Spare

But along with the importance of work, he also believed in the magic of flight. He was a helicopter pilot, after all, so he particularly loved seeing me steer these jets over the marshy flats at ungodly speeds. I mentioned that the good citizens of Wolferton didn’t share his enthusiasm. A ten-thousand-kilo jet roaring just over their tiled roofs didn’t exactly cause jubilation. RAF Marham had received dozens of complaints. Sandringham was supposed to be a no-fly zone.

All complainants were told: Such is war.

I loved seeing Pa, loved feeling his pride, and I felt buoyed by his praise, but I had to get back to work. I was mid-control, couldn’t tell the Typhoon to please hold on a moment.

Yes, yes, darling boy, back to work.

He drove off. As he went down the track I told the Typhoon: New target. Gray Audi. Headed southeast from my position down track. Towards a big silver barn oriented east-west.

The Typhoon tracked Pa, did a low pass straight over him, almost shattering the windows of his Audi.

But ultimately spared him. On my orders.

It went on to blow a silver barn to smithereens.

8.

England was in the semifinal of the 2007 Rugby World Cup. No one had predicted that. No one had believed England was any good this time round, and now they were on the verge of winning it all. Millions of Britons were swept away with rugby fever, including me.

So when I was invited to attend the semifinal, that October, I didn’t hesitate. I said yes immediately.

Bonus: The semifinal was being held that year in Paris—a city I’d never visited.

The World Cup provided me with a driver, and on my first night in the City of Light I asked him if he knew the tunnel where my mother…

I watched his eyes in the rearview, growing large.

He was Irish, with a kindly, open face, and I could easily discern his thoughts: What the feck? I didn’t sign on for this.

The tunnel is called Pont de l’Alma, I told him.

Yes, yes. He knew it.

I want to go through it.

You want to go through the tunnel?

At sixty-five miles per hour—to be precise.

Sixty-five?

Yes.

The exact speed Mummy’s car had supposedly been driving, according to police, at the time of the crash. Not 120 miles per hour, as the press originally reported.

The driver looked over at the passenger seat. Billy the Rock nodded gravely. Let’s do it. Billy added that if the driver ever revealed to another human that we’d asked him to do this, we’d find him and there would be hell to pay.

The driver gave a solemn nod.

Off we went, weaving through traffic, cruising past the Ritz, where Mummy had her last meal, with her boyfriend, that August night. Then we came to the mouth of the tunnel. We zipped ahead, went over the lip at the tunnel’s entrance, the bump that supposedly sent Mummy’s Mercedes veering off course.

But the lip was nothing. We barely felt it.

As the car entered the tunnel I leaned forward, watched the light change to a kind of watery orange, watched the concrete pillars flicker past. I counted them, counted my heartbeats, and in a few seconds we emerged from the other side.

I sat back. Quietly I said: Is that all of it? It’s…nothing. Just a straight tunnel.

I’d always imagined the tunnel as some treacherous passageway, inherently dangerous, but it was just a short, simple, no-frills tunnel.

No reason anyone should ever die inside it.

The driver and Billy the Rock didn’t answer.

I looked out of the window: Again.

The driver stared at me in the rearview. Again?

Yes. Please.

We went through again.

That’s enough. Thank you.

It had been a very bad idea. I’d had plenty of bad ideas in my twenty-three years, but this one was uniquely ill-conceived. I’d told myself that I wanted closure, but I didn’t really. Deep down, I’d hoped to feel in that tunnel what I’d felt when JLP gave me the police files—disbelief. Doubt. Instead, that was the night all doubt fell away.

She’s dead, I thought. My God, she’s really gone for good.

I got the closure I was pretending to seek. I got it in spades. And now I’d never be able to get rid of it.

I’d thought driving the tunnel would bring an end, or brief cessation, to the pain, the decade of unrelenting pain. Instead it brought on the start of Pain, Part Deux.

It was close to one o’clock in the morning. The driver dropped me and Billy at a bar, where I drank and drank. Some mates were there, and I drank with them, and tried to pick fights with several. When the pub threw us out, when Billy the Rock escorted me back to the hotel, I tried to pick a fight with him too. I growled at him, swung on him, slapped his head.