Secrets and Lies: A Collection of Heart-stopping Psychological Thrillers

by M K Farrar

  His lips thinned, and he folded his arms across his chest. “I’m not comfortable with this at all, Kristen.”

  “So, what are you going to do? You can help me out by increasing what you pay in child maintenance, or you could offer to have Ollie more regularly so I’m not having to pay for every meal.”

  He shuffled his feet, glancing at the ground. “It’s not that easy. What with the business sucking every penny out of me, and the new baby as well... It was very stressful last night trying to get a whole heap of small children to stay in bed.”

  She barked laughter. “Stressful? You should try living my life for a few days. You should try feeding pasta to your child for three days in a row because that’s all you’ve got until payday, or explaining to Ollie why his dad isn’t showing up, yet again!” She’d managed to say all of this in a kind of hissed whisper, not wanting either Ollie or Haiden to hear their conversation. Stephen made her so mad, though. He was happy to criticise her but would never do anything to help.

  “Look, Kristen. The truth is that things between me and Lisa have been pretty strained since the baby arrived. Our house isn’t a fun place to be right now. No one is getting any sleep. Lisa is short-tempered with me all the time, and it doesn’t help when Ollie is around. It just gives us something else to fight about.”

  She didn’t want to experience a little buzz of pleasure that his new marriage was struggling, but she did.

  “Sometimes,” he continued, pausing to bite down on his lower lip, “I wonder if I made a mistake.”

  Her head shot up. “Oh, no. Don’t you dare do that. You’re several years too late. I don’t want to hear it.”

  Where the hell had that come from? Was it just because he’d seen a tall, blond, gorgeous stranger in his ex-wife’s home? Or was it because it was finally dawning on him that the grass wasn’t always greener? It didn’t matter either way. There was no chance she’d consider having him back. Life with him had been miserable.

  Even if it’s better for Ollie, her mother’s voice sounded in her head. Always thinking of yourself, Kristen. Such a selfish girl.

  She shook the thought away. She’d never been more miserable than when she’d been with Stephen. Sure, things were tough now, but she didn’t spend every day questioning every little thing about herself, wondering if his excuses for coming home late at the weekend were true, and expecting every phone call to be from some woman who thought he was interested in her and had no idea he was married. He’d always come up with an excuse, calling her paranoid and crazy, and making her feel that way, too. He even brought up her mother and her sister, comparing her to them, making her doubt her own mind.

  “Go back to your wife,” she said, making her tone hard. “Mind your own business. And next time, make sure you show up for Ollie when you say you’re going to.”

  Not waiting for his response, she stepped back into the house and quickly shut the door.

  She leaned her back against it and exhaled a long, shaky sigh. Her hands were trembling, her stomach in knots. She hated confrontation, and confrontation with Stephen was the worst. He always seemed to know exactly how to push her buttons, sending her from calm to furious in a matter of seconds. She guessed it was because she still had so much invested in him. He’d always be Ollie’s father, and Ollie was the most important person in her life, and that was never going to change.

  As much as an infuriating arsehole as Stephen was, he wasn’t going anywhere, and she just needed to get used to that.

  Chapter Seven

  Kristen was happy when Monday morning rolled around, and she could at least slip into a semblance of normality.

  She pointed out the way to the bus to her new houseguest, making sure he knew which stop to get off at and that he had enough money to pay for the ride. He laughed her off, and she knew she was fussing around him like he was a child, but she didn’t want to mess up, and besides, he was still in a strange country, however cool and easy he seemed to be with everything.

  With Ollie happily ensconced at breakfast club, she went to the office to get the day started. Even though nothing happened at school over the weekend, somehow things still managed to build up, so she always ended up with a busy morning. Mondays tended to be the day where all the parents needed something, too. Letter slips were handed in, lunch meal tickets bought, enquiries about upcoming school trips made. There would be a barrage of phone calls from parents whose kids had fallen sick or injured themselves over the weekend and so wouldn’t be making it to school that day.

  Just as she sat down, Anna swept into the office. “Oh my God. I can’t believe it’s Monday already. I swear the weekend is at least three days too short.”

  “So, you want to swap the weekends for the weekdays?” she said with a smile.

  “Yes, that sounds perfect! I’m never ready for it when Sunday night approaches. I always end up having one glass of wine too many and staying up too late watching movies on Netflix.”

  Kristen laughed, though she didn’t know why Anna was complaining. She didn’t have to work Mondays if she didn’t want to. Her husband made enough for her to not need to work at all. But Anna said she got bored being home all day and wanted to feel like she was needed. It seemed kind of selfish to work a job she didn’t really need, when someone else who needed the money could have worked it instead. Anna’s time might have been better spent volunteering somewhere that really could have used an extra pair of hands. But Kristen wasn’t going to tell her that. Really, it was none of her business what Anna chose to do with her life, and she had as much right to her own independence and feeling as though she was contributing to the household as anyone else.

  “Well, I had an interesting weekend,” she said.

  Anna lifted her eyebrows. “You did?”

  “Yeah. I got a placement from the university housing.”

  “Oh, wow. That was fast.”

  “It was a bit last minute, but it’s all fine. The student is from Sweden and he’s studying business. He seems very nice.”

  Anna narrowed her eyes at Kristen. “There’s something else, isn’t there? I can always tell when you’re holding something back.”

  Kristen twisted her lips. “Well... he’s a little older than I was expecting.”

  Anna frowned. “You asked for a mature student, didn’t you?”

  “True, I did, but I guess I was expecting someone who was eighteen. This guy is in his twenties.”

  She waggled her eyebrows. “So, you have a twenty-something Swedish guy living in your house?”

  Kristen sighed. “Yeah, that was pretty much how Stephen’s train of thought went, too, when he saw him.”

  “Stephen saw him? I guess he wasn’t happy, then?”

  “No. He said that he thinks he regrets us breaking up.”

  Anna let out a snort and rolled her eyes. “Jesus. What an arsehole.”

  “You got that right.”

  The school playground started to fill with parents and kids. The parents stood in small groups, while the children raced around with their friends at a million miles an hour. There was always the occasional child who didn’t want to be back at school and cried while clinging to their mother or father’s leg, but for the most part, the children were more than happy to be back. She kept an extra eye out for Ollie. The breakfast club kids were normally allowed five minutes in the playground before school started for real, letting them burn off some steam before they were expected to sit down and concentrate.

  The line of parents needing things grew longer with every passing minute. Kristen forced her mind away from her son and focused on taking in permission slips and handing out lunch tickets. No matter how quickly she dealt with one person, another two seemed to take their place just as fast.

  Suddenly, one of the older boys from year six came pushing through into the office. “Miss Scott, it’s Ollie. He’s got hurt and he’s crying.”

  “What?” She was instantly on her feet. “What do you mean he got hurt? Did he fal
l over?” It wasn’t unusual for Ollie to trip over. Like most five-year-old boys, he was always racing around and often fell over his own feet or ran into things.

  “I don’t know,” the boy said.

  She apologised to the waiting mums who waved her away, and then picked up her pace to half run into the playground. She could tell immediately where the incident had taken place. A little crowd of people had gathered around, and she pushed through them. “Sorry, excuse me. Sorry.”

  Her heart broke when she saw Ollie standing in the middle, tears pouring down his face. One of the other mums was comforting him and gave her a sympathetic smile as she approached.

  “What happened?”

  She caught a glimpse of Rachelle Hurst standing with her son, Felix, clutched against the front of her body. Felix was a year older than Ollie, and was known for being a troublemaker, but Rachelle was one of those mums who had a finger in every pie. She headed up the school’s parent teacher association, and got involved with every fundraiser, making sure that she controlled exactly what everyone else was doing. She would wait by the front door and pounce to determine that you’d donated whatever it was they wanted for whatever the current fundraiser was—cakes, sweets, presents, sometimes even money. For someone like Kristen who struggled just making ends meet, the constant requests for donations were draining and embarrassing.

  “What happened?” Kristen asked again.

  Ollie was crying too hard to understand what he was saying, so she looked around at others for help.

  Rachelle stepped forward. “I think the boys got into a bit of a tussle over the football. Ollie’s just overreacting, that’s all.”

  “What kind of a tussle?” She fixed her gaze on Felix, her over-protective side rising. “What did you do to Ollie?”

  Rachelle’s lips pinched. “Don’t you talk to my son like that!”

  “Then I suggest you ask him yourself. What’s he done to make Ollie cry like this?”

  Ollie tried to say something, and Kristen crouched to hear him better. “He bit my shoulder.”

  “What?”

  Quickly, she pulled up the back of Ollie’s shirt. Sure enough, there were already blue and purple bruises in the shape of a set of teeth.

  “Jesus Christ.” She glared at Felix. “You bit him?”

  “He wouldn’t let go of the ball,” Felix muttered.

  “Say sorry, Felix.” Rachelle hissed through clenched teeth.

  “Sorry,” the boy said sulkily, looking away as though he was already bored.

  Kristen straightened and shook her head. “I don’t think ‘sorry’ is going to cut it. You can’t have boys biting other boys—especially not when they’re younger. This isn’t the first time Felix has done something like this either. This needs to be dealt with properly.”

  Rachelle bristled. “I hope that’s not a threat.”

  “No, me saying I was going to bite him back would be a threat,” she spat, unsure where the words came from. “Animals bite. Are you an animal, Felix? Because you certainly behave like one.”

  Rachelle gasped in shock at her audacity.

  “Come on, Ollie.” Kristen took hold of her son’s hand. “I think we need to speak with the headteacher.”

  She was horribly conscious of how everyone had stopped and were now staring as she marched her son through the playground towards the headteacher’s office. This incident was bound to be the talk of the school.

  She knocked on Andrew Larsen’s door and waited for him to call to come in. She entered, still with a teary Ollie by her side, to find the headteacher sitting behind his desk.

  “Andrew, I’m sorry, but I need to talk to you about Felix Hurst.”

  He sighed and put down his pen. “What’s he done now?”

  She pulled up the back of Ollie’s shirt to show him. “He bit Ollie because Ollie wouldn’t give him a football.”

  Andrew winced. “That looks sore.” He frowned at her son. “You okay, Ollie?”

  Ollie sniffed and nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Doesn’t look as though the skin is broken,” Andrew continued. “It’s only bruised.”

  “It’s a bite,” she said, feeling as though he was missing the point. “You can’t have kids biting other kids. They’re not a bunch of animals.”

  “I understand that, Kristen. I’ll be bringing Felix and his parents in and having a talk with them.”

  “I don’t think having a talk with them is going to cut it. How many times is this boy going to injure another child before something is done? He pushed over one of the other boys last week, and nothing was done. Just because his mother is Rachelle Hurst doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be held to account for his actions.”

  His lips thinned. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “That you give the kid a free pass because his mum is head of the PTA.”

  “That’s ridiculous, Kristen. I treat Felix just like every other child at this school.”

  Anger bubbled inside her, but she forced herself to push it down. She wanted to fight for her son’s right to be able to come to school without fear of being bitten by another child, but she was also keenly aware that this was where both she and Ollie spent a large portion of their days.

  “Are you okay, sweetheart?” she asked her still sniffling son. “Do you want to go home, or do you want to stay?”

  Deep down, she prayed he wasn’t going to ask to go home. There was already a big queue trailing out of the office door, and she knew Anna would be freaking out trying to deal with everyone. Besides, it would be a day of unpaid leave, and she couldn’t afford to take that either.

  “It’s okay. I can stay,” he said in a small voice.

  Her heart broke. It was as though he’d seen straight into her head and decided to stay even though he probably didn’t want to.

  She gave him a hug. “That’s my brave boy.”

  “Everyone will be going into class now, Ollie,” the headteacher said. “I’ll make sure I have a word with Felix so nothing like this happens again, okay?”

  Ollie nodded again and turned to leave the office.

  Kristen still didn’t feel as though things were going to be dealt with severely enough, but what more could she do? She joined her son in the corridor outside. From the playground, one of the other teachers blew the whistle to signal it was time to go into class.

  Kristen took Ollie back out into the playground so he could line up with the other children. She bent down and gave her son a kiss.

  “I need to go back to the office now, Ollie, but you know where I am if you need me. If Felix does or says anything to you again, I want to know about it, okay?”

  “Okay.”

  She glanced up and caught Rachelle glaring at her from the other side of the playground. Kristen pressed her lips together and stared back. She wasn’t going to be intimidated by some bully’s mother. Not when her son was involved.

  Chapter Eight

  She was running late.

  The bus should have already dropped Haiden off at the correct stop to deliver him back to the house shortly before five. It was just after that now, so she expected to find him sitting on the doorstep, which wasn’t what she’d planned at all. She guessed she’d need to give him a key to the house at some point, but she hadn’t had time to get one cut yet. It felt strange giving someone else the option to come and go whenever they pleased, even though it was well within Haiden’s right to do so. The school imposed a curfew, but she guessed she could hardly force a man in his twenties to stick to it. It would be different if he was a teenager, but he wasn’t.

  Ollie seemed okay after the incident at school. He hadn’t mentioned it since she’d picked him up from afterschool club, and she hadn’t brought it up again herself. She was dreading bath time, though, knowing she was going to see those horrible bite marks again. She felt a fresh rush of protective anger at the thought. Bloody Felix. How would he like it if someone bigger started biting him?

  She approached t
he house, but instead of finding Haiden waiting for them, something else caught her eye, and she drew to a halt. “Oh, no.”

  “What is it, Mummy?” Ollie asked from beside her.

  “The plant pots are all broken!”

  She did her best to keep the front of the house looking tidy. She always made sure Ollie’s scooter and bike weren’t left in the front garden, and she’d made the effort to have a couple of pretty, potted plants on either side of the front door. Now the plant pots were lying on their sides, the dirt and plants spilled onto the concrete path, the ceramic in fractured pieces.

  “Did they get blown over?” Ollie asked doubtfully. She knew why he thought that—they’d had a storm over winter which had wrecked the garden and blown down a fence panel—but there hadn’t been any wind today.

  “I don’t think so. Maybe someone knocked them over accidentally.”

  “Yeah, that was probably what happened,” he agreed.

  Movement came from behind them. “Hello.”

  She looked over her shoulder to see Haiden. He was all energetic youth and good health, and she felt ten years older and exhausted all at once.

  “Oh, hi. I thought you would have been back by now.”

  “The bus was running late.”

  Lucky for her. “How was your first day?”

  It felt strange asking someone that question when they were clearly nowhere near being a child.

  He nodded. “It was good. Still getting my bearings, you know.”

  She smiled to show she did, but she’d left college at the age of eighteen with a couple of A-levels in dance and social studies to her name. She hadn’t even done a degree, never mind a masters in something.

  Haiden caught sight of what they were looking at and frowned. “Someone broke your pots.”

  His words jolted through her. Yes, that was what it looked like—as though someone had come along and deliberately knocked them over, so they broke, had maybe even picked them up and thrown them hard enough to smash. Her stomach twisted, hating the idea that someone would do that.