Colin looked up and down the road then swiftly leant over, twisting the steering wheel under her chest, so it locked in place. He leaned over her, undid the handbrake, and the car lurched forward. He pulled his body out and slammed the door. The car rapidly picked up speed. Erika saw him grow smaller in the rear-view mirror as he ducked back into the driveway. When Erika looked back through the windscreen she could see the car was hurtling down the hill, rolling in neutral with the engine off. She couldn’t move her legs, and when she lifted her hands to the steering wheel, it was locked into place with the wheels straight on.
Erika felt a deep detached calm, like she was still watching the movie from far back in the cinema. But there was a small voice screaming in her head to do something! Even with the engine off, the speedometer was hitting forty mph. She was hurtling past the houses set back from the road, between the rows of parked cars, and the busy junction at the bottom of the hill was streaking fast towards her, where the cars were moving past in both directions.
Erika tried to sit up, but her knees were on the floor, and her feet were trapped painfully under the seat. The junction at the bottom of the hill was coming up fast, the traffic was roaring past in both directions and the cars and houses on either side were a blur of colour.
Erika managed to flex the fingers in her right hand. At the angle her body was lying against the steering wheel, she could reach down towards the pedals.
The car reached the bottom of the hill and burst out across the junction. Where the gradient of the road changed, the car hit the tarmac and jolted her violently, her head hitting the roof. She narrowly missed being hit by a huge lorry whose driver honked as she crossed the first lane. A large grey SUV skidded to a halt with a screech of brakes, and as Erika sped across the second lane, she just managed to reach down and push against the brake pedal. The car slowed, but it was too late. With a bone-shattering shudder, it hit the kerb on the other side of the second lane, mounted the pavement and shot across a wide stretch of flowerbeds that separated the pavement from a supermarket car park.
Her car landed in the car park and slammed into the back of a small black Porsche. The last thought that went through her head before she lost consciousness was that people would think she had had a car crash on the way back from Colin’s house, and that he would get away with it.
EPILOGUE
For a long time, Erika felt herself drifting in and out of consciousness, but always below the surface. There were beeping sounds, a hiss of air and a clank of metal, and the voices of people she recognised, and occasionally the feeling of a cold breeze on her bare skin. Apart from this, she seemed to drift on a warm sea of oblivion.
When she started to feel the pain, that’s when reality returned. A couple of times, she’d woken in an empty room with a dull throbbing pain, but it was on the third or fourth time she opened her eyes that she saw it was day, and she was lying in a bed next to an array of machines beeping and pulsing with small lights.
Everything was a blur and a familiar face loomed over her, and then it all faded out.
When she woke again, the room was different. The high-backed chair in the corner was closer, and the familiar face was clear. It was her sister, Lenka.
‘You’re awake,’ she said, smiling. Lenka was petite and short in comparison to Erika, and her long blonde hair was tied back.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Erika. Her voice sounded distorted. She tried to lift her hand and saw her arm was crisscrossed in scabbed-over cuts, like she’d fought through a bramble bush. There were tubes in her wrist. Erika tried to sit up and a terrible pain shot through her chest, and her legs. She couldn’t feel her legs.
‘Don’t try to get up,’ said Lenka, sitting up and gently taking her arm.
‘Am I paralyzed?’ she croaked.
‘What did you say?’ asked Lenka. ‘Do you want some water? The doctor said I should try and get you to drink.’ She picked up a cup with a straw and Erika took a sip. She could now feel something on her face and she couldn’t breathe through her nose. She put up her hand, which set off a spark of twisting pains in her chest again. There was a huge rigid bandage on her nose.
‘My legs, what’s happened?’ she said, trying to sit up so she could see her legs. The covers at the bottom of the bed gave nothing away. She couldn’t make out the shape of her legs, or even if she still had legs. There was no feeling down there.
‘It’s okay. You broke both of your legs, below the knee. You’ve had pins put in and you’re on a lot of painkillers… Don’t you remember? I’ve told you this three times already,’ said Lenka. She didn’t seem annoyed, just concerned.