Woody didn't speak once as he drove me from the scene of the accident and back to my poky apartment in the small town of Cliff View. The town was on the furthest tip of the southwest of England, in the county of Cornwall. It sat nestled between sweeping hills on one side, wide, rolling fields on the other. It was all I had ever known. All that separated Cliff View from the thrashing waves of the Irish Sea were the sleek, black, ragged cliffs. The town itself was quiet in the winter and picked up when the tourists came in the warmer summer months. There wasn't much of a nightlife - or any other kind of life for that matter - unless you ventured into the bigger towns like Penzance. I could have left after I finished college, in search of a career, but I hadn't done well in my exams and after a few failed jobs in the local supermarket, a hairdresser's, and a bar, my father had suggested I joined the police. It hadn't been my first choice, but as my father had pointed out - what other choices had I? I spent most of my teenage years hanging around the local parks, getting drunk with friends, smoking and messing about with boys. My father thought I was a loser - I know he did. But I wasn't a loser - I was just bored. When my mother left with her Spanish toy boy, I drank more than ever. It was then that my father said I needed to get a grip - stop screwing around and get a proper career - get a life!
So, wanting to please him more than myself, I took his advice and joined the police. It made him happy and proud. I would never be able to forget his look of pride on the day of my passing out parade. Now, I didn't doubt my mother's departure hurt my father badly - but he just never showed it. These days, the only feelings he happily wore on his sleeve, were those feelings of disappointment he had for me.
Joining the police force hadn't been all bad. In fact, I quite enjoyed it. It paid better than the supermarket and the hairdresser's, enough to move out of my father's house and rent a place of my own. There I could do what I wanted, when I wanted, with whom I wanted, without my father's disapproving stare. So things had been ticking over quite nicely until...until I went back to that farmer's house, had a few drinks, got it on with the lush-looking farmer's son, then went and wiped out a...
"Here you go," Woody suddenly said, breaking the thick, suffocating silence and my thoughts.
I looked up to see that he had pulled to a halt outside the small white painted apartment block. Woody looked at me, his thin, brown hair slicked back off his brow, light blue eyes staring out of his pinched face at me. Woody was okay, I'd known him since I was kid, but his kids had moved on. One was at a university, the other moved to London to become a lawyer or something. I bet my father would never see the day he would have to sneak one of Woody's kids away from a fatal accident. He would never have to blow a green for one of his kids. As teenagers, Woody's kids had never hung around, pissed out of their skulls, with the kids from the local estate. They had been too busy at home, tucked away in their bedrooms and hitting the school books. No wonder my father was so ashamed of me. What a fucking disappointment I had been. I couldn't even be a good cop.
"Are you okay?" Woody asked, looking at me like a caring father.
"I guess," I said, looking down at my hands in my lap. I didn't want him to see the tears standing in my eyes.
"Don't you worry about a thing," he soothed. "Your dad has got everything under control."
"But those people..." I started, sniffing back the tears.
"Shhh," Woody hushed. "Like your dad said, they should've never been in the road. It was just an accident. It could have happened to any one and anywhere."
"They're dead because of me," I said, lifting my head to look at him. "It doesn't matter what my father says or does - what any of you do - I know it was all my fault."
"Now, you need to stop thinking and talking like that," Woody said. "We all have to be singing from the same hymn sheet, or..."
"Or what?" I cut over him.
"Or we're all in the shit," he whispered as if someone might overhear us somehow. "Do you want your dad to get into trouble? He's risking his career for you."
"I never asked him to, Woody," I said, reaching for the door handle. I didn't know how much more guilt I could take.
Before I'd the chance to open the door fully, Woody had taken hold of my arm and pulled me back into my seat. "Listen, Sydney, why do you think your father did what he did today?"
I looked at him and said nothing.
"Because you're his little girl and he loves you," Woody said. "He just doesn't want to see you get into trouble for the sake of a few..."
"People," I cut in. "They were people who died today."
"Okay," he sighed. "But they're not like us."
"So that makes it okay then?" I snapped. "We just pretend it didn't happen?"
"No one's pretending it didn't happen," he said back, his voice starting to harden with me. "But they're dead - nothing is going to bring them back. Their lives are over - you can't change that - none of us can. What we can change is what happens from here, from this moment on. What happened was an accident. That's all it was. You're gonna feel guilty for years to come - isn't that sentence enough?"
"But I don't like lying," I said, looking away again towards the cliffs and the sea.
"So what do you like, Sydney?" Woody asked. "Do you want to see your dad unhappy? Do you want him to feel the shame that any decent father would feel if their daughter were sent to prison? Your father is a proud man. What do you think you going to prison will do to him? Huh? It will kill him - that's what it will do. Isn't it bad enough that his wife has run off with someone half his age? Don't you think that hurts him? I don't know about you, but I see the humiliation in his eyes every time I look at him."
"I see it, too," I whispered.
"So how do you think he's gonna feel if he loses you, too?" Woody said, his voice softening now, trying to reason with me. "Who do you care more about? Those drifters or your father? They can't suffer anymore - but your father can. Telling the truth about what happened today isn't going to change anything except break your father's heart. Is that what you want?"
"No," I breathed, knowing that I had broken my father's heart enough - but nothing like this.
There was a pause, a short silence before Woody spoke again. "If I were you, I'd go inside, run myself a nice hot bath, relax, and then get some sleep. You're upset - shook up - that's understandable. Things will seem different tomorrow."
I looked at him, a kind smile on his face. "I promise this time tomorrow, things won't seem so bad. Just leave it to me and your dad to sort this thing out."
Without saying anything more, I opened the car door and stepped out. It had gotten colder and I folded my arms across the front of my blood-stained shirt. I made my way towards my apartment. At the door I looked back, but Woody had gone, racing back towards the road and the accident. I took my front door key from the chain on my belt, opened the door, and stepped inside. With the door closed behind me, I sunk to the floor, pulling my knees up beneath my chin. There I sat until the last of the daylight, which cut through the windows, throwing my apartment into darkness. I knew in my heart I wasn't doing the right thing - the honest thing by those people who had died on the road. That little boy deserved more. He deserved justice. But what about my father? If I owned up to what had truly happened, then I ran the risk of ruining him and his career, too. How would I ever live with that?
Those drifters can't suffer anymore - but your father can, I heard Woody whisper, as if he were sitting on the floor next to me.
Hadn't I caused my father enough shame and embarrassment while growing up? Hadn't my mother caused him enough humiliation by running off with a guy half her age? Could I stick another thorn in his side?
When I felt as if I couldn't cry anymore, and my head aching, I ripped off the blood-stained shirt. Standing, I went to the bathroom and turned on the light. Blood had soaked through the shirt and onto my bra. I took that off too, throwing both items to the tiled floor. I looked in the mirror above the sink. The cut to my brow wasn't deep, but the skin around it had started to swell and turn an angry red. Taking Woody's advice, I ran a bath, removing the rest of my uniform and leaving it where it had dropped. I couldn't care if I never wore that uniform again. Did I deserve to? I wondered.
I lay back in the water, tendrils of stream wafting upwards, covering the mirror with condensation. I closed my eyes, desperate to unscramble my mind. I needed to try and make sense of everything that had happened; to come to terms with what I had done. There was a sudden sound - a knocking. I opened my eyes and gasped. The word Witch had been written in the watery condensation that now covered my bathroom mirror.
