The End of Her - Shari Lapena Page 0,90

an hour’s drive from Aylesford. It had been a celebratory affair, because Niall had had an excellent write-up in an architectural magazine – and they’d had a lot of wine with dinner.

‘Are you okay to drive?’ Nancy asked as they got their coats.

‘Yeah, I’m fine,’ Niall said. And he seemed fine. He certainly didn’t seem drunk. But then, she’d been drinking, too, and perhaps her judgement had been impaired.

Soon after they started off it began raining heavily. Niall was hunched forward over the steering wheel, peering into the night. The car was warm. The sound of the wipers sweeping noisily and methodically across the windscreen was hypnotic, lulling Nancy to sleep.

Suddenly a loud thud shook her violently awake. She felt the car swerve and then right itself back into the centre of the lane. ‘What was that?’ she cried. She looked over at her husband, who seemed to be in a daze.

‘I don’t know. Maybe I hit something. I didn’t see anything.’

He kept going, his knuckles tight on the steering wheel. It was on the tip of her tongue to suggest they stop, but she didn’t. She persuaded herself it was nothing. And once they’d driven on for a few seconds, it became impossible to go back.

‘It was probably just a rabbit,’ Niall said, after a minute. But they both knew a rabbit wouldn’t have sounded like that.

They arrived home and didn’t mention it again. They fell into bed and slept in.

Nancy got up the next morning and picked up the newspaper from outside the front door. She saw a small story at the bottom of the front page, and her life changed for ever. A young man, walking along the side of the highway in the rain on the edge of Westchester County, perhaps hitch-hiking, had been struck and killed instantly the night before. The car had fled the scene. There was no camera footage, there were no witnesses. The police were appealing for anyone with information.

Nancy read the article twice, an awful certainty overtaking her. She went into the kitchen and approached the door to the attached garage with dread. It took her several minutes to build up the courage to open it. She thought about getting Niall, but she wanted to see it for herself first. In the garage, she bent down, freezing in her nightie and bare feet, and studied their car. There was some damage to the passenger side front bumper, but it wasn’t too noticeable.

She rushed upstairs then and shook Niall awake, thrusting the newspaper in his face. ‘Could we have done this?’ she asked in fear. She watched him read the article, saw the same horror overtake him.

He looked up at her, clearly shaken. He shook his head back and forth. ‘I don’t know. I thought it was nothing.’

‘But the location – that’s just about where we were when you hit something,’ she persisted.

‘So what do you want me to do?’ Niall said, turning to her.

‘I don’t know.’

‘The harm’s done,’ Niall said in a shaky voice. ‘A man is dead. If I hit him – my God.’ He got out of bed and started pacing the bedroom. ‘I was probably over the limit. I fled the scene. I’ll probably go to prison.’

‘No, no, no,’ Nancy cried, tears running down her face. ‘I’ll call my father. He’ll know what to do.’

‘No,’ Niall said. ‘Keep him out of this.’

‘He can help us, Niall! He’s a judge. He’ll know what to do.’

‘He’ll want me to turn myself in,’ Niall protested.

‘Only if that’s what’s best. I’m calling him.’

Niall sat by helplessly, his head in his hands, as Nancy called her father. She told him only that it was an emergency. He showed up less than an hour later, without her mother, as she requested.

‘What is it?’ he asked in his direct way. ‘What’s the matter?’

They told him everything. Showed him the newspaper account. The judge’s demeanour darkened. ‘How could you drive when you’d been drinking?’ he said to Niall in disgust. ‘How could you leave the scene? What were you thinking?’

‘Dad, you have to help us,’ Nancy pleaded. She could see the conflict behind her father’s eyes. He was wrestling with what to do. They all knew Niall should turn himself in. But what she really wanted from her father was his permission not to. To help them with that. She waited.

‘Let me see the car.’

They trudged out to the garage, and he looked at it for a long while without speaking. ‘You’d think there’d be more