Anything for Her (20 page)

She hates her friends, she hates her attacker – she hates everyone. She imagines living a life where she never has to see another human ever again.

She tries to flick the ash through the gap in the window, but misses and drops the cigarette. It catches the flesh on her thigh and drops to the floor of the car.

She curses and rubs her thigh before rummaging around on the floor with one hand for the cigarette. The longer it takes her, the more frantic her search becomes. Terrified that she is going to set the car on fire, she takes her eyes off the road and looks below her. She sees its burning embers. It has rolled under her right foot, which is pressing down on the accelerator; she reaches down to retrieve it. As she returns her eyes to the road she sees a bend in the road ahead. She swerves suddenly. The tyres slip across the snow and ice, unable to stop the car from speeding up.

A car is parked on the next bend in the road. The car swerves again. Brooke slams her foot firmly on the brake, but the car spins in accelerating circles, refusing to slow down, before flying forwards into the back of the car parked on the bend. Through the other
car’s rear windscreen she sees the terrified faces of a young boy and a woman. The woman’s mouth opens in horror before she is thrown into the back of the driver’s seat; the boy flies past her and smashes through the windscreen. Brooke just has time to scream as both cars topple from the road and roll downwards.

***

Brooke comes round. Her head is throbbing. Her nose and eyes feel swollen and bruised. Her chest and stomach feel sore and tight from the strain of the rigid seatbelt that is keeping her secured to her seat. Her head feels as though it is about to explode; the pain in her left shoulder is excruciating: she realises that she is hanging upside down.

She looks down, squinting and grimacing from the pain, and dazed from her brief concussion. The windscreen and windows have smashed. Glass litters the inside of the car, reflecting the moon in the sky outside like thousands of eyes peering down at her from above. The bitter air drifts in, bringing snowflakes with it. The car is a mangled wreck.

Desperate to escape, she struggles to get out of the seatbelt. It unclips, throwing her to the ground on top of the shattered glass. She lies there, stunned; the intrusive wind blowing through the car and the
adrenaline coursing through her veins cause her to shiver. She is too scared to move, but inside her skull she is buzzing with life: she feels more alive than she has ever felt before.

She spots her house key lying by her left foot. She remembers her bag emptying on the floor of the car.

My phone. I need to find my phone
.

Small splinters of glass pierce her skin like tiny fangs as she drags herself out of the broken window. She slips through the distorted gap and gasps as she crawls across the snow, staining it with blotches of her own blood.

Holding onto the car’s wreckage, she drags herself to her feet. The car rolled down an eighty-foot drop, turning numerous times, before landing with its wheels in the air – on its back like a dead insect.

The other car, however, did not roll clear of the hill. It hit a tree on the slope of the hill head-on, smashing the front bumper. A seat came free and landed thirty feet below, and a door ripped clean off the car lies nearby.

Brooke’s hair whips at her face while she scans the ground for her phone. When she doesn’t find it, she crawls back inside the car on bleeding knees and searches the interior. It’s nowhere to be found.

As she crawls back out of the car, she realises that her phone must have flown out during the fall. She heads back up the hill, shivering relentlessly. She
ends up crawling up the hill on all fours, as snow pelts her face. She climbs until she sees dark stains in the snow: thick, fresh blood. Her eyes follow the sinister river upwards, witnessing it grow wider and darker. Finally, her eyes settle on a pair of feet resting against the mangled front of the car, smashed into the tree on the hill. Her eyes crawl up the bloodied calves and thighs lying on the bonnet, the bloodied torso and the limp, gloved hands. When Brooke finally reaches the face, she screams.

The body’s eyes and mouth are wide open, frozen from the moment that her life left her. She had launched through the windscreen with the impact; her neck had got caught in a seatbelt; the force of the jolt snapped the bone in two.

Brooke sobs, looking up into the woman’s eyes, holding on to her cold, bleeding ankles.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she wails. ‘I’m so sorry for what I have done!’

Her words can barely be heard over the forceful wind, and the victim’s only reply is a lifeless stare. Her dark brown skin is splattered with her own red blood.

Brooke releases her hold on the dead woman’s legs and promises herself not to look up again. She doesn’t need to see the woman’s face for a second time. The image has been scorched into her mind: she will never forget it for as long as she lives.

She looks up towards the road. The metal barrier
has been torn apart, the mangled ends jut outwards over the drop. A few feet in front of her – its screen reflecting the moon above – lies her phone, half submerged in snow. She scrambles up the hill and grabs it. It still works. She instinctively begins to dial 999. She stops herself.

I did this. I stole a car. I hit another. I killed that woman. They won’t help me – they will arrest me
.

Brooke allows the horrific truth sink in: she is a murderer.

She knows instantly who she needs to call. There is only one person who can help her get out of this mess.

She taps the glass screen with her numb, bloodstained fingers and calls her mother.

Chapter Forty-two

Dominic has spent the day with his grandparents.

They picked him up just after nine a.m. on the first official day of the Christmas break, keen to emphasise how much fun they were going to have. His grandmother, Pamela, had a permanent smile on her face; but beneath the façade and the homely scent of lavender, the pain could be seen deep within her eyes. His grandfather, Tony, made jokes to lighten the mood, from the moment the day began. But Dominic knew better. He knew neither of them felt like laughing or smiling. He knew it was all for him, to help him forget that his mother isn’t around and his sister is missing.

They went to the local children’s play centre, which was filled with soft floors, ball pits, tunnels, and slides painted like waves. He made his way through the play centre, found a dark room with soft walls and floors and sank into the darkest corner, hugging his knees to his chest. He stared into the darkness, longing not to be seen by any passing children. He couldn’t have fun – not when Brooke was missing; not when his mother was away from him.

His grandparents then took him to lunch, to a fast-food restaurant. They all sat eating their burgers and
fries, which were over-salted, packed with processed meat and filled with cheese that resembled rubber. His grandparents tried to keep the conversation alive. When they could no longer get any responses from him, just the odd nod, they spoke about their own lives. Their conversation wasn’t interesting to Dominic, but it was comforting just to hear their voices without having to participate.

After lunch, they went for a walk in the park, their feet crunching in the snow, and the grass as white as the clouds. Some people were playing cricket, even on a cold day in December. Children rushed down the snowy slopes on sledges and Christmas decorations lit up the bandstand. Dominic saw nothing but festive fun around him, yet all he wanted was to be left alone to pine for his mother and sister.

He thought about Christmas morning and wondered who would be there with him. Would his mother come home? Would Brooke be found? Or would a pile of presents lie unopened under the tree, waiting for their return? It’s the time of year every child eagerly anticipates, yet Dominic longed for it to go away: for it to come back only when his family does.

He walked silently with his head down, kicking up the snow from the ground, while his grandparents commented on what a beautiful day it was, how picturesque the views were, and how fresh the air was. He didn’t see it as a beautiful day at all. He saw it
as another day of confusion and pain, stuck in limbo between his once normal life and his horrendous new reality.

As they walked, all three of them fell into a comfortable silence.

‘Is Brooke dead?’

It was a question that he knew couldn’t be answered, but needed to be asked.

His grandparents both stopped abruptly. They looked at one another.

‘Let’s sit down,’ Tony decided.

The trio sat on the nearest bench, after Pamela had brushed off the snow with her gloved hands. They looked out over the London park; the snowy grassland filled with trees and space felt like a completely different world to the city behind it.

They sit in silence for a moment with Dominic’s question lingering around them like fog.

‘We don’t know where Brooke is, or if she is safe,’ Tony said. ‘We all feel just as you do.’

‘You don’t act sad,’ Dominic replied.

‘Sometimes adults hide how they feel,’ Pamela said. ‘It isn’t right because the emotions need to be felt – but all the same, it makes some people feel stronger to pretend that something isn’t happening.’

‘So, Brooke might be dead?’

‘You should try not to think about that, Dominic. Just think about her coming home.’

‘But she might not come home. She might be dead.’

Pamela looked away as tears began to sting in her eyes.

He hadn’t wanted to make her cry. He hadn’t wanted to make things worse. He just wanted to ask the question that is always eating away at him. He felt as though he mustn’t ask another question ever again. He shouldn’t upset people. He shouldn’t make things worse.

After leaving the park, his grandparents took him to the cinema. They watched an animated film. His grandparents fell asleep almost instantly, with their heads back in the seats, mouths open; his grandfather snoring lightly and a bag of sweets almost spilling from his grandmother’s lap.

Dominic couldn’t watch the film. Not because he didn’t like it, but because he couldn’t take his mind off his sister. He couldn’t spare a moment to focus on anything else around him because his sister’s disappearance and his mother’s absence plagued him constantly. They are the most important people in his life and he is without them. He feels homesick, even though he is living at home. He feels alone while surrounded by people. He feels helpless and confused, so much so that his mind and body seem to be numb. He simply stares idly before him, seeing images of his sister trying to escape a bloodthirsty monster, and fretting that his mother will move away
and never come back.

After the cinema, they went out to supper. They hardly spoke throughout the meal and headed home straight afterwards, all of them yawning infectiously. Dominic longed to be at home, but not the home he was returning to. He longed to be in the home he’d once had: Brooke in her room reading a book or watching TV, his parents cooking dinner and falling asleep on the sofa together, cuddled up and breathing heavily; his mother tucking him in bed and kissing his forehead. He might have been returning to his house, but certainly not his home.

They got stuck in traffic – not unusual for London – and returned home about eight p.m. The sky was dark except for the twinkling stars. Snowflakes began to fall on the city again.

‘It’s snowing some more, Dom! You love snow!’ his grandmother said.

I used to love snow
.

‘Doesn’t it feel Christmassy?’ she said to her husband.

No, it doesn’t. Not without Mum and Brooke
.

He couldn’t help but hope that his mother had returned home in his absence.

They parked the car and headed for his front door, all of them pleased that the tense day had come to an end, when they witnessed Denise flying out of the door. She fell on the concrete floor before the steps,
sobbing. Michael stood in the doorway with blood trickling down his cheek from deep scratches, as though he had been wrestling a tiger before they arrived.

‘He tried to kill me!’ she cried, hysterically. ‘Michael tried to kill me!’

Then she shot off – barefooted and dressed in unusual clothes – and sped off in her car.

Michael simply stood before his son and parents, unable to explain.

‘It’s not true. I promise you it’s not true.’

‘I’m going to bed,’ Dominic said, and headed into the house and up the stairs.

Nothing in his life shocks him any more.

***

Dominic wakes up with a jolt. He dreamt his sister had fallen down a well and he was trying to save her. In the dream, he extended a rope for Brooke to climb up. Every time she got close to the surface, the rope would snap and she would fall back down into its depths where it was far too dark for him to see her.

He lies in bed, shivering; his breath is visible in the cold air. He hugs the duvet up to his chin. The window is open, allowing snow to stray silently into the house and fall onto the carpet. The moon sheds its rays on the floor like a second, illuminated window. The
curtains blow in the ice-cold wind. He can smell something. It isn’t a nice smell. It smells sour, like his father’s breath after drinking and his mother’s clothes after smoking.

He can’t go back to sleep with the window open, allowing the chill to infect the room and freeze his bones. He tries to build up the courage to get out of bed and close it, but keeps imagining a pair of hairy, monster-like hands jolting out from under his bed and grabbing his ankles to pull him into the darkness below.

‘You don’t know how lucky you are to be alive,’ a low, pained voice says from the shadows of his room.

He freezes at the sound.

The voice has a low, demonic tone.

‘He would have been your age one day,’ the voice continues. Every word is spoken with disdain and hatred. ‘He should be alive.’

Dominic watches grey cigarette smoke billow out from the shadows, lit up in the path of the moon that peers through the window. His heart is racing so fast he wonders if it might explode. His pulse pounds as it echoes through every vein and artery, throbbing all over his quivering body. Even though he is chilled like ice, he begins to sweat. The sweat is as cold as his flesh.