With the front of the garden being elevated, neither Dina nor Sarah saw the Subaru until it was a few feet away.  There was barely time to recognise the danger before it hit the wall at only twelve miles per hour.  When it hit it wasn't going quite fast enough to demolish the wall, but fast enough to crush the life out of Daniel Gray.

Chapter 1

October 28th 2010

The alarm clock heralded the start of a new day and it came as some relief to Tom Gray, rousing him from yet another nightmare.

In the months since Daniel had been gone he had rarely been able to sleep without dreaming of the incident.  At first he had thought it a blessing that he hadn’t witnessed Daniel’s death, so that he could remember his son as he was the last time he saw him alive, but as the weeks went on he found that each dream saw Daniel dying in more bizarre and painful ways.  In all of these dreams he was there, watching it all unfold, but helpless to do anything about it.

The relief soon turned to anguish, though, as he remembered what the day had in store.

As much as Daniel’s death had hurt him, he had been able to immerse himself in his work.  For his wife there had been no such distraction.  She had shunned friends and sat alone in the house day after day, hitting the bottle.  He had lost count of the number of times he had arrived home to find her drunk and watching a home movie: Daniel learning to eat with a spoon; Daniel taking his first steps; Daniel saying ‘Daddy’ for the first time...

Every evening was spent consoling her, urging her to get back in touch with her friends and carry on with life, and despite her promises that she would, he saw little evidence of things improving.

The fact that he hadn’t spotted the signs for what they were would haunt Tom Gray for the rest of his days, but today more than any other.

It was time to have a shower, shave and head to the office to do the payroll.

In the afternoon he would bury his wife.