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

by Darren O’Sullivan

  So we left for the city centre. The weather finally picked up and within a few minutes both of us had to take off our jumpers as we walked. When we got to her work she told me to wait outside. Doing as I was told, knowing it was safer, I crossed the road and leant against the wall of an Italian restaurant. Its owner, the sole inhabitant, watched me momentarily before shaking his head and returning to his work.

  Smoking my cigarette I watched the automatic door of the bank. Every time it moved I expected Natalie to step out and although the only thing my sister was doing was getting an address my heart beat like she was robbing the bank and I was her getaway driver.

  While I waited every person who walked by looked at me suspiciously. Two young-looking university students breezed past me on their way to Starbucks to get a coffee, flashing me a glance, and I thought they knew. An old man with his poodle and garishly bright blue scarf caught my eye, and I looked away, thinking he recognized me. As he passed he wished me good morning. Was he saying good morning or was he saying it’s going to be a good morning? Like he knew what I was wishing for. I tried to shake it off; it was me being paranoid. I needed to calm down.

  Natalie was only gone for about ten minutes, although it felt like I was stood watching the world scrutinize me for hours. When she came out she wore an expression that told me three things. She felt terrible for abusing the system. She knew what I wanted to know, and she was still annoyed I had asked her to do it. I didn’t blame her. As she crossed the road I stood upright and flicked my cigarette.

  ‘Don’t ever ask me to do something like that again.’

  ‘I won’t, I promise. I know it’s too much.’

  ‘It is too much.’ And her look proved it. Her eyes were steely and her face set in a way that screamed disappointment. ‘I mean it; don’t ever ask me to do something like this again.’

  ‘I won’t.’

  ‘Are you listening?’

  ‘Yes, I promise. I won’t.’

  ‘I love you, but I’ll not risk my livelihood for you again. This was your one and only time.’

  ‘I know. I’m sorry.’

  We walked away from the bank and crossed onto Downing Street. We passed the Museum of Earth Sciences. A formidable-looking building with hard stone steps that swept up to it. They were guarded by some sort of animal, its details faded over time.

  ‘Did you find it?’

  ‘It’s so like you. Do I not even get a thank you?’

  ‘Thank you, but please, did you find it?’

  ‘Sarah!’

  She stopped in her tracks at looked at me angrily. Her look softened, turning into sadness. Directed at me.

  ‘This is really important to you, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I don’t know. I think it will help him.’

  ‘By giving him a stone?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She took a long deep breath and looked up at the clouds that hung above us, threatening to rain down. Weighing up her options.

  ‘There are a few people called Chris Hayes. But the closest lives in Peterborough.’

  ‘Peterborough?’

  ‘Yes, and if you’re going now, I’m coming with you.’

  Chapter 14

  9.43 a.m. – Peterborough District Hospital, Peterborough

  Sitting on a gurney in a curtained-off box white room consisting of the bed he was perched on, a waste bin, and a wall-mounted hand sanitizer, Chris could hear the sounds of a drunk man somewhere in the accident and emergency department. He was shouting obscenities about how he was a victim of assault and no one seemed to a give shit. For a moment he thought it was him, and quietly he opened his curtain to check, coming eye to eye with a drunk who was twenty or thirty years older than Chris, his right eye swollen and bloodied.

  ‘What the fuck are you looking at?’

  Closing the curtain Chris took three deep breaths to calm himself. It wasn’t who he thought it might have been; it was just a drunk and clearly not a victim. He had to remain calm; he had to keep his appearance as such, knowing if he didn’t more people would be hurt.

  The drunk continued to shout at Chris but he didn’t care. His foul language was eventually hushed by nurses who were still on shift from the busy Friday night before. Their voices were tired. Chris heard the man apologize, but then mumble to himself, the only audible works being fucking bastards, which Chris heard a few times before the man was told that if he didn’t stop swearing the police would be contacted. It seemed to work.

  Now it was quieter he could hear the crying of a small child who sounded scared by their unusual surroundings, as well as the moaning of someone from the opposite end of life’s spectrum who felt exactly the same.

  It made him think about the cycle of it all, how people are born and then grow and then fight for independence, but in fact never achieve it. Despite how it may appear. For when it mattered everyone was exactly the same: they fought and cried and eventually became terrified of what was after that thing they call life. It was all so fragile and no one was exempt from that. No one. He knew this firsthand.

  With his heart rate back to where it should be Chris thought about his morning.

  How he was startled awake by the sound of what he could only describe as a table leg snapping. After a few seconds he realized that nothing was broken. The noise wasn’t something he’d heard but something remembered from a dream, something more organic than a piece of wood.

  Rubbing his eyes he sat upright and took a deep breath. His dreams felt more and more real each day and each one was leading him closer to the nightmare that was his wife’s last moments. As his eyes began to adjust to the early morning glow he once loved, a glow that was fighting to seep through the thin curtains, he felt sick with the realization. The day he dreaded coming was upon him. A day he would have avoided if he didn’t fail in his May plans. It had been just over eleven months since she died and he fought desperately with himself to delay this moment, but he couldn’t.

  Chris tried to picture his wife in his mind, and he failed.

  Not wholly. He could still see her glazed-over eyes as clearly as he could his own hand. He could still see her leg twitching as nerves fired for the final time. The fear on her face, permanently embedded. But he couldn’t see anything other than that moment. What he couldn’t see was the way she looked at him lovingly on their wedding day. He couldn’t picture her intimate gaze or the universe that existed in her irises. He couldn’t see her depth; he couldn’t see her soul.

  After rolling out of bed Chris stumbled to his bathroom and ran the cold tap. Leaning over the sink he drank the cold water. He washed his hands and splashed his face, the icy water forcing his mind to focus on the moment. He was awake. He was still alive despite not wanting to be. Worst of all he had once again failed Julia.

  He didn’t want to look at himself any more. He didn’t want to see the man he now was. But he had to; he needed to punish himself for being so careless with her memory. Facing the mirror he examined the wounded thing that looked back, bloodshot and broken, its head disproportionately sized compared to its shoulders through matted facial hair: dark, hostile, dirty, and hated by every atom of his being. It had a violence in its eyes, ready to do what was needed. It spoke to him.

  ‘Fuck you, Chris.’

  He had to look away for he feared he would reach inside the mirror and strangle the beast that dared to look back.

  Stepping away Chris felt a hot numbness begin to sweep over his body, the way it felt when being lulled to sleep with anaesthetic. It began deep down in his stomach and spread like a virus through his lower organs and limbs until his hands tingled.

  Leaning against the sink he closed his eyes. He needed to be able to see his wife clearly or everything would be lost, but despite searching he couldn’t fully bring her into his mind. She remained teasingly on the edge of what he could grab, her image like a pavement chalk drawing after a heavy rainstorm.

  Opening his e
yes again to see the animal looking back, Chris felt the numbness travel through his chest up to his throat, choking him until it burnt with rage behind his cheeks. He couldn’t look at himself any more and he hit the mirror, smashing the glass and distorting the image of the monster that continued to look back.

  Then, grabbing a glass that held his toothbrush he threw it. He liked the way it spun in the air as it left his hand. It felt right – the release of it – as though he were doing something. The glass representing something in him that he could control. He liked the way it splintered into a thousand independent pieces on impact with the wall. The shattered glass sat like fallen stars on his bathroom floor, glittering and beautiful and harmful. He liked the way he saw the beauty in its demise. It felt strange but exhilarating at the same time. He felt powerful, even if it was just for a moment.

  He let himself imagine that he was back in that night when Julia died and the things in his bathroom were in fact the monster who had killed her. He pictured hitting him, throwing him until he was broken on the floor like the glass under his feet.

  Chris didn’t stop until everything he saw that could be shattered had been shattered. Looking around at the destruction caused, he saw the toilet seat ripped off. The bathroom cabinet hanging at an angle, everything that was inside smashed on the floor or covering the walls.

  He felt like he needed more. He picked up a piece of smashed mirror. Four inches long, shaped like a dagger. Resting his left hand on the sink he pressed the point of the mirror into the back of his hand. Dimpling his skin. As he pulled back a small circle of blood formed. But it didn’t hurt. He pressed again, harder, the tip penetrating a few millimetres, enough for him to be able to let go of the glass and look at it stuck in his hand.

  He knew he needed to stop himself, calm himself and clean up the bathroom. But, somehow, causing himself damage made him feel good. Closing his eyes he hit the top of the glass with his right hand, forcing it deeper. A scream forced its way into his mouth but he held it. Instead focusing on the pain. Something he needed to feel. As he pulled it out blood poured from the wound to his feet. And the rage passed. And he could see his wife’s face once more.

  As he came back to his senses Chris could see that his hand was bleeding badly, much worse than he had intended, and he thought about getting a needle and thread and stitching it back together himself, like he had done before, but he knew it needed to be done by a professional.

  As he drove to hospital he knew that despite it feeling good to hurt himself he couldn’t do it again. He couldn’t afford another trip to A & E. Someone would surely begin to question his ‘accidents’. He had to remain vigilant and ensure he made it to his new date without anyone else getting hurt, anyone except him.

  ***

  The moaning outside his room intensified, snapping him away from his thoughts. Getting up he pulled the curtain that separated him from the rest of the ward and looked outside. He saw the source of it. Lying on a bed, only a matter of ten feet away from him, was an elderly woman of an age Chris dared not to guess. The side of her head was covered in dried blood from a gash to her temple that had been crudely patched up as she waited for a doctor to stitch her tissue paper thin skin back together.

  She had a needle inserted in the back of her veiny arthritic hand and she looked truly terrified. Chris couldn’t work out why he was in a curtained-off section whilst she was left on public display. He wondered if it was to appease other patients who could look at her broken old body and see their situation wasn’t as bad. Her suffering almost like an advert for how lucky they really were.

  She looked so alone although the ward was busy with the constant movement of doctors, nurses, and porters. She looked vulnerable. Despite not wanting to he felt ashamed. She was all alone in the world and he couldn’t even guess how long that had been the case, but one thing was clear: she was terrified of dying. He could see it in the desperate way she raised her head every time an official person walked past. She still had that desire to live in her broken body with all of its pain, in a world that had forgotten her.

  And there he was. Wanting to be dead. Having to begrudgingly wait. He thought of his father, and how he was exactly the same. Fighting for life until it left him, and quietly he wondered, for a second: what if?

  Shaking off the thought he saw her eyes resting on his, cataracts clouding them over, making them smoky grey. His mind began to shift. A memory began to bleed into the forefront of his brain and although he still saw the eyes of the old lady her face had changed. She was no longer in the corridor of a busy hospital ward but a quiet room, the smell of fresh flowers filling the air. And beside this new older woman was Julia.

  It was the memory of when they had both visited her mother whilst she was in hospital. They didn’t know it then, but it would be the last time they would see her alive.

  He remembered the doctors had previously talked with both him and Julia to tell them she was slipping away but her pain was being managed and that she would soon fall asleep and probably not wake up. He remembered how Julia lifted her head a little higher after hearing that, how she stuck her beautiful chin out a little, emphasizing her elegant jawline, the way she did when she didn’t want anyone to know she was upset.

  Chris knew; he had spent every available waking moment watching the woman he loved.

  He remembered how he spoke to Julia’s mother when Julia had finished applying the older woman’s make-up. ‘You look beautiful, Mum,’ she said. Again Julia’s jawline came into focus.

  Her mother called for him, unable to see him at the end of her bed, partly though disease, partly through medication. He leant close, close enough to smell her skin, which had now lost its floral scent, replaced with the smell of clean, antibacterial soap.

  She told him he was a good man, and that he needed to look after her daughter. He said he intended to for ever.

  He remembered her pulling him closer. Her voice barely a whisper. ‘I’m scared of what is to come.’

  He told her what was next was the biggest adventure of them all. That she looked beautiful and her spirit would thrive. That she had nothing to fear for she would always have that grace everyone admired. She smiled before closing her eyes and falling asleep.

  He remembered Julia letting herself cry at that, and how her tears broke his heart. He then held her in his arms, stroked her hair, and whispered that everything would be okay until Julia fell asleep also.

  That night as Chris held his wife in his arms he watched Julia’s mum pass away.

  As he rubbed his eyebrows with the balls of his hands the moans from the hospital ward flooded back, like they were being turned up by a television remote. He was once again eye to eye with the lonely old lady. She looked as if she had said or asked for something. Desperation on her pale face.

  Chris closed the curtain, unable to say anything back.

  Sitting back down he tried to think about something else, anything other than her. He couldn’t deny that he had just created a barrier between him, a seemingly healthy man and an older lady who looked desperate for someone to tell her everything was going to be okay despite her probably knowing that the end was close.

  Chris couldn’t see the life leave another person, not again, not after so many. But closing himself off to someone in need was more proof that the good his father instilled in him was dead. That Chris would have held her hand, or stopped a doctor or taken more action and wheeled the woman into his bay so she could maintain her dignity. He instinctively reached out to feel the stone that was usually in his pocket, forgetting it was gone.

  And as much as he tried to, he didn’t care that he’d shut her out.

  Looking at his hand, all raw and bloody, he moved his fingers. One of them didn’t quite bend properly, possibly due to him cutting into a tendon, not that he cared one way or another. Soon it wouldn’t matter. It became something curious rather than uncomfortable. Someone pulled back the curtain that separated him from the rest of the ward, startlin
g Chris. A young man, possibly only in his twenties, stepped in.

  ‘Mr Hayes?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m Dr Bhari. Now, it says you have cut your hand?’

  ‘Yes’

  ‘May I have a look?’

  After stepping in and closing the curtain Dr Bhari put on a pair of blue surgical gloves from his top pocket. He then took Chris by the hands gently, as if holding a quail’s egg, and looked into the wound.

  ‘It’s quite deep. What happened?’

  ‘I cut it.’

  ‘I see. May I ask how?’

  ‘It was an accident.’

  Chris could see that the doctor didn’t believe him. He could see it in his dark brown eyes, eyes that reminded him of the train girl. Part of him wondered how she was, and immediately he hated it. It was her fucking fault he had to wait.

  ‘I see. Well, you’ve managed to cause a bit of damage in here, but luckily, you’ve missed the major blood line into your hand. Although there may be a damaged tendon.’

  The doctor paused, looking at Chris, clearly knowing he had done this injury to himself.

  ‘Is there anything else you want to discuss before we patch you up?’

  He wanted to tell the doctor it came easy to him to cause damage. That he was broken following Julia’s death and he couldn’t recover. He wanted to spill everything, unbottle the secrets he’d been keeping for months, torturing himself with. He wanted to tell him that she had been killed and he had to keep it a secret to make sure no one else was hurt. He wanted to plead with the doctor and explain that the killer was probably close by, waiting, always waiting to kill again.

  He wanted to tell him that he had started having thoughts of not only hurting himself but others as well, because he could never hurt the man who stole his wife enough. He could never be punished. He wanted to say he needed help. He needed to grieve. He needed his wife to have a proper burial.