The hearing broke late for lunch with all the evidence having been presented and only a few questions asked by individuals in the gathering, which Dr Phillips, or the police officer, answered capably and to the apparent satisfaction of the enquirers. The coroner told them that she would sum up and present her findings when they returned from lunch.
It seemed that the main business of the day was finished. Rosie and Mike spent the lunch break offering each other reassurance that the inquest went much better than they’d hoped, but Hannah still had a sickening knot of uneasiness in the pit of her stomach. She desperately needed to hear the coroner saying categorically that she had not been at fault.
Her wish was granted after the lunch break. Dr Phillips again offered condolences to those who’d lost loved ones and then went on to announce that after consultation with the police, she was satisfied that the incident was a no-fault accident and therefore the fatalities, Marjorie Simpson, Alison Jane Parker and Timothy Gary Jones, would be recorded as accidental deaths.
As a low murmur of voices swept around the room the coroner thanked everyone for giving their time in attending and stood to leave the room. Mike was the next one to jump up, steering Hannah to the door they had entered by, as if in a hurry to get out, but his wife wasn’t complaining. She felt emotionally drained and totally exhausted by the whole experience and although she would have liked to thank the man who had spoken on her behalf, she was happy to leave.
Rosie was dashing back to work, having been away much longer than anticipated.
‘I’ll pop in to see how you are this evening,’ she told Hannah. ‘I’m so glad they’ve seen reason!’
Hannah smiled her thanks and allowed Mike to lift her into the car. He hadn’t as yet offered any opinion and his expression was unreadable.
‘What do you think, Mike?’ she asked him.
‘Yes, a good result — it seems to have been just an unfortunate accident.’
His reply wasn’t what she’d hoped to hear and lacked something, although she didn’t quite know what; conviction perhaps?
The journey home passed mostly in silence and, once inside, Hannah asked Mike to help her upstairs to bed, where she pulled the quilt up to her chin and fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.
CHAPTER 11
The inquest was torture for Alan and Cassie Jones. Alan sat bolt upright beside his wife, holding her hand but lost in his own thoughts and unable to give her the comfort she craved. Cassie’s parents sat on her other side and Alan’s widowed mother beside him. Not only were the family forced to once again confront their own grief and relive the accident, but they were also unwilling witnesses to the grief and pain of the others who had been involved too.
Many lives were brutally affected that day; the ice had been a savage instrument of destruction to so many. One man had lost his wife, who was also a mother of four and a grandmother. Another man also lost his wife and seemed alone and totally bereft, even though outwardly he appeared composed, his face was ashen, his eyes dull and lifeless, empty. The woman in the wheelchair, they learned, had lost her leg and still had no memory of the accident itself.
Cassie felt an overwhelming empathy for all of the victims and prayed silently that out of something so brutal and far-reaching, lessons might be learned and compassion would somehow blossom out of such incomprehensible tragedy.
Timothy had taught them so much in his short life. He loved unconditionally, he cared for the feelings of other people, and he had an all-consuming passion for animals. He’d grown up fascinated by his father’s work and attended clinic with his dad whenever he was allowed. From the age of seven, he began to ‘collect’ animals of his own which he cared for on the family’s small farm.
Timothy had grown up with dogs and cats but wanted more, so when he found an injured owl, he nursed it back to health under his father’s guidance. The chickens came next and then an orphaned pygmy goat, called George, all extra work for Cassie but she was amazed at how hard Timothy was prepared to work, even at such a young age. The farm outbuildings became home to any animals that needed one, and over the years even Timothy lost count of the number and variety of animals they had fostered.
Cassie and Alan Jones wanted to do something significant to honour the memory of their son, something he would have loved and which would make him proud. Now that the inquest was over, they could start thinking about what it was Timmy would have wanted.
CHAPTER 12
To have no memory of the accident; was that a blessing or a curse, Joe wondered when he arrived home from the coroner’s inquest. It had been a gruelling day, but not only for him. The father of Timothy Jones looked like a broken man, and Hannah Graham seemed to be in another world, probably still in shock at the loss of her leg.
Joe was content with the verdict, even if Ethel was not. As he helped his mother-in-law into a taxi after the hearing, she was still grumbling, muttering that someone should be held accountable for the death of her daughter. The black look she gave him suggested she was thinking that he was that ‘someone’, making him instinctively want to counter her argument by suggesting that if Ethel herself had not been so insistent that her daughter attend her that day, Alison would not have been with him in the car.
But you could argue the toss about it all day; if the motorway had been closed, if the slip road had been gritted, if the Ford Focus had set off two minutes later, if he hadn’t had toast for breakfast... ‘If’ was such a sad, lonely word, and a rather senseless one too. No one could have foreseen what would happen that morning or they would all have stayed safely at home.
Joe’s next hurdle was to get through the funeral, and he’d made an appointment with the undertaker for the following morning. Having to wait until after the inquest to arrange Alison’s funeral only added to his distress — it was an event which was permanently on his mind, one he dreaded as the final goodbye to his beloved wife. A few well-meaning people suggested that he would feel better after the funeral and that life would return to some semblance of normality, but was that what he really wanted? It would be a relief to get rid of the terrible pain he felt at his loss, but not at the expense of forgetting his wife — he would never want to do that!
Joe spoke to the undertaker and a date was fixed for ten days’ time. Joe was happy to leave the arrangement of most of the details to him; it was difficult enough thinking about your wife in a coffin without deciding exactly what it was to look like. Perhaps he’d pay more in the end, but he agreed to the undertaker arranging the flowers, the obituary in the paper and other little details which were too painful for him to even think about.
Alison’s funeral was every bit as grim as Joe expected it to be. The weather at least had improved, with rising temperatures melting the snow almost as swiftly as it had arrived, but still two weeks too late to spare Alison’s life. The good turnout was something of a surprise to him, although it shouldn’t have been; his wife was much loved by everyone she came into contact with. Neighbours and friends mingled with a few distant relatives, mainly Alison’s cousins, whom he hardly knew. Many of the faces he didn’t even recognise; staff from the local hospice where she volunteered each week, and a group from Ali’s Pilates class all shook Joe’s hand, offering the usual platitudes. He went through the motions, his own personal sorrow clamped down somewhere deep inside of him, as he thanked people for coming, playing the host for as long as he must.