Destroy Me by Karen Cole (read people like a book TXT) 📗

any shock or alarm. It all happened too quickly for that. It must have been merely a matter of seconds, but her image was frozen in time, her face white, illuminated in the headlights. It was the sharpest, most permanent thing I’d ever seen. Still, even now, I remember every detail. From the grubby-looking white dress she was wearing, to the two missing front teeth and the wispy blonde hair, lit up like a halo around her head. She held out her hand as if to ward us off, as if she could stop fifteen hundred kilos of metal with one tiny little hand. And I stamped desperately on the brake. But it was too late. There was a sickening thud and then she was flying, vaulting through the air, her legs skyward. My car screeched to a halt and I watched, horrified, as she slammed into the hard, tarmac road.

There was a silence – a silence that stretched out like a scream.

Charlie was the first to recover. ‘What the hell just happened?’ she said. Her eyes were rolling in their sockets like a startled horse.

I couldn’t speak. My hands were glued to the steering wheel. The breath had left my body. It felt as if all my organs had fallen out and I was nothing but a hollow shell.

‘We have to see if she’s okay,’ I muttered finally. I was trying to get my limbs to move without much success. When they eventually got the message from my brain it felt like an out-of-body experience, as if I was watching someone else clamber out of the car and walk over to where the girl was lying in a small, limp heap.

Strangely, one shoe had come off her foot and had rolled a few feet away and the animal that had sped across the road – a black schnauzer, as it turned out – had come back and was sniffing around her, licking her face.

She was so young, I thought. Her arms were flung carelessly out by her sides, her little hands still padded with baby fat. Her face was strangely peaceful, her eyes shut, as if she were sleeping. But beside her head a large pool of dark blood was soaking into the tarmac and there was no movement in her chest. No sign at all that she was still breathing.

Please God, let this not be happening, I prayed, sinking to the ground beside her and touching her neck lightly with trembling fingers. Her skin was warm, but I couldn’t feel any pulse.

‘I think she’s dead,’ I said. And my voice seemed to come from a long way away, drowned out by the rain that suddenly began falling, like some cosmic judgement. Rain pattered down on us, soaking the girl’s blonde hair, rolling off her soft, unblemished cheeks like tears.

‘Shit, shit. Is she dead?’ Charlie appeared beside me. She looked like the Joker, mascara-blackened tears rolling down her cheeks. She tugged at her hair, as if she wanted to pull it out at the roots.

‘Yes. I think so.’ I tried to gather my wits. ‘I suppose we need to call an ambulance,’ I said. ‘Have you got a phone?’

Charlie stared at me, her features frozen in horror. ‘I left it at Nessa’s.’

‘It’s okay. Mine’s in my handbag.’ I stood up and walked to the car in a dream and fumbled for my phone.

‘Shit,’ I called out to Charlie.

‘Did you get hold of them?’ she asked as I got closer. She was shivering, whether from shock or cold, I couldn’t tell.

‘No,’ I said through the rain. ‘I couldn’t. My phone’s run out of battery.’

‘Oh my God, what do we do? This is bad.’ Charlie fell to her knees beside the little girl and pressed her head to her chest. ‘She’s dead, Cat,’ she wailed. ‘We’ve killed her.’

My head felt like it was about to explode. ‘Shut up, shut up. Let me think. What are we going to do?’

I looked around. There was a house across the field. All the lights were glowing yellow in the windows and very faintly I could hear music playing. It sounded as though they were having a party.

‘Maybe we should go to that house?’ I said. ‘Knock on a door. Ask if we can use their phone.’

‘Wait,’ said Charlie. She had stood up and was dusting herself off, brushing away her tears. ‘Slow down. Let’s think about this a minute.’ Her face was pale and grimly resolved. ‘She’s dead already. There’s nothing we can do. There’s nothing anyone can do for her.’

‘Right,’ I nodded, my mind working frantically.

‘Think about it, Cat. You’ve been drinking. Drink driving. Manslaughter. If people know about this, you’ll go to prison for a long time. It will ruin your life.’

I sank down on the damp grass verge, blinking away the rain. I could see it all with a terrible crushing certainty. My future ruined. The anger and disappointment of my parents. The disgust and condemnation of my friends and acquaintances. Charlie was right. We couldn’t help the little girl. She was dead. Nothing would change that. And my life was as good as destroyed if people knew about this.

‘Come on,’ Charlie said, suddenly urgent. ‘We should go before another car comes and sees us here.’

I nodded blindly, stood up and climbed back in the car. I didn’t look at the girl lying in the road again. With a heavy heart, I turned on the ignition and drove away. I felt so tired. All I wanted was to get home and forget this had ever happened.

In the end, it was surprisingly easy to do – to just drive away and pretend the whole thing was just a bad dream. There was a slight dent in the car that I explained away to my mother by saying Charlie had attempted to drive and had hit a post. She didn’t question my explanation. No police came to my house. A few weeks later, we both went our separate ways: Charlie to Cambridge and me to Manchester University.