Run, Mummy, Run (18 page)

‘Sarah,’ she pleaded, ‘please stop James from crying; I can’t think.’

Aisha swallowed hard, peered ahead – up the lanes of traffic – and tried to think. There was no sign of a motorbike’s single red tail light in among the pairs of car lights. If he did know where they were heading he could be going ahead to lie in wait at the retreat for when they arrived. She shivered, every muscle in her body tensing in fear as it had done in the garage. There was no way she could park the car on the driveway at the retreat and make it to the front door if Mark was already there and lying in wait. Even if she and the children ran across the driveway, they wouldn’t be able to make it. She thought of the secluded drive with its hedges and trees, and the bell she would have to ring, and then be answered before they were safe. No, it wasn’t possible, Mark would grab them as soon as they stepped from the car. Her stomach contracted and she felt sick with fear. She swallowed the bile rising in her throat.

‘Mum, what are we going to do?’ Sarah asked, her small voice breaking.

‘I don’t know. Please, just look after James, will you. I’m trying to think.’

James was still sobbing uncontrollably and it was making driving very difficult. What with the dark, the rain, her terror, looking at the tail lights in front, and all these cars and lorries, her head was spinning. If only she had a mobile, she could have phoned the monk or even called the police. She could have pulled off, stayed locked in the car and phoned 999. But there’d been no credit on her mobile for years and she didn’t even know where her phone was now. No money for a mobile, clothes, or even food, only a brand new motorbike.

Without a phone, and with no way of contacting anyone for help, something told Aisha it was better to keep going. It felt safer to be moving; he couldn’t get in while they were in the car. But what was she going to do? Spend all night circling the M25 like a motorway equivalent of the Circle Line? And what about petrol? She hadn’t thought of that. She looked down at the dashboard, scanned the array of illuminated green symbols and dials, and found the petrol needle. Dear God, it was already approaching red. Fear gripped her, and she felt as useless as Mark had always said she was.

‘Sarah, you must stop James crying, please,’ she repeated, though she could have wept herself.

You thought you were getting clever
, she heard Mark say.
Not so clever now, are you? Trapped in the dark and rain and about to run out of petrol. What are you going to do? Panic? I told you you’d never make it without me.
And she thought of what would happen if she went back now and knew she couldn’t, for one way or the other – by his hand or her own she would surely die.

How much petrol had she got left? She glanced again at the dial. Probably no more than half a gallon, which in this big car meant nothing. Probably not enough to get to the retreat, even if she found it first time.

‘I’m scared,’ James said, his sobs at last subsiding.

‘It’s all right,’ Sarah soothed, sounding older than her years. ‘Don’t worry, he’s gone. We’re safe now.’

But for how long?
Aisha thought. How long could they keep going? She checked all around, but there was no sign of the single headlamp, just endless pairs of lights shimmering through the surface spray and rain. Did she have enough petrol to get them to a service station where she could run in and ask for help? But where was the next service station? None had been signposted and she wasn’t even sure they had them on the M25; she couldn’t ever remember seeing one on this stretch of the motorway. Should she turn off? Take the next exit and stop at the first house she came to and run in and ask for help?
Could you call the police, please. My husband is trying to kill me.
Would they believe her? With all the dried blood down her front, and the state she and the children were in, they might. But supposing she turned off and he was following her, and there wasn’t a house or they didn’t answer the door? What then? Perhaps she should pull onto the hard shoulder and wait for a police car to pass. Hadn’t she read somewhere that the police regularly patrolled the motorways? But how often? Ten minutes, twenty, every hour? She’d no idea and it felt safer to keep moving, with the doors locked.

Then she saw him. He was waiting on the hard shoulder. Terror gripped her. There was no mistaking his large frame, the white stripe of his leather suit glowing luminous in the passing headlights. He was standing astride the bike, one leg raised, ready for the off. His helmeted head flicking back and forth as he scanned the passing cars, looking for them in his car. There wasn’t enough time to pull into the middle lane so cars could shield them, there was too much traffic, moving too fast. Aisha clenched the wheel and looking straight ahead continued steadily past him.

‘He’s there!’ Sarah shouted. James shrieked.

Then they heard the roar of engine as the bike accelerated off the hard shoulder and onto the inside lane. Aisha looked in the mirror and saw it tuck itself in half a dozen cars back. The children sunk low in their seats and covered their heads with their hands again. Aisha looked in the mirror as the single headlamp pulled in only a few cars behind them.
He was right about one thing
, she thought, the bike’s multi-reflector beam he’d spoken of in the garage certainly projected a strong forward image; its light was dazzling and unmistakable.

Her eyes darted nervously as she monitored the bright light’s progress. There was another roar of engine as the bike throttled and began to overtake. Her heart pounded and she was sweating, despite the cold. A car horn blared from behind and the single headlamp closed in. It came up between the inside and middle lane, then forced in behind her, almost riding on her bumper. Close, far too close. There was no stopping distance – if she had to suddenly brake he would go straight into her. And the confession she’d made to the monk earlier that morning briefly touched her mind:
I am now so wretched and consumed by bitterness, I think things far too dreadful to speak.

The throb of the bike’s engine drowned out the radio and the headlight began to move outwards again as he accelerated up beside them. He paused outside the window, his giant helmeted head with its black visor leering in at her like a creature of the night. Then another blast of engine and he’d disappeared, the power of the bike projecting him into the night.

‘Has he gone?’ Sarah whispered, daring to peep out.

‘Yes, for now,’ Aisha said.

Yet Aisha’s voice was low and oddly dispassionate as her mind suddenly became calm and focused. She thought of the garage where she’d squatted down beside him, wanting to share and see everything. How she had allowed herself to believe and forgive – the hope, the optimism, her plans for counselling and their future, before he had killed it dead

The traffic picked up speed slightly, 67 mph, 68 mph, and a signboard appeared. Radwood was listed, it was the next exit, the one which should have taken them to the retreat. She peered through the mist and rain, then down at the speedometer – nearly 70 mph. The road cambered slowly to the left and then she saw him again on the hard shoulder. Waiting, watching, looking over his shoulder, looking for his car with them in it.

‘Keep down,’ she said to the children. She drew herself up in her seat, then continued steadily along the inside lane and past him.

He accelerated out and forced a gap in the traffic a short way back. Cars hooted loudly. It was a dangerous game he played – this cat and mouse, driving aggressively. It could escalate into road rage in drivers who weren’t as compliant as she – or how she used to be. Aisha remembered her naïve acceptance in the garage, his attack, and all the years of punishment and degradation, and knew it would all continue if he got to them and forced her to go back. She looked at the red tail lights of the car in front, and then at the bike’s single white beam in her wing mirror. Two cars blocked the bike’s path, keeping him back for a few seconds.

Aisha’s thoughts remained quiet and composed. She glanced in the rear-view mirror at Sarah and James, both slunk low in their seats and secured under their belts. The radio was still on, the DJ was playing a request, and inviting listeners to phone in with theirs. Aisha thought she might one day, she might phone in, for she had plenty of requests, though not all for music.

The bike’s light flashed to full beam and its horn blared, ordering the cars to part and let it through. The drivers let him in; they had little choice if they weren’t about to cause an accident and knock him off his bike. He was riding two cars behind her now, in a few seconds he would be up to her bumper, then level and overtaking. She saw the final signboard for her exit and looked again at the speedometer. The needle was hovering over 65 mph and Aisha began to do some calculations: the speed and distance equalling the stopping time if she were to suddenly brake. She used to be a good judge of speed and distance, in the days when she was good at things, and drove. ‘You drive like a man,’ her father had once said, by way of a compliment. Aisha remembered how good she used to be, and all that she and the children had suffered, and knew she couldn’t go back now or ever.

The single light was directly behind her now, hovering on her offside wing. The bike’s engine was revving, getting ready to come up beside them once again. She glanced between the front and wing mirror, and gripped the wheel very tightly, every muscle in her body tensed.

‘Keep under your seat belts,’ she said to Sarah and James.

The bike’s engine roared and pulled out. Aisha ticked off the seconds, judging which would be the correct one. The bike was level with Sarah’s door now, moving alongside them at 68 mph. Soon, in another second, he would be level with her door, then he would accelerate again, disappearing and re-appearing until they had run out of petrol, when he would finally catch them. He began to draw level with her door, now exactly level, and in that split second she swung her left arm up and over and brought the wheel round, hard right. Hard down, taking their car straight into the middle lane, as hard and fast as she could. She heard a horrendous crunch of metal as the car jolted and spun and the white stripe on the suit disappeared. Then she was braking, braking for all she was worth, spinning, and trying to avoid the other cars.

Tyres screeched, her wheels locked, and they pirouetted out of control. Round and round on the slippery road surface in a dance being mimicked by other cars outside. Steer into a skid, she remembered from the Highway Code, all right in theory, but impossible in practice. There was no time to turn in one direction before you were heading off in another. She clung to the wheel as the car travelled sideways and began to rock; she prayed it wouldn’t turn over. Then as fast as it had started it stopped, bang, straight into the front of another car and they were finally still. Nose to nose, facing the wrong way down the fast lane but miraculously, unbelievably, still upright.

I
t was quiet, so very quiet in the aftermath of the accident, with only the hiss of steam escaping from the engine. It was as though time had taken a breath and was deciding what to do next before exhaling. A freeze-frame of events between the past and future, a brief and silent window in the present, before action needed to be taken.

The first thing Aisha did was to check the children were unhurt. They were dazed and shocked, but otherwise all right. They’d been huddled low in their seats so she was sure they hadn’t seen exactly what had happened, which was a huge relief. The next thing she did was to switch off the radio. It seemed irreverent to leave the music playing given that people were probably hurt. She wondered where Mark was and if he was trapped under her car, but decided even if he was he couldn’t get to them – not with her door crushed and a car rammed against the other side. So she folded her hands loosely in her lap, rested her head back, and waited. She couldn’t do much else as they were trapped in the car but also she felt quite happy waiting. After everything that had happened that day, she found it quite relaxing to simply sit and wait. They weren’t in any danger, and doubtless someone would get them out eventually.

The children seemed content to sit and wait too, now that she had reassured them they were safe and it was only a matter of time before help arrived. They had calmed down, and Sarah had rubbed a patch clear of mist on her window and the pair of them were now watching the activity unfolding outside. And there was plenty of it, Aisha thought. What five minutes before had been a reasonably free-flowing motorway now looked like the chaotic end of a dodgem ride at the fair. Vehicles had come to a halt at every angle across the three lanes: nose to nose, bumper to bumper, at right angles, and parallel. Some still had their headlights on, while others had been plunged into darkness by the impact. As she surveyed the carnage, she saw car doors and windows begin to open, and the occupants clamber out. The calm in the wake of the accident quickly gave way to a chaos of movement with people darting around like a disturbed colony of ants. Shouts, exclamations, calls for help and reassurance filled the air as drivers and passengers checked on each other, and then their vehicles.
What a mess
, Aisha thought,
what an unholy mess.
But that was as far as her interest went for quite a while – a vague and passing assessment on what was happening outside which seemed separate from her and the children.

The wipers were still chuntering back and forth and she lowered the lever on the steering column so the wipers would clear the windscreen every fifteen seconds. The engine had cut out on impact but she left the keys in the ignition so the wipers and heater worked. Through the windscreen, she could see steam rising from the bonnet of the car in front – a misty spectre spiralling into the cold night air. As Aisha looked, the driver’s door slowly opened and a woman in her late sixties got out. She stared at the bonnet of her car which was coupled with Aisha’s in a weird act of intimacy, then made her way, dazed, towards the grass verge where others were starting to gather. Two cars behind hers was a lorry, its cab towering fortress-like over the surrounding mayhem. The driver had switched on his interior light and Aisha could clearly see him talking on his mobile, while looking around, presumably reporting on what he saw. Aisha watched as he leant across, and, opening his door, continue his report hanging half out of the cab.
He must have a good view up there
, she thought.
Panoramic.
And her other thought was that his consignment of Heinz food was going to be rather battered and very late.

Further over to her right, Aisha saw a man in shirtsleeves, sopping wet but apparently unhurt, picking his way between the cars. He stopped and looked in each vehicle as he went, and seemed to be checking on any occupants, though many of the cars were now empty, their doors left raggedly open in the unscheduled exodus. Aisha charted his meandering path towards them as he came closer and closer, and finally up to her door. He tried opening her door with the handle, but it wouldn’t budge, then he squeezed in behind their car and tried the rear door, but that wouldn’t shift either. He returned to her side of the car and motioned for her to wind down the window. She pressed the button set in the armrest; and the window grated and managed to lower itself a couple of inches before stopping.

‘I’m a nurse,’ he said, his mouth to the gap, and looking at the children in the rear. ‘Does anyone in here need emergency first aid?’

Aisha shook her head and wondered how he would get in if they did. She noticed there was an ugly scratch on his forearm which he seemed to be unaware of.

‘No, thank you, we’re fine,’ she said. ‘But it’s very kind of you to ask. I appreciate that.’

He looked at her oddly; perhaps politeness wasn’t the correct response at a time like this, she thought. He hesitated and a large raindrop ran down the centre of his nose and dripped onto his already sodden shirt.

‘I’m sure others need you more than us,’ she added. ‘Was anyone badly hurt?’

‘It seems we’ve all been pretty lucky from what I’ve seen so far. Mainly cuts and bruises, one fracture, apart from the poor guy on the bike. Hopefully he’ll make it but …’ He shook his head. ‘The emergency services are on their way.’

Aisha nodded and thanked him again. Seven years of fear evaporated and her one thought was that she and the children were safe at last. She pressed the button to raise the window and, turning to the children, she said quietly, ‘I think there is a chance your father is badly hurt. If so, I hope in time you will find it in your hearts to forgive me.’

They looked at her and said nothing and she recoiled from what they could be thinking, for in making them all safe she had taken away their father – possibly for ever. She was silent for some time and the children were quiet too.

Presently two police cars and three ambulances arrived, their blue lights flashing and sirens wailing, closely followed by two fire engines. Sarah and James moved to the window to watch the activity. Ten minutes or so later the male nurse reappeared, this time with a police officer whom he showed to their car. Aisha lowered her window the two inches again and looked at him questioningly. The PC was young and bore a very earnest expression. ‘How are you and the kids doing?’ he asked, shining his torch into the back seat.

‘We’re doing all right, thank you,’ Aisha said.

‘We’ll have you out as soon as we’ve cleared a space for the cutting gear. Shouldn’t be too long.’

Aisha thanked him and raised the window again. She and the children watched and waited as more ambulances arrived and left, in a relay of advancing and retreating lights and sirens. After a while James became restless and remembered he was hungry; with the promise of a meal with the monks gone, he wanted to know when they were going to have dinner.

‘I really don’t know, love,’ Aisha said. ‘And I’m not really in a position to find out, am I?’ He moaned a bit longer and then returned his attention to the window.

Every so often, one of the police or fire crew knocked on her window to reassure them it wouldn’t be much longer. Each time she wound down the window the two inches, smiled and thanked them, then shut it again to stop the rain coming in. One police officer asked if there was anyone she would like to contact to reassure them they were safe, as the accident was now being reported on the news.

‘No, thank you,’ she said. ‘We’re not expected by anyone.’ She paused. ‘Is it possible to have a drink of water please? We’re all rather thirsty.’

‘Sure, I’ll see what I can do,’ the police officer said, then added with a wink at the children, ‘it won’t be Coke though.’ But his joke was wasted on Sarah and James because they’d never had Coke, not at £1.35 a bottle; it was tap water or nothing.

The police officer returned shortly with three plastic cups of water, which he carefully eased through the gap at the top of the window. Aisha thanked him, and before he left he said again they would be out very soon. She switched on the radio and heard that the M25 was at a standstill anticlockwise, between junctions twenty and twenty-five. A multi-vehicle pile-up, it said, that wouldn’t be cleared for at least four hours. She switched the radio off again – she already knew most of that, and more. She knew who was responsible; for once she was the maker of news.

*  *  *

Nearly half an hour passed and then it was their turn to be released. She and the children sat up and took notice as a hive of activity began outside their car. Four burly firemen in dark protective suits, two with clear visors attached to their helmets, congregated down her side of the car. She lowered the window the two inches again as they asked so she could hear their instructions.

‘We’re going to have a go at prising this off first,’ one of the firefighters said, tapping her door. ‘If that doesn’t work we’ll bring over the cutting gear.’ Another firefighter told her and the children to move to the far side of the car and turn away. Aisha leant over the back of her seat and positioned the children against the far door, huddled into each other, and then she slid into the passenger seat.

‘Turn away,’ the fireman repeated as he inserted a massive crowbar into the hinge and began levering.

There was a hideous metallic rip that sounded like a ring pull coming off a giant can, only magnified a million times.

‘OK,’ the firefighter called, and Aisha turned back to look. The door was in his hand, torn off like a sheet of paper, and he was leaning it against the bonnet.

‘Dear me,’ she said, ‘that wasn’t very strong.’

‘No,’ he joked. ‘It’s like opening a can of beans with these modern cars.’ Aisha thought how angry Mark would be if he could see his car now and hear it referred to as a can of beans.

She stayed in the passenger seat and helped first James, then Sarah clamber over the handbrake and into the driver’s seat, where another fireman reached in and lifted them out. Aisha then slid across and felt his big strong hands under her elbows, helping her out and keeping her away from the jagged metal of the hinges. As she straightened and stood next to Sarah and James, a paramedic draped blankets around their shoulders. Aisha appreciated this small kindness – it was still raining and they hadn’t had time to grab their coats on the way out.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked the paramedic as he guided her and the children round the damaged cars.

‘To the ambulance, to check you over,’ he said.

‘I don’t want to go to hospital,’ Aisha said, holding back.

‘No, you needn’t if you’re OK. But we’ll check you all in the ambulance as a precaution, we’re doing it with everyone.’

‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘But how will I get home?’

‘Someone will take you. Don’t worry.’

So she didn’t. She’d worried enough for one day and was now feeling strangely light-hearted.

As they approached the ambulances parked on the hard shoulder, the paramedic reassured the children that there was nothing to worry about, and asked them if they had ever been inside an ambulance before. James, suddenly finding himself the centre of attention, began agitating about food again. An elderly couple who’d just been given the all-clear and were coming down the steps of the ambulance heard him.

‘You have these, dear,’ the woman said, delving into her bag and producing a packet of crisps, and a small bag of sweets. ‘They were for my granddaughter, but I don’t suppose we will be going there now. Not after all this.’

Aisha thanked her, feeling a pang of guilt for being responsible for stopping her visit, and told James to say thank you too; then she and the children continued up the steps and into the startling brightness of the ambulance. There was something faintly disturbing about the fluorescent light and the clinical neatness – the meticulously labelled stowaway cupboards on the walls. With a shudder, Aisha realized it reminded her of the garage and the last time she’d been under a glaring overhead light, surrounded by precise, almost fastidious attention to order. She pulled the blanket closer around her and sat on one of the long seats, while Sarah and James sat together on the other. The two paramedics introduced themselves as Joe and Chris and started checking the children, testing their reflexes, then their sight and hearing. They talked to them as they worked and gently asked them questions: Did it hurt anywhere? Had they banged themselves in the accident? Sarah and James looked at her and shook their heads; the smell of cheese and onion crisps filled the ambulance and James clung protectively to his bag.

‘Offer one to Sarah, that’s a good boy,’ Aisha said. Joe and Chris laughed as James reluctantly stuck the bag under his sister’s nose and then withdrew it again before she had time to take one.

‘Don’t want one anyway,’ Sarah said, and Aisha frowned at them both.

Satisfied the children were not injured, Joe looked at Aisha. He assumed the cuts and bruises to her face and the dried blood down the front of her cardigan were a result of the accident. This suited Aisha as it meant her injuries didn’t require any further explanation which might have been awkward. Joe talked to her as he shone his pencil light in her eyes; and asked her name, date of birth, what day of the week it was, and if she had any dizziness or double vision; she answered no to all. Then he ran his hands over her cheekbones and pressed lightly and asked her if it hurt.

‘No,’ she said again, ‘not really.’ She could have added that this hurt was nothing compared to how she had got the injury, and all the hurt that had gone before. Aisha found Joe’s concern, and his touch, quite pleasant after all the years of neglect and abuse, and would have liked to have told him what really hurt and possibly confessed, but of course she didn’t, for what would have been the point in that?

Joe finished examining her and then said that while there was no obvious trauma to her head she should go to the hospital for an X-ray, ‘to rule out a hairline fracture of the skull’. Without thinking, her guard momentarily lowered by his kindness, she replied, ‘No. It was only my nose he caught,’ then immediately realized her mistake. ‘I hit my nose on the steering wheel,’ she said quickly. ‘But I’m all right now, it stopped bleeding a while ago. Really, I’m fine, thank you.’