Poppy's Smile

This story was told to me, I should perhaps say admitted to me, by a young violinist who stayed for a night on our living room couch. He was part of an orchestra my wife had brought down for a concert in the church. We put up six of them, two in the spare room, one in a bunk bed in the office, two in our neighbour's borrowed camper-van, and the young man in question. After the concert we all sat out in the garden for a drink, enjoying the warm summer night, until gradually, one by one, the party drifted off to their beds and only the young man and I were left.

He struck me as a rather lonely young man. He was, my wife told me, a hopeful talent who exhibited occasional moments which bordered on the extraordinary, and it was for this reason I felt obliged to sit up and talk with him as long as he wanted to sit up and talk. He told me this story, I think, when he ran out of other subjects with which to put off going to sleep. Why he wished to put off going to sleep the story perhaps explains.

I was tired by then, and I had drunk more than I am used to, but the tale made an impression and I believe I recall it more or less exactly as he told it. He began it quite casually by mentioning he had been to the area before. I asked how come of course, and this is what he said:

It was four years ago. I had given up the music at the time, it didn't seem to be going anywhere and I was sick of never having any money so I started working in a kitchen design studio in Epping, doing graphics for brochures and the website. I wasn't very good at it. I had a crush, I suppose I should call it an obsession, with a girl who worked there. Her name was Poppy. She was beautiful; young, blonde, had the loveliest smile, very kind, very friendly, very already with a boyfriend - but that didn't actually make any difference for me. I dreamed of being with Poppy in the same way a person might dream of winning the lottery. Not something I ever expected to actually happen.

I am prone to these obsessions and, if anything, it was running its course.

I don't want to pretend I behaved any better than I did. I stalked her by most people's definition. I didn't follow her home or anything - but I did find out her address, and I found all her social accounts of course. I was just... collecting information about her the way a teenage girl might collect information about a boy band. I concocted an excuse why we should be friends on Facebook. I don't think she thought anything of it but I spent hours looking through her entire history. It wasn't... there were no bikini pictures or anything... but just finding out about her life, you know...

Then she died.

It was a hit and run, that was all we knew at first. Not very far from here. She had been cycling with a friend - they were in training for a sponsored ride. They were on a country road. It wasn't single track but it had high hedges and a car coming the other way cut the corner. They were riding abreast, which is what you're supposed to do. Poppy was on the outside. The car hit her straight on. Sent her flying. Her friend called for an ambulance but it was too late.

You can't imagine the effect on the office. It was not a big company, sixty people maybe, and everybody loved her. We were just devastated. We were like ghosts for the longest time. When the police didn't make any progress finding the driver a bunch of us went up to Wickham and handed out leaflets asking for information.

I got angry. I guess that's normal but it was just... all the time. Angry with the police for not catching the driver. Angry with everyone at work for still being there. Angry at Poppy for not being there. Angry at myself for... everything. But most of all angry at the driver.

After we went to Wickham, and we stood around like lemons the whole day in that stupid little twee market square trying to give the stupid leaflets my manager had designed to stupid people who did not care, I got in my car and I followed the map on the leaflet to the road and tried to find the spot where she died. I wasn't sure if I found it or not. The police notices asking for information were a long way apart and there were a number of bends it could have been, but I pulled over into the entrance to a field near one of them and stopped and... well I just sat there for a bit feeling angry and useless and stupid.

Then a car came past, and it occurred to me that if somebody drives down a road one Saturday, they might drive down it again another Saturday. The only thing we knew about the car was that it was a black Range Rover - so I sat there, for about two hours until it got dark, watching for a black Range Rover.  I went back the following week, and then the week after that, and then every week. The first day I didn't really know what I'd do if I'd actually saw a matching car; follow it home and report the address to the police maybe. Sitting there Saturday after Saturday though, for hour after hour, I worked it over in my mind. I had this whole speech worked out which would make them see the error of their ways. If they didn't, and if the police weren't interested, I was going to take out adverts accusing them in the local paper, that sort of thing. I thought I was a vigilante or something. 

It was October when I contacted Poppy's friend, Helen. I reasoned that if I was going to catch the driver I needed to know more, enough to be certain it was them, so I made up a story. I sent her a message on Facebook, told her that I was one of Poppy's colleagues, and told her that a friend of my father's was a retired police detective and that he had heard what happened and he wanted to help find the driver, and that he'd asked me if I could ask her for the details of the crash. I didn't think she'd say yes but she did.

She lived in a flat in Melton. It was a nice place. I went there on a Sunday morning when her boyfriend was out. It was awkward at first. We stood in the kitchen and she made tea and neither of us knew what to say. I have never been good at putting people at their ease. I was so nervous I was mostly just trying not to sweat.

She said something really odd. She said "I think Poppy wants me to tell you about it." Not "would want", but "wants." I remember that very clearly. I wish I'd asked her about it.

She said "let's get on with it," and we sat down and I took out my notepad. I'd written a list, as if I'd been prompted by someone who knew what they were doing: time of day, exact location, order of events, anything at all about the driver, anything at all about the car. I recorded what she said on my phone so I know it word for word.

"The time of day was about eleven in the morning," she said. "I know that for sure because we'd just checked. We had a lunch stop booked, the Ship, and we knew we had to keep up the pace to make it because it was a nice day and it would fill up and they give away your table if you're late. The place where it happened I know because I've been back since. Do you know the road?"

I said I did.

"As you come from the west, which was what we were doing, about two miles from the main road there's an entrance to a field with a galvanised gate and the view of a hill with a single tree at the top."

I said I knew the place. It was where I'd been parking.

"Just beyond that, going east, is a bend to the left. It was right on that bend."

I asked if she could describe what happened. This is what she said.

"We were going around that bend. We were riding abreast and Poppy was on the outside. We knew there was a car coming the other way because we could hear it but we couldn't see it. It sounded fast though. You get a feel for that when you cycle a lot. Poppy must have seen it before me because of where she was riding but I only saw it a fraction of a second before it hit her. Suddenly there it was, right in the middle of the road."

She stopped at that point and picked up her mug but it was already empty. I offered to make more tea but she declined and went and got herself a glass of water. When she came back she had this look of resolve on her face. Deadly serious. She started talking almost before I could restart the recording.

"It hit Poppy head on. Her bike went under the wheel and she went over the bonnet and bounced off the windscreen, at the edge where I guess it's very strong, it didn't break anyway. Poppy landed on the far side of the road. Practically in the hedge. The car stopped. I remember the sound of the brakes. I'd leapt off my bike and I think I must have screamed. I remember... I remember very clearly looking back at the car and seeing the drivers eyes in the mirror and her looking at me. I don't know if that actually happened, if it would actually be possible, she was a little way down the road, but I remember it so clearly. Her looking at me, and then just driving off and leaving me all alone.

"After that I ran to Poppy. She was alive but she couldn't really speak. I tried my phone but there was no signal so I ran back to the entrance to the field and up that hill till I got a bar to call for an ambulance. I was so out of breath that it took me three goes to make the woman understand me. Then I ran back down to wait with Poppy. I tried to talk to her but I was so scared I couldn't think of anything to say so I just told her help was coming over and over again. It took forever. At some point some cars stopped. There was a woman who knew first aid, and someone who drove off to call the ambulance again, and an old man who just put an arm over me and told me I'd done everything right. I never found out who he was.

"When the ambulance finally arrived I didn't understand why they kept fussing over me and not Poppy, but she was dead by then of course."

I turned the recording off and asked if she wanted to take a break but she just wiped her eyes and said no so I asked what she remembered about the car.

"All I can remember is that it was a black Range Rover, very clean and shiny, and it had an RSPCA sticker in the rear window with a picture of a skinny rescue dog. I didn't remember the license plate at all. Nothing. The police showed me pictures of different models and we decided it was a recent one. No more than five years old I think."

I asked about the driver and she said "I can't have seen her for more than a split second. I have these images in my mind but they change. Sometimes she's older. Sometimes she has brown hair, sometimes black. I just can't remember. I've tried and tried."

After that, I mean after I left and was driving home, I felt desperately guilty. Like the worst scum on earth. But that evening I got a text from Helen thanking me. She said since talking it through it was like a weight had been lifted from her shoulders, those were her exact words. I didn't feel that through. If anything I felt more obsessed and anxious for Saturday to come round again. It was like... it was like this voice at the back of my head berating me for not doing more. I couldn't relax at all. Not for a minute. I slept even worse than usual.

I started doing something that week that I'd been thinking about but hadn't been brave enough to actually do. I figured that if you'd hit somebody and fled the scene you'd get rid of the car, so I started searching for second hand black Range Rover's online. I also made a list of car dealers near the accident.

I still went down on the Saturdays and parking in the same place, but I started going down on the Sundays too and visiting every used car place I could find. And then driving out to see private sellers on week-night evenings.

Something strange happened that following Saturday. A lot of strange things happened over those weeks but they were just odd feelings, the sense that someone was watching me, nothing definite, but that day... Sometimes when I was parked drivers would stop and ask if I was okay. I said I was fine, sometimes that I was just killing time, or watching for birds – people believed that. Somebody stopped when I was there the following Saturday. Before they drove off they said, "what's that girl doing up on that hill?"

I looked but I didn't see anyone.

It took four weeks till I found the car. I'd been going further and further afield every Sunday. I'd seen a lot of black Range Rovers but they never felt right. There was no sticker, no sign of recent repair to the bumper or windscreen. No feeling. It wasn't rational but I expected to just know when I found it. I really believed that.

In Harleston, in a small dealership, the Range Rover had no dents or scratches but it did have a brand new paint job, and it did have an RSPCA sticker with a skinny dog, and I did have a feeling. Oh boy did I have a feeling. Just touching it was like getting an electric shock.

The salesman came out. He said it had had one careful lady driver, which was so unfunny it made me feel nauseous, then he said it was a good car if you wanted to start a family and he turned around as if he was looking for someone. He asked me if I was there alone and said he was sure I had somebody with me when he'd seen me from the office.

I should have just told the police I suppose. There might have been forensics they could do. They could have certainly found the previous owner. But I didn't. I had some money my grandmother had left me. It wasn't quite enough but if I lived off my credit card for a month and exchanged my old car it would stretch. I went back two days later and bought it. When I got the log book I saw it had had bodywork repairs done in September.

Driving home I saw... Poppy had had beautiful blonde hair and it would flash the most glorious gold in sunlight and out of the corner of my eye... in the mirror as if someone was in the back seat... That whole week I would just drive around in the Range Rover just to get the sense that she was there.

I went to the road again very early on the Saturday. By that time I was absolutely certain Poppy was with me. I felt if I reached out my left hand I would find her sitting there. I actually angled the mirror away because if I caught a glimpse of the empty passenger seat it broke the spell. I was excited that day. I was talking to her, imagining what it was going to be like for the driver to see her old car waiting for her exactly where she'd killed someone with it.

There was a red Mercedes SUV with a woman driver that I had noticed before. It came that way more weeks than not. This time it nearly swerved off the road when the driver saw us and then the engine roared and it drove away very fast. I think I actually heard Poppy tell me to go.

I've never driven so quick trying to catch up. I knew this was the only chance we would get. I caught sight of them before the main road so I knew which way they went. And I raced down the dual carriageway at God knows what speed just to keep them in view, but I could still see them when they turned off onto the side road and then it was easy. The road led straight to her house.

For a while I did not get out of the car. The woman had been trying to get indoors as fast as possible I think but when I pulled up she just stopped and stared. She was white as a sheet. She had a little girl with her. About four years old.

I got out but I just stood by the door. I couldn't remember a word of that speech I'd planned and planned. She said something to me but I wasn't listening. Poppy, real as day, had her arm around her, and then around the little girl. Neither of them noticed. She was smiling. Looking right at me and smiling with her hands on that little girl. I think of that smile a lot. It was not a nice smile.