Our Little Secret: The most gripping debut psychological thriller you’ll read this year

by Darren O’Sullivan

  He realized that now the rules had changed. He realized that leaving a human form didn’t matter. He had done everything he could to protect other people. He had lied and hidden. He had grieved alone because it kept others safe. So focused on that he’d almost failed to see the only thing that truly mattered. Julia. It would be a stranger who would find him, the police probably. Fuck them; they were not his responsibility. It had to be this date.

  Realizing he didn’t need to care so much for someone else made Chris feel anticipation build and course through his body. Like an athlete might feel on a starting block, waiting for the gun to go. His plan hadn’t been executed the way he wanted but he was still going to join his wife. Opening his cutlery drawer Chris took out a small fruit knife, its blade about three inches and sharp. Perfect.

  Looking around he wondered where it would be best to do it. Only one place sprang to mind. The bedroom. The room where they’d shared their deepest fears and wildest dreams. The place where they could forget about the world, wrapping themselves up in their own little bubble, where they could laugh and love and lust for one another.

  He went to his bedroom, sat on the edge of his bed, and opened his side drawer. There were only two items in it: a book, one of its pages folded a third of the way through that he’d not picked up in a long time and under it Julia’s favourite light blue cardigan. He needed to be close to her as he took his last few breaths, to smell her smell, to have her with him. Although he didn’t deserve it.

  The rest of her possessions were all boxed up in the small room that used to be an office. He wanted to hold her cardigan as he died. Clutching it, Chris pressed the knife into his wrist. It wasn’t ideal. Far from it. He knew that it would take between ten and fifteen minutes to bleed out and in that time most of his blood would cover the room that he and Julia slept in.

  It was completely opposite to what he had tried and failed to achieve with the train. It would be messy; it would be disturbing for the poor person who found his cold lifeless body among an ocean of dark brown drying blood. But he would be by her side once more and in that ten to fifteen minutes as his life faded he could think of her. Taking a deep breath, he glanced at the small digital clock as the flicking of one minute to the next caught his eye. The time it read stopped him before he spilt a single drop of blood.

  Chapter 5

  11.54 p.m. – Kings Road, Cambridge

  I spent the journey watching the scenery rush past, unable to focus on what my vision took in as a heat burnt though my body. My blood pumping though my veins like lava making my eyes sting. My breathing was shallow and tight. I was obviously in shock. The train went into a tunnel, making me jump and as my ears popped I caught myself in the glass that acted like a mirror against the vast black nothingness. The girl who looked back was blotchy and pale. Her mascara, which was designed to be waterproof, had failed after twenty minutes of crying.

  I couldn’t keep looking at myself as a fresh tear rolled out of the corner of my left eye. Instead I focused on my hands, the polish on my fingernails chipped through picking. My hands shaking slightly. I pressed them onto my thighs to try and calm them. It seemed to work. I tensed my arms, pressing down onto my legs and took a deep breath in. As I released my tension I let my breath out and, for a moment, I felt in control of my thoughts again.

  Somehow, I felt like I had failed when in fact I had done the exact opposite. I should have felt empowered. I had just saved a life – and yet, I felt like a child, lost, needy. I tried to look at myself again, but as I did the tunnel ended and the flat, dark world came into focus again, broken only by lights from farmhouses and faraway villages until the city lights of Cambridge came closer.

  Wrapping my cardigan around me tightly I saw couples sat in front of the televisions in the houses that lined the tracks as the train slowed into the city station. It bothered me less than I thought to see people happy together. I guess stopping a man from killing himself can change someone’s perspective.

  Once I left the near-deserted station I wrapped my cardigan as tightly as I could around me and, crossing my arms, focused on keeping my breath under control. I began to walk home. Night was clinging fast to everything around me as I wandered down Station Road, making me involuntarily shiver. Shadows from street lamps transformed the Georgian student-filled town houses that were, by daylight, beautiful to look at into something more sinister. Usually if I was out this late I wanted to get home as quickly and as safely as I could, but not tonight. Tonight I dragged my feet.

  Although Cambridge on the whole was a safe city it had its fair share of problems and streets you had to avoid after dark, like all cities do, and usually I would feel my senses heightened. Waiting for a noise or light that would make me break into a run. Somehow though, I feared the night less. Almost like my self-preservation had been detached. The gravity of walking out on the man I loved and hated simultaneously only to accidentally walk into the life of another man who was trying to kill himself was all a little too much for me to fully absorb. It seemed too bizarre for my small and ordinary life. It felt like I was watching a black and white movie instead of actually experiencing it firsthand.

  As I reached the botanical gardens I thought it was safe to relax a little, but as soon as I did an image flashed into my mind, like a lightning bolt illuminating a night sky. It was him, on the platform, jumping under the train as I helplessly stood by. So sudden and violent was the image, conjured up from my broken imagination, it forced the air from my lungs and stopped me in my tracks.

  I had to sit down or I was going to black out. I tried to refocus on my breathing but it was too late. Flashing through my mind was Chris and his wet shirt and his note and his sad, fearful eyes that made my heart ache. They were spinning inside my head, shouting at me. Taking my last cigarette out of the packet I tried to light it. My unsteady hands making it impossible to do so. Each strike of the flint failing to spark the gas somehow pressed on my chest, crushing my lungs, until I had to stop and lower my head between my legs. The lack of oxygen getting in made me feel as if I was going to black out. I felt as if I was drowning, as if I wasn’t a part of the world.

  When I closed my eyes I saw his bare feet on the platform floor and heard his voice saying it connected him. Without thinking I unzipped my calf-high boots and struggled to get them off my feet before taking my socks off as well. My fumbling fingers felt like they didn’t belong to me any more and I knew if I didn’t get control I was going to be sick. Hot bile began to rise from my stomach and my eyes were struggling to focus as I finally wrestled my socks off.

  As soon as I managed to and put my feet on the cold, wet, hard, uneven floor I could feel the world begin to slow down and for a moment I focused on the uneven chips and cracks under my cooling soles. It allowed me to get my breathing under control.

  After a few minutes I could feel the blood return to my hands, enough for me to light my cigarette, inhale a deep lungful, and lift my head back up to hear the sound of the wind in the trees and rain hitting the leaves above me. I knew I should get back up and get home to safety. But I couldn’t. I needed to stay put and finish my cigarette barefoot.

  Only eighteen hours earlier, I had woken up to just another Wednesday with is mediocrity of responding to emails and taking telephone calls. With only the nervous sensation of seeing John and what that would bring letting me know I wasn’t entirely numb. Fast-forward that short time and everything had changed because of a man called Chris Hayes.

  I saw him kiss that picture again. But in my mind I was stood behind myself watching the whole evening play out in front of me. Like you would in a dream, and my heart ached once more. The poor, poor man. Why didn’t he just do it? Was it something he had to do alone or something more? I imagined his sad eyes on mine as he fell backwards in front of the train and the sound it hitting him would make and the way his body would explode on impact, it all happening so fast it would be like he wasn’t even there. It would have been something that would have stayed
with me for ever – and I knew then why he didn’t do it.

  With my boots and socks in my hand, my feet beginning to numb from the cold, I started to walk home again. The sinister shadows of older houses replaced with new builds where the street lamps were more frequent and brighter. Usually here I would have my senses fully engaged for any movement from the alleys between the houses, or a sound of footsteps behind me, but tonight they weren’t. It felt like I was in my own sense-free bubble.

  If he really did protect me from seeing him die, even though he wanted to die, then that made him a better person than anyone else I had ever known. It was the most selfless thing someone had ever done, and I knew that I needed to repay his obscure kindness. It was clear that whatever happened he felt like the only option was to end it all.

  I could empathize with that. Sometimes pain can feel so great that ending it seems the best solution, but I also knew that if someone could reach out to him, he could find another way. Which meant I would need to find him. I just wished he’d said or done something that might tell me where to start.

  Finally reaching the welcoming shape of my own front door I suddenly realized how tired I felt. It was as if the comfort of home allowed me to finally concede to the night. Opening it I could hear the television quietly playing from the lounge, knowing what that meant – my sister Natalie and her partner George were downstairs. Probably both asleep on the sofa as that was what usually happened. I didn’t mind though. I desperately needed the familiarity right now.

  I had never had that feeling of closeness Natalie shared with George with anyone, and it made me feel happy and jealous at the same time. Leaving my boots at the bottom of the stairs I stepped into my small cluttered front room with its walls covered in a menagerie of photographs. Lots of me and Natalie, some of John, most of Natalie and George. The bright HD light coming from the TV was cast over the sofa opposite, confirming my suspicions.

  There they were, both curled up, her head on his chest, both asleep, barely visible above the sofa’s throw, which they used as a blanket. Their breathing in perfect unison. It was nice to see and I loved that Nat and I were so close and could live together in relative peace. But sometimes I wished for my own space, just so I didn’t have to feel like a third wheel in my own home.

  Natalie was so similar to me in so many ways. Her looks, the way she talked, and yet Natalie managed to make everything seem effortless. She had excelled in school and was more popular despite being three years younger, and she’d managed to meet a wonderful man, one who adored her and who she adored in return. Again something I didn’t believe could ever happen to me, and Natalie made it seem easy to maintain that mutual adoration.

  Normally I would gently tap my sister and she would stir. She would then wake George and they would sleepily give me a kiss and go to bed, freeing the couch for me to sit on and perhaps wait for a text from John, or channel-surf for an hour, to try help me switch off. But instead I left them there. It seemed cruel to disturb their peace, and after a day like mine I needed the idea of peace to exist. Seeing their tranquillity offered me a brief and fragile hope.

  I walked up my narrow, steep stairs and stepped into the bathroom. I turned on the light, which temporarily blinded me with white and chrome. Turning the dial on the shower I undressed, foolishly looking into the mirror once naked. I noticed how red my eyes were, how tired I looked, and how I was beginning to show the early signs of age, the small and delicate lines around my eyes, the skin on my forehead not quite as tight as it once was, the slight thinning of my lips, and boobs that weren’t quite as pert as they once were, until the steam from the hot water blurred me from myself. Thank God.

  I got into the shower and turned it up as hot as I could bear, so hot my skin reddened, and then I stood motionless, letting the water cascade over my head and face, trying to wash the day away. After I felt less dirty I wrapped myself in a towel and fell onto my bed, knowing I needed to get to sleep quickly. In six hours I would have to get up and get ready for work. But playing in my mind on a loop was my moment with Chris.

  As the hours ticked by all I could think of was him and whether I could have done more before he walked out of the station and my broken little life.

  Chapter 6

  12.07 a.m. – London Road, Peterborough

  Dropping the knife, its cold steel sounding louder than it should on the wooden floor Chris couldn’t believe how careless he had been. Time had been his only companion, his only constant since Julia died and somehow he had neglected it. With Julia’s cardigan still in his hand, he ran downstairs to look at his wall clock, which continued on its forward journey, completely oblivious or uninterested in the commotion he was causing.

  ‘Please be fast, please be fast.’

  Seeing it his heart sank further. It said seven minutes past.

  He was too late. It was now the 6th.

  He had missed his date.

  Not knowing what to do he looked around his room for an answer. He wished he could turn back time, just eight minutes would be all he needed. But if he could turn back eight minutes, why not turn back ten months and stop the man that took his wife from him?

  Rage bubbled to the surface and he buried his face into her cardigan to muffle his wounded scream. He screamed until there was no more air in his lungs. He screamed until veins in his forehead bulged, until he was desperate for more oxygen. He screamed until his hands tingled and his vision closed in on him.

  Then he was on the floor, lying on his side, his face pressed into the cold kitchen tiles, her cardigan half covering his face. The clock told him he had lost four more precious minutes. He must have passed out. He lay still for a moment. His hand beginning to hurt where he had cut it. Chris inhaled and Julia’s scent lifted from the cardigan, which remained potent after so long. It acted as a powerful aphrodisiac for better times that quietly existed in places no one else could go.

  The dark lifeless world began to fade into the background as the light of a beautiful moment from their past took over. One that he had forgotten they shared. She was in bed, lying on her side and looking at him. Her skin glowing in the way it did after they were intimate. He stroked her face, running his finger over her eyebrow, across her cheekbone. He remembered telling her that she was beautiful and she hid her face more with the duvet. He laughed, unable to say what he really wanted to. He’d been scared by the intensity of the feelings he already had for her.

  She asked him who he admired. Chris said that one was easy, and he told her about his father and all of his kindness and strength. About how he always managed to find light, even in dark times. He also talked about his father’s father, a man who passed away when Chris was just eight or nine. He died not through illness or accident but because he wanted to.

  Chris remembered telling Jules how his grandfather and grandmother met when they were young, and they fell in love instantly. His grandfather a bugle boy in his army outfit, playing on the steps of York Cathedral to thousands of people. When he hit his solo he saw her in the crowd, looking at him. As soon as he finished he went to her side and then never left. Just like the old movies.

  As they got old she developed cancer and at seventy-one she died. He, being a healthy man of seventy-four, with no illnesses, died less than three months later. His grandfather told Chris’s father with his lasts breaths that the world was beautiful for different people for different reasons. And that his reason for it being so beautiful for him was waiting somewhere else. Chris remembered telling Julia he wanted to be like that; he wanted to love so much that he couldn’t live without it.

  He remembered Julia saying it was the most beautiful story she had ever heard.

  He remembered how she then kissed him and he tingled at the touch.

  Then he remembered the last time he kissed her. Her lips cold and blue.

  Taking shuddering breaths Chris cried. In the rare moments when he allowed himself to cry he did so quietly, gracefully, and completely unnoticed. This time was differen
t. A loud wounded noise, almost like an animal dying, fell from his mouth. There was no restraint, no modesty in his grief. Its origin unknown, but from some deep and dark part of his body. A part that he had learned to keep behind a door, one that had been forced open only once before in his life. He clutched his stomach, thinking he may burst wide open, hoping he would, and he sobbed long and hard. ‘What do you do now? Jesus, Chris, what do you do now?’

  Only the ticking clock could be heard in reply.

  Chris staggered towards his back door, unlocked it, and stepped into the cold night air. He walked towards the back of his garden where his shed was, barely visible through the overgrown weeds that had strangled Julia’s buddleia. He looked behind him to make sure he couldn’t be seen. Satisfied, he unlocked the door and stepped inside.

  Stepping over his lawn mower and reaching to the furthest corner from the door, Chris lifted a large metal tool box and put it on the counter he had built years before in an effort to be more organized. Using the key he had left with the letter, he opened the box. He needed to make sure its contents were still inside. He counted them off in his head. All seven items were there. Untouched, smelling of damp earth, iron, and rust.

  He moved the mobile phone that was switched off and picked up a large hardbound book. Inside were the words of his murdered wife. A diary that wasn’t his to read. He took it, flicked through the pages. Her smell coming from them. He stopped at a page from August – the summer after they married.