Flawed (29 page)

She took his good hand and pulled. ‘On your feet, Burglar Bill.’ And then she froze.

Here it comes, thought Daniel.

‘You have to promise me something,’ said Marianne, her voice an odd mixture of command and supplication. ‘You have to promise me you won't send the police here. To…you know…stop me.’

‘Don't ask me that,’ he whispered.

‘I have to,’ she said doggedly. ‘And you have to promise.’

‘I have to promise to let you die? Or you'll let me die?’

‘No!’ she said indignantly; then, on second thoughts, ‘Yes. Yes, I will, Daniel. That's how desperate I am. I'll watch a good man bleed to death if it's the only way I can be sure of putting an end to this tragedy. Don't think I won't. Don't count on me to come over all sentimental at the last moment. You have a choice. I can have you at Dimmock General in fifteen minutes and they'll sort you out in another five. It's that easy. All I want in return is the freedom to make the right choice for me and my family.’

‘You're asking me to keep quiet while you kill yourself,’ Daniel said baldly. ‘Knowing the hurt that's going to cause to people who don't deserve it. Knowing that today you're desperate – but you weren't desperate enough to kill yourself yesterday, and the chances are you won't be desperate enough to do it tomorrow. Give yourself a chance, Marianne. Wait till tomorrow and see.’

She shook her hair, tendrils the colour of winter sunshine escaping the scarf. ‘Tomorrow they'll be watching. Tomorrow I'll be the new fish in the aquarium, and every eye will follow my every move. All the ologists you ever heard of will be queuing outside my door. When I said I wanted this finished, Daniel, that's one of the reasons. To avoid the ologists.’

‘Even ologists have a purpose in the grand scheme of things,’ suggested Daniel. ‘And as purposes go, saving the life of a young woman with a devoted husband, an adoring son and a million strangers’ lives to her credit is a pretty good one. Me, I'm with the ologists.’

‘Then let them analyse you,’ she said briskly, ‘because I think they'd find it quite rewarding. More than the odd paper to be written on you, I imagine. But I don't want to be studied. I just want peace. I want out. And I want your word – your
word,
Daniel, and I know what that means to you – you'll do nothing to stop me.’

‘That's blackmail,’ he said weakly.

‘Maybe it is,’ she allowed. ‘I don't care what you call it. I don't care what you call me. This is the right thing for me and my child, and I don't care what anyone else thinks. Your word, Daniel.’

He shook his head. ‘I can't.’

She stared down at him as if she couldn't believe what he was saying. As if she wanted to slap some sense into him. ‘What do you
mean,
you can't? This is your
life
we're talking about! You're bleeding a river. You need to get it stopped, quickly. You don't have any choice.’

‘It's your life we're talking about as well,’ he pointed out. His voice was growing breathy. ‘I'm not going to help you die.
I don't think you'll let me die either.’

‘Don't bet your life on it,’ she shot back in anger, and Daniel gave a little chuckle that ended in a cough.

‘I have to. It's all I have.’

Brodie Farrell had known Daniel Hood for two years. She knew him intimately. Not by virtue of sharing her body and his bed: that was something she'd never wanted and even now, knowing what it would mean to him, knowing how much she too stood to gain, she couldn't make herself want it. She could pretend, but she knew in her bones it would be a terrible mistake, not a beginning but an end. She wished with all her heart that this was something she could give him, but it wasn't and she wasn't going to lie. Not to him. She had too much to lose.

But whatever the tabloids tell you, sex is a comparatively small part of most people's lives. Sometimes it's entirely incidental. Twice in her student days Brodie had found herself heaving and sweating with someone she didn't know well enough to put a surname to. She wasn't proud of that. These days, unlike in the early days of her marriage, she wasn't particularly ashamed of it either, but it did serve to underline that sex and intimacy are not the same thing. She knew Daniel as well as she knew herself. She knew – even if she didn't always understand – how he thought, how he felt, what mattered to him. Even when he managed to surprise her it was in entirely predictable ways.

And one of the very first things she'd learnt was that there was a reason for everything he did. It wasn't always a good reason, but at least in his own head, in that moment in time,
it made sense. He did nothing for effect. If he hurled himself out of a moving car and hared off back down the road, he had a pressing reason. Brodie spent the next minute working out what it was.

When she had, the breath caught momentarily in her throat. The question now was what she should – what she could – do about it. One thing she couldn't do was turn and drive back to the cottage with Noah in the car. If Daniel had been successful Marianne Selkirk would be in a state of such distress that, for both their sakes, her son should not see her. And if, despite his best efforts, Daniel had arrived too late it was imperative to keep the boy out of the house.

Brodie needed more information, and she needed to get it without the child – this smart, astute child who knew more about his family's problems than she and Daniel did even now – realising what she was asking. She cleared her throat, tried to keep her voice light. ‘Last time I was out this way was for a pheasant shoot. Those woods over’ – she hunted desperately, pointed with relief towards a little copse to the west – ‘there. Do your parents shoot?’

‘No,’ said Noah. ‘Mum says, once you've seen people shooting other people it doesn't seem much like a sport any more.’

‘Mm.’ Brodie was still walking on eggshells. ‘So there are no guns in the house.’

Noah shook his head. ‘My dad says it's asking for trouble, having a gun and a boy in the same house.’

‘I can't argue with that,’ said Brodie. She felt a little of the tension easing from her muscles. There are a lot of ways to commit suicide. Most of them require a little time, but a bullet
in the brain requires only one long moment of desperation. If Marianne didn't have a gun some of the urgency was gone from the situation. If she'd taken sleeping pills Daniel would have an ambulance on the way by now. If she was screwing a hook into a ceiling beam he'd have confiscated the step-ladders. There was time to get Noah off-side and then to get help.

Half a mile closer to Dimmock Noah said, ‘What happens if you drop an electric heater in a bath?’ and the fledgling sense of relief that had been stirring in Brodie's breast spat out its last worm and turned belly-up.

‘
What
’

‘There's an electric heater in the cottage. The central heating isn't very good. There's a heater on a long cord, and you take it wherever you're going to be sitting.’

‘Including, if you're sitting in the bath?’

Noah nodded. ‘I don't think you're supposed to do that, are you?’

‘No,’ she said. ‘You're not.’

‘I think Mum knows that too. But…’

‘What?’

‘She tried it to see if it would reach from the nearest plug.’

‘Reach the bathroom door?’ asked Brodie faintly.

In the rearview mirror she saw Noah shake his head. ‘Reach the bath.’

Brodie stopped the car and turned round in her seat. Immediately she saw from his grave, guarded, intelligent expression that her subterfuge had been entirely wasted on him. He knew what she was thinking. He'd known what Daniel was thinking when he leapt out of the car. He'd known
what his mother was thinking when she made him stuff a bag and hurry after them. He'd known, and he'd said nothing.

Brodie said softly, ‘I'm not fooling you, am I, with all this talk of shooting parties?’ The boy shook his head. ‘Sorry. I guess, in the desire to protect them, grown-ups forget that kids are as smart as them and sometimes see more. You know what I'm afraid of, don't you?’ This time Noah solemnly nodded. ‘How about you? You know her better than anyone. Are you afraid?’

Again he nodded.

Brodie decided. ‘OK. I'm going back there, and you're not. I'm going to park a hundred yards from the cottage, and you're going to stay in the car. Come what may. Do you understand?’ Another nod. She spun the wheel past the protuberance of her bump. ‘Come on then.’

‘Oh come on, Daniel,’ said Marianne, wheedling, as if it was past his bedtime and she was desperate for a vodka and tonic. ‘You're just being stubborn. Let me take you into town and get your arm seen to.’

‘Great idea,’ mumbled Daniel. ‘Let's do it.’

She squinted at him. ‘And you'll keep your mouth shut.’

Daniel gave a little scowl like a wince. ‘Damn. I knew there was a snag.’

All the time she was getting closer to hitting him. All that stopped her was the fear of making him bleed faster, bringing forward the moment when an irrevocable decision would have to be made. ‘I can't believe you're doing this,’ she hissed, impatient and mystified. ‘What business is it of yours? What gives you the right to say I'm wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ he freely acknowledged. ‘If you're sure you're right, do it. Whatever the cost.’

‘The cost is your life!’

‘The cost is both our lives, Marianne. You'd better be damn
sure
you're right.’

This was a woman who'd spent half her adult life fighting to save lives. She was never going to sit there and watch him bleed to death. She might have thought she was – for a moment,
he
might have thought she was – but she wasn't. It would have made a mockery of everything that had gone before. She'd spent her career taking risks and making sacrifices for other people: this time she was going to have to sacrifice her own needs for Daniel Hood. So today she would live. Tomorrow was another day. But today she would live.

She reached out her hand. ‘Come on, hero. You win. But if you think I'm carrying you to the car, think again.’

They had trouble getting him to his feet with both of them trying. His head swam and his legs felt like rope well-chewed by a bored donkey. ‘Sorry,’ he mumbled.

He knew Marianne was stronger than she looked. All he could hope now was that she was strong enough.

Marianne Selkirk had carried half the world on her back, she wasn't going to be defeated by a pocket-sized maths teacher. She crouched beside him and took his good arm over her shoulders, and – snarling at him to help, trembling with the strain – she straightened up, bringing him with her. She pinned him against the wall to stop him slumping while she got her breath back. ‘Jesus, Daniel,’ she gasped, ‘you must have rocks in your legs.’

‘Sorry,’ he said again.

Still pinning him to the wall with one hand she unlocked the front door with the other.

As she did it burst inward in a manner quite inexplicable by the normal laws of physics. Marianne recoiled, letting Daniel go in the process. He slid down the wall uncomplainingly. ‘Hi, Brodie,’ he said, unsurprised.

Imagine an avenging angel in an advanced state of pregnancy. She filled the open doorway, her eyes burnt and electricity crackled about her. The blast of her gaze cauterised the narrow hall. Then, by degrees, the adamant of her expression softened and a puzzled little frown gathered between her eyebrows. She wasn't sure what kind of a situation she'd walked in on, but it wasn't the one she'd been expecting. ‘Daniel – what are you doing down there?’

It would take a fairly long explanation or a very short one. He settled for the short one. ‘Bleeding.’

‘What?’
Then she saw the makeshift bandage dark with his blood and fury worked on her like adrenalin. She spun on Marianne Selkirk as if she meant to deck her. ‘What have you done to him?’

Daniel shook his head wearily. ‘It wasn't Marianne. I cut myself breaking in and it won't stop bleeding.’

Brodie stared at him. ‘We have to get you to hospital.’

‘I was trying,’ Marianne said pointedly.

They took an arm each and hauled him to his feet, and walked him outside.

‘Where's your car?’ asked Marianne. And then, her tone sharpening: ‘Come to that, where's Noah?’

‘Just up the lane.’ Brodie made Marianne meet her gaze. ‘I didn't want to bring him because I didn't know what I'd find.’

Marianne dipped her head in acknowledgement. ‘Shall I take Daniel? My car's closer, and faster.’

‘OK,’ nodded Brodie. ‘Noah and I will follow you in. Oh…’ She dropped Daniel's hand and, startled, her eyes round, clutched at her belly. ‘I'm having a baby.’

Marianne looked at her bump. ‘Actually, I'd guessed.’

‘No.’ She shook her head, the dark hair dancing. ‘I mean, I'm having a baby
right now.’

Daniel peered at her through the miasma of his weakness. However frail he was feeling, he could always do math. ‘It's too soon.’

‘Don't tell
me,’
gritted Brodie, ‘tell The Blob.’

It
was
too soon – six weeks too soon. But The Blob wasn't listening. The last hour or so had been enough to persuade it that things were more interesting on the outside and it was time to join the human race. The contractions raked at her as if it was trying to claw its way out. She bent double, gasping, then dropped to her knees on the grassy path.

Unsupported, once more Daniel slid down beside her.

Marianne lifted her head in disbelief and raged at the sky: ‘And now there's
two
of them!’

A small figure was standing in the open gateway. ‘There's two of us too.’

You heat the steel in a fire, then you quench it in a bath. You'd think treatment like that would be enough to destroy anything. But it makes a sword strong, and it makes it sharp. Noah Selkirk was not only an intelligent boy, he was a resilient one, and he was used to dealing with crises. Daniel bleeding, and Brodie in the throes of parturition, unable to help one another, found themselves at the mercy of a suicidal
woman and a twelve-year-old boy.

In the event, they could have done a great deal worse.

The boy smiled gravely. The mother smiled back. ‘So there are. You think we can do this?’