Backing away toward the door, I sense that someone else is watching. The smallest shift of my gaze finds him.
He whispers, “Like to watch do you, yindoo?”
I catch my breath. A half breath. Paul Donavon pushes his face close to mine. The years have thinned his hair and fleshed out his cheeks but he has the same eyes. It’s amazing how I can hate him with the same intensity after all this time.
Even in the half-light, I notice the tattooed cross on his neck. He sniffs at my hair. “Where’s Cate?”
“You leave her alone,” I say too loudly.
There are curses from the darkness. Lindsay and partner pull apart. Rocco is dancing on one leg, trying to hoist his trousers. At the far end of the corridor a door opens and light washes from outside as Donavon disappears.
“Jesus, Ali, you frightened the crap out of me,” says Lindsay, tugging down her dress.
“Sorry.”
“Who else was here?”
“Nobody. I’m really sorry. Just carry on.”
“I think the moment’s gone.”
Rocco is already heading down the corridor.
“Give my best to your wife,” she calls after him.
I have to find Cate now. She should be told that Donavon is here. And I want her to explain what she meant. Who wants to take her baby?
I check the hall and the quadrangle. There is no sign of her. She might have left already. How strange it is to be conscious of losing her when I’ve only just met her again.
I walk to the school gates. Cars are parked on either side of the road. The pavement is dotted with people. I catch a glimpse of Cate and Felix on the far side. She is talking to someone. Donavon. She has her hand on his arm.
Cate looks up and waves. I’m closing the distance between us, but she signals me to wait. Donavon turns away. Felix and Cate step between parked cars.
From somewhere behind them I hear Donavon cry out. Then comes a tortured high-pitched screech of rubber against tarmac. The wheels of a car are locked and screaming. Heads turn as if released from a catch.
Felix vanishes beneath the wheels, which rise and fall over his head with scarcely a bump. At the same moment Cate bends over the hood and springs back again. She turns her head in midair and the windscreen suddenly snaps it in reverse. She tumbles through the air in slow motion like a trapeze artist ready to be caught. But nobody waits with chalky hands.
The driver brakes and slews. Cate rolls forward, landing on her back with her arm outstretched and one leg twisted beneath her.
Like an explosion in reverse, people are sucked toward the detonation. They scramble from cars and burst from doorways. Donavon reacts quicker than most and reaches Cate first. I drop to my knees beside him.
In a moment of suspended stillness, the three of us are drawn together again. She is lying on the road. Blood seeps from her nose in a deep soft satin blackness. Spittle bubbles and froths from her slightly parted lips. She has the prettiest mouth.
I cradle her head in the crook of my arm. What happened to her shoe? She only has one of them. Suddenly, I’m fixated on a missing shoe, asking people around me. It’s important that I find it. Black, with a half heel. Her skirt has ridden up. She’s wearing maternity knickers to cover her bump.
A young chap steps forward politely. “I’ve called 999.”
His girlfriend looks like she might be sick.
Donavon pulls down Cate’s skirt. “Don’t move her head. She has to be braced.” He turns to the onlookers. “We need blankets and a doctor.”
“Is she dead?” someone asks.
“Do you know her?” asks another.
“She’s pregnant!” exclaims a third person.
Cate’s eyes are open. I can see myself reflected in them. A burly man with a gray ponytail leans over us. He has an Irish accent.
“They just stepped out. I didn’t see them. I swear.”
Cate’s whole body goes rigid and her eyes widen. Even with blood in her mouth she tries to cry out and her head swings from side to side.
Donavon leaps to his feet and grabs the driver’s shirt. “You could have stopped, you bastard!”
“I didn’t see them.”
“LIAR!” His voice is hoarse with hate. “You ran them down.”
The driver glances nervously around the crowd. “I don’t know what he’s talking about. It was an accident, I swear. He’s talking crazy—”
“You saw them.”
“Not until it was too late…”
He pushes Donavon away. Buttons rip and the driver’s shirt flaps open. The tattoo on his chest is of Christ and the Crucifixion.
People have piled out of the reunion to see what the commotion is about. Some of them are yelling and trying to clear the street. I can hear the sirens.
A paramedic pushes through the crowd. My fingers are slick and warm. I feel like I’m holding Cate’s head together. Two more crews arrive. The paramedics team up. I know the drill: no fire, no fuel leaks and no fallen power lines—they secure their own safety first.
I look for Felix. A dark shape is pinned beneath the rear axle of the car. Unmoving.
A paramedic crawls beneath the wheel arch. “This one’s gone,” he yells.
Another slides his hands beneath mine, taking hold of Cate’s head. Two of them work on her.
“Airways are blocked. Using the Guedels.”
He puts a plastic curved tube in her mouth and suctions out blood.
“One seventy systolic over ninety. Right pupil dilated.”
“She’s hypotensive.”
“Put a collar on.”
Someone talks into a two-way. “We got serious head trauma and internal bleeding.”
“She’s pregnant,” I hear myself saying. I don’t know if they hear me.
“BP is climbing. Low pulse.”
“She’s bleeding into her skull.”
“Let’s get her inside.”
“She needs volume now.”
The spine board is placed beside her and Cate is log-rolled onto her side and lifted onto a stretcher.
“She’s pregnant,” I say again.
The paramedic turns to me.
“Do you know her?”
“Yes.”
“We got room for one. You can ride up front.” He is pumping a rubber bag, forcing air into her lungs. “We need her name, DOB, address—is she allergic to any drugs?”
“I don’t know.”
“When is she due?”
“In four weeks.”
The stretcher is in the ambulance. The paramedics climb inside. A medical technician hustles me into the passenger seat. The door shuts. We’re moving. Through the window I see the crowd staring at us. Where did they all come from? Donavon is sitting in the gutter, looking dazed. I want him to look at me. I want to say thank you.
The paramedics continue working on Cate. One of them talks into a two-way using words like bradycardia and intracranial pressure. A heart monitor beeps out a broken message.
