Her Last Secret

by Barbara Copperthwaite

  The doctor pressed his fingers together. ‘Only one per cent of the adult population sleepwalk, and among them, those who have a violent episode are exceptionally rare.’

  ‘Rare, but not unheard of,’ she interrupted.

  ‘True… Of course, you have already suffered such an episode, so you are at risk – which is why I’ve made time to speak with you now. But don’t worry, this is extremely treatable; after all, you’ve been through it once with great success. We’ll get back on top of things in no time.

  ‘First things first: I’ll contact the London Sleep Centre. They will book you in for a polysomnography – a series of tests to measure functions including brainwaves, muscle activity and breathing activity. You know the score.’

  She did indeed. She remembered the centre of expertise well. Walking to the north end of Harley Street, as a teenager, to undergo a raft of tests, she’d been nervous as a kitten. After weeks of tests, where she had even had to sleep at the centre so she could be monitored, her sleepwalking had been confirmed. It had been terrifying to have it confirmed that she had had absolutely no control over her own body. When she got the news, she had walked around Regent’s Park in a daze, trying to get her head around everything, because even to her the truth sounded crazy.

  Like someone possessed, Dominique had indeed been sleepwalking at the time of the attack she had committed, in a state called automatism. With the help of the sleep experts, she had been found not guilty of the charges against her, due to non-insane automatism.

  ‘I’m just so scared, doctor. I hate losing control. What if I hurt someone again? What if I kill them this time?’ she asked now.

  ‘Dominique, your stress is going to make your symptoms much worse. There have only been about sixty-eight recorded cases worldwide of murder in sleepwalking. See how rare it is? You have nothing to worry about.’

  Nothing to worry about?

  ‘Surely you could give me some sleeping tablets to knock me out, or some kind of medication?’

  ‘Unfortunately, drug treatments for nightmares and sleepwalking are not helpful. In fact, they are more likely to make them worse. But there are steps we can take to lessen the frequency of your nightmares, and the effect they are having on your life.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘While we’re waiting for the appointment to come through with the London Sleep Centre, you and I can look at you making some behavioural changes.’

  ‘What if that’s not enough?’

  He gave a small but reassuring smile. ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Imagery rehearsal treatment works something like seventy per cent of the time. We know it’s worked on you once, so we have no reason at all to fear it won’t this time.’

  She sighed. Rearranged her handbag on her lap, knowing he was right but unwilling to concede the point.

  ‘Talk me through the worst incident you’ve had so far this time.’

  Dominique described holding a bloody Ruby in her arms. She vividly relived the feeling of knowing her daughter was dead, the gut-wrenching horror that had overwhelmed her. She trembled as she spoke.

  ‘Okay, now imagine what changes you would make if you could. Run the dream through your head as if it were a film and you are the director. You rearrange the action, Dominique. You are in control.’

  ‘There’s a noise outside my bedroom door. A gurgling noise. It’s… laughter. I open it, and lying on the hallway floor is… is…’ Her voice faded. She forced herself to carry on. ‘Is Ruby, and she’s…’ Not covered in blood. Not struggling to breath. Not clinging onto life by a thread. ‘She’s wearing a red dress, it’s just a red dress, that’s why she is red, it’s not blood.’

  Crying a river of tears that joined the scarlet puddle. Blood making her hands sticky, turned her fingernails into talons. Holding her daughter to her. Clinging to her rag doll body and holding it tight against her chest.

  ‘And we hug. We put our arms around each other and we hug.’

  It sounded so simple, but tears flowed unchecked down Dom’s cheeks as she tried to manipulate the memory of the dream and work on inserting the new images into it.

  She and Dr Madden went over and over it, talking through every sight and sound of the dream, every feeling she’d had. They then converted it to something related but positive. The rest of the session flew by as they practised the imagery rehearsal treatment.

  If she drilled it enough, she would be able to take control of the dream and make those tweaks while asleep. It sounded crazy, but she knew from her own experience that it worked.

  She simply had to calm down, trust in the process, and practice her imagery rehearsal therapy. And hope it worked really, really quickly – though in her experience it was a slow process getting a handle on changing dreams. Practice made perfect.

  Seventy-Two

  As soon as Mum shouted her goodbyes up the stairs and the front door clicked, Ruby picked up her phone. Held it. Didn’t know what to do.

  Should she call Harry?

  The last thing her mum had done before she went out was to fix her with a long look.

  ‘I’m trusting you, Ruby. I’ve deliberately not taken your phone away because you know what will happen if you have anything to do with Harry from now on.’

  She certainly did. Her parents had stood shoulder to shoulder, earlier, united in destroying her life, if nothing else. Delivering the killer blow that if she had anything more to do with her boyfriend in any way, shape, or form, they would immediately have him charged with statutory rape. Ruby had offered to have a medical check done to prove she was still a virgin, but they weren’t interested. Of course not.

  She had not ranted and raved. She had not sworn and become explosive. The shock had been too much. Instead she had taken the news quietly, stunned that her own parents could sink so low. She had known they didn’t understand her, didn’t love her even. She’d known they took absolutely no interest in her. That had hurt enough to make her hate them.

  What she felt now was way beyond that emotion, though. It was enmity hammered into something diamond hard and implacable.

  That her own flesh and blood would blackmail her was despicable. They had sunk so low that they were threatening to destroy the only person in the entire world who loved her and who she loved.

  And they knew it was all over a stupid lie. It would take minutes for an expert to assure them Ruby was untouched.

  Ruby stared at her phone. The only good thing to happen today was that the messages seemed to have calmed down. Her phone was quiet for once. Perhaps it really was the season of goodwill. She gave a cynical snort at the thought.

  She made a decision, and dialled Harry.

  Without him, she had nothing to lose. Her parents had just taken away the only thing she had left to live for.

  * * *

  While Mummy was out, Mouse decided to read the final book in the Narnia chronicles, The Last Battle. It always made her cry in the end, when everyone realised they were dead. But when they all went to heaven and were running around having fun, her tears went all funny as she read, because she was still crying but they were happy tears. Which was silly, really. How could anyone cry and be happy? But she could.

  She wondered what it was like to be dead. Did it hurt? In the book, the pain was over quickly, then everyone was together and would never, ever hurt again. Mouse liked that. She was certain she was going to heaven – or Narnia, she wasn’t sure which – and would meet Aslan.

  She grabbed Ted, clambered into the wardrobe, and shut the door on the miserable afternoon weather outside and miserable atmosphere inside. Curled up in a corner with her torch, and opened her book.

  * * *

  Kendra was still worried about the final stage of her plan to force Ben’s hand. But she had tried everything else. Everything except…

  There was one last desperate throw of the dice. Screw it, what did she have to lose except the love of her life?

  She would do it.

  She took her ph
one out and tapped out several messages. Her phone buzzed almost immediately with a reply from her neighbour, Dawn.

  ‘Come over now, the kids are about to go to bed.’

  Brilliant, she could always rely on Dawn, who was her only real friend any more. And goodness knows, she needed a pal to unburden herself on – well, to give an edited version of her life to, anyway. It was always an edited version, to ensure sympathy.

  Ben took longer to reply to his text, finally confirming that he would come over at ten p.m., after dinner with a potential client.

  She quickly sent him an emoticon of a smiley face and some love hearts, before grabbing her keys and heading across the hall to Dawn’s place.

  This was it: everything was in place to drive a wedge between Ben and his family once and for all. If only her courage held.

  Seventy-Three

  Harry held Ruby like he didn’t want to ever let go. Fierce and protective. That was how she felt, too. They were both crammed into the downstairs loo, the only place they felt safe enough to meet. They couldn’t go out because Ruby was grounded, and didn’t dare go anywhere else in the house, in case they were discovered. At least in here there was a lock, and if her parents came home Harry could scramble through the window, and make a run for it with a good chance of not being spotted.

  Mouse was squirrelled away in some hidey-hole or other, presumably reading. She and Ruby had not spoken since the morning.

  ‘I’ll never, ever forgive the squirt for bursting in and screaming the place down. She should have knocked. She should have waited. She should have quietly asked me what you were doing there, rather than totally overreacting,’ Ruby fumed.

  Harry nodded, then jerked is chin towards a carrier bag Ruby had chucked on the floor. ‘What’s in there?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a Christmas present for your mum. You know you mentioned the other day that she struggles with buttons so I’ve got her some nice tops, and a lovely pair of trousers from a posh shop – it’s got an elasticated waist but you’d never know to look. They’re smart.’

  ‘Rubes, you’re the best.’

  ‘Nah. It’s not like it’s my money I’m spending.’ But she felt her cheeks warming at the compliment. ‘Think your mum will like them?’

  ‘For sure. Hey, I can’t believe your parents want to call the pigs on me over some trumped-up rubbish.’

  Harry put the lid of the loo down and sank onto it. Patted his knee and Ruby sat on it so they could carry on cuddling.

  ‘Why can’t they just fuck off and die?’ she huffed, anger igniting again.

  ‘If we can’t be together, I might as well be dead.’

  She looked at him. Those big brown eyes of his, full of fire and love. ‘That’s how I feel, too.’

  Without him all she had was pain. The constant insults were so deep-rooted in her now that they had tangled around her soul, choking off all the light, and stopping anything else from thriving within her.

  The teenagers’ fingers twined, no words needed. Ruby couldn’t believe her parents thought she and Harry needed something so prosaic as sex, when they had this between them. Their love had been forged in a crucible of despair which made it unbreakable.

  ‘I can’t live without you,’ she repeated. ‘If my parents keep us apart, I’m going to kill myself.’

  ‘You’re the one good thing in my life, Rubes. Let’s face it, my home life is shit – and school’s worse. Don’t leave me.’

  ‘Maybe we should just kill everyone else instead. Blow up everyone who has ever crossed us, then we’d be free.’ She started flippantly, but even before she reached the end of the sentence, the idea took hold. The same pain that had fed the darkness inside her now allowed this idea to take root and grow.

  ‘Like Columbine? Great idea, except school is closed, I’ve no idea how to make a bomb, and it wouldn’t get rid of your parents.’

  ‘My dad’s got a shotgun.’ The words were out before the thought. ‘We could shoot everyone and then run away, be free. Me and you and no one to interfere.’

  ‘And if we got caught we could kill ourselves anyway.’

  There was electricity in the air. Ruby’s heart was beating fast, and she had never felt so alive. She should have been appalled by this talk; she knew that, somewhere in the back of her mind. But she wasn’t. She was excited. The only other thing that made her feel like this usually was Harry – and the fact she felt so good as they talked now was confirmation for her that it must be right.

  Harry seemed to feel it too. His eyes were fever bright, burning into hers. His pupils were huge, as if he had taken drugs.

  His reaction fed her own fervour. Talking like this gave her an adrenaline rush even bigger than punching Jayne, or goading the police, or kissing Harry, all put together. It was wrong, horrifying – and that was the fun.

  ‘We’d never get away with it. We’d last five seconds on the run with the police after us,’ he said finally. ‘Unless we planned things real careful, like. We’d need to fool the pigs into thinking it was nothing to do with us.’

  ‘They’d need to think it’s a break-in gone wrong or something.’

  ‘Yeah, so, like, maybe I should bring knives with me, rather than using ones in the house. Like, I could nick some from home. Knives are better than guns because then no one would hear it.’

  Good plan. And it was a plan, Ruby realised – both of them had slipped from saying what would happen were they to do it, to what they were going to do.

  ‘How will we know when they’re dead?’ Ruby breathed.

  ‘Well, it’ll be bloody obvious from the blood – it’ll be everywhere,’ he laughed, then turned serious. ‘But I know first aid, so I can check their pulses.’

  ‘Just imagine thinking you’ve murdered everyone and then realising they’re still alive,’ she mock-shuddered. ‘They could shout out for help.’

  ‘I’ll stab them in the throat first. Stop them from shouting out for anything ever again.’

  There was such determination in his voice that Ruby shuddered again, for real.

  ‘We could drug your dad,’ he added. ‘He’s the only one who could really fight back and stand a chance of stopping us. Drug his food and he’d be taken out instantly. We can still slit his throat, even though he’s out of it.’

  ‘Yeah. I could slip something into his precious whisky. You could get like a roofie or something, couldn’t you?’

  Harry shrugged.

  Ruby had never been the bad girl; she had spent her life trying to fit in around others. Only in the last few months had she given up – and discovered that being bad felt good. This was a great idea. Even if they did end up with the police after them, they could always go back to Plan A and kill themselves. At least they would first have dished out some punishment to those who had let them down.

  Seventy-Four

  Kendra’s legs wrapped around Ben’s hips as they pounded into her, breath hitching. Tearing at his skin trying to get closer to him, have even more of him. She’d claw her way to his heart if she could. Dragging her teeth against his chest, his heart thudded beneath her lips. Sweat pearled across his back as she pulled him closer, closer, closer. No holding back. She couldn’t have done even if she had wanted to.

  Yes, yes, yes!

  Ben collapsed on top of her, then rolled to one side, breathing heavily. She snaked herself against him, throwing one leg over him possessively, running a hand over his chest. Sated for the time being.

  He had set Kendra free. She had been shy before. But with him she felt free and fierce and capable of anything. He gave her confidence where she’d had none. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel like that. Previously, the men in her life had been feeble fumblers, she realised now. As lacking in experience as she, but hiding it behind bravado. Ben turned her into a she-wolf.

  ‘Did you scratch me?’ he asked, breaking her reverie.

  He sat up. Turned his back to her. She ran her fingertips over four straight, pink lines across his right s
houlder.

  ‘Oh, I did. I’m sorry.’

  ‘Christ!’

  Ben always told her off when she marked his skin. She knew why: he didn’t want his wife to see. And that was another reason why she did it – Kendra wanted the world to know that Ben was hers and hers alone, and she saw no reason why she shouldn’t mark her territory. Speaking of which…

  ‘I’m pregnant,’ she announced.

  The blood drained from Ben’s face. He looked like an uncooked piece of pastry.

  ‘Fuck.’

  It wasn’t the reaction she had hoped for.

  Seventy-Five

  Harry lay in bed thinking about that afternoon. He and Ruby were going to carry on seeing each other, somehow, some way. He loved that they could talk so freely, get all their darkest fantasies out, and neither felt weirded out by it.

  Death.

  Revenge.

  Freedom.

  Murder.

  Bottling it up was bad, so he was glad they could vent together. But it was all talk, neither of them would ever do something so horrific, it was just cathartic to get all that anger out.

  * * *

  It was late. The house was quiet, kids in bed and Benjamin not yet returned from work or his mistress.

  Illuminated by the glow of the Christmas tree fairy lights, Dominique opened up her tablet and typed ‘sleepwalking killers’ into the search engine.

  There won’t be any results. Oh, damn…

  Her psychiatrist was correct; it was extremely rare for someone to commit murder in their sleep. But it wasn’t unheard. Page after page of examples loaded.

  A Manchester man who beat his father to death while asleep.

  A chef who woke to discover he was hitting his wife with a claw hammer.