel. He tightens his grip until the plastic squeals. ‘So here’s what we’re going to do. And I want you to listen carefully, and take in all in, because I know you won’t like it, even though it really is the best solution.’
He licks his lips and tries to swallow, but his throat is so dry he nearly retches. ‘After we dump what we brought from the house, we’re going to drive back to the spot where this happened and put things back exactly as they were. Then you’re going to walk home, get rid of the tarpaulin along the way. I’ll wait a while. Then I’ll call the police, say I fell asleep at the wheel, that I—’
Max rears away. ‘Dad, no. You can’t—’
‘I told you tolisten,’ Joseph hisses. ‘Because this makes sense. Think about it. I haven’t been drinking. I’ve got a perfect driving record. And at least I’m insured. We can cope with the consequences, however they play out. It won’t be disastrous.’
‘You’re going to let Erin think youkilledsomeone?’ Max shouts. ‘Tilly, too? Have you even considered what that might do to them?’
Joseph’s heart aches. Because he hadn’t, not yet, and because it still doesn’t change his mind. His loves his wife, regardless of their difficulties, but he loves his son more. ‘This kind of secret,’ he says. ‘It would eat away at you. Until there’s nothing left.’
‘And you being in prison wouldn’t? Fucking hell, you’re delusional, Dad.’
‘Max, you don’t underst—’
‘No,youdon’t understand.’
‘Put your seatbelt on.’
‘I’m not putting my—’
‘Max—’
‘You don’t have all the facts!’
Joseph freezes, his hands still clutching the wheel. Because that voice didn’t sound like his son’s. He twists around – convinced, suddenly, that the words came from behind him, possibly from inside the tarpaulin.
His horror is a noose drawing tight around his windpipe,choking off his breath. It’s too dark to see anything back there, to see if that bungee-wrapped package has sat up straight.
Abruptly, Joseph’s reason floods back. The voice might not have sounded familiar, but he knows that it belonged to Max. He thinks of how he’d felt in the kitchen, his sense that he was talking to a stranger. ‘I told you earlier not to hide anything. So if I don’t have all the facts, what am I missing?’
Max breathes slowly, through his nostrils. Then, in a tone far different from any Joseph has heard before, he says, ‘You’re not going to like it, Dad, and I wish more than anything I didn’t have to tell you. But when I stopped the car, the guy was still alive.’
SIX
Headlights appear at the end of the street. Joseph tries to formulate a question, but his brain seems to have seized again. He feels his eyebrows fluttering, worries he’s about to pass out. The headlights grow brighter. He hears the whine of a battery motor, the clink and clatter of glass. Three parked cars from theirs, a milk float pulls into the kerb. The driver jumps out, grabs a carry crate and disappears up a nearby driveway.
‘You remember the deer?’ Max asks.
Joseph’s stomach yawns away from him. Because he knows, immediately, what his son is talking about.
The milkman reappears. He transfers his empty bottles to the float and starts to refill his crate.
They’d hit the deer last summer, driving home. A fawn had sprung from the undergrowth and bolted across the road. Joseph managed to avoid it, but he couldn’t avoid the mother, who followed an instant later. The impact took her in the flank and sent her pirouetting past his window.
Joseph stopped the car, got out. The doe was a mess of broken legs, wild eyes and frothing blood. He stared at her for a while. Then he fetched a torque wrench from his car and did the only humane thing possible. His first strikedidn’t kill her, just distressed her further, turning her chest into forge bellows. His second attempt cratered her skull and ended her life. When he turned around he found two sets of eyes watching him: the fawn’s and his son’s.