Free Wakening the Crow by Stephen Gregory

jests.
    Footsteps behind us.
    As we were standing up and about to move away from the frozen grass, there was a crunch of footsteps on the gravel, the flash of a torchlight, and a calm, authoritative, sympathetic voice.
    A man, apologetic. Wanting, as discreetly as possible, to tell us it was time to leave the premises. Were we relatives of the deceased, were we family or friends of Mr. Heap? He was so sorry and could he express his condolences?
    He angled his torch at the place where we’d been kneeling. Even that, the way he played the beam onto the plaque we’d been touching, was carefully respectful, not wanting to intrude at a time of great sadness. Sad, yes, the passing-away of Mr. Heap, an old gentleman who’d given so much to the community, to the city of Nottingham. And last year, when was it? Last spring... the torch caressed the plaque and illumined the date on it... there’d been a terrible a car accident.
    Me and Chloe, we walked away, our feet crunching, our breath pluming in the man’s torchlight as he escorted us to the gate of the crematorium. He was asking, were we alright? We could get a bus to Long Eaton, yes the 7B, from the bus-stop on the other side of the road, thank you, good night and take care... he was thanking us for leaving and letting him lock up and go home, his voice was so kind, trained in the business of bereavement.
    My mind was a jumble of thoughts, as we waited at the bus-stop and Chloe squeezed my hand with hers. Connections. PTO 725G, diamonds of glass, the tooth of Edgar Allan Poe.

 
    Chapter Twelve
     
     
    O F COURSE I’ D known about the accident. Everyone in the area knew about it. As well as featuring on the front page of the Nottingham Evening Post , it was reported on local television news.
    ‘A seven-year-old girl has been injured in a hit-and-run incident, in Breaston village. A few minutes later, the car involved, travelling very fast along the Derby Road towards the centre of Long Eaton, apparently swerved out of control and struck the pillars at the entrance of Derwent College. The driver, Mrs. Angela Henson, 24, and her husband Mr. Andrew Henson, 29, were rushed to the Queen’s Medical Centre, where they both died of their injuries. Chloe Gooch, the child involved in the hit-and-run incident, sustained a head injury from which she is expected to make a full recovery.’
    Of course I’d known about it. All I’d seen in a matter of seconds, like a clip from a movie, was the attractive couple in a nifty sports-car... a pretty blonde woman and a good-looking man, so typically glamorous that they could have been actors playing a part in a TV soap, accelerating past the camera and snarling angrily at each other at the same time. If the director had shouted Cut! at that moment and they’d stopped and got out, everything would’ve been fine. But it wasn’t a soap, it was real life. And in real life they didn’t stop. A child was brain-damaged, and five minutes later a young married couple were smashed into the windscreen of their nice little car.
    It was like a cancer in my belly. Me, so engrossed in the nonsense about saxophones that I’d sent Chloe to the pub for crisps and fizzy drinks. Me, so exasperated with her and the wretched wasp that I couldn’t help laughing when she pulled off her shirt and ran outside... me, ignoring her when she snapped at me, you can see what I’m fucking doing, because it fucking stung me that’s why , and I thought it was funny...
    She’d been right. I would never learn to play the saxophone. The guilt in my belly, gnawing at me whenever I saw the doubt and fear in Rosie’s eyes... the guilt I felt when that shameful, recurring thought came cringeing and fawning and wheedling into my brain, like a craven cur skulking in the shadows... that I liked Chloe more as a simpering angel than I had when she’d been herself. How to atone? How?
    And the beautiful couple? Was that my fault too? I had a blurry fantasy that they’d seen