I Let You Go Read Free Page B

the son I loved with an intensity that seemed impossible. Precious photographs. So few for someone so loved. Such a small impact on the world, yet the very centre of my own.
    Unable to resist, I open the box and pick up the uppermost photo: a Polaroid taken by a soft-spoken midwife on the day he was born. He is a tiny scrap of pink, barely visible beneath the white hospital blanket. In the photo my arms are fixed in the awkward pose of the new mother, drowning in love and exhaustion. It had all been so rushed, so frightening, so unlike the books I had devoured during my pregnancy, but the love I had to offer never faltered. Suddenly unable to breathe, I place the photo back and push the box into my holdall.
     
    Jacob’s death is front-page news. It screams at me from the garage forecourt I pass, from the corner shop, and from the bus-stop queue where I stand as though I am no different to anyone else. As though I am not running away.
    Everyone is talking about the accident. How could it have happened? Who could have done it? Each bus stop brings fresh news, and the snatches of gossip float back across our heads, impossible for me to avoid.
    It was a black car.
    It was a red car.
    The police are close to an arrest.
    The police have no leads.
    A woman sits next to me. She opens her newspaper and suddenly it feels as though someone is pressing on my chest. Jacob’s face stares at me; bruised eyes rebuking me for not protecting him, for letting him die. I force myself to look at him, and a hard knot tightens in my throat. My vision blurs and I can’t read the words, but I don’t need to – I’ve seen a version of this article in every paper I’ve passed today. The quotes from devastated teachers; the notes on flowers by the side of the road; the inquest – opened and then adjourned. A second photo shows a wreath of yellow chrysanthemums on an impossibly tiny coffin. The woman tuts and starts talking: half to herself, I think, but perhaps she feels I will have a view.
    ‘Terrible, isn’t it? And just before Christmas, too.’
    I say nothing.
    ‘Driving off like that without stopping.’ She tuts again. ‘Mind you,’ she continues, ‘five years old. What kind of mother allows a child that age to cross a road on his own?’
    I can’t help it – I let out a sob. Without my realising, hot tears stream down my cheeks and into the tissue pushed gently into my hand.
    ‘Poor lamb,’ the woman says, as though soothing a small child. It’s not clear if she means me, or Jacob. ‘You can’t imagine, can you?’
    But I can, and I want to tell her that, whatever she is imagining, it is a thousand times worse. She finds me another tissue, crumpled but clean, and turns the page of her newspaper to read about the Clifton Christmas lights switch-on.
    I never thought I would run away. I never thought I would need to.

3
     
    Ray made his way up to the third floor, where the frantic pace of twenty-four-seven policing gave way to the quiet carpeted offices of the nine-to-fivers and reactive CID. He liked it here best in the evening, when he could work through the ever-present stack of files on his desk without interruption. He walked through the open-plan area to where the DI’s office had been created from a partitioned corner of the room.
    ‘How did the briefing go?’
    The voice made him jump. He turned to see Kate sitting at her desk. ‘Party Four’s my old shift, you know. I hope they at least pretended to be interested.’ She yawned.
    ‘It was fine,’ Ray said. ‘They’re a good bunch, and if nothing else it keeps it fresh in their minds.’ Ray had managed to keep details of the hit-and-run on the briefing sheet for a week, but it had inevitably been pushed off as other jobs came in. He was trying his best to get round all the shifts and remind them he still needed their help. He tapped his watch. ‘What are you doing here at this hour?’
    ‘I’m trawling through the responses to the media appeals,’ she said,