‘You can’t drive,’ I said, fighting sudden tears. ‘You can’t be alone, either.’ I turned to the two officers, telling them my name, not sure if I was introducing or reintroducing myself, for this conversation – time itself – was creasing and stretching in peculiar ways. ‘I’ll make sure he gets there safely. Do you have an address for the hospital?’ I could not say ‘mortuary’; my brain could think the word but my voicebox could not produce it. ‘We’ll take the train. It goes from Victoria, I’m guessing. I’ll check.’ I’d phone for a taxi to take us to the station, I thought. I’d sit next to him for the whole journey, not let him out of my sight.
But I could see the police officers were uncertain of me, had picked up on Arthur’s rejection of me, and neither judged it safe to supply the details. ‘If you prefer to make your way separately, that’s fine,’ Officer Wayne told him, continuing to speak very gently, ‘but Emily is right, you shouldn’t drive. Is there anyone else you’d like us to contact who might take you? A family member or close friend? We’d be happy to phone them for you and wait with you until they arrive.’
‘My brother,’ Arthur said. ‘He’s in north London. He’ll take me.’
‘What’s his name? Is his number in your phone?’
‘Yes. Toby Woodhall.’
‘Your phone’s in the bedroom,’ I said. ‘I’ll get it for you, shall I?’ All three of them looked at me then and I regretted having been so specific, not because of the officers, who exhibited a studied lack of judgement in their appreciation of my offer, but because of Arthur, who regarded me with utter bewilderment, as if he couldn’t comprehend how an uninvited guest should know the whereabouts of any of his possessions or consider it her business to roam his house. I fetched the phone, grateful to leave the room for a minute, also grateful to see that he’d missed no calls during our night together. However, returning downstairs I remembered the second phone, the one I’d seen recharging in his study. Not sure which held his brother’s number, I decided to bring both. As soon as I handled the second one, the display lit up with an alert for two missed calls.
By the time I returned to the kitchen, Arthur’s expression had distorted into one of near-revulsion for me. I wanted to protest, remind him that he loved me and I loved him, that we loved each other. I wanted to vow to him that he would survive this tragedy, that one way or another he would continue to live, but I could say none of those things, of course.
He noticed the missed calls at once, fingers finding the itemised log. ‘There’s a message from Hugo,’ he said in a tone of terrible wonder, and I was relieved when the officers suggested he wait a while before listening to any voicemails. Officer Matthews then made the call to Toby, who, I gathered, promised to set off from his house directly. It was agreed that I would take interim guardianship of Arthur and, having offered final condolences, the officers departed. I was moved by how shaken they looked compared with their composure on arrival, even though they must do this every day. But then I thought, no, they don’t, they can’t. Not this bad. This is exceptional.
After they’d gone, I tried to hold him but his body recoiled, its resistance instinctual, and I knew, as I drew away, it was the last time we would touch. Even without his having been told about my phone call to Sylvie, I just knew. And I was not the only part of him that would be banished; he would never again be as he had been, feel as he had felt.
‘I can’t bear this for you,’ I said. ‘I know it’s better if you go with Toby, but I can come to you any time if you need me. Tonight, tomorrow… just say the word. You mustn’t be on your own.’
It was an appalling choice of words and he did not reply.
Toby arrived. He was not like his brother at all, but chaotic in personal style and freely expressive of his anguish. ‘This is unbelievable,’ he kept saying, his voice rising and falling with the strain of an inadequate vocabulary, unpractised emotion. ‘Are they sure? I mean, all three of them? Alex and Hugo? Are they absolutely sure?’ I did not like to trust him with Arthur’s welfare, but I knew I had to.
‘I live up the road,’ I told him. ‘I was bringing back a document your brother lent me and was here when the police arrived.’
Having no reason to know the lie, he thanked me for my kindness and took my number before urging me to leave; he probably thought I was longing to escape and get on with my delayed day.
In my bag my phone rang and rang. It would be Charlotte, but I could not go in to work. I could not guide small children’s hands as they applied paintbrush to ceramic, or lead ‘Happy Birthday’ and call out, ‘Hip, hip, hooray!’ I could not explain to a mother why her child was snivelling or had lost his shoe. I could not smile hello or wave goodbye.
‘Shall I phone you later?’ I said to Arthur, hopeful to the last.
His eyes looked blindly towards me, as if he were able only to follow the disembodied sound of me. ‘No,’ he said, ‘don’t. Don’t phone me.’
I swallowed my sorrow. ‘You’re right,’ I said, as if in agreement. ‘I’ll wait for you to contact me.’
By the afternoon, the deaths had been reported online. There was nothing like the subsequent coverage of the inquest, only brief references amid warnings of severe traffic disruption and temporary road closures. A single image showed an air ambulance at rest on a ghostly carriageway, two lanes of traffic held behind a barrier and backed up as far as the eye could see. You could not see the wreckage or any other emergency vehicles.
On Monday there was a short piece on the
Telegraph
website, which named the family:
The wife and two sons of leading Harley Street eye surgeon Arthur Woodhall have been killed in a road accident in Sussex. The coroner has opened an inquiry into the three deaths, which he has referred to the police for investigation on his behalf. Mr Woodhall is noted for his work in neuro-ophthalmology and strabismus, and lists among his patients members of the British and Saudi Royal Families. As well as running an exclusive private practice in Harley Street, he is a consultant at NHS St Barnabas’ in south London and founder of the AllSight charity, which works to combat blindness in West African countries.
I must have read it fifty times.
I couldn’t say now how many days passed before the coroner’s office rang me, but it was in the immediate aftermath, I’m sure, because I was aware as I pressed the phone to my ear of my face being swollen and sore from nightly crying. The officer, Gwen, told me the investigation was under way, the police having assigned an impressively large team to it. The implication was that Arthur’s VIP status warranted this commitment to maximum efficiency.
‘Would it be possible for someone to come and speak to you?’ she asked. Her manner melded matter-of-fact professionalism with the warm solicitude of a new friend. The former scared me, the latter made my heart clench.
‘Why?’
‘Because you knew one of the deceased, Sylvie Woodhall.’
‘I didn’t know her. I only met her twice, and even then only for a few minutes.’ I felt like a criminal uttering this half-truth.
‘You knew her husband, though, and you spoke to her soon before her death. You may have information that could be useful in understanding her intentions before the collision took place.’
They must have looked at her phone log, I realised. I must have been one of the last people she spoke to. Had I even been the last? It didn’t bear thinking about, but I could see I was going to have to.
‘Has there been a post-mortem?’ I asked, speaking in painful gulps. ‘I mean on Sylvie?’
It was a question that had consumed me these days – these weeks. What I was thinking, what I had by then decided to be fact, was that our phone conversation had caused her to drink and drive. Arthur had told me she did not drink alcohol, or not often, he had as good as said she was a recovering addict. Had my refusal of her ‘deal’ led her to relapse the night before the accident? Unused to its effects, she might not have metabolised it quickly enough and it had acted as poison, affecting her judgement at the wheel.
‘A post-mortem has taken place now, yes,’ Gwen said.
‘What did you discover?’
‘The pathologist is still preparing his report.’ In other words, they weren’t about to tell
me
anything. She said she would pass my number to the investigator and forward me a guide to coroners’ inquiries to give me an idea of what the process would entail.
I told myself it had been inevitable that someone would name me as Arthur’s lover; perhaps Arthur had already done so himself. And on a shameful, subterranean level, I couldn’t stop myself from hoping that being involved in the investigation might bring me into contact with him again. Maybe it would make him remember me. Because the tragedy may have stopped him from loving me, I understood that, but it had not stopped me from loving him.
There was a succession of interviews, in the event, in which the chronology of my affair with Arthur was documented, our plans to live together resurrected, my phone conversation with Sylvie reconstructed in an official statement. I did my best to give the investigator a true and full account. Gwen kept me up to date. As I had feared, she said it had now been established that I was the last person Sylvie had spoken to on the phone, possibly the last person at all besides her sons, and I would certainly be called as a witness at the inquest. The coroner would want to understand her state of mind when she set out on the morning of the accident and my ‘background information’ could be crucial.
They did not say if Arthur knew this or not.
‘Am I… am I in some sort of trouble?’ I asked her.
‘No, you’ve been very helpful and we’d like to thank you for that. The coroner’s job is not to determine criminal liability in any way. He wants only to establish the facts in order to give a verdict on the cause of death.’ Gwen added that the coroner had now issued the authority permitting the three bodies to be buried, and that this in itself signified that no criminal charges were likely to be brought against anyone.
I did not ask where and when the funerals were to take place. Under no circumstances could I show my face on those occasions. Sustained though I was by then entirely on the hope of seeing Arthur again, even for me the thought of watching him lay his sons to rest was unspeakable. I had a vision of Sylvie’s family standing in a horseshoe around a grave, glaring at me with murderous loathing. I knew of the existence of her sister already, the recipient of the yellow dish, and of the niece who had helped Sylvie paint it, but there were probably parents still alive too, other siblings, nieces and nephews, cousins to the boys. Not to mention the relatives on Arthur’s own side. The momentousness of the tragedy overwhelmed me once again and tears spilled down my face.
‘Do I
have
to attend the inquest?’ I said. ‘What would happen if I said no?’
There was the sound of an exhalation, not quite a sigh. Gwen was too tender-hearted to let on that she was bored or irritated by the protests she must encounter day in, day out. ‘I know it’s upsetting, Emily, but there’s nothing to be afraid of. To answer your question, you can either come voluntarily or we can issue a formal summons.’
I banished the row of faces, the branches on the family tree. There was no question that I would refuse. ‘Of course I’ll come, if you think I can help.’
She said there was a very good support service for witnesses and, if I wished, someone would accompany me on the day.
‘I don’t need that, thank you,’ I said. ‘When will it be?’
‘We’ll let you know the date as soon as it’s set. It will be the new year at the earliest, depending on the complexity of the investigation.’
I felt as if I’d been struck in the chest: the new year at the earliest! The idea of reaching January of the following year, months away, was unthinkable, like being asked to swim the Atlantic. To have to swim the Atlantic before I could see Arthur again… I admit I cried even harder after the call ended, hopelessly sorry for myself. At least it was in the morning and I was still at home, free to lie on my bed sobbing and writhing till the torment subsided. Had I taken such a call at work, I would have had to put down the phone and pretend I was not in the middle of a waking nightmare. For I had to continue working, of course. I had to or I’d very quickly be destitute.
Charlotte had accepted my excuse on the Saturday of the accident that I’d been consoling a neighbour, having become drawn into the crisis on my way to the dentist’s. She’d already heard news of it and was prepared to give me the benefit of the doubt. But from the Monday, I had no choice but to behave as if as personally unaffected as she was, for I could hardly explain my true involvement and expect any sympathy. To excuse my facial swelling I told her I’d suffered an allergic reaction to a mosquito bite, which seemed to work, but when I lost control and was found in tears while washing up the chocolate fountain, I had to improvise and say my father had had a relapse. I felt the additional misery of the lie as heavily as if it were true.
‘Oh, poor you,’ she said. ‘You know how close I am to
my
father. I can’t think of anything worse to have to deal with.’
I could.
‘Except that poor guy who lost his whole family,’ she added. ‘The surgeon. I guess
that
’s
worse. You can tell something terrible’s happened, can’t you? I mean locally, right down the road.’ Since our adult customers talked of little else but the ‘triple tragedy’, conspicuously shielding their children’s ears from their gossip, this was stating the obvious. ‘It’s a relief when someone comes in from out of the area and doesn’t know anything about it. But even then, there’s just this weird atmosphere.’
Perhaps it was me; perhaps it descended when I arrived and lifted when I left.
‘I wonder if she ever came in here,’ Charlotte mused. ‘Sylvie Woodhall.’ Her attitude of compassion was agonised, for no one embodied better than her the emotion of ‘There but for the grace of God go I’. While a minute ago she had been beside herself with relief that she was not the one with a parent dying in hospital, now she counted her blessings that it was Sylvie Woodhall who’d lost control of a speeding vehicle and not her.