The Betrayed: A shocking, gritty thriller that will hook you from the first page

by Casey Kelleher

  ‘I know, Mum.’ Jimmy sighed, the raw emotion evident in his voice as he spoke, finally admitting what he’d refused to accept as the truth even to himself.

  He didn’t love Colleen. He never had, but that didn’t mean that he didn’t give a shit about the girl. Colleen was his wife, the mother of his child.

  And he knew: he did this to her.

  He made her this way.

  That’s why he had chosen to turn a blind eye to the woman’s behaviour. The drinking and the pills. He’d ignored it, hoping that somehow Colleen would be able to dispel whatever angst she still seemed to have inside her. But the truth of the matter was that Colleen Walsh wasn’t cut out for this world. For Jimmy’s world.

  For all his wealth and success, Colleen didn’t want any part of it, especially once she realised how Jimmy had come by his fortunes. She hated it all. Everything that Jimmy stood for. Everything that he did.

  She hated him.

  ‘I can’t reach her anymore, Mum. It’s like she’s just not here.’ Even as he said the words out loud, he finally felt like a weight had been lifted from him.

  It wasn’t often that Jimmy Byrne suffered with his conscience, but with Colleen he did. He knew he’d broken her. Beyond repair. And now he knew the lengths she would go to escape her life with him, it cut him to the bone.

  He tried for so long to pretend that everything was okay, but Colleen had slowly got worse. Moping around the place, as if Jimmy physically kept her in the house against her will. Disengaging from everyone and everything.

  She didn’t even bother to conceal her drinking from him anymore. In fact, it was as if she was purposely rubbing it in his face. As if she got some kind of a kick from goading a reaction from him. As if she was testing how far she could go.

  Tonight though, Colleen had pushed him way too far. He knew he couldn’t turn a blind eye to her actions anymore. He was her husband, and he needed to get this sorted out once and for all.

  ‘I’ve had enough of sitting around and waiting. I’m going to see her. She’s my wife. I should be in there,’ Jimmy said, the conversation with his mother clearly over. ‘Take Nancy home, Mum. Get a cab, yeah? You both look shattered. Try and get some sleep.’

  Agreeing with Jimmy, Joanie got up and scooped up her granddaughter. They could both do with some rest.

  Kissing him on the head, Joanie spoke seriously. ‘You need to get this sorted out, son. We can’t have her putting Nancy at risk again.’

  That was her final parting shot, pleased that finally she’d been able to get through to her son and that Jimmy had finally realised that he needed to do something about the girl.

  Once her son’s mind was made up about something there was very little anyone could do to change it.

  * * *

  ‘Jimmy, son!’ Edel said, allowing her tears to fall as her son-in-law walked in to the room, looking every bit like a man defeated. ‘Colleen look who’s here. It’s Jimmy, love.’

  Staring blankly at the wall ahead of her, as if she hadn’t heard her mother, Colleen didn’t respond.

  Edel shook her head apologetically, shrugging to Jimmy. She was at a complete loss as to what to do.

  ‘She looks a lot worse than she is, Jimmy. She’s on a drip to help raise her blood pressure and they’ve administered Activated Charcoal to stop the poison from doing its worst. Apparently, it pushes the drugs out through the gut, stopping the body from absorbing it.’ Edel spoke softly, repeating all the information that the doctors had given her, hoping that she was putting Jimmy’s mind at ease. It was probably an awful shock for the man to see Colleen in such a way. Edel knew exactly how the poor man must be feeling.

  ‘She won’t talk to me, Jimmy,’ she said sadly as Jimmy hovered awkwardly over by the doorway, neither of them really knowing what to say to each other. ‘Maybe you might have more luck?’

  Seeing the hope in Edel’s eyes, Jimmy nodded, though he very much doubted that Colleen would speak to him either.

  ‘I know she’s been bad before. With her depression and all that,’ Edel said, still trying to make sense of the night’s events, of finding out her daughter had tried to kill herself. Edel just couldn’t understand any of it. It was as if Colleen was unreachable; she just didn’t talk to her anymore. ‘But I thought she’d turned a corner? I thought she was seeming much better?’

  Again Jimmy didn’t speak.

  He’d always acted on the understanding that what Edel Walsh didn’t know, wouldn’t hurt her, he’d downplayed Colleen’s addictions, hiding whatever he could from the girl’s mother, in the hope that somehow, eventually, Colleen would snap out of whatever it was she was going through.

  Sensing that Jimmy would want some time on his own with Colleen, Edel wiped away her silent tears, before reluctantly tearing herself away from Colleen’s bedside and getting up from her seat.

  ‘I’ll go and get a cuppa and leave you both to it,’ she said, squeezing Jimmy’s arm as she passed him.

  * * *

  The room suddenly silent now that the woman had gone, Jimmy stood staring at Colleen. Lying in the bed staring vacantly at the ceiling. An intravenous drip being fed into her arm.

  Colleen didn’t bother to acknowledge his presence, pretending as if she didn’t even know Jimmy had entered the room.

  He’d been fuming with her up until this point, but now seeing her lying in the bed – so fragile and broken – he felt heart sorry for his wife. Taking a seat next to the bed, he decided it was time for them both to start talking.

  ‘I’m sorry, Colleen,’ Jimmy said and for once in his life he really meant it. ‘I know what you did tonight was because of me, because of how much you hate me.’ He spoke softly now. The anger he’d felt earlier had completely disappeared, replaced only by sadness as he finally accepted the truth. ‘I don’t know what to do to make this better, Colleen. I don’t know how to fix this.’ He shook his head, the words hitting a nerve suddenly, now that he was finally voicing them out loud. ‘Please, Colleen, we can’t go on like this. Forget about me. Think about your daughter. Think about Nancy. She was lying in the bed with you when you tried to kill yourself, Colleen. She went wandering when she couldn’t wake you. Taylor found her down at Richmond High Street. She’s traumatised,’ Jimmy said, speaking about their daughter in the vain hope that maybe then he might get through to his wife.

  It worked.

  Finally Colleen acknowledged him. Turning her head to face her husband. Dark circles around her sunken eyes, her lips all cracked and dry. Dehydrated from where she’d been violently sick.

  Jimmy waited for Colleen to say something.

  Anything.

  To call him names. To shout. To cry. To say she was sorry. Anything.

  The last thing he expected was for her to laugh at him.

  A manic strangled noise escaped from the back of her throat as she finally looked Jimmy dead in the eyes.

  ‘I didn’t try to kill myself, Jimmy,’ Colleen said, her voice cold, hardened; but her tears betrayed her as they fell. ‘I’m pregnant.’

  Then reaching down to her stomach, Colleen pressed her hand to where the life she’d tried to flush out somehow, despite all the odds, was clinging on to her, despite Colleen’s wishes.

  ‘I don’t want to give birth to another baby of yours, Jimmy. Another one of the Byrne spawn. I was trying to kill it.’

  Part Three

  2003

  Twenty-Eight

  Colleen closed her eyes as she fought back the sudden urge to scream. Consumed with grief, she wanted to throw herself down on top of her mother’s coffin and shout to everyone around her how much she wished more than anything that she was dead too.

  A heart attack of all things. It was so unexpected that Colleen still couldn’t even comprehend that her mother was really gone. It just didn’t seem real. Her beautiful mother taken from her like that.

  As the priest started reciting the final committal, and the other mourners started throwing down the clumps of ear
th on top of the coffin, to say their final goodbyes, Colleen opened her eyes and allowed her tears to come.

  Unable to look as her mother’s coffin sat down inside the grave now.

  Unable to bear the thought of the woman that she loved the most in the world being placed down there deep in the ground, soon to be covered with six feet of dirt. Left to rot.

  This couldn’t just be it!

  This couldn’t be all that was left for her. This sad, shitty existence of a life with only death ahead of them all.

  Blinking back her tears she glanced at the other mourners around the grave, focusing on them instead as she tried to regain her composure. She was left with all of them.

  With them.

  Looking over at her so-called family, her gaze rested on her two grown children: Nancy and Daniel. The pair of them were so like Jimmy that just the sight of them literally broke Colleen’s heart. Daniel, the baby. Ironically, he stood taller than his father now. At eighteen years old, he’d grown into a big strapping young man. Broader than Jimmy, his features sharper, more chiselled. Though he was more like Colleen in personality. Softer in some way. Not quite as brutal or direct as Jimmy.

  Staring over at Nancy: the enigma that was her daughter, Colleen eyed her, fascinated, as she always did. She carried a lethal combination of both Jimmy and Joanie – a Byrne to her very core. Blessed with beauty beyond measure, and she knew it too. Even at just twenty years old, she’d already mastered the art of manipulating all those around her into doing things her way, the way Jimmy had always managed to do. Only Nancy had the added bonus of an angelic disguise to hide behind.

  Even Jimmy had fallen under his daughter’s spell: mesmerising and heartbreaking to watch. The girl so full of false charm and promise, when deep down she was just as calculating and conniving as her father.

  Colleen watched Nancy staring down at her nan Edel’s coffin; she was holding it together as Colleen knew the girl would. Edel had loved Nancy just as fiercely as Joanie, but Nancy was all about Joanie. Edel’s sudden death didn’t seem to affect her in the slightest, Colleen thought. Taking in Nancy’s expression, not so much as a flicker of feeling or emotion registered on her daughter’s face. Those same emerald green eyes as Jimmy, casting out an icy cold stare, void of any real emotion. The only trait of Colleen’s Nancy seemed to have was her vibrant red hair. Other than that Nancy was all Jimmy. It was because of this, Colleen assumed, that Nancy was so favoured by Jimmy. Joanie too. She had been from the day she was born. Seeing themselves in her, they’d doted on the child.

  Poor Daniel never stood a chance. Her son never got a look in. Standing back from them all and looking in from a distance, Daniel had always been shunned in favour of Nancy. Living his life in his sister’s shadow, always vying for Jimmy’s attention, striving to be good enough – but he wasn’t. He never could be. He was too like her. Too like his hapless mother, and no one matched up to Jimmy’s daughter.

  Nancy caught her eye then, staring over, offering Colleen a rare small smile. Colleen didn’t smile back. The gesture was empty. To anyone else watching it would have appeared affectionate, but then that was exactly the point. Her dear children knew how to play the game. ’Course they did, they’d learned from the very best. Jimmy and Joanie had taught them well. The Byrne family were all about keeping up appearances. Why should today be any different?

  They were all here together, united in both their grief and as a family. Showing their support for Edel as she was laid to rest. Their support for Colleen.

  What a joke.

  The truth was none of them ever had the time of day for Colleen. Her children included. They never had and they never would. She’d accepted that long ago. Her two precious children. Born from her, yet they’d been raised by their evil witch of a grandmother, Joanie Byrne.

  Staring at her mother-in-law, Colleen felt the familiar feeling of hate bubbling in the pit of her stomach. Joanie was looking old now. In her seventies, her mouth pinched, giving her a permanent soured expression. Standing between Daniel and Nancy, Colleen thought she looked like she’d shrunk suddenly too. Small and frail-looking.

  An illusion.

  There was nothing frail about Joanie Byrne. She was as fierce as she was mighty. She’d won in the end. Managing to turn the children against Colleen, just as she’d set out to from the moment Nancy was born.

  Sensing Coleen’s eyes boring into her, Joanie looked back at her. Deliberately twisting her hands around her grandchildren’s arms and pulling them both in closer to her, she kept her eyes locked with Colleen’s. Another small gesture of affection, only there was no sentiment behind the small movement at all. Joanie was just staking her claim. Smug in the knowledge that she’d won the war; purposely goading Colleen, knowing that she was too weak and pathetic to even try to fight back.

  Well Colleen wasn’t going to be weak and pathetic today. Not on the day that she was burying her mother. Determined to be strong, Colleen held Joanie’s stare, refusing to look away first. Forcing herself to hold the woman’s eye, she glared at Joanie with the full ferocity that burned inside her.

  Forcing Joanie to divert her gaze.

  Colleen looked at Jimmy then. Her husband every bit as handsome as the first day she’d met him. Time had been so cruel to Colleen. She could no longer bear to look at her haggard reflection in the mirror, the bleak lines etched firmly across her face. The dark bags under her eyes. Yet for Jimmy, time had stood still it seemed. It was like the past twenty years hadn’t happened. He’d gained weight but it looked good on him, his greying hair only making him look distinguished.

  Her poor long-suffering husband. Isn’t that what everyone thought of him secretly? Jimmy Byrne, the man with the heart of gold. Putting up with his mental patient of a wife that he’d been lumbered with. What a good man he was. He could have anyone, and yet he’d stayed true to her.

  Colleen bit the inside of her cheek, her hands twitching at her side as she felt the overwhelming familiar pull inside her: needing a drink. Today more than ever, the hate bubbled away inside her, so rapidly today, so uncontrollably strong that Colleen really wasn’t sure she could contain it.

  He did this to her. Jimmy. And for that she hated the man with every cell in her body. For everything he’d done, and everything he was. Colleen’s only small mercy throughout it all was that her mother had been spared the truth. Colleen had made sure that Edel never found out about the murder she’d witnessed all those years ago. She’d made sure that her mother never knew what a wicked and cruel man Jimmy really was.

  It consumed Colleen. Her hate for her husband had eaten her up inside, so much that there had been days that Colleen had been unable to look at herself. It had driven a wedge between her and her mother over the years too. She’d allowed her mother to think that she was sick, rather than confess the truth. Her mother hadn’t questioned any of it, believing that her daughter just couldn’t cope after the birth of Nancy. That she’d suffered with acute postnatal depression. She did what everyone else did: she went along with Jimmy’s story, accepting it wholly. She believed it because Colleen let her.

  Zoning back in on the service, Colleen realised that the priest had stopped talking. It was all over. Jimmy had even ruined today. Too busy thinking about him, her hatred for him, she hadn’t been fully present for her mother’s funeral. Her own mother. Another important occasion that had just passed her by.

  People were surrounding her now. Too close. Touching her. Pulling her in towards them. Wrapping her tightly, their arms around her as they whispered their words of condolences. Only there were no words that would ever console Colleen for her loss. And these peoples’ words to her meant nothing. The people meant nothing to her. They were all here for Jimmy.

  ‘Get off me,’ she screamed.

  Staring over at the grave now, knowing that she’d have to leave her mother here, alone, cold in the ground, Colleen felt the overwhelming feeling engulf her once again. Her breathing erratic so that her lungs could barely
keep up. Her heart was pounding inside her chest. Echoing inside her ears. Gasping for air now, lost in another crippling panic attack, Colleen felt as if she would die. Her chest rising and falling rapidly, as she tried to suck in some air. Her lungs grabbing at the little oxygen they could find. Light-headed, she could feel her legs collapsing beneath her.

  Then Jimmy was there at her side once more. The good, dutiful husband that he was. Pulling Colleen up on her feet, holding her upright, as he wrapped his arm around her waist and led his fragile wife back to the awaiting funeral car.

  And Colleen did as she always did. Without a murmur, she let him play the role that he so desperately wanted the world to see. She let him be the hero of the hour. Because that was all it was about for Jimmy. Reputation, appearances. Colleen had learned that a long time ago.

  They’d go back to a house full of people now. So that people could eat the wonderful spread of food that Joanie Byrne had prepared especially for them all. And drink the expensive Scotch and wine that Jimmy would no doubt be serving. Only the best would do. Even for her mother’s wake. A house full of people. Strangers.

  Yet, once again Colleen would be all alone.

  Twenty-Nine

  Joanie Byrne couldn’t have been prouder of the way her grandchildren had behaved today.

  The pair of them had really held themselves together following Edel Walsh’s death. Of course, they’d never been as close to her as they were to Joanie. Joanie had always made sure of that. Even back when Jimmy had bought Edel her new shop after she’d lost her home in the fire, Joanie had made sure that it was the other side of London, so that the woman would be kept busy and out of her way.