Chapter 17
brOOKE
Brooke couldn’t believe she was sitting here with Kirsty, of all people. It was all Danny’s fault. He’d started talking about her for the first time in eighteen years, and saying her name had conjured her up. She was like bloody Beetlejuice! Well, sort of.
She couldn’t help noticing how much her cousin had aged.
Kirsty had been in her twenties the last time she’d seen her.
Now she must be in her mid-forties. She had lines around her eyes and across her forehead, and she’d put a bit of weight on round her middle.
Those skinny jeans she used to wear would look awful on her now, unless she wore a baggy top instead of tucking her T-shirt in the way she used to.
At least Brooke had kept her figure. One perk of having died at twenty-five she supposed.
It was sheer luck that Danny wasn’t here this afternoon.
He’d told her he was nervous about the song and Silas had offered to coach him for the afternoon.
She’d thought he was nuts, because he had the best voice of any of the ghosts, and who’d choose to spend an afternoon alone with Silas if they could help it? But that was Danny for you.
She’d been quite cross about him going off without her, but it was a good job as it turned out. Imagine if she’d been with him when she’d spotted Kirsty! Imagine if he’d spotted Kirsty!
And that was the problem. She definitely didn’t want him to see her.
Not now, especially. Not when he finally seemed to be taking baby steps forward, mentioning her name and all that.
And he’d been nicer to Brooke lately, and a bit less miserable.
If he set eyes on his wife again that would be that. He’d be back at square one.
Worse in fact, because seeing her again would make it much harder for him to let her go again, and she would have to leave in the end.
Wouldn’t she? What was she even doing here anyway?
Was this some sort of vigil for Danny? She could understand it if it was the anniversary of their death, or a special occasion, but it wasn’t.
It was just another ordinary day. It made no sense.
And now here she was, asking Brooke awkward questions and bringing up that awful day of all things.
Well, Brooke would tell her the gist of it, but she couldn’t go into any details.
She might slip up and reveal that Danny was around after all, and the one thing Brooke had to make sure of was that Kirsty and Danny were never reunited.
Briefly, she filled Kirsty in on the fateful events of that night in February 2008, and Kirsty listened, tears rolling down her cheeks. Brooke wondered guiltily how many more tears there’d have been if she’d told her the full truth…
* * *
Brooke
Saturday 16 February 2008
Opening her eyes, Brooke found herself lying on the hard ground, looking up at a dark sky and wondering where on earth she was and what had happened. She lay quite still for a few moments, trying to remember, but when nothing came back to her, she gingerly sat up.
How had she got here?
Vaguely, she remembered being at a party, but not much else. She couldn’t even remember leaving it. Bloody hell, how much had she had to drink?
She carefully got to her feet and brushed down her trousers – although they didn’t seem to be at all dirty, surprisingly.
Something caught her eye and her gaze shifted from the hem of her trousers to something lying on the ground beside her.
She leapt back, giving a gasp of horror when she realised it was a body.
Before she’d had the chance to fully register that fact, a voice murmuring her name in her ear frightened her so much that she let out a piercing scream, before slumping against Danny in relief.
‘It’s you! Thank God. What happened? Have you seen…’
Her voice trailed off. Danny’s eyes were wide with shock and he was shaking uncontrollably.
‘Danny?’
He couldn’t speak. Instead, he turned and pointed, his face looking suddenly eerie in the feeble light of what she now realised was one remaining headlight.
There wasn’t much left of the car to be honest. It was a crumpled wreck, having obviously smashed into a tree on the driver’s side.
She couldn’t imagine anyone would survive that sort of impact, and peering closer she could see the vague, dark shape of what might well be airbags, and possibly someone in the driving seat.
‘Are they—?’ She broke off, not wanting to think about it. But then again, they might be alive and need help. ‘We need to get an ambulance. Where’s your phone? Oh!’
She remembered suddenly about his phone and why she’d left the party, and remembering that seemed to open the floodgates as a whole bunch of other memories started to return.
‘Lee! That’s Lee!’ she gasped, stumbling forward. ‘He might be alive!’
Danny grabbed her wrist. ‘Don’t.’
His voice was hoarse and his grip was tight.
Brooke trembled. ‘He’s… He’s dead?’
Danny nodded. ‘You’re not seeing.’
She thought he meant that he didn’t want her to see Lee’s body and had to admit she wasn’t keen to see it herself.
‘Don’t worry. I won’t look. We need to ring an ambulance.’
‘Brooke, you’re not seeing.’ He stared at her, his eyes filled with something she couldn’t quite understand. She guessed he must be in shock. Not surprising. She was feeling pretty shocked herself, but that didn’t alter the fact that they needed to get help.
‘Where’s my phone?’ she muttered. She’d thrown his back at him as they’d been arguing, she remembered suddenly. A vague image of her turning round and yelling something at him, then chucking the phone onto the back seat beside him. Thank God he hadn’t opened it.
She’d had her own phone in her bag, so where was that?
In the car, she supposed. Funny, she had no memory of getting out of the car at all, but she must have done.
How had she ended up on the ground? Must have fainted.
That meant she might have bumped her head when they crashed. She should get checked out.
Danny’s arm went around her shoulders and she started in surprise. He’d never done that before! At any other time she’d have been thrilled. After all, how long had she waited for him to show her some sign of affection? But this… This didn’t feel like affection. This was something different.
‘I don’t know what to do,’ he whispered.
Brooke put her arm around his waist, trying to reassure him. ‘We’ll be okay. We just have to get help. We need to get to a hospital, and someone needs to see to Lee…’
She turned back to the car and finally registered how much damage had been done to the windscreen. In fact, there was a large, gaping hole on the passenger side, and cracks spidered across the rest of the glass.
She bobbed down, peering through the side passenger window and felt suddenly sick.
‘Danny! There’s someone else in there! Look!’
A body, sort of twisted and tangled, and hanging over the passenger seat as if they’d been hurled forward from the rear. But there hadn’t been any other passengers, had there? Lee had been driving. She’d been in the passenger seat, and Danny had been behind her…
‘Now do you see?’ Danny asked gently.
Brooke staggered backwards, shaking her head in terror.
‘How – how can you be here, talking to me? You’re in there!’ She looked back at what she now realised was Danny’s body in the car.
Danny ran a hand through his hair and let out a sob. ‘And you’re there! So explain that!’
She followed his gaze and her whole world seemed to collapse. Because there she was, lying on the hard ground, barely recognisable even with her distinctive costume. Yet she was also here, standing by this crumpled car, talking to a dead man.
Brooke dropped onto the ground and buried her face in her hands. ‘You’re a ghost?’
‘I think,’ Danny said, sitting beside her, ‘that we both are.’
‘And Lee?’
Danny hesitated. ‘I don’t think so.’
‘But he’s definitely dead?’
There was a pause. ‘Yeah. He’s definitely dead.’
Brooke looked up, seeking some sort of reassurance as she grabbed the edges of his hussar style jacket, barely registering the white stripes of make-up across his cheekbones and nose.
‘Danny, what do we do? What do we do?’
He shrugged helplessly. ‘I suppose we get out of here. Try to make our way home. I don’t know what else…’
Brooke nodded. She didn’t want to be here any longer. She couldn’t bear to see the wreckage of the car, of their lives, another moment. She somehow got to her feet and Danny followed.
‘Which way do we go?’ she asked.
Danny frowned. ‘I don’t know my way back from here, do you?’
‘Maybe we should go back the way we came. There was a sign for a village just back there, wasn’t there? Maybe we can get help.’
‘We’re dead, though. Who’s going to be able to see us? Haven’t you watched Ghost? Patrick Swayze had a heck of a time finding someone to help him.’ Danny sounded panicked now.
Remembering some of the things that had happened in Ghost, Brooke didn’t blame him.
Even so, there wasn’t much else they could do, and there didn’t seem to be any sign of a bright light to guide them to wherever it was they should presumably have gone, so they decided they might as well head back towards the village.
They hadn’t spoken a word to each other as they walked, each lost in their thoughts, and it was someone else’s voice who had eventually broken the silence.
‘Oh, you poor things! Now, don’t worry yourselves. You’re safe now. We’re here to help.’
Two men in fancy dress were hurrying along the road towards them. Had they come from the party? Brooke couldn’t recall anyone dressed in old-fashioned clothes like these. It had been a 1980s party, not a 1780s party, or whatever. But, wait, these two could see them. Were they ghosts, too?
‘I’m Peter,’ one said. He was small and thin with grey hair and a sad expression. ‘This is my friend, Isaac.’
Isaac was also quite short but rotund, with thinning hair and a wide smile.
‘Danny,’ Danny said flatly. ‘This is Brooke.’