Page 77 of The House Swap

MARTIN

People assume the moment everything changed for me must have been the accident.

But that isn’t quite true.

My life didn’t fall apart all at once. It happened in stages.

The accident was simply the beginning. The fracture line.

Everything that came after spread slowly from there.

When I think back to before, I was happy. Things were simple, but there was no drama. I liked my job and I loved my girlfriend. And yes, perhaps I took everything for granted at times, but I think it’s true for most of us that you don’t really appreciate what you really have until it’s gone.

I wasn’t the one driving when it happened.

That detail matters to me, even if it doesn’t seem to matter to everyone else.

When people look at my face, at my scars, they see the consequences of that night.

The recklessness, the speed. That split moment of miscalculated judgement.

But I wasn’t the one behind the wheel.

My friend, Darren, was driving. I was simply the passenger.

The road had been slick after rain and a car coming the other way had been travelling too fast on the bend. I remember a moment of headlights filling the windscreen and in my head I hear the sound of metal folding in on itself, but the truth is I was already unconscious. That part is probably my imagination.

I do know that it happened so suddenly, there was no time to brace. No time to react.

The driver of the other car walked away with nothing more than bruises, while Darren was lucky to escape with a fractured wrist and concussion.

I was the one who remained in hospital for weeks.

Luck, apparently, is a matter of perspective.

The surgeons did what they could. They repaired the bones that had shattered in my face and reconstructed what the collision had destroyed, but there are limits as to what the best surgeons can restore.

Skin heals, scars fade.

At least, that’s what they told me.

Unfortunately for me, I suffer from keloid scarring, which is a result of abnormal healing. The ugly red, raised, jagged lines will never disappear entirely.

I remember I avoided mirrors at first, not able to bear looking at my reflection.

It wasn’t a vanity thing. I knew I wasn’t classically handsome, but I had never been ugly either. But add a few scars, and a tightness around my mouth, where the skin pulls taut and is slightly uneven so that when I smile it looks creepy and a little grotesque, it changes things.

People always notice it.

Some pretend not to, trying hard to ignore it, while others respond with curiosity and questions.

Both reactions are equally obvious and annoy me.

I never asked for any of this.

When I was eventually discharged from hospital, I had hoped things would go back to normal, but I suppose that was wishful thinking. The life waiting for me outside no longer fitted as comfortably as it once had.

My girlfriend, Claire, tried to be supportive. At first, she visited every day, encouraging me as I recovered. She told me the scars weren’t as bad as I thought. She even said she barely noticed them.