Keeping It in the Family

Posted on by Simon J. Wood

police accident

(700 words)

“Hard to imagine he’ll get away with it,” said my sister Donna.
“Well, he says if we both stick to the story, they can’t prove anything.”
Donna looked thin and pale, not surprising, considering the strain we’d all been living under. “I still can’t believe it, that poor woman!”
“Look, I know it’s awful, but nothing we can say or do’s going to bring her back is it?”
Donna sighed. “I suppose not. But it’s not justice is it?”
“What’s justice at the end of the day? Just someone’s opinion over someone else’s. Where’s the sense in him spending years in prison? He’d lose everything, and it’d destroy Mum.”
Donna turned away, saying nothing, busying herself with preparing lunch. I collapsed into an old armchair.
 –
My brother Matthew and I had gone to see a play. Donna was coming too but had cancelled, feeling too ill after a minor dental procedure. On the way home, with Matt driving, a woman had walked out onto a zebra crossing, just as we were coming out of town on the main high street. Matt had been pontificating about the main female role, in his view the only one who could really act, never mind that she was a pretty blonde thing with large breasts. He wasn’t concentrating and the car ploughed into the woman with a loud thud, sending her flying. We got out and stood in horrified silence, looking down at the attractive face, blood now leaking over it from a crack in her head where it had hit the road. In the orange street light, the vital fluid began to resemble a black veil.
“Listen, Sarah, she ran out in front of us, I didn’t have time to stop,” said Matt, staring into my eyes.
“What!”
“You heard.”
We looked around. It was gone eleven and the streets were deserted in the quiet town. There was no other traffic.
Then a window opened above a shop by the zebra crossing. A woman looked down. “Oh, my God!”
Matt whispered, “She ran out in front of us, remember!”
Reluctantly, I nodded, just as a door opened to the right of the shop and a middle-aged woman clutching a mobile phone rushed out in slippers and a coat, hurriedly thrown over a nightie. “I’m a nurse,” she said, then bent to test the woman’s pulse. “She’s still breathing!” She phoned for an ambulance.
Later, we’d heard that the woman, thirty-three-year-old Sylvia Barnes, had died on the way to the hospital. I’d felt totally gutted and mad at Matt. He’d said he was sorry, but he’d always had a ruthless streak and seemed to be taking the whole shocking affair in his stride. I’d needed to confide in someone, so I’d told Donna. I could trust her to keep it in the family.
We’d been taken to the police station and breathalyzed. Fortunately, Matt had only drunk coke at the interval. I’d had a large glass of Pinot Grigio. The car was in Matt’s name and I wasn’t insured to drive it, so they’d believed him when he said he was driving.
Then we’d both been interviewed the next day. I’d been asked the same question in twenty different ways. What exactly had I seen? My answer: “Nothing.” I’d been looking in my handbag for my mobile phone and had just been aware of a crash and being restrained by my seat belt as I jerked forward under the impact. In the end, I’d come to believe it myself.
The police had appealed for witnesses but no one had come forward, and there was no CCTV, thank God! It had all come down to Matt’s word against the suspicions of the police and Sylvia’s family.
Then yesterday had come a bombshell. I’d read that Sylvia had recently given birth to her first child, a girl they’d named Emma. I hadn’t known. A thought came into my mind, ‘It’s never too late to do the right thing.’
“What are you thinking?” asked Donna, putting a plate of ham and tomato sandwiches on the table.
I took one, and opened it, looking at the juicy thick-cut local ham. “Oh, just wondering if there’s any mustard.”
–

Featured in the book and audiobook, To Cut a Short Story Short, vol. II: 88 Little Stories

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10 thoughts on “Keeping It in the Family”

    1. I have a book called What If? by Bernays and Painter. They suggest writing five continuations What if …, then picking the one you like most. Maybe I’ll try that as the post has been a lot more popular than I expected. 🙂

      Reply

    1. Hello Becca, glad you found it compelling! Now, it never occurred to me to think of a continuation TBH but, mulling it over after your suggestion, a few ‘What if …?’s came to mind. What if Sarah decided to talk to Sylvia’s family? What if she met the husband and she found she already knew him? What if they were once lovers?! What if she decided to blackmail Matt and then he tried to kill her to stop it?! Hmm. Food for thought. LOL

      Reply

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