Her Last Secret

by Barbara Copperthwaite

  Ruby nudged her boyfriend. ‘I’m sorry you’re having such a crappy day.’

  He shrugged. ‘Thinking about you helped. And last night.’

  Ruby hadn’t been able to stop thinking about it either. It had been the most loving and intimate thing to ever happen in her life. She knew some other girls were desperate to take things further with their boyfriends, to get physical, but Ruby didn’t understand why when what she and Harry had transcended everything.

  ‘Reckon they’ll miss us at school?’ Harry asked, changing the subject.

  ‘Reckon they’ll be relieved we aren’t there,’ she laughed.

  ‘They’ll all feel safer knowing they can slag us off in peace and not have to worry about the consequences. Anyway, tomorrow’s the last day at school before we break up, so it’s not worth going in.’

  ‘If I never have to see that place and all the stupid idiots inside it again, it will be too soon,’ said Ruby, through a mouthful of burger.

  ‘Someone should Columbine them,’ quipped Harry.

  Ruby swallowed. Looked at Harry and shook her head to convey she was clueless.

  ‘Come on, you’ve heard about the Columbine killings, right?’

  ‘Er, no.’

  ‘Ah, man, I can’t believe it. You’ve got to have heard of them. These two boys, right, they took out all their enemies at school. All the people who had bullied them and made their lives a misery for years. Revenge is sweet, man. If things had gone according to plan, the death count would have been massive. I mean… massive.’ He held his hands as far apart as he could, as if to demonstrate. ‘They had bombs and all kinds of stuff. And why did they do it? Cos the people at school were asking for it, I’m telling you. You should take out some of those bitches who are ragging on you.’

  She laughed. ‘Yeah, it would be great to see the looks on their faces.’

  ‘And be free of them once and for all.’ He wiped his hands against each other as though getting rid of enemies was as easy as shedding crumbs on his palm.

  Ruby shivered at the thought of it. The idea made her feel scared and feverish and hot with excitement; everything that was at odds with the cheery music playing softly around them.

  ‘Wouldn’t it be great, though,’ she breathed. ‘Imagine, if everyone who made our lives a misery were dead. If it were just you and me, and we didn’t have to worry about anyone else ever again.’

  ‘We could be together for ever. Get a little place to live. Yeah… One day, man.’

  A pop song from before either of them were born gave a tinkle of jingle bells and a chorus of angelic oohing.

  ‘I don’t know if I can wait,’ she said.

  She took his hand and stared into a distant future where every night could be like last night. Where she could sleep peacefully, without fear, and be wrapped up in love. Surely it was too far away to ever reach. Surely her enemies would have won by then.

  Forty-Eight

  There was a tiny noise outside the window. So tiny that it would have been missed if Ruby hadn’t been listening out for it. It was eleven p.m.; bang on time. She yanked the sash window up, letting in a rush of freezing air, and a cold and panting Harry. He helped her close the window quickly, quietly, then gave her a kiss with icicle lips.

  ‘Come on, get into bed and warm up,’ she urged.

  He shed his jacket and pulled his boots off before clambering in alongside her and pulling the duvet over them both. She pretended to protest when he pulled her tight against him, insisting he needed her to warm him up. Through the winceyette cloth of her pyjamas his freezing body sent a jolt through her and she pushed him away, laughing.

  ‘Come on, I’m nearly freezing to death for you,’ he whispered, grinning.

  ‘I’m worth it,’ she smiled back, hoping desperately that it was true.

  Harry’s body seemed naturally set to hot, so it didn’t take long for the pair of them to feel more comfortable.

  For years Ruby’s sleep had been disturbed. After she and Harry had been attacked, she had expected it to get worse, and been surprised when it hadn’t. She reckoned that was thanks to her realising that she finally had someone firmly in her corner. But when the taunting text messages had started just a week or so later, that’s when the nightmares had really kicked in. The flashbacks to being beaten up. Explosions of terror more painful even than the original punches and kicks. The feeling of helplessness suffocating her.

  After long months, she had finally found a solution. This. With Harry, she would sleep well. She snuggled into his arms and let the warmth of his body pressed against hers ease the knots of tension away.

  Ruby thought of the time when she was about seven, just before Mouse was born, when her parents had taken her to a festival. Dad had gone off in search of strawberry fizzy water for her, because she wouldn’t shut up about how she wanted some. Someone nearby had lit a fire, and Ruby had been mesmerised by the sight of the orange glow in the dimming light. She had asked if she could light one. Mum had been scared of being told off, at first, but the two of them had gathered rubbish from nearby – and there had been a lot of it – and set fire to the towering pile. It had looked beautiful, and drawn people in to warm their hands and say hello, and chat, and Ruby had been warmed by her own inner fire, feeling as if she belonged somehow. She and Mum had sat side by side, Mum’s arm looped over her shoulders, Ruby’s hand on her mum’s pregnant belly. Dad had come and sat on the other side of them, a group hug as they stared at the dancing flames.

  With Harry, she had that same sense of comfort and belonging. Ruby thought of that as she drifted to sleep.

  * * *

  When she woke in the morning, Harry had gone. Only two things gave away that he had ever been there: the window being open just a crack at the bottom, and the fact that Ruby felt well-rested and couldn’t remember a single dream from the night before.

  Forty-Nine

  CHRISTMAS DAY

  Two people had been found inside the house so far. Chief Inspector Ogundele looked past the officers kneeling beside the prone forms, and beyond the claret stain soaking through the golden carpet. Instead, he peered through the open bedroom door they lay beside. A teenager’s room, by the look of it.

  That was where the real carnage was.

  The dove grey walls, white ceiling, and a couple of posters of depressed-looking pop groups dressed in black were decorated with blood spatters.

  Fifty

  TUESDAY 21 DECEMBER

  FOUR DAYS TO GO

  The rattling cry of the magpies sounded again, waking Benjamin. It was six a.m. He was going to get his gun and shoot those buggers. He was sick of them waking him, their noise clear through the original sash windows that he was going to have replaced with double-glazing soon.

  The house was falling apart. He should never have bought it. The latch on the downstairs loo needed fixing; maybe he could do that himself. He could definitely remove that nail sticking out by Mouse’s door.

  Was that what he was going to be reduced to? Odd-job man around his home, because he could no longer afford to get someone in to do it for him.

  As his dad had always predicted for him.

  No, this meeting with James would work. He’d get money to tide him over; it would be fine.

  That’s what he told himself in the shower; as he dressed; while he forced down breakfast. His family whirled around him like biological mist to be waded through. They made noises, tried to engage with him, but he couldn’t pull himself out of the despair that seemed to be clinging to him. He had a bad feeling about today, but kept giving himself mental slaps, reminding himself of all he had achieved in his life: the awards his business had won, the huge amount of clients he had attracted, the high standing with which people regarded him. He had a beautiful wife, too. Although, she didn’t quite seem herself lately; she seemed sort of absent most of the time, and the last few days she had an almost haunted look on her face. He needed to speak to her, see if she was okay after the sleepwalking
business. But not right now; right now, he didn’t have the strength to surface from the sea of stress he was drowning in.

  * * *

  By the time he arrived at work, he had slid on his bombastic mask. Spoke in his booming, cocky way, playing the big man. But it was tiring, and as he flirted outrageously with his secretary – enough to make her giggle and feel pampered, not enough to make her want to file a sexual harassment complaint – he contemplated chucking it all in.

  ‘I’m not the man you think I am. I’m out of here,’ he’d announce, and let everyone see the empty soul behind the façade. He could almost hear the gasps of horror, see the staff backing away from him, and Jazmine… Poor Jazmine, she hadn’t asked for any of this.

  He had no choice but to keep going, because it wasn’t only him who would suffer if he didn’t pull this off. He could not let anyone see through the cracks forming in his mask. He must refuse to give in to chronic fatigue and self-pity. Losers did that.

  What was it Muhammad Ali always said? Those who don’t have the courage to take risks won’t get anywhere in life – or something like that. Just like Ali, Benjamin was the greatest, he was The Man, he would—

  ‘Here’s this morning’s post.’ His PA handed the bundle of envelopes over to him, shocking him out of his internal motivational speech.

  ‘Great, thanks,’ he said, giving her one of his best, most dazzling smiles. Act confident and he’d be confident.

  He sauntered into his office, whistling as he went, and sifted through the letters, mainly cards from his clients and—

  Oh, crap.

  It couldn’t be. Not yet. He had been sure he had until the new year to sort something.

  His good mood nuked, Benjamin closed his office door, slumped into his chair and stared at the brown envelope.

  At his name peering through the plastic window at him.

  At the berating black lettering of the organisation which had sent it.

  HMRC.

  Coughing, he swallowed down the bitter taste of sick. Forced himself to tear the letter open.

  The words blurred because the paper trembled so much. Benjamin grabbed at his right wrist with his left hand to try to steady it, but it was futile. Instead, he crumpled the paper into a ball and threw it into the bin. Only to retrieve it instantly, for fear of his secretary or the cleaner discovering it.

  He could tear it up. He could set fire to it.

  It wouldn’t stop what he had read burning through his mind. His life was over. Nothing left but ashes and shame. He might as well be dead.

  Fifty-One

  ‘Hello, Mrs P. You all right today?’ Ruby spoke politely but slightly more accentuated and slowly than was usual. Just in case. Sometimes Harry’s mum had trouble concentrating.

  Looking at her always made Ruby a bit uncomfortable. She knew she shouldn’t stare at the shaking, the dribbling, the slurring words, but it was easier said than done.

  Mrs Porter nodded at her, head trembling and bouncing like one of those nodding dogs people had in cars and claimed were ironic.

  ‘Why aren’t you in school?’

  Harry jumped in. ‘I told you earlier, Mum, remember? We’ve finished for Christmas.’

  ‘Oh, I thought that was tomorrow.’

  ‘No, it’s today. The twins finish tomorrow cos it’s a different school,’ Harry assured her. Chucked a quick look Ruby’s way to make sure she didn’t say anything she shouldn’t. She and Harry had walked the boys to junior school together before deciding to bunk off again themselves.

  ‘Almost Christmas already, eh, Mrs P. You all set?’ she said, to change the subject.

  ‘Aw, Harry’s a good boy, he’s put the decorations up.’

  A plastic tree, so small it was more a twig, was sagging arthritically under the weight of cheap baubles, and home-made decorations clearly made by Harry and his brothers when they were younger. It was swathed, mummy-like, in tinsel, presumably to support it. At the top was a glitter-ridden fairy with a torn wing and a surprised expression as she gazed at her pink fluffy wand. The present pile beneath was tragically small, and the bright wrapping paper was the cut-price kind that was see-through unless you used twenty layers, and even then it tore if you looked at it too hard. Ruby thought of the huge amount of presents beneath the gargantuan tree in her own home, and shifted uncomfortably. All those expensive trinkets she would receive, which she didn’t even give a stuff about.

  ‘Do you fancy going for a walk? We could take you,’ Ruby offered.

  ‘No, no, I’d rather stay here,’ Mrs Porter replied. Her voice was slurring with the effort, and her hands trembled.

  With a nod, Ruby and Harry left his mum to it. She was already starting to slide down the sofa as they left the room, and Harry nipped back to lift her a little higher and arrange the cushions as makeshift scaffolding.

  Although Harry only lived a bus ride away from Ruby’s Blackheath home, it felt like a different world. He lived between Charlton and Woolwich, in an area of high unemployment, and headline-grabbing crimes. Low points included the racially motivated murder of teenager, Stephen Lawrence, a murder so well known that even though it happened before Ruby was born, she knew all about it. Another was that the town had been a major flare point during the 2011 riots – several buildings had been attacked, and the landmark Great Harry pub left a burnt-out shell. More recently, that soldier, Lee Rigby, had been run over then stabbed to death by Islamic extremists near Woolwich barracks in 2013. Her father would have had a blue fit if he knew she was in Woolwich; he thought it was far too dangerous. But it wasn’t that bad, you just had to know where to avoid – and who.

  ‘Woolwich boys don’t mess about when it comes to business,’ Harry had told her the first time she had visited him. ‘Most people raised here end up in gangs. I know a few people in them, so I’m safe. Which means you’re safe. Drug dealers hang around on the estates and sell cocaine and heroin, but they reckon they give money to the families that the government has forgotten. Woolwich’s only problem is poverty, man. Get rid of the poverty and you get rid of the problem. They don’t call it Britain’s poorest postcode for nothing.’

  Harry’s home was a flat in a high-rise near a busy road, where the rumbling roar of traffic never seemed to cease, and the exhaust fumes choked even when the windows were closed. The living room was reasonably warm, thanks to an electric heater which only ever had one bar lit. The rest of the flat was chilled, as though haunted, but this particular ghost’s name was ‘being skint’.

  She and Harry spent most of the day holed up in his bedroom, listening to music and talking, cuddled up to one another to keep the cold at bay. Every now and again Ruby huffed a breath into the air, and watched it cloud faintly in front of her.

  ‘I’ve never seen that happen inside before,’ she said, fascinated.

  ‘Well, I know how we can warm up,’ Harry said, giving that wonky smile of his that always made her heart hurt in a good way.

  Kissing Harry seemed to open up a wormhole in space and time so that hours flashed by in the blink of an eye. But the persistent buzzing of her phone made her pull away finally, curious and full of dread, all at once.

  Harry wrapped his hand around hers and the mobile it clutched. ‘Leave it,’ he urged.

  She could feel the tears balancing on the bottom rim of her eyes as she looked up at him and shook her head. ‘You know I can’t.’

  Looking was an addiction, a compulsion she was too weak to resist. She had to know what people were saying about her, then she could be prepared, and harden herself to the insults.

  Harry sighed. In frustration, in sympathy, all of the above, she wasn’t sure, but he prised the phone from her fingers firmly but gently. ‘Then we look together. All right?’

  She nodded, making one of the tears lose its balance. Harry wiped it from her cheek with his thumb pad.

  ‘Ready? Three.’

  She felt sick. Maybe she should just leave it.

  ‘Two.’

&nb
sp; If she left it, she’d only imagine the worst anyway. But the toast she had eaten for breakfast was threatening to reappear.

  ‘One.’

  Harry unlocked her phone. Alert after alert scrolled across the screen. Her eyes ran over them. They didn’t make sense.

  ‘I wouldn’t if you paid me. Looks like you could drive a lorry up her.’

  ‘What a whore.’

  ‘Nice tits. I would.’

  A couple of clicks, and all was made clear. There was Ruby, lying on a bed, naked, legs wide open, clutching her breasts together.

  ‘Bloody hell.’ Harry sprang up, dropped the phone. Glared down at it and then at her. His eyes burned. She’d never seen an expression like that on his face before.

  ‘I – I don’t understand… It’s not me,’ she begged.

  He glared at her again, fists balled. Was he going to hit her?

  ‘Do you think I don’t know that, Rubes? I’ll bloody kill Jayne and her crew for this.’

  She snatched up her phone, had to look closer. The picture had been cobbled together badly. Her head, taken from the video of her being hit, was clearly pasted onto the top of a body nicked from a porn site. Angle and skin tone were all wrong.

  The words typed under the image were brief but to the point:

  ‘Free sex. Give it to me, big boys, I’m desperate.’

  Below was Ruby’s mobile number and email address.

  There were already over fifty comments on it, and her phone was buzzing as if possessed with more notifications.

  ‘They’re never going to leave me alone,’ she whispered. ‘I wish I were dead. Honest, Harry, I just want to die and this all to be over.’