Anything for Her (22 page)

Brooke is down there
.

She pulls up the handbrake, turns off the engine but keeps the lights on full beam. They shine out over the edge of the road and into the darkness. When she steps out of the car, the snow whips at her face. She hugs her coat tight to her torso and walks towards the edge, listening to the wind as it rustles the trees on the other side of the road. No other sounds can be heard, nor is there any sign of her daughter within the darkness. Her body begins to shake violently.

‘
BROOOOOOOOOOOOOKE!’

She shouts with all her might, framing her mouth with her hands. The echo of her daughter’s name slowly dissipates in the darkness, making her realise how vast the place is behind the cloak of night.

A faint sound escapes from the shadows, but she fears it might have been the wind fooling her.

‘
BROOOOOOOOOOOOKE!
’

She listens again, hoping for a reply.

Brooke’s voice calls back. It’s faint, but it is hers.

Louise rushes to the car, grabs the bag of Brooke’s belongings she brought with her, turns off the lights and locks the car. Returning to the edge of the drop, she looks down.

A snowy slope, darkened with shadows, descends below.

Brooke must be so cold. She must be so frightened
.

Before she left, her maternal instincts had made her go into her Brooke’s room and get thick jogging bottoms, a hooded sweatshirt, coat, scarf, gloves, socks and her daughter’s wellington boots.

She begins a cautious descent down the slope, terrified she will tumble, and eventually finds herself staring at a wrecked car; the front of the car is crumpled around a tree on the slope, with a shadowy mound resting on top of it.

The metal body is so disfigured she cannot imagine what it looked like before. A door is missing; glass is everywhere; the wheels are twisted; the bonnet is crushed; and the roof is low and distorted.

She continues further down the hill, her heart beating so fast she can barely breathe, wondering what she is going to find next.

Then she sees the body.

First, she only sees a pair of feet on the deformed bonnet. With each cautious step, she sees more: legs, black gloves encrusted in snow and blood, a bloody torso, and a lifeless face set in a fearful grimace. A seatbelt – which is wrapped tightly around the woman’s neck – is still attached within the darkness of the car. It seems the woman flew through the windscreen, and the belt snapped her neck with the impact.

Louise doesn’t scream. She doesn’t gasp. She doesn’t say anything. She can only stare in horror,
eyes wide, her mouth wider, taking in the sight of a painful death.

The body – the young woman – can only be twenty-one, maybe twenty-two. She has beautiful brown skin and black hair. Her facial features show she would have been a pretty girl when she was alive. Daggers of glass and spears of metal puncture her bloodied torso.

My daughter did this
.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispers into the night, staring at the dead girl with terrified, glistening eyes.

Louise continues down the hill, the sight of the dead girl still plaguing her thoughts, when she sees a figure emerging from the darkness.

Someone is running frantically towards her.

She recognises her daughter.

Dropping the bag to the ground, she rushes towards Brooke until they collide in a hard embrace, locking onto each other tightly.

‘Mum, I’m a killer,’ Brooke sobs hysterically into her mother’s shoulder. ‘I killed the woman! I killed a little boy!’

‘You didn’t mean to do it. It was an accident. I know that. You didn’t do it on purpose.’

All the while, Louise cannot fathom the possibility that her daughter has killed two people. Her eyes dart around her as she tries to discover the second body.

She strokes her daughter’s hair until her sobs turn to
whimpers and her whimpers turn into exhausted sniffles.

‘Your poor nose. It looks so sore,’ Louise says, cupping her daughter’s face.

Brooke’s nose is swollen and bloody from the impact of the airbag. The skin on the bridge is cut and covered in dried blood.

‘I brought you some warm clothes,’ she tells her. She fetches the bag and Brooke follows on red, raw feet.

Louise dresses her daughter as though she is a child again.

‘Thank you.’

‘What happened?’

‘A guy at the party tried to rape me. I drove away. I had to get away. I was drunk – I didn’t mean to hit them – they were parked on the bend of the road without lights on. I lost control of the car and hit them.’

Her eyes are haunted by trauma as tears trickle down her red cheeks.

‘I’m so sorry, Mum.’

Louise fights the tears in her eyes and hides her clenched fists in her pockets.

Someone tried to rape my daughter
.

Her imagination concocts the image of the rapist and the scene– an evil, aggressive man trying to rape her innocent, helpless child. She imagines hitting his face with a hammer until his skull caves in and mutilating
his genitals so he can never try and rape again.

Her focus returns to her daughter, who is sobbing into her gloved hands, unable to respond.

‘Did you see the woman?’ Brooke asks.

She nods in reply.

‘I never found the boy.’

‘It’s okay,’ Louise replies, her voice hoarse and plagued by pain. ‘Let’s just go.’

‘I can’t go without knowing whether the boy is definitely dead. If he’s alive, we can’t just leave him out here.’

‘Brooke… if he’s alive, he will tell the police everything. They’ll send you to prison.’

‘I deserve it! I can’t take back what I did – I killed two people!’

‘Brooke, it was an accident! You don’t deserve to be punished for fleeing a man who tried to rape you!’

‘Maybe I’ll be let off or get a shorter prison sentence, because of what happened.’

‘You are not going to prison for an accident, Brooke! I won’t allow it! I won’t let you go to prison and throw your life away because of a mistake!’

‘But I deserve to be punished for what I’ve done!’

‘The memory of this is going to be enough!’

‘I’m not leaving without finding the boy,’ Brooke replies sternly, a last tear slipping down her cold, determined face.

Louise has to fight the urge to shake her, shake
sense into her young mind, have her realise that her life will be over if she tries to do the right thing.

‘Fine.’

The mother and daughter begin searching for the boy.

Brooke wants to find him alive. Louise wants to find him dead.

If he’s alive, he will be the key witness – and he will send her to prison. I can’t let him do that. I have to protect my daughter
.

Louise checks one side of the hill, to the left of the car that is crushed against the tree, and Brooke searches to the right. Louise looks for a body, a hand, a shoe – anything sticking out of the snow or lying lifelessly on top of it. After ten minutes of searching, she spots something. It’s minor, but noticeable.

Something is moving underneath the snow: almost as if the snow itself is breathing. She looks behind her and sees Brooke venturing further up the hill in her search. She turns back to the spot. With shaking hands, she begins to scoop away the snow.

Under the snow, with closed eyes and blue lips, lies a small, young boy with beautiful ringlets of brown hair, caramel-coloured skin and a vibrant red coat. He looks as though he is sleeping. She rests the back of her hand against his nose and feels the faint touch of breath emerging from his nostrils. His chest is rising and falling. Just.

He is still alive
.

Louise considers her choices: take him to a hospital and risk Brooke going to prison; or bury the boy so he can never be found.

She looks over her shoulder again and spots Brooke even further up the hill.

She won’t see it. She will never know. She will think he died in the crash
.

She rests her trembling hand above the boy’s face, thinking of her daughter’s fate and what she has to do to save her. Tears trickle from her eyes. She whimpers in shame before pressing her hand down over the boy’s nose and mouth. She presses down hard. The boy doesn’t even open his eyes. She cries, looking away from the sight of the boy below her, feeling nauseous as his lips and nostrils mechanically attempt to breath behind the palm of her hand, sucking against her skin like a baby suckling a breast. A voice deep within her tells her to stop – to let the boy live – but she can’t let that happen. She can’t let the boy live if it means losing her daughter. She has to protect her child. She would do anything for her: even kill.

She holds her hand there for minute after minute, waiting for a sign of death. The boy jolts once, eyes remaining closed. She releases her hand. He doesn’t move.

She looks down at the dead body of the little boy, and the significance of the murder she has committed
sinks in. She instantly longs to undo the deed. Tears roll down her cheeks and her entire body trembles.

‘What have I done?’

She stares at the young boy. So beautiful, so peaceful, so lifeless. Frantically, she tries to revive him, pumping her hands against his chest, and breathing rasping breaths into his lungs through his small, angelic lips; tears fall from her eyes and land on his face.

It doesn’t work. The boy is dead.

She strokes the soft brown ringlets on his head, sobbing so hard so can barely breathe.

‘I’m so sorry.’

She zips his red coat right to the top below his chin, as if he’ll be cold in death, and tucks his head into the hood of his coat, acting as a mother after being a coldblooded killer.

I had to do it. If I didn’t, my daughter would suffer. I’m a good mother. I did what I had to do
.

Louise covers the boy’s body in snow, sobbing. Now a damaged, disturbed woman, she turns on shaking legs and staggers up the hill towards her daughter, wiping away the flowing tears.

Chapter Forty-six

Michael sits in silence at his desk in the study, twirling scotch around the crystal tumbler. He watches the amber liquid swirl and swirl. It’s morning, and yet this isn’t his first drink of the day. Somehow, he just knows this will be his last morning spent as a free man.

He woke at five a.m. for no reason at all. He stared at the ceiling, wide awake and cold in his bed. He glanced at the empty space next to him where his wife should have been.

The scratches on his face have hardened into thin scabs and his eyes are still red from exhaustion. He can’t remember the last time he ate. He feels sick with stress, sick with the loneliness of being without his wife, and sick of not knowing if Brooke is alive or dead.

He takes a swig of the scotch and allows it to roll around his mouth.

You have one life, Michael Leighton, and this is what you’ve done with yours
.

He exhales sharply.

You destroyed your marriage. You didn’t keep your daughter safe when you had the chance. You lost all of your money – and you’re going to prison for what you’ve done
.

‘You deserve everything that’s coming to you, you
prick,’ he says out loud before taking another swig of his scotch. The liquid burns his throat. He drags his feet towards the drinks cabinet and pours himself another.

He returns to his chair with the replenished tumbler, places it on the table and strokes the arms of the chair.

They designed this room together. The chair cost more than their first car. Now everything in the room, in the whole house, is going directly towards paying off his debts. When he gets out of prison, he will be an old man with children who have grown up without him. He won’t have his wife. He won’t have any security at all – no money, no home, no love, and no job. Absolutely nothing. All because of his own greed and arrogance.

I’ll never drink this beautiful stuff again
, he thinks, picking up the crystal tumbler and looking at the expensive, honey-coloured liquid inside.

Snow has settled on the ground outside. His SUV is covered, hiding the words that are carved into the paint.

He knows today is the day. He can feel it in his bones. He isn’t a religious man – or a man who believes in fate, karma, or premonitions – but somehow he knows that today he will be taken away for his crimes. He feels he should spend time with his son on his last day of freedom, but can’t bring himself to have Dominic see him in such a state: drunk before
ten in the morning and red-eyed from crying and lack of sleep, with stubble decorating his scratched cheeks. He didn’t bother to dress; he didn’t see the point. He came downstairs in his pyjamas, shut himself away in his study and began drinking. He watched the sunrise from the study window as he smoked cigars, drank scotch, and wallowed in self-hatred.

He wonders if Louise will come to court when he is sentenced, or if she will ever visit him in prison. Will Brooke be found? Will she come to see him or will it be just Dominic? Or will Dominic grow up to resent him for what he has done and not visit either?

Outside the window, a police car, accompanied by a black, unmarked car, pulls up outside the house.

It’s time
.

He gets out of the chair and makes his way into the hallway, trembling. He stands at the bottom of the stairs.

‘Dominic! Come downstairs! Quickly!’

He listens to his son’s small footsteps bound across the living room floor towards the stairs. He appears at the top of the staircase and makes his way down quickly, as commanded.

‘Yes, Dad?’

Michael kneels down on one knee and places a hand gently on his son’s shoulder.

‘I need to tell you something.’

He waits obediently for his father to speak.

‘I haven’t always done good things. I’ve made mistakes. I’ve made bad decisions. Life is going to become a lot harder because of some of them, and I’m really sorry. I need you to remember how much I love you, and how none of this is your fault.’

He stares intensely into his son’s eyes. Dominic stares back confused, but with unfaltering devotion towards his father.

‘I’ve loved you from the second I listened to your heart beating while you were in your mother’s womb. I loved you when my hand felt the first kick you made inside your mother’s belly. The first time you cried. The first time I had to change your nappy. Every first time in your life has made me so damn proud, son. I love you more than anything.’