Thanks once more to Jennie Ward who did the thorough job of editing
and to Brenda who showed me what thorough reading does :-)

(this story not suitable for happy mood reading)

I was just getting settled on the couch with my book and a cup of tea, when a noise from outside crashed the peace and quiet of the late autumn night.

It was unmistakably the sound of slipping cars and brakes being hit. But it was followed by sounds I couldn't quite place - something like popping corks? Not very likely in a car accident, right? By the time I got to my feet it was over, and everything was silent. I put my book to one side, stepped over to the window and shoved the curtains aside to see what was going on. In this remote place, miles away from the suburbs of London there is hardly any traffic, since this house is so far from 'civilisation'.
It was originally a farm house and cattle used to graze on the vast space surrounding it, but the livestock had been long gone. I inherited it from my late grandfather and was now the proprietor of this remote, peaceful place. I like to spend my weekends and days off here, away from the busy and crowded London where I live and work. There are hardly any other houses here - my closest neighbour lives three miles down the road. It's amazing that this happened just outside my front porch, actually.

I saw three cars. I have no knowledge of makes and models and all I could see was that one was dark and had smashed into a thick oak tree. The second was white and had stopped beneath a lamp post. The third car, also dark, stood a bit to the side, and like the white one, had its doors open. From where I was standing my view was restricted by the branches of a tree but I could see someone on the ground, near one of the cars. An injured person? I dialled 999, explained the situation to the operator and slammed the receiver back onto the cradle. Snatching the blanket from the couch, I jumped into my slippers and ran downstairs.

I haven't been confronted much with death in my life. My grandfather's death, when I was sixteen, was as close as I had come to seeing a dead body. My hands were sweaty and my heart rose in my throat as I looked into the dark car that had smashed into the tree. It wasn't that I was scared - I suppose nervous is a better way to describe it.
The driver was dead - his face frozen in a moment of surprise, or so it seemed. His dark eyes were staring into nothing with an amazed expression, almost as if he had realised - too late - what was going to happen. I swallowed and wiped my hands on my trousers before stepping over to the second dark car, with its engine still running. There was a man hanging in the seat belt, half out of the opened door. Part of his head had disappeared.
I backed away - this was too much for me. I leaned against a tree, taking deep breaths to get the pounding of my heart under control. I read an article once about an undertaker who said it was easier to cope with the dead if you distanced yourself from them and regarded the situation clinically. Clinically… After a few moments I realised that I should try to do just that. Be distant. Be clinical, Emma, I thought as I tried to stop my reaction to this unexpected situation.
With shaking knees I went over to the white car. No, it wasn't white, it was silver. I could see the Ford logo on the bonnet.
The driver's door was open, as I had noticed from the window. I approached carefully, afraid to see another dead body. But - if there was somebody alive, I should be there, help, offer first aid. I took a few deep breaths, trying to ignore the bile that stubbornly pushed its way up.

The man near the Ford had fallen out of the driver's seat. I squatted down beside him and shivered as the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. So much for the clinical approach - I knew this man.

I stared at the gaze in the blue eyes. I can't remember how long I just sat there, staring paralysed at the face I knew from Lloyd's Savings and Trust in London. I managed his account - and had done so for many years. He would come in at irregular intervals and deposit or withdraw money from his account. Even when I was married he never failed to ask me out on a date. It had become a bit of an inside joke and I was often teased with it, but I recognised the envy in the eyes of some of my female co-workers. He was certainly a charming man, the knight in shining armour who could enchant the ladies with a simple smile and a casually spoken compliment. One wink of his eyes was enough for the people around me to start the gossip machine again…
Even after my divorce I never said yes to his invitation. Not because I was seven years older than him - call it a professional distance that I liked to keep up. Plus the fact that I knew that once I agreed to a date, the magic of that smirk would somehow lessen. I knew about him only what it said in his file: name, address, date of birth, etcetera. He had stated his profession to be a civil servant, but I didn't know the Civil Service paid that good a salary nor that bruises and black eyes were part of the job. But it was never my place, nor my nature to ask what caused him to look the way he sometimes did. I think he appreciated it - I could see it in his smile.

But there was no smile now. I couldn't take my eyes off of his face. The blue eyes stared into eternity - looking at something beyond my sense of perception. I stretched out my still trembling fingers and very carefully, as though afraid that I might make the image of this man shatter, touched his face. I let my fingers run over the light stubble on his jaw.
I touched his lips, hoping that I would feel the warmth of a breath caressing my fingers - but there was nothing, not even an autumn wind to fool me. The tip of my fingers stayed on those lips for a while, my body screaming for a reaction, a hint to life in this broken body, but there was none.

I let the back of my hand slide gently over his face. My index finger followed the curve of his nose, then his cheekbone and was automatically drawn to the eyebrows.

A faded scar interrupted one of those - a vague reminder of something that happened in his childhood and prevented the hair from growing. It was very characteristic to his features and suddenly, before my mind's eye I could see his smile and those eyebrows, rising to set his face alight and giving him the somewhat smirking appearance that appealed to so many people.

I touched his eyelashes very carefully. They were soft and springy and moved like hair in soft brush when I ran my fingers over them. They circled his eyes like the corona surrounds the sun, and I knew it was odd that I thought of something so lively when I faced death so intimately now. Maybe it was because I had seen those eyes so often - the mirrors to the soul, right? The cheekiness and the alertness that I had found to be so appealing came straight from those eyes for sure. But now - the liveliness, the warmth, the glow - was gone. Eternity had beckoned and he had answered. Anyone who had seen those eyes the way I did at that moment would have recognised it - the man had surrendered to death at last. I realised vaguely that you're supposed to shut the eyelids and cover the body but I just couldn't bring myself to do it. If I did that it would be like signing his death certificate and there would be no turning back. It was nonsense, I knew he had passed away and nothing was going to bring him back but I just … couldn't. It just felt so…. so final.

Even though I only knew this man from his quick visits to the bank, I felt a sisterly or maybe even motherly warmth for him, now that his life had ended so abruptly. He had shown an obvious love of life, but now… I blew out the air I'd been holding… that was gone. I stroked his hair, as if that could somehow undo his suffering, if there had been any - or maybe I did it to ease my own pain.

The dark slightly wavy hair felt soft, even a little warm under the palm of my hand. Something wet and sticky ran onto my fingers and with distant fascination I recognised it to be blood, dripping slowly from an injury to his head, down onto the tarmac.

I'll never remember how long I sat there, his blood on one hand, the other caressing that face. An infinite sadness gushed through me. There was no way I could stop the intense no - no - no that kept on echoing through my body. Words are not sufficient sometimes to describe certain feelings. You can only understand them if you've experienced them yourself. I've tried to write down hundreds of times how this felt but the intensity of the defeated feeling was something I was unable to express properly.

I never even realised where the ambulance personnel came from. Suddenly there were more cars all around me, I hadn't even noticed them approaching. The reaction to my phone call had been professional and swift, so it seemed. An older man with a Scottish accent asked me something but I couldn't grasp what he said - it went straight over my head. I could hear shouts and screaming from behind me -were they shouting at me or at the dead man? I felt somebody taking me by the shoulders and pulling me away from him. Curly hair came into my vision, I didn't even see a face as that curly headed man ducked deep over the body on the ground but I could hear his moan, like a wounded animal, before somebody guided me away from the scene.

A young looking Constable with a shocked look in his eyes asked me if I knew the victim.

He was a civil servant, was all I could mumble, unable to tear my eyes away from the curly head that was knelt over the dead man, a civil servant.