In the end, the matter was hushed up. Very few people knew what had happened, and they weren’t telling. Well, not much. The shades were drawn down over the whole ugly incident.
There wasn’t good feeling in the first place. The Wren family weren’t the sort of family to attend community events, drink in local establishments or fundraise for village causes, despite their obvious wealth. This engendered some resentment. Frank, the father, could be excused as he travelled extensively for his work. Valerie, well, she didn’t seem to work but neither did she volunteer. It wasn’t at all clear what she did. This was suspicious.
It was Alistair who was the real problem, having developed quite the drinking problem at university. He still showed no sign of seeking gainful employment, despite graduating three years ago. One supposed that Valerie spent some of her time managing him. He had by all accounts been to well-respected rehab clinics several times, but the car he had written off in the first incident was incontrovertible evidence that this approach had not yet borne fruit.
Alistair had crashed an eye-wateringly expensive vehicle into the oak in the centre of the village, but it was midnight and only the landlady of the local public house witnessed it as she was locking up. Valerie made sure that the landlady was suitably recompensed for her trouble as she loaded a drunk but uninjured Alistair into the back of another top-of-the-line car. The landlady only told her regulars, who promised to keep it under their hats. The regulars only told their wives. It was quite a successful cover-up as these things go.
But six months later, Alistair drove his second eye-wateringly expensive vehicle into a pedestrian, a five-year-old girl walking home from school with her grandfather. The girl was killed instantly, of course. Her funeral drew mourners from four counties, family and friends and strangers alike crowding into the small local church to stand around and behind the full pews. Alistair survived; he and his family moved away.
The locals remembered the rumours they had heard of the first incident. Judgement was passed, in the court of village opinion, that Valerie was an incompetent mother, Frank no better than an absent father, and that Alistair should have had his licence removed six months previously.
In the local pub, the landlady was quick to point out that no one had been hurt that first time, and that if the Wrens didn’t claim on their insurance then surely it was nobody’s business but theirs. The regulars agreed with her, swayed no doubt by the fact that she owned the only watering-hole in the village. Other customers gradually stopped debating the matter. Everyone pretended not to notice the diamond bracelet that sparkled with every pint she pulled.
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