Chapter 27
I sat alone in the cool darkness of an April evening, my hands tucked inside my coat pockets as I stared into the inky blackness of the River Faran.
From somewhere across the dark waters, I heard music as the door to The Quicken Tree Inn opened.
I hadn’t gone far, but then, I’d never intended to.
I just needed to escape Rory, to sit and think, and work out how to resolve this mess.
‘Penny for them?’
I jumped, startled, then relaxed as Brooke sat down beside me on the bench.
Her thin little T-shirt made me shiver on her behalf.
‘Do you really not feel the cold?’ I asked.
‘Nope. Nor the warmth, which is worse. I do miss the feel of the sunshine on my skin,’ she admitted wistfully.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Really I am.’
She gave me a funny look, as if she was wondering what exactly I was sorry for.
‘What are you doing out here alone?’ she asked.
‘I was going to ask you the same question,’ I said.
‘Couldn’t sleep. It’s been a heck of a day, and my mind won’t switch off. I thought a bit of solitude and darkness might help me get some clarity. You?’
‘Same.’
We smiled at each other, sadness in our eyes. She looked just like the Brooke I used to know and love before she got all bolshy and cross with me.
‘You looked miles away when I saw you,’ she told me. ‘Is it because Rory told Danny about the two of you?’
‘Rory said he didn’t take it very well,’ I said.
‘No, well, did you really think he would?’
‘No. I suppose not. Although I hoped… After eighteen years I guess I hoped he’d moved on. Got over me.’
‘Yeah,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Me, too.’
I gave her a sideways look. The girl I remembered had always had a major crush on Danny. Was it possible that she still had a crush on him, all these years later?
‘Do you think he’ll forgive me?’ I asked.
‘For what?’ She was staring at the river rather than at me, but I saw her tense and wondered how much she knew.
‘For marrying Rory,’ I said cautiously.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘For that. Well, I suppose he will. The thing about Danny is he always sees the best in people. He’s hurt now but before long he’ll realise it’s the best thing that could have happened.
He loves and trusts Rory. He’ll be grateful that you’re being looked after by him.
’ She turned to face me. ‘I’m not like Danny. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you.’
‘For marrying Rory?’ I asked, puzzled.
‘No. For what you did to Danny.’
I swallowed. Ah. Here it is then. ‘He told you.’
‘What about?’ she asked. ‘About you stringing him along, pretending you wanted to have a family and move to the Essex countryside with him? No, he didn’t mention it, because he never knew, did he?
I only know because I heard Mum and Auntie Sheryl talking.
They said it was pretty clear that you didn’t want either of those things, and they wished you would just be honest with him. ’
‘They were right,’ I said. ‘I should have been honest with him. I was a coward. I didn’t know how to break it to him, so I went along with it, hoping somehow that he’d change his mind.’
‘That would never happen,’ she said. ‘I could have told you that.’
‘I know. Like I said, I was a coward.’
‘He didn’t deserve to be lied to like that.’
‘No, he didn’t. I’m not making excuses, Brooke. Really, I’m not. You’re right to be angry with me on his behalf. Does he still not know?’
‘Not a clue. Although, he must have wondered, mustn’t he? You certainly strung him along for long enough, and I know he was fed up and worried that you’d lost Cherry Tree Cottage, because he told me so that night, on the way to the party.’
‘He did?’ I wiped tears away with the back of my hand. Something else to add to the list then. More to feel guilty about.
Brooke watched me for a moment, her teeth nipping her lower lip.
‘And what about that bloke you were sleeping with?’ she said suddenly. ‘Did you keep quiet about that because you were a coward, too? Or was it just that you didn’t want Danny to find out because you didn’t want it to stop?’
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. ‘So,’ I said flatly, ‘he told you then.’
‘What about Rory? Did you tell him what you’d done to his brother?’
‘No,’ I murmured, ashamed. ‘I never had the guts to do it.’
She gave a scornful laugh which I more than deserved.
‘How could you do that to Danny?’ she demanded, suddenly furious and not afraid to show it.
‘What the hell did he ever do to deserve that? The way you treated him! It makes me sick to think about it. You had everything! Everything! A husband who worshipped the ground you walked on, a job you loved, the chance to live in a lovely village and start a family. What more did you want?’
Angrily, she slammed her hand down on the bench, but it went straight through the wood. Through my guilt and grief, the random thought occurred to me. How could she sit on the bench when her hand went through the wood like that?
I shook my head impatiently. What did that have to do with anything?
‘I have no excuses,’ I said. ‘Bobby was a mistake. A huge mistake.’
‘Bobby!’ she practically spat his name at me. ‘So who was he then? And how long was it going on? Don’t tell me it was a one-off because I don’t believe you. You wouldn’t have fallen asleep with him like that if you weren’t comfortable with him.’
‘It wasn’t a one-off,’ I admitted miserably. ‘It had been going on for about two months. He was someone I used to work with. I didn’t even like him much, but there was something about him that drew me to him.’
‘Drew you to him? Well, you’ve got pretty poor taste.
What sort of man torments the husband of his bit on the side by sending him photographic evidence of her affair?
And it’s not like he even told you he was going to do it, is it?
You were completely oblivious. Great judgement you showed there, Kirsty. ’
‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ I said wretchedly.
‘I couldn’t believe it when I got Danny’s phone back and I found out he’d sent him that photo.
I was devastated to think that was the last Danny saw of me – lying in bed with another man.
God, it makes me feel sick to my stomach.
Bobby and I were over the minute the police knocked on my door to tell me about the accident. ’
I shivered, remembering that moment all too well.
‘He left Rochester’s six months later to move to another company and I haven’t set eyes on him since.
Nor would I want to.’ I realised I was crying again and wiped the tears away.
‘I wanted to kill him when I saw the photo, but it was as much my fault as his. More. It was me who’d gone behind Danny’s back, and I hated myself for it.
Was he…’ I gave her a pleading look. ‘Was he angry, or…’
I thought I’d rather he’d been angry than heartbroken.
Brooke straightened and stayed silent for a few moments, watching me. Then she said quietly, ‘He wasn’t either of those things. Danny didn’t know. He never saw that photograph. It was me who opened it.’
‘Wh-what?’ Hope mingled with confusion left me staring in bewilderment at her. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Danny had gone to get me a drink and I was looking after his phone,’ she said patiently.
‘When the message came through I opened it because I’m a nosy cow, as you may well remember.
I saw the photo and I was so furious that you’d been that selfish and stupid that I decided to go back to your house and have it out with you. And with him if he was still there.
‘I wanted you to see the photo, and what that scumbag you were sleeping with was really like. What you were throwing Danny away for. That’s why I cadged a lift with Lee Hardwick.’
She shivered, even though she’d already admitted she couldn’t feel the cold.
‘To be fair, I didn’t know he was as high as a kite.
But yeah, it was because of me we were in the car.
Danny didn’t know what was wrong, but he wasn’t about to let me go home with the office letch, so he jumped in the car, too, to protect me from Lee.
’ Her voice cracked. ‘So you see, it was my fault we were in the car. If I hadn’t lost my temper about you, we’d be alive and well now. ’
I honestly didn’t know what to say. All these years I’d believed Danny had died thinking the worst of me, when actually he’d been totally oblivious of my affair.
Then a thought occurred to me.
‘Did you tell him? Does he know now?’
Brooke stood up. ‘I need to go home,’ she said.
‘Please, I know you owe me nothing, but I have to know. Does Danny know I cheated on him?’
She shook her head. ‘No. I never told him.’
‘But why not? You must have been furious with me! Your deaths were down to me. Oh, I know you were both in the car because you lost your temper, but if I hadn’t slept with Bobby none of this would have happened. Why wouldn’t you tell him what a lowlife he’d married?’
‘Because,’ she said simply, ‘it would have broken his heart, and I could never do that to him.’
I got to my feet and gazed into her eyes, seeing the truth for myself at last.
‘My God. I thought it was a crush! You really love him, don’t you?’
For a moment she hesitated, then nodded slightly. ‘Nothing’s happened,’ she said quickly. ‘And Danny doesn’t know how I feel.’
‘But why not? You’ve been together eighteen years. Why haven’t you told him?’
‘There’d be no point,’ she said sadly. ‘The plain fact is, there’s no room in Danny’s heart for anyone but you, and I don’t think there ever will be.’ She gave me the smallest of smiles. ‘Night, Kirsty.’
As she walked away from me, a forlorn little figure in an eccentric outfit with crazy hair, my heart broke for her and for Danny. I’d taken everything from them, and here I was, still preventing them from finding happiness. It wasn’t fair.
Maybe I hadn’t done much to deserve my happy ending, but Rory deserved his, and so did Danny and Brooke. This entire mess was down to me. Somehow, I had to make up for it. It was the least I could do for them.