Keep My Secrets

by Elena Wilkes

  ‘It looks like it.’

  ‘I talked a girl down off a roof.’

  ‘Jesus Christ, Frankie.’

  ‘I climbed a ladder to get up there.’

  His jaw drops in shock. She thinks for a moment that he might be angry but then he laughs, his whole face crumpling as he shakes his head. He’s got such a lovely laugh; it’s such a shame that she doesn’t hear it so much these days.

  He raises an eyebrow in amusement. ‘Off a roof, eh?’

  ‘Yeah. She was threatening to jump.’ She dumps her bag down. Her hands look as though she’s been changing car oil.

  ‘Jump?’ he frowns. ‘Jeeze. She must have been in a state.’

  ‘Yeah, I was scared the emergency services wouldn’t get there in time. I happened to be around when it all kicked off.’

  ‘You already know this girl?’

  ‘Keeley? A bit. She’s only been a resident for a couple of days, but I’ve seen her file so I know what she’s been through. I’ve seen how quickly emotions can change if you don’t get a handle on them… And anyway, she said she was armed—’

  ‘Armed? For Christ’s sa—’

  ‘—with a potato peeler.’ She gives him a wry look. ‘Can you imagine? That’s what I’m saying. There she was, sitting on a roof in the pouring rain with a vegetable scraper. It kind of sums up her pitiful life. She needed someone who really understood what she was going through.’

  ‘And why does it always have to be you who gets these kids?’ Alex looks annoyed but his eyes are soft.

  ‘You know why. I was that girl, once upon a time.’

  Alex leans forward and kisses her forehead. ‘But you’re not now. Look, why don’t you go into the laundry and strip off in there while I run you a bath. You look absolutely shattered.’ He moves past her, squeezing her hand briefly as he bounds up the stairs. The sudden touch shocks her. It feels like forever since he’s spontaneously shown her any kind of affection at all.

  ‘Yep, great idea.’ She pads through the kitchen, knowing that her wet socks are leaving smears across the stone tiled floor. She instantly feels guilty about the mess and tries to tiptoe the rest of the way, but it doesn’t make a lot of difference. Overhead, there’s the sudden drumming of water into the bathtub as she begins to peel off the layers. Her guilt worsens as the slow-drifting scent of some kind of casserole twitches her nostrils and she peeps into the Rayburn where she sees a banana cake, her favourite, just beginning to rise. Her heart crumples just a little; god, Alex. Good, decent, kind, Alex, who’s been through so much stress recently and yet he still tries, in all these little ways, to show how much he values her. How she wishes she could make him see the same value in himself.

  ‘You coming up?’ His voice echoes from the top of the stairs as she listens to the creak of him moving from the bathroom to their bedroom. ‘This bath will be ready in a few minutes. I’ve put some bubble stuff in it.’

  Her heart wavers just a touch. ‘Lovely! Right. Perfect!’ She tries to keep her tone light and grateful, but his words have sent her antennae twitching.

  ‘Come on! Don’t let it get cold!’

  She takes a quick inward breath as she sneaks quickly across the kitchen in her bra and knickers and makes her way up the stairs. Not only has he run her a steaming scented bath, but he’s also laid out her snuggly dressing gown and socks on the chair. He’s trying to make things normal and right between them; she can see that. Perhaps tonight will be different. Perhaps tonight he’ll try to be the old Alex she used to know, and they can sit down together, eat a meal, relax.

  ‘I’ll get the bottle of red I opened earlier, shall I? And bring up a couple of glasses.’

  He disappears, leaving her to strip off, pin up her hair, and sink gratefully into the crackling bubbles. Lying back, she lets the water cluck into her ears, staring up to watch the condensation billow around the light fitting. The kinks of tension ease a little in her neck. She loves this room, this echoing space with its long, slanted ceiling, sash windows and a white turn-of-the-century fireplace with beautiful Art Nouveau tiles. This is the one room in the house where she can truly relax. She closes her eyes, trying not to dwell on what’s happening downstairs, but she knows he’s taking too long. Her stomach contracts. He’ll be down there now, going through her bag. She knows it. She deliberately left it zipped at the foot of the stairs. He’ll try to memorise its position, before rifling through the splay of jumbled contents, picking her phone up and trawling through the calls and checking the numbers. Then he’ll work his way to the clothes on the laundry floor, going through the pockets, one by one. He won’t know what he’s looking for: some telling shop receipt perhaps, a suspect serviette from a café he doesn’t recognise, some tiny inconsequential thing that he’ll find to build a whole story around. He’s even searched through the files on her computer, her Twitter account, her Insta, her WhatsApp.

  Alex thinks she’s having an affair.

  She presses her lips together. Her irritation mixes with her guilt as it seeps quietly into the bathwater. She knows, because she’s been monitoring him. She’s set little traps: the event viewer on her PC to note the times he logs on, the strategically placed bits of paper in her handbag, the single strands of hair across the cover of her phone that have disappeared when she comes to use it. She knows it all, but if he ever found out about the flowers and the notes… A squall of dread clutches at her insides. She’d never explain. He’d never understand.

  ‘Dinner smells wonderful.’ She sets her face, gazing up at him appreciatively as he appears in her sightline clutching two wine glasses and an open wine bottle in the crook of his arm. He pours, handing one to her, and then settles himself on the wicker laundry basket.

  She takes a sip. It slides thick and fruity across her tongue. ‘God, that’s good…’

  ‘Frankie.’

  She turns to find he’s studying her. She wonders if he’s going to tell her that he’s been prying.

  ‘I would never try and stop you doing something you wanted to do, you know that.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘But you really can’t keep pulling these kinds of stunts.’

  No, clearly not.

  He leans forward cradling his glass, elbows on his knees. The chair creaks comfortingly. His eyes are full of genuine concern. ‘Look, I understood it when you were working as a care worker with volatile kids on a day-to-day basis – even when you became a manager, I knew there’d be the occasional bump and bruise. But with this new job I was hoping you might just sit in endless boardroom meetings talking policy nonsense and analysing tick-box data.’

  ‘Yeah, well, that’s the thing.’ Frankie tries to sound light-hearted. ‘I’m not really a policy-and-tick-box-data kind of person, am I? We both know that.’ She grins and takes another sip. All this half-truth and pretence. Oh, how wonderful it would be to come clean.

  ‘But you can’t carry on doing these things, you know that, Frankie. You’ll come unstuck sooner or later.’

  If only he realised how close to the truth that was.

  ‘Yep, I know. But these kids are individuals, Alex. Keeley isn’t a “case” or a name on a file to me. She’s a real person. I know what she’s going through. I know what that life is like.’ She looks into his eyes.

  ‘That was then, this is now.’

  ‘Thanks to you.’

  ‘But not anymore, we both know that.’

  She knows what he’s referring to. The failing business feels acutely personal.

  ‘It will get better. All things pass.’

  ‘As long as you don’t pass on me.’ He smiles but there’s real pain there.

  At that moment she doesn’t care about the snooping and the prying. She only cares that his terrible gnawing, checking, compulsion comes to an end. She can see what it’s doing to him and it’s awful to watch.

  How easy it would be right now to tell him what’s going on. How easy – And how totally selfish.

  ‘So that’s why I t
hought I’d cook something special. I want us to relax over some food and good wine and chat about it all.’

  ‘Yes, let’s make a plan; let’s take back some control. Let’s make some decisions about the future – our future.’

  She smiles but feels a twitch of uncertainty as he suddenly stands.

  ‘Hold that thought, I’ll be back in a sec, I just have to stir the casserole.’ He makes a move to the door but then pauses. ‘I’m very proud of you, Frankie. You do know that, don’t you?’

  She goes to speak but he interrupts her.

  ‘Hold that thought, too,’ he lifts a finger.

  He’s excited, but it feels brittle. ‘I want dinner to be perfect tonight… I’ve got so many ideas to talk to you about.’

  He dips and plants a kiss on her wet forehead. ‘I’ve made your favourite pudding.’

  ‘I know. I peeked. You’re seriously lovely.’

  He winks. ‘Yeah. I have my moments.’ And he pulls the door closed behind him.

  The tap plinks into the sudden quiet. A gust of wind sends a scutter of rain and leaves across the Velux window on the landing. She sinks back into the heat of the water and nestles the wineglass against her cheek. She takes a deep breath.

  The business will go under completely; it’s gut-wrenchingly obvious. Every which way he’s turned, the doors have closed in his face. The orders dwindled away, and his self-esteem went with them. She was pleased when he said he’d do voluntary work, but it’s only served to make it ten times worse. Now he’s there every day with the ex-offenders, the homeless, and the dispossessed. She lets the air out slowly. The whole bloody framework of his life has crumbled. He feels the loss as keenly as a razor cut.

  ‘You can’t imagine what it’s like,’ he keeps telling her. ‘It’s the loss of the family name that really gets to me. We go back generations. My father is an MP, my grandfather was massively successful as a landowner and businessman. There are baronets and peers right the way through my ancestry. We’re practically feudal… We’re not just a name, we’re a clan.’

  She does understand but she sees the millstone of it too. This whole torturous lead weight of ‘McKenzie,’ synonymous with handcrafted furniture. It’s the enormous guilt that he, grandson of the great Dafydd McKenzie and of all those Scottish and Welsh ‘B’ list McKenzie aristocrats, he, Alex McKenzie, will be the one who’ll have caused the family firm to fail. His two sisters do nothing. They’re more than happy to stand back and watch his downward spiral with pursed lips and folded arms and an appalling kind of glee that their big brother is turning out to be what their father had always suspected: a soft-hearted incompetent nerd, devoid of manly backbone, a weak-charactered sop who had married far beneath him just to bolster his failing ego. Frankie had hated them on sight.

  ‘Oh my goodness! Where on earth did you find her?’ His sister Marianne had smirked. That just about summed Marianne up.

  Alex had ‘found’ her crying on a park bench. He’d tried to cheer her up by buying them both a cup of tea and piece of chocolate cake from Starbucks and had sat chatting to her about the squirrels. He’d told her how they deceive other squirrels by pretending to bury their food in one place while the real stash was put somewhere safe.

  She smiles at the memory.

  ‘That’s what going to school gives you.’ She’d tried to wipe her eyes with the heel of her hand.

  ‘Actually…’ He’d handed her a tissue, tapping his foot amongst the litter at their feet. ‘That’s what reading “Fabulous Facts” on the back of crisp packets gives you.’

  And she’d stopped crying and burst out laughing. No one in his family ever understood that about him: Alex didn’t care where people came from, they were just people who sometimes just needed a bit of kindness. She listens to him now in the hallway, and she closes her eyes. How she’d love to reach back through the years and find that boy he used to be: that almost shy self-belief he had, that he would prove his family wrong, that he would never be the failure they all said he’d be. But she doesn’t know where the boy has gone. His replacement is a man who is fragile, watchful, and wired tight.

  ‘This came.’

  She leaps up, sloshing her wine. ‘Jesus, Alex!’ She puts her fist on her thumping heart.

  ‘Sorry.’

  Something in his voice makes her look up at his face. He’s standing there trying to look unconcerned and holding a parcel. It’s a crumpled looking jiffy bag with her name in black felt tip scrawled across the front. Her throat constricts momentarily. She tries desperately not to swallow.

  ‘I’ll leave it here.’ He props it on the windowsill and picks up his wine glass. ‘I always like to see stuff addressed to Frankie Turner.’ His tone is over-bright. ‘It’s good you kept your own name. Maybe I should’ve taken your name instead of keeping my own, what do you think?’

  She should reply but can’t find her voice.

  ‘Are you expecting something nice?’ He glosses over her silence. ‘You should, you know. You should treat yourself to nice things.’

  She clears her throat. Her fear feels shrill and acute.

  ‘Oh, it’s probably just something from eBay,’ she manages. ‘Yes… actually, I remember now. I bought a silk scarf. I’d forgotten all about it.’ The thudding pulse in her neck moves into her jaw.

  ‘It’s just I thought I recognised the writing.’

  ‘Yeah, probably. I’ve ordered from that seller before. She sells some nice stuff…’ She’s horrified at herself, how the lies slip out so easily.

  He glances down and smiles. ‘Ah. Right. You see, you don’t get anything past me these days. Not now I’m a real homemaker and house-husband.’

  He’s trying to sound upbeat but the whole atmosphere in the room has changed. Her eye keeps sliding back to the thing that’s sitting there on the sill. She knows the writing too. Her lungs feel like thin paper bags.

  ‘Dinner will be on the table in ten. Will that give you enough time to drag yourself out of that bath, do you think?’

  ‘I’ll be there!’ Her voice sounds tinny and false. He doesn’t appear to notice as he goes over to the bag and absent-mindedly squeezes it. Her heart goes with it.

  ‘Is it a man or a woman, this seller?’

  ‘It’s a woman. At least I think it is.’ She lifts her arms to re-pin her hair that doesn’t need re-pinning. The air pressure has dropped, and she realises her hands are trembling. She’s not going to query why he’s asking. She wants him to just go. Please. Leave it alone.

  He picks up the bag and turns it over.

  ‘It’s just that it’s got an “X” on the seal… Like a kiss. Do women normally do that?’

  She lets her hands drop into the heat of the water and turns her face to him, forcing her expression to appear calm.

  ‘You can open it if you want, Alex. It’s just a scarf.’

  He looks back at her, his fingers pausing on the sealed edge. There’s a heart-stopping terror that he might call her bluff, but she doesn’t allow herself to blink. Her gaze is steady, open, innocent.

  He drops his eyes and his face collapses. ‘Shit, Frankie, I don’t know what’s wrong with me.’ The bag slides awkwardly back onto the sill. ‘I feel like I’m going mad… like, seriously mad. I’m sorry I keep doing this. I don’t mean to. You’ve asked me to stop and I can’t. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Alex…’ She holds out a dripping hand. ‘Alex,’ she soothes. ‘It’s alright. It’s okay. I would rather you tell me how you’re feeling than hide it. Okay? I get it.’

  He touches her fingers with his own and gives them a little squeeze.

  ‘Whatever you’ve got into your head isn’t real.’ She tries to get him to meet her eyes. She gives his hand a little shake. ‘I’m here, you’re here. It’s just us. Are you listening to me?’

  He nods dumbly.

  ‘Now go and check on that banana cake before I become so much of a prune we’ll be having me with custard instead.’

  They laugh and the pres
sure around them relaxes. She listens to his gentle tread as he makes his way back down the stairs. The thud in her throat sets her neck and shoulders shivering. Hauling herself slowly out of the water, she stands for a moment before shakily reaching for a towel from the rail. The wind outside has gathered strength. Behind the window blind there’s the pattering shapes and shadows of trees. Her eye keeps being drawn to the parcel, sitting there, bland and innocuous. She knows the writing. She knows it as intimately as her own.

  A tingle of fear inches across her scalp.

  She has no idea what he has in store for her, but she knows something is coming. She’s always known. It’s taken him fifteen years. Fifteen years and now here he is – all her past and present and future is in this grubby yellow bag that she knows she has to open, knowing the moment she breaks the seal, she’ll be undone too.

  Chapter Two

  She pauses with one hand on the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, noticing that the zip on her bag is not as she left it. Her fingers tighten on the wood, but she knows she’s not going to say a word.

  The table in the kitchen is laid for dinner.

  ‘This looks fantastic.’ She tries to keep her voice upbeat while sliding into the bench seat. He’s already put out a tureen of mashed potatoes and broccoli and a second bottle of wine. ‘Napkins, too.’ She barely recognises her own voice.

  If he’s aware, he’s clearly not going to remark on it.

  ‘Isn’t it nice to eat at the table for once rather than on our laps?’

  He deposits a huge cast iron pot onto the waiting mats and takes the lid off with an oven-gloved hand. Steam mushrooms in a cloud and she waves it away.

  ‘That smells dee-vine.’ She says it as though she means it, but her stomach feels sour and bloated with anxiety.

  He puts down two plates and proffers the serving spoon. ‘Dig in.’

  She helps herself, ladling out the rich chunks of meat and gravy.

  ‘Is that all you’re having?’

  She can hear the disappointment.

  ‘I’ve got tons already.’

  ‘That’s hardly anything. Do you feel okay?’