And all those years, Jackson and Georgia Crane had just been getting on with their lives as if nothing had happened. Making films. Making money. Parading down red carpets. Lending their star power to worthy humanitarian causes. Bantering playfully on Twitter, sharing cute pictures of each other sleeping or curled up with one of their dogs on Instagram. Basking in the world’s affection. How endearing everyone had found it when they had actually turned up in person at the VMAs to collect their award for being the world’s sexiest couple. How romantic when they had been pictured ice-skating together in New York at Christmas, or holding hands in Rome.
And all that time, as it turned out, the whole thing had been a lie.
And eventually the police had announced that they were closing the case, or rather that they would no longer be actively investigating the crash that had killed her father outright. Despite several public appeals for witnesses, despite repeated requests for anyone with any information they thought might be relevant to come forward, anyone who had been in the area on that night, seen a vehicle matching the highly distinctive one she had described to them, they reminded Jess they were still no closer to making a positive ID on the driver of the car, the passenger she claimed to have seen, or the vehicle itself. If new evidence arose, they promised, they would be very happy to reconsider their decision. But until then . . .
Jess had never told her mother about that. She could never get the words out.
Because they did have a witness, the police, to the incident that night, and they always had done. And she had told them, Jess had told them, what had happened. Described the vehicle for them. The colour of it, the size of it, she had even drawn them a picture of it in felt tip. And she had told them what had happened after the collision, about the sound the big black car had made reversing, about the raised voices she could hear, a man’s voice and a woman’s voice, screaming at each other. She had described the woman’s voice, and told them everything she could about the woman herself, a beautiful woman, dark-haired, pale as a ghost. She had told them about the man, too, about the way he had got out of his car and made his way over to theirs – crunch crunch crunch, the sound of the glass under the soles of his shoes – and the way he had looked in through the broken windscreen and then made his way around the concertina of their car, squatted down and squinted in at her father and her mother, and run a hand over his face, and wobbled a little on his haunches. And he had looked at her father, and he had looked at her mother, but he had not seen Jess there, in the back. Yet she had been there, holding her breath, not wanting him to see her, terrified of what he might do, absolutely paralysed by fear and shock. And she had heard him swear to himself, under his breath. And she had watched him walk back to the car, and say something to the woman. And then the car’s engine had started up. And then the car had turned around and driven away.
They did have a witness and that witness might not have been able to give them a number plate or tell them what make of car had been involved in the collision, but she had been able to tell them who was driving.
Captain Aquatic. That was what Jess kept repeating, the man she kept insisting had been behind the wheel of the vehicle that killed her father. His hair was not dyed blond any more. He wasn’t wearing the costume, obviously. But she knew that face. The man who had looked in and glanced at her mother in the front seat, suspended in her seatbelt and suffering the brain bleed that would condemn her to a seventeen-year coma from which she would never emerge, was Captain Aquatic. Captain Aquatic? Captain Aquatic, she had insisted. Captain Aquatic, she had told them and they had listened and she had seen them at least pretending to write it down. And then, she guessed, once her aunt – red-eyed, bewildered herself, still wearing her pyjamas under her big woolly coat – had turned up to collect her and take her home, they had all sat around the station and scratched their chins and rolled their eyes and probably had a good old laugh about that.
Annie
Annie’s horse whinnied and gave a start as a member wobbled past on a motorized scooter.
‘Are you sure you’re okay back there?’ the riding instructor yelled to Annie, Keith and Freddie, who had stopped in a clearing.