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

by Darren O’Sullivan

  He needed the glass to shatter around her as she had shattered his heart. It needed to be broken like his trust had been. Grabbing her by her hair he smashed her head into the glass again and again until cracks appeared. The whole time she begged him to stop. The fourth attempt put her face though it and a thousand shards exploded over her eyes, cutting her flesh. Dropping her to the floor she was no longer begging but mumbling incoherent words.

  Her dress was riding high up her leg, exposing her underwear, and he thought of the other man seeing that part of her body, touching, fucking. He knew he should stop, but the image of her with James wouldn’t lift.

  ‘I trusted you, Julia.’

  ‘Chris, please stop.’

  ‘Shut up, just shut the fuck up.’

  ‘Chris …’

  ‘I said shut up.’

  Dropping to his knees beside her he took her throat in his hands and squeezed. She put her thumb in the hole in his shoulder and screaming he let her go. She tried to run, but failed, in too much pain to get anywhere quickly. Chris grabbed her by the ankle and pulled. She fell once more, her face landing in the wet, soft mud, glass from the window cutting her face even more. A pool of blood began to form around her.

  Falling on her he pressed her head into the mixture of mud, blood, and glass. He screamed at himself to stop, begged him to stop but he wasn’t listening. The more she fought the harder he pressed, crying as he did until she stopped fighting. The only movement being the involuntary twitching of nerves as they fired for the last time.

  Rolling off of her Chris stood and looked towards the car, seeing the monster looking back through the rain-beaten glass. Shocked when through the reflection it spoke to him in a voice that both was and wasn’t his.

  Look what she made us do. She left us no choice, Chris. We did what we had to do.

  ‘What have you done?’

  What you wanted me to do.

  ‘I didn’t want this.’

  You tell yourself that. We both know it’s not true. You know what we need to do now?

  ‘Go to the police.’

  Don’t be so fucking naive. Now we have to bury the bitch.

  Bury the bitch, Chris.

  ‘Shut up!’

  Chris staggered backwards, the pain in his shoulder intensifying with every laboured, wounded breath. Her body only a few feet away, unmoving. Trying to keep his balance Chris stumbled to the left and fell down a six-foot dyke he hadn’t seen. His body slammed into a tree at the bottom, knocking the wind out of him.

  Clambering up the steep sodden slope Chris fell by his wife’s side and rolled her over. Her face unrecognizable, mud inside her mouth where she had fought to breathe. He shook her, shouting at himself as he did. ‘Look what you have done to us; look at what you have fucking done.’

  Although the animal had taken over, he still expected her limp body would come back to life with every violent shake. But, she wasn’t moving; she wasn’t breathing. From somewhere he could hear himself say that he needed to get to work.

  ***

  Standing up Chris took a breath. This was the furthest he had ever let himself go when remembering that night. Looking at his hand he could see himself visibly shaking. He clenched his fist three times to try stop it. It didn’t work. Placing his fingers on his wrist he felt his pulse. It thumped though his vein quickly.

  He needed to calm himself down, get himself refocused. He needed to see his crime objectively and then, centred and controlled, like he was a month before, throw himself under a train. He didn’t know why but part of him didn’t feel as ready as he had. He’d had another month to prepare, and now, with the man he had become in that month, he had even more reason to do what he had to do. He had killed his wife. There was Steve and Sarah too, whose fates were still unknown. This was the only way he could make it right. Julia’s body needed to be laid to rest, and the others, they needed to know why.

  He looked up to the clock to see how long was left.

  5 minutes.

  Chris began to pace slowly, one foot directly in front of the other, as if walking a tightrope up and down a short stretch of the platform from the entrance to the toilet to directly under the clock. He compared this moment to the one from twenty-eight days before and couldn’t help but see how different it was. Although he knew what would happen as the 10.47 train came through, the wait felt like the polar opposite.

  He felt fear of the pain that he might experience before he was dead and wondered how exactly it would happen. Thinking of it made him feel sick. So once again he forced himself to picture that night. He hated himself for what happened after he looked to the moon. This was good. Chris knew he needed to hate himself for another four and a half minutes.

  ***

  Her body lay on its back, waiting for him to decide what to do with her. Looking at his wife Chris felt detached, lost. Like he was watching what was happening to him through an old grainy television set. But it was real; there was no drama. No parting words. His wife lay silently dead at his feet, and he had murdered her.

  As his breathing calmed he felt the cold rain falling on him once more. Soothing, cleansing. He looked in the rear passage-side car window and saw himself, soaking, muddy, bleeding, and each flash of the hazard lights allowed him to come eye to eye with the monster before him. He looked at what his wife had made him become. A panting, hunched beast with arms that swung loosely at his sides. Its teeth bared, its body taut and ready.

  What are you waiting for, Chris?

  ‘No, I have to call the police.’

  And say what?

  ‘That you killed her.’

  But I’m you, Chris. You killed her, not me. They’ll lock you up.

  ‘I don’t care.’

  I do.

  Chris tried to take his phone from his pocket but threw the phone to the ground.

  I can’t have you ring the police, Chris.

  ‘I have to.’

  You forget, Chris, I’m you. That means I know everything you do. I know your friends, your work colleagues. All of them. I’ll kill them all and you know I will. I’ll visit them in their sleep and slit their throats. So I suggest you do what I say.

  ‘Please, don’t hurt anyone else.’

  I won’t, if this stays our little secret.

  ‘Please, don’t make me do this.’

  We both know that this is what you wanted, Chris. You’re just too much of a pussy to say it out loud.

  ‘I didn’t want her dead.’

  It’s too late to change that now. Come on, we have work to do.

  With no control over his feet Chris stepped over his Julia’s corpse and opened his boot to find the car jack, which lay under the flooring inside. Cradling it in his damaged arm he grabbed her ankle with his good hand and dragged her to the edge of the slope before pushing her over. He watched her body tumble like a ragdoll’s before slamming into the same tree he had.

  Cradling the jack he slid down the bank and ended up stood over her. Her eyes fixed on his, glazed over. And he began to dig, scraping the wet mud and piling it beside the base of the tree. He dug so deep that the thick roots of it became exposed. He thought if he placed her close to them she would be less likely to be found. It made him sick to realize there was some logic in it.

  He decided to rest her headfirst. He didn’t want to remember his wife’s face as the bloodied, broken, and lifeless one that he saw now. He gently laid it into the hole facing the tree. He didn’t know why, but it felt important. For a moment the monster backed off, allowing him to stroke his wife’s hair tenderly.

  He wanted to say something, but the monster wouldn’t let him. So he sat in silence for a moment, pretending they were back on the beach in southern Spain. Neither speaking, neither needing to. Giving her one final kiss, he stood and looked at the rest of her lifeless body and the monster took control once again.

  The rest of her was the woman who had been fucking another man. Dropping to his knees he tried to fold her right arm thro
ugh a gap between root and earth. If he could get her arm in then her shoulder and half of her chest would follow. But it wouldn’t fit, not with it bending the way an arm should.

  He looked up at the night sky. The moon was full, peering out from behind a cloud, watching. He then took a deep breath, grabbed her lifeless wrist, and placed her elbow against the root. With her arm twisted so her palm faced upwards, he pressed on her wrist with his other hand. With her arm straightened, the only way for it to naturally bend was if he removed it from the root or released his grip. Instead he pressed down as hard as he could.

  Julia was only petite, but breaking her arm was far harder than he would have imagined. He pressed down so hard sweat began to mix with the falling rainwater until he could feel the arm begin to bend, just before he heard it snap.

  Her arm had given way, the snap sounding like a table leg being broken and, because of the force Chris had been pushing with he fell, hitting his eye on the root of the tree before landing next to his Julia, her arm bent backwards. The bones tearing through her skin. Their jagged angles looking more like a cheap horror prop than belonging to a real person. Breaking it had done the trick and twisting it slightly he was able to push half of her body under the root and around the tree.

  She looked like a baby holding its teddy whilst it slept. With her face turned to the tree and her broken arm obscured by the roots, she looked just like she did any other time she was asleep. When she was in their bed, warm, safe.

  ‘Fuck. What have I done?’

  ***

  Four minutes.

  Chris needed to snap out of his memories. His train was in four minutes and he was on the verge of passing out. Which would let the monster in once again. Seeing the male toilet door was open he walked towards it and inside.

  He noticed it was a lot cooler inside the bathroom and the terracotta-coloured floor tiles were mostly broken, several missing. Floor to ceiling white tiles gave the space a clinical yet dirty feel. There were four metal urinals lining the wall on the left and two cubicles on the right. He checked them first. Both were empty. Beside the urinals, two of which blocked with tissue, stood one solitary metal sink. Above it was a mirror that was only six inches squared and scratched, almost to the point of being useless.

  He pressed the button on the tap and water poured from it. Cupping his hands he scooped some onto his face. The coldness instantly making him feel more centred. He splashed himself again then looked at himself in the mirror. He saw the look of a tired child who was unable to sleep because of bad dreams. The beast that used to stare back was gone, dead or hiding. Taking deep, measured breaths he looked at himself for as long as he dared not to be able to see the clock.

  ‘You have to do this. You have to remember exactly what you did, all of it. Every detail. Because of you, she’s dead. So get your fucking shit together.’

  Unable to stand the sight of himself any more, he looked away and before leaving took the picture of his wife out of his trouser pocket. The memory of his honeymoon wanted to come back to the foreground. He forced it back. Although smiling her eyes looked angry. Had they always? Kissing her he folded the picture and wanted to put it in his shirt pocket, close to his heart, where he had before. Only this time he didn’t have a pocket. So he put it back in his a trouser pocket before stepping out of the bathroom and back onto the platform.

  Three minutes.

  There were only three minutes left now, not long. He looked around. Still alone. Curling his toes back over the platform edge he took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

  ***

  The ground was so wet he slipped twice whilst trying to get up, both times falling on her. The pain in his eye intensifying as his blood ran into it.

  Finally, scrambling to his knees and regaining his balance, he began the process of covering the top half of her body that was wrapped among the roots, scooping a handful of mud with his good arm and packing it around her. Pushing it into every gap, covering her arms, chest, hands, and neck. He couldn’t do her face, not yet; he would leave that till last. Her body was what he had lost to another man, but he still believed her mind was his. He wasn’t ready to say goodbye to that part.

  So he covered her torso and wiped mud from her ashen face every time it spilt on it. Once he finished only that and her legs remain uncovered. As for the rest of her, even he couldn’t believe how easy it was to make it look like she wasn’t there at all. Taking a deep breath, wiping blood from his face, flexing his right fingers to try keep his hand working he began to fold her legs around the tree. And, as with her upper body, he would have to make her bend in ways that weren’t natural, but he took a small pleasure in the sound of snapping bone.

  ***

  Chris threw up on his bare feet and track. It came so violently he thought he was going to fall over the edge. If he did he would probably knock himself out, then the driver would have no choice but to watch as he ran over his body. He forced himself back and dropping to the floor he fought to control his breathing. Telling himself to be calm, get control, nothing had changed from a month before, he’d still done what he did, and he still needed to see it again. He still needed to do so to honour his wife and stop the monster from doing any more harm.

  Two minutes.

  Looking up he tried to see where the moon was in its cycle. It was almost full. Sneaking out from behind a cloud. There were no visible stars. Looking to the clock he knew his train, his end, was coming soon. He had to stop wasting precious time so he put himself back in that night.

  ***

  With his hands on her right leg he forced it into a small gap, hoping he wouldn’t have to damage her body any more to make her legs rest against the tree. He scooped up more dense mud to pack around her once she was nested. Her legs were bent up on themselves, all broken angles. Him having to stamp on them several times to snap them and fold them in.

  Covered neck to toe in mud, so thick it had stemmed the bleeding from both his shoulder and eyebrow, Chris looked at his work. His wife, his cheating, flawed, wonderful wife was now embraced by the tree as she had been embraced in his arms for years. As she had been embraced in the arms of her lover. But the job wasn’t finished. The monster in him backed away, allowing him to kneel down beside her face. He kissed the side of her lips, cold and mud-speckled.

  And then he saw that final moment, a fist full of mud, her face uncovered. His final goodbye before burying her completely. Removing her from the world. Once all of the air had gone from his lungs he dropped his head into his hands and screamed.

  He screamed at himself so loud the sound bounced off of the clouds, like the train horn did a month before.

  ***

  It snapped him back into the present. He screamed at himself for the damage he had caused. He screamed at Julia for having her affair. He screamed at Sarah for loving him and Steve for doing the same. He screamed at his mum for dying so young and his dad for trying to teach him how to be a good man. He screamed at the monster that had robbed him of everything that mattered. He screamed at the wait, the long wait that had filled him with doubt until there was no more air left in his lungs.

  Chapter 45

  60 minutes before

  9.45 p.m. – Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge

  It took Steve a full minute to focus once he opened his eyes. All he could make out was the blurry images of a window and darkness outside it. Then he saw Kristy, her outline soft and blurred around the edges. It was the only one that he knew and could make sense of. When his eyes did adjust to the light and his vision sharpened he could see she was asleep in her chair wearing one of his old jumpers.

  Looking around the room he fixed on a bag of saline solution hanging from a stand. Its tubes running into a vein in his right arm. He knew what it was; what he didn’t know was why he was connected to it. He tried to sit up but couldn’t. The pain in his head and face like a lightning bolt that grounded him. Then he called out in panic. His wife was by his side before he could run out of ai
r.

  ‘Steve, darling, it’s okay. Steve. Calm down. It’s me. It’s Kristy.’

  ‘Kristy.’

  ***

  She broke down in tears, relief flooding through her body. They had told her when he did eventually wake they didn’t know what the extent of the damage would be. He remembered who she was; that was enough.

  ‘What happened?’ His voice was barely a whisper. He was already looking like he was going to go to sleep again.

  ‘Shhh, it’s okay, you’re okay.’ She wanted to know exactly the same thing. What happened that meant he was in a house in Ely belonging to a dead woman she had never heard of? What happened that meant he had been attacked? But she didn’t ask, not yet, not while he looked so vulnerable and in so much pain. Instead she reached over and pressed the call button for a nurse before wrapping both of her hands around one of his, careful to avoid the cannula in the back of it pumping antibiotics into his system.

  ***

  Within seconds a nurse, followed closely by a doctor, entered the room. The nurse flashing a wide smile with crooked teeth and dark, soothing eyes. She almost made it feel like he was a child waking to its mother. The doctor was far more serious, far more assessing. Examining her handiwork like a mechanic.

  Steve looked through them and could see two others in uniform who were hovering outside the door, interested in what was happening. The doctor examined his pupils, asked him questions. Can you remember your name? Who is this lady? What day is it? Do you feel any pain? That’s to be expected. Does it hurt anywhere else? Satisfied with his answers she then told him he had been very lucky.

  Steve watched as the doctor looked towards the waiting police officers and they began to step inside. They spoke in compassionate tones, held a sympathetic gaze but clearly wanted to know what had happened. The told him he had been involved in an incident, that he had been attacked and hit with a small fireplace shovel. He was told that he was found by police who came because a neighbour saw him break into the house and called them. He might have died if he hadn’t been seen.