Chapter 25
brOOKE
Brooke crept into the flat later that evening, wondering what sort of mood Danny would be in.
She knew Rory would have told his brother the truth about his relationship with Kirsty, and that her cousin was in the village, and she couldn’t help feeling anxious about how Danny had taken that.
If he was completely heartbroken, how was she going to help him this time?
‘You’re out late. Thought you were never coming back.’
Brooke almost leapt into the air as Danny’s voice cut through the silence. He stepped through his bedroom door into the dark hallway, standing in front of her in a rather menacing fashion.
‘What are you doing scaring me to death like that!’ Realising what she’d said she tutted impatiently. ‘You know what I mean.’ How had he even known she was there?
‘I was waiting for you to come home,’ he said. ‘I expect you can guess why. Shall we?’
He gestured to the living room door. Brooke sighed inwardly. She could tell that, for whatever reason, he was annoyed with her. Again.
They entered the living room, where the lamps were on and the curtains were drawn. Brooke sat on the sofa, ignoring the television which was showing a repeat of some old crime series.
Danny didn’t sit. He paced up and down, rubbing the back of his neck as he seemed to contemplate what he was going to say to her.
‘You know,’ he said at last, ‘I had this whole speech worked out. You’ve been gone hours and I’ve had a lot of time to lie on that bed and think about what I was going to say to you. What I was going to ask you. But when it comes right down to it, all I want to know is, why?’
‘Why what?’
He stopped pacing and stared at her. ‘Why what? What do you think? Why you didn’t tell me that Kirsty was here in Rowan Vale! What else?’
Brooke eyed him miserably. ‘I might have known that, after everything those two have done, I’m the one who’s going to get it in the neck.’
‘Don’t play the victim here! You knew how much I missed Kirsty, and yet you deliberately kept that information from me. It’s bad enough that Rory didn’t tell me, but you! After everything we’ve been through!’
‘So your brother marries your wife then lies to you about her being here, and your wife knows you’re here but doesn’t bother to seek you out or come with her new husband to break the news to you, but somehow, I’m the bad one!
Thanks a bunch, Danny.’ She leapt to her feet.
‘It’s always the same story, isn’t it? The truth is, I’m always to blame. And we all know why, don’t we?’
Danny looked taken aback by her outburst. ‘I don’t know what you mean. What’s this about?’
‘It’s about you, blaming me! And you always have, haven’t you? Because deep down you think it’s my fault that we’re stuck here in Rowan Vale. You blame me for our deaths. You know you do.’
Danny glared at her. ‘I have never, ever said that.’
‘No, you haven’t. But it’s always been there, hasn’t it?
That’s why you’ve pushed me away for so many years.
I’ve seen the battle raging in your eyes.
Every time we start to get close it’s like the shutters come down and I know – I absolutely know – that you’re reminding yourself of what I did and that you can’t forgive me. ’
Danny folded his arms. ‘Well… I never thought it was all your fault. Lee Hardwick was high on drugs. He was driving. He smashed into a tree, not you. And if we’d been wearing seatbelts, we might have survived it anyway, so that’s on both of us.’
‘Except we were too busy arguing to put them on.’
‘Well…’ He shrugged helplessly. ‘You were very angry.’
‘Yes.’ Brooke sighed and sat down again. ‘Yes, I was.’
A subdued looking Danny sat next to her.
‘I just never understood why you were so intent on going home all of a sudden,’ he confessed.
‘All right, you weren’t exactly having a brilliant time at the party, but neither of us were.
Even so, we’d booked the hotel rooms and it would have been much easier if you’d just had an early night instead of hitching a lift with that idiot. ’
‘I lost my temper,’ she admitted. ‘I needed to get out of there. Fast.’
‘But with Lee?’
‘There was no other way of getting home!’
‘If you’d asked me, I’d have got you home somehow. There was no rush, was there?’
There was, Danny. I wanted to catch Kirsty with her mystery lover. But you can never know that.
Brooke shrugged. ‘At the time it seemed important.’
‘And because of that we both ended up dead!’
‘You didn’t have to jump in the car with me,’ she said hotly. ‘I never asked you to. That was your decision. If you remember I tried everything to get you to go back into the hotel.’
‘And leave you with him?’ Danny asked incredulously.
‘He was a letch at the best of times, and I didn’t trust him with you even without knowing that he’d been snorting cocaine all evening.
Can you imagine what he might have done to you when he was off his head?
No, you’d best not imagine it. Anyway, I can, and I’m still glad I made the decision not to let you go home with someone like him. ’
‘I wasn’t your responsibility!’
‘Of course you were!’
‘Just because I’m Kirsty’s cousin didn’t mean you owed me anything!’
Danny stared at her for a moment then he slumped. ‘No. It didn’t. Even so…’ He shrugged. ‘It was the decent thing to do.’
Brooke wiped tears from her eyes, even though it was pointless as they could never fall. ‘If I hadn’t been arguing with you, telling you to get out and leave me alone…’ she said wretchedly.
‘You had my phone,’ he remembered suddenly. ‘I asked what you’d done with it, and you said you’d left it at the party, but I saw it sticking out of the pocket of your trousers. I called you a liar and demanded you give it back.’
‘And I threw it at you,’ she said sheepishly.
She really hadn’t wanted to. She’d wanted to show Kirsty what her lover had done while she was sleeping.
Not that it mattered now. Kirsty had no idea that he’d sent the photograph to Danny.
She couldn’t decide if she was glad or sorry about that.
She was just relieved Kirsty hadn’t gone on to marry him.
At least she’d picked a decent husband in Rory.
Brooke could only hope that Kirsty treated him a lot better than she had Danny.
They sat in silence, remembering.
‘I suppose, if I’m honest,’ Danny said slowly, ‘I did blame you. I needed someone to be angry at. I’d had everything taken away from me, and you were all too convenient.
I kept coming back to the fact that if you hadn’t got in the car with Lee that night, we’d still be alive and well, and at times I felt so angry with you I could barely look at you. ’
‘Then why didn’t you ever shout at me? Rant and rave? It was the cold silence I couldn’t stand. That look in your eyes. And every time I thought you were getting over it, it would come back. That look. And it was horrible. It hurt so much.’
‘I didn’t dare say anything,’ he admitted. ‘I was afraid I’d say things that could never be taken back, and that I’d hurt you so much you’d leave and never return.’
Brooke gave a mirthless laugh. ‘Never return? Where the heck would I go? I can hardly leave Rowan Vale and move back to London, can I?’
‘But you could have left the flat and moved in with Polly or someone.’ Danny bit his lip. ‘I wouldn’t know what to do without you, Brooke.’
Brooke’s eyes widened, and she reached for his hand. ‘I think that’s probably the kindest thing you’ve ever said to me,’ she said.
He squeezed her fingers. ‘I know, and I’m sorry.
I’ve been horrible. I don’t know why you put up with me for so long, I really don’t.
It wasn’t your fault, you know. It was just one of those things.
An accident. We were all to blame in our own way and I shouldn’t have taken it out on you. I really am sorry.’
‘It’s okay,’ she said. ‘I blamed me, too, so you weren’t alone.’
‘You mustn’t. This has to stop. There’s no point in either of us looking for someone to blame after eighteen years. It’s not going to change anything, and when it boils right down to it, we’re all we’ve got now. This is our life. Well, our afterlife.’
He bowed his head suddenly, lifting his hands to hide the despair on his face.
‘What am I going to do? Kirsty’s married again, and to Rory of all people! How could they do that to me? My brother, the man I loved and looked up to all my life, and my wife who was everything in the world to me!’
He looked up at her with anguished eyes. ‘Do you know, I only moved to London to be near Rory? I wanted so much to be like him. I can’t believe he’s taken Kirsty away from me like this and then lied to me.’
Brooke steadied herself, trying to understand, even though she was running out of patience.
If she chose to, she could tell Danny what she really thought of his precious wife.
It might bring her a moment’s satisfaction, but she could never hurt him like that.
Instead, she had to make him see reason.
‘I know it hurts, Danny, but you’ve got to look at it from their point of view. It’s not like they rushed into it, is it? They’ve only been married ten years, and we’ve been dead eighteen, so they didn’t exactly bury you one day and head back to the church to marry the next, did they?’
Danny shook his head slightly. ‘Rory says it was seven years before they even got together,’ he admitted.
‘Well, there you go then! Seven years is a long time.’ She leaned back on the sofa and gave a loud sigh. ‘Being alone, without someone who loves you… I reckon the time goes very slowly indeed. Is that what you’d want for Kirsty? You say you loved her—’
‘I did! I do!’
Brooke tried to ignore the pain his declaration caused her.
‘Well, there you are then. If you love her, you’ll want her to be happy, not lonely and sad.
And if Rory makes her happy… I mean, what more could you want really?
The big brother you love and look up to, taking care of the wife you adore.
It’s perfect. Who better to take care of her?
And isn’t that what you want for her? For them both? If not, it should be.’
Danny’s beautiful dark eyes gleamed with unshed tears as he listened to her. Brooke fought the urge to put her arms round him because if she did that she might just lose control and tell him how she really felt about him.
‘It’s so painful,’ he whispered. ‘You can’t begin to imagine what it’s like, knowing the person you love is so close by but that her heart belongs to someone else.’
Brooke willed herself to be strong as she ignored every instinct and pulled him into an embrace. He threw his arms around her and held her tightly.
‘It hurts so much,’ he told her.
‘I know,’ she said sadly, stroking his hair. ‘Believe me, I know.’