My father and the others were at my side in an instant, the three of them peering down over my shoulder. The old man moved again, just a twitch of his arm. This time he opened his eyes and stared straight up at me. I flinched backwards. The whites of his eyes were a milky yellow, both of them clouded over with cataracts. This was something not missed by Mac.
“Jeezus,” he sighed. “No wonder the old fucker steered right out in front of you Sydney, he’s almost blind.”
I knew this point would be raised in all of their statements.
The old man’s lips moved, as if he were trying to say something. I leaned in closer as I desperately fought to hear what it was he was trying to say. Suddenly, I felt a bony hand grip my arm. I gasped out loud and looked down to see the old man’s gnarled and swollen fingers curled around my wrist like a deformed claw. He pulled me down towards him.
With my face almost touching his, I could feel his breath caress my cheek like a hot kiss.
“Witch,” he whispered in my ear. “Witch!”
I pulled back from him, my skin prickling with gooseflesh. There was a rattling sound in the back of his throat, a red bauble of blood appeared between his dry, flaky lips. With his milky-coloured eyes rolling back in their sockets, the old man took one last breath and fell still.
“What did he say?” my father barked, pulling me to my feet.
I looked at him, too numb to answer.
“What did he say?” he snapped again.
“Witch,” I whispered. “He called me a witch.”
Chapter Five
Woody didn’t speak once as he drove me from the scene of the accident and back to my poky apartment in the small town of Cliff View. The town was on the furthest tip of the southwest of England, in the county of Cornwall. It sat nestled between sweeping hills on one side, wide, rolling fields on the other. It was all I had ever known. All that separated Cliff View from the thrashing waves of the Irish Sea were the sleek, black, ragged cliffs. The town itself was quiet in the winter and picked up when the tourists came in the warmer summer months. There wasn’t much of a nightlife – or any other kind of life for that matter – unless you ventured into the bigger towns like Penzance. I could have left after I finished college, in search of a career, but I hadn’t done well in my exams and after a few failed jobs in the local supermarket, a hairdresser’s, and a bar, my father had suggested I joined the police. It hadn’t been my first choice, but as my father had pointed out – what other choices had I? I spent most of my teenage years hanging around the local parks, getting drunk with friends, smoking and messing about with boys. My father thought I was a loser – I know he did. But I wasn’t a loser – I was just bored. When my mother left with her Spanish toy boy, I drank more than ever. It was then that my father said I needed to get a grip – stop screwing around and get a proper career – get a life!
So, wanting to please him more than myself, I took his advice and joined the police. It made him happy and proud. I would never be able to forget his look of pride on the day of my passing out parade. Now, I didn’t doubt my mother’s departure hurt my father badly – but he just never showed it. These days, the only feelings he happily wore on his sleeve, were those feelings of disappointment he had for me.
Joining the police force hadn’t been all bad. In fact, I quite enjoyed it. It paid better than the supermarket and the hairdresser’s, enough to move out of my father’s house and rent a place of my own. There I could do what I wanted, when I wanted, with whom I wanted, without my father’s disapproving stare. So things had been ticking over quite nicely until...until I went back to that farmer’s house, had a few drinks, got it on with the lush-looking farmer’s son, then went and wiped out a...
“Here you go,” Woody suddenly said, breaking the thick, suffocating silence and my thoughts.
I looked up to see that he had pulled to a halt outside the small white painted apartment block. Woody looked at me, his thin, brown hair slicked back off his brow, light blue eyes staring out of his pinched face at me. Woody was okay, I’d known him since I was kid, but his kids had moved on. One was at a university, the other moved to London to become a lawyer or something. I bet my father would never see the day he would have to sneak one of Woody’s kids away from a fatal accident. He would never have to blow a green for one of his kids. As teenagers, Woody’s kids had never hung around, pissed out of their skulls, with the kids from the local estate. They had been too busy at home, tucked away in their bedrooms and hitting the school books. No wonder my father was so ashamed of me. What a fucking disappointment I had been. I couldn’t even be a good cop.