Plan B

Chapter Thirteen

Keeping calm was impossible.  Even before Brookie had shooed Joey away and closed the door, Fran’s palms were sweating.  She was trembling like a leaf, and her breath just wouldn’t come.  Eyes wide, she just stared at Brookie, desperately wanting to yell at him to barricade the door and not let the police in, but she was too petrified and breathless to speak.  Her mind was almost blank with terror, and it was a while before she could even make coherent sense of what she was thinking.

Run.  Run.  I need to run.  I need to escape.  I need to—

It wasn’t until Brookie remembered about retrieving his laptop and accidentally nudged Fran’s quaking leg that he realised she was hyperventilating.  Grey eyes widening with concern, he put the computer on the floor and sat down on the bed near her head.

“Hey, hey.”  He tried to peel the duvet back, but Fran clung to it as though it was her last protection against certain death and he was forced to give up.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.  Fran shook her head frantically, trying to convey to him that he couldn’t let the police in.  Her throat was too dry for her to speak.  There was a lump building in her throat, and she knew if she wasn’t careful that she was going to burst into tears.  Her gasping breaths seemed to echo around the room, and while Brookie seemed sympathetic, the innumerable Bruno Mertons remained impassive and cold as they continued to glare.  Fran tried to hide from their myriad eyes, but before she could escape under the covers completely, where her only persecution would be claustrophobia, Brookie managed to prise her torso away from the bed and gather her into his arms.

The comforting warmth of somebody patting her back and resting her head on their shoulder as her mother had used to do whenever Fran had been scared witless by her dad’s drunken rages did it: she broke down completely and started sobbing.  He tightened his arms around her and Fran buried her face in the crook of his neck.  Brookie didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to.  It had been so long since Fran had had human contact with somebody like this that just the encompassing warmth, the heat and comfort radiating off his chest, and the slow, steady rhythm of his heartbeat as he held her brought home to her just how much she’d missed and needed something like this.  It was the first time in months that she’d actually felt safe.

I can’t keep going like this, she thought miserably as she cried on Brookie’s shoulder.  I can’t.  I need to tell somebody or I’ll explode.  But I can’t tell.  While she could tell that Brookie didn’t mind too much about looking after a rather weird and effeminate roommate, he wouldn’t take well to her blurting out that she was actually a girl.  If he managed to keep his cool through that, he’d want to know why she was pretending to be a boy, and then she’d have to explain all about being Frances Pelham and the whole thing about the stalkers, and she just couldn’t do it.  Moreover, she had a nasty suspicion that, whatever she said, Brookie either wouldn’t believe her or would go straight to the police.  He’d probably just go straight to the police anyway, whether or not he stuck around for the whole story.

The police….  Fran choked and Brookie instinctively started rubbing small circles on her back.

“Hey, hey, shush,” he murmured.  “It’s only the police.  All they’ll do is ask you a few questions.  It’s not that bad… is it?”

Fran nodded.  Brookie’s hand momentarily ceased rubbing and Fran felt his muscles tense as he stiffened.

“Why?”  A wary edge crept into Brookie’s voice.  “You haven’t done something wrong, have you?”

After a slight hesitation, Fran shook her head.

“Then you have no reason to be so worried.”