Christmas at the Little Waffle Shack - Helen J. Rolfe Page 0,81

decision I found her car keys and got into the car. Giselle wasn’t thinking straight either and didn’t argue because her mind was on her son and that was it. She sat in the back seat with him, both clinging to each other, and I drove, windows down, all the way to the hospital.

‘I must’ve been speeding – in fact, there’s no doubt I was – and the police were tailing me as we approached the hospital. They were flashing at me to pull over but I put my foot down harder when Giselle screamed she couldn’t get Peter to wake up. Nothing else mattered apart from him, Harvey.’ His eyes welled up, the memory almost too much. He cleared his throat. ‘I screeched up outside emergency, Giselle and Peter went in and the police right behind me arrested me for reckless driving. I was breathalysed and drink driving was added to the list of charges.’

Harvey swore and scraped a hand across his chin.

‘Yeah, exactly. Not my proudest moment in some ways, but in others? I’d do it again in a heartbeat if it meant saving Peter’s life, which we were told is exactly what it did.’ Harvey was looking at him as though he couldn’t believe his kid brother had taken responsibility, had sacrificed his own self to save a little boy. And then his face changed.

‘Did you go to prison?’ It was as though he was bracing himself for hearing the worst news possible, wondering whether his guilt trip could take another downturn.

‘No, I didn’t. I was disqualified from driving for twelve months, I got a hefty fine, but no jail time. I wasn’t so far over the limit that they wanted to throw the book at me, and they took my circumstances into account. I’m just grateful they didn’t ignore the reason I was behind the wheel in the first place.’

‘When I heard you’d been in trouble with the police and Mum couldn’t give me any details, I assumed the worst. And I shouldn’t have done. I’m an arse. A total arse.’

‘No, you’re not, Harvey. I had form, lots of it. You stayed in the Cove when I buggered off and I expect you got a bit of flack.’

‘Some. Not so much I couldn’t handle it.’

‘And you had Dad to deal with too. I wouldn’t have wanted to swap places with you for anything – even living on the streets was better than wondering what he’d do next. He was never violent, not like some stories you hear, but my biggest dread was that one day he would be. I was a coward and I ran.’

‘You’re not a coward. If anyone’s a coward it’s me, for blaming you rather than waking up to myself enough to see you needed my help.’

‘You know, we could go round and round in circles about this if we let ourselves. That, or we could let ourselves off the hook from here on in.’

‘I guess you’re right.’

‘I should tell you that getting charged by the police wasn’t quite the end of me messing up. I was in a bad way. I could’ve killed someone on the roads driving like that at those speeds, and even though I knew I’d do it again to save Peter, I couldn’t accept that what I’d done might well have had consequences for anyone else on the road. I could’ve killed a pedestrian – a mother, a child, a father or a brother – and my head couldn’t wrap around any of that.

‘I dealt with it by spending a lot of time in the pub – went on benders most nights. I nearly lost my job after one too many late arrivals for my shift, and it was Giselle who pulled me out of it yet again. I’d gone to see Peter and she knew what was going on. She pointed right at him and yelled at me that her son was alive because of what I did and that I had to forgive myself. She was crying, almost as upset as the night it happened. She got through to me and not long after that was when we got married. I think our heightened emotions got the better of us and it seemed the next logical step, except it really wasn’t.’

‘And you didn’t tell Mum any of this?’

‘Not at the time, not until recently.’ He shook his head. ‘You know, Giselle hated the police after that. She’d been around enough officers to know that some of