Keep My Secrets

by Elena Wilkes

  ‘Oh my god!’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about what he did, but he blames Jarvis and he blames you, Frankie. He thinks that somehow none of these things would have happened if it weren’t for you two.’ He shifts uncomfortably in his seat. ‘He’s seriously unwell. I’m petrified he’s out of control. His thoughts, the stuff he’s doing – he’s not right. I can’t go anywhere near the police, not in my position, but I’m really, really shit scared.’

  ‘How scared?’ Her hand comes to her heart. ‘I mean, is he really that unwell? Is he dangerous?’

  Jack nods slowly. ‘Dangerous enough for me to believe he’ll try and kill Martin Jarvis.’

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The journey back home is a blur.

  Would Peter do such a thing?

  The craziness whirls around and around in her head.

  Martin’s face… Martin’s face keeps coming back to her. He’s grinning; that infectious playful grin that even now wipes out everything and sends her stomach somersaulting. How she wishes she could hate him cleanly and sharply, like a razor blade slicing through skin – the pure, unadulterated loathing that Peter and Vanessa feel – but she can’t. She feels a great, churning tangle of old emotion that’s now full of a terrible panic. But the idea of him being killed? The fear rattles and rattles… Her brain goes into overdrive.

  The screen in the console jangles into life and Alex’s name flashes up.

  ‘Hiya!’ She tries desperately to sound upbeat. There’s a slight pause on the other end.

  ‘That’s a very long journey home.’ His voice is flat.

  She snatches a look at the time. ‘Oh! God, Alex… I’m sorry! I’m so sorry. I was—’

  ‘Please don’t bother,’ he interrupts. ‘I’ve heard it all before,’ he sighs. ‘I said I’d cook dinner, didn’t I?’

  ‘Uh-huh, you said—’

  ‘That we should talk about stuff.’

  ‘And we should.’

  ‘But I really can’t see the point.’

  ‘Alex—’

  ‘Why would I, Frankie? You don’t invest in us. It’s like you can’t see or think of anything apart from that job. Even now, even now with a lunatic prowling about, you’re still behaving as though your feelings are the only ones that matter. You carry on as though there’s no one to consider but yourself.’

  ‘It’s not like that, it’s—’

  ‘Stop trying to justify the unjustifiable, Frankie. Just take a moment and think. What about me, Frankie? Consider me for once.’

  She goes to argue but stops herself. ‘You know what, Alex? You’re exactly right.’

  Her reply takes the wind out of his sails. He hesitates.

  ‘I’ve been selfish and I’m sorry. I want to make things better between us.’

  ‘Right, then. Well, that’s a start. So convince me, Frankie. Convince me that you’re in this marriage as much as I am.’

  ‘I am in this marriage, Alex. I want to be with you.’

  ‘Then change.’

  ‘Yes, I will, I’ll talk to Diane—’

  He sighs, huge and exasperated. ‘No, Frankie. Not Diane – I mean change by changing your life. Change our life, for god’s sake! Leave that bloody job!’

  She stares silently into the road in front of her, wishing and wishing that they weren’t having this same old conversation right now. That somehow, it could be different.

  ‘I’m really close to home.’

  ‘Are you?’ He sounds doubtful.

  ‘Can we talk then?’

  ‘I’m still at the community centre, but yes, let’s talk later, Frankie. Let’s talk about changing both our lives. Let’s put a time band on it for a brand new start. Can we agree to that?’

  ‘Let’s agree to talk – yes, definitely.’ She tries to sound as definite as her words.

  ‘Okay. I’ll see you later, then. Bye.’

  ‘Bye.’

  The depression leaches over her in a blanket of pure exhaustion. Yes, give up your job, run away from all this, her head tells her. So what if Peter kills Martin? Why should you care? Move away where no one will ever find you, leave it all behind, and start again – No Martin, no Chloe, no Vanessa or Peter or Jack. None of them ever existed. Start again.

  Could she do that?

  Looking up, she realises she’s almost home. Pulling on to the drive, she practically stalls the engine. Her head feels like a pressure cooker that’s ready to explode. If she screamed out here, no one would hear her.

  There’s a stillness in the house as she walks into the hallway. She’s thankful Alex is out. She thinks her head might burst. The thought of Chloe’s photograph keeps coming back to her in a stunned, dragging ache. All those feelings that she’s pushed down hard for years are now simmering in a great surge that she can barely keep contained. She puts her hand in her pocket and brings out the photograph that Jack gave her.

  Chloe, Chloe, Chloe.

  It’s an immediate compulsion. She doesn’t even pause to take her coat off. Walking quickly upstairs, she goes into the bedroom and pulls out a cardboard box that’s hidden at the back of the wardrobe. The pink ribbon has frayed and dried out with age. She sits on the end of the bed holding the box on her knees. It’s been a long, long time.

  The pain forms a stone in the centre of her chest as she forces her fingers to slide the dusty band over the end and tip off the lid. Inside is the plastic hospital wristband with her name ‘Frankie Turner’ on it. Underneath it are two tiny ones: ‘Chloe Turner’ they both say, one for her ankle and one for her wrist.

  She slips her fingers inside them: so, so small.

  How could she have done what she did? How could she have done any of it?

  She didn’t. She couldn’t have. It must have been some other person, someone who lived some other life…

  How she wishes that were true.

  She picks up the little bits of things one by one. A single scratch mitten, a tiny hat, a necklace chain that she unwinds holding it up to the light. The tiny crystal ‘C’ dances there. ‘C’ for Chloe. Undoing the clasp, she puts it around her neck, stroking it with the tips of her fingers. Chloe. A miniature onesie that looks like it could have belonged to a doll. She brings it up to her nose. The scent is still there; it’s unmistakable. It’s a primal smell that tells her they were once joined in a way that no one else could ever be joined to her: not Vanessa, not Peter, not even Martin.

  Jack had gathered these tiny memories for her to keep. Smuggled them out to the house where his friend lived; the place they should have been going together, but where she ended up going alone. He got his packages, and she got these small lifelines. He sent her photos too, little video clips of Chloe as a baby that he took when no one was looking. She didn’t know how she would have coped without him in those first few weeks and months. They let her see Chloe in the beginning, once a month at a park or a shopping centre – somewhere there were lots of people in case she thought of snatching her – but they would never let her hold her. She saw Jude twice in that time, who asked lots of smiling questions and she gave her lots of smiling answers. Martin had sent letters, she was told. ‘Burn them,’ she’d replied. Jude was happy with that. Everyone was happy, apart from her.

  She feels the mask of depression tightening behind her eyes. The time gaps between the contact meetings got longer; there were always reasons and excuses to soften the blow, but she knew what was coming. Her baby was being taken away from her, but the truth was she’d never been hers from the start.

  She drops the mitten back into the box, her stomach hollowing out with grief and she bends double suddenly, her breath suddenly sucked away.

  She needs to leave the memories alone.

  The realisation comes like a shaft of light.

  Leave her alone for good. Do what Alex is asking her to do: pack everything up and move to the middle of nowhere – start again, have a baby. The thought makes her heart race. Could she do that? To mend her marriage? She would be giving
him not only a new start, but the possibility of a new family. Replace the old with the new: the past for the future. Her whole being rebels. She feels dizzy with the thought of it, but she holds on tight.

  She could do that.

  She could.

  Straightening up, she looks at the box in her hands. All these things – these letters, this baby stuff – these things are the real ghosts. They are dead things. What’s the point in her turning them over and over in her hands like dirt from a grave? Chloe isn’t this tiny baby anymore; she’s a fifteen-year-old girl on the cusp of womanhood. And Martin Jarvis is a name on a prison discharge list, one of the many hundreds of men who walk through those gates, the mess and the pain and the agony they’ve caused floating away with the free air they’re now breathing – ready to inflict their misery all over again.

  Only he’s not going to do it to her.

  Not anymore.

  Gathering the box together, she goes into her office and kneels beneath the desk. Prising open the board at the back, she drags out the hidden envelope and then takes the whole bundle downstairs to the Rayburn where she opens the fire door. She pauses for a moment, weighing the things in her hands, feeling the searing heat radiating from the stove as the wood crackles. She knows this is destroying a part of herself that has been an open wound for the last fifteen years. She needs to heal; it’s the only way, and this is all part of her penance.

  Wavering for a moment, she pulls out one of the letters from its envelope.

  I miss you.

  She lets the piece of paper fall from her fingers. A quick spool of smoke curls up and then a lick of bright flame blackens the papery edge and the words melt one by one.

  We were meant to walk through this life together and never be apart

  The second note lands on top of the charred flakes and is consumed quietly as though it had never been there.

  A great gulf of sadness threatens to consume her too. She could sink to her knees right now as she watches that seventeen-year-old self, who was so trusting, who was so in love and so vulnerable, go up in smoke with his words.

  I’m waiting for you Frankie

  Each piece gets fed into the flames, one by one. She feels a track of something running down her neck and only then realises she’s crying. She rubs her nose with the back of her hand, sobbing her grief into every message that she’s letting go. He dirtied everything they had. He soiled her; ground her into the muck with the heel of his shoe and left her there. So why couldn’t he just leave her be now? Why did he have to drag her back into all this? Hadn’t he destroyed enough? The terrible night of Charlotte’s death had murdered something inside her too.

  A key rattles. There are voices and her head snaps round.

  Alex.

  In a heartbeat she’s closed the stove and stuffed the remainder of the notes into the shoebox, pushing the whole lot under the dresser. She turns to find him standing in the doorway. He’s clearly been laughing; as he sees her, his smile drops. ‘Oh! You just coming in or going out again?’ He looks her up and down and she realises she’s still wearing her coat. There’s a curtness in his tone. She looks back at him.

  ‘Oh yeah.’ She scrubs at her face. ‘A bit of both… and neither.’ She attempts to make light of it.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Oh, just worrying about this work thing, that’s all.’ She brushes the tears away, realising that there’s a figure behind him waiting in the hallway.

  ‘You’ve got a guest! Great! Hang on, let me get out of your way.’

  She ducks to squeeze past him as Alex crosses her path, walking into the kitchen.

  ‘Come through! Come through! Cup of tea, mate?’ he calls over his shoulder. ‘Or maybe…’ His voice fades into background noise. She doesn’t hear the rest of the sentence, because her entire body has lurched with a shock as powerful as a bolt of lightning. She stumbles back.

  ‘Where’s she gone?’ Alex’s voice rings out and she manages to keep herself in one piece by pressing her back to the wall.

  ‘Ah, this is Martin.’ Alex holds out a palm of introduction. ‘From the community centre.’

  ‘You must be Frankie.’ Martin stands there in front of her, his expression inscrutable. Her seventeen-year-old self freezes in that instant; the years fall away, time spins backwards, and there she is and there he is and nothing else exists.

  ‘Alex has told me a lot about you.’

  She hears the words and watches his mouth moving. His face is different but his eyes: his eyes look straight into her soul.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  She doesn’t know how she got out of that hallway.

  Martin’s eyes had bored into her as he walked past and through into the kitchen. Alex was asking about milk and sugar and biscuits which gave her a chance to get up the stairs before her legs gave up on her completely. Dragging herself into the bathroom, she locked the door and sat with her back against it as the shakes got to her, an uncontrollable, pummelling quake that shook her to the core. She hears the low rumble of voices from downstairs and the occasional guffaw of laughter, and closes her eyes.

  What the fuck just happened?

  Resting her forehead on her knees, she tries to force her head to comprehend the thing that cannot be real. She had taken one look at Martin and the whole world, the hallway, the kitchen, Alex, had disappeared. All that was left was the two of them standing in a space like the eye of a tornado. A hundred buried emotions, sensations, bloomed and burst in time-lapse photographs.

  She lifts her head, staring wide-eyed around the bathroom: her bathroom that looks the same as it always does – and yet downstairs in her kitchen, her and Alex’s kitchen, is the man who changed her life forever.

  No. No. No.

  He had walked into her house as though it was any other house on any other day and she was any other person. Her head rests back on the door and she grinds her scalp until she can feel the ridges of the panel bite. So he had found her, and watched her, and in so doing, had found Alex too – such a simple way into her life, a way that would ensure she was completely cornered.

  There’s a soft knocking on the door.

  ‘You okay in there?’ Alex’s muffled voice comes from the other side.

  She doesn’t think it’s possible to be further from okay.

  He taps again gently. ‘Frankie…?’ The tapping gets more insistent.

  She gathers her legs under her. ‘Yes… Yes, I’m fine. I-I was just leaving you two alone to…’ She can hear her voice trailing off as the enormity of the situation begins to dawn. Her ears begin to buzz with tension, her ribs constrict her lungs. She clutches hold of the side of the basin and tries to breathe… just breathe…

  ‘One minute. Hang on a sec.’ She unlocks the door and steps back.

  ‘You sure you’re okay? You look… Did something happen? That weirdo guy… He hasn’t—’ He puts a protective hand on her arm.

  ‘I’m fine, honestly.’ She shakes her hair back and attempts to smooth it so he won’t see the tremble in her hands.

  ‘I didn’t know you’d be back so soon… I thought—’ He pauses and takes a breath. ‘Look, I’ve been meaning to mention Martin before, but things got—’ he waves. ‘It’s part of this life-change stuff I’m talking about – I can’t spend my time alone in this house, driving myself slowly insane. It’s not fair on me and definitely not fair on you. So I thought, okay, I’ll make some positive changes. The first thing I’ll do is start making new friends… That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’ He gives her a puzzled look.

  ‘Yes… yes, of course. It’s a great idea.’

  ‘And Martin’s a really nice guy. We got chatting at the centre about a month ago and really hit it off. He’s in much the same situation as me, I think. He’s recently moved into the area, so he doesn’t know many people.’

  ‘Right. Yes.’ She thinks her head might explode.

  ‘So I invited him round for dinner tonight.’

  ‘Toni
ght? But I thought—’

  Alex shrugs. ‘I wasn’t even convinced you’d turn up, to be honest. I didn’t want to eat on my own again.’

  She stares at him open-mouthed. ‘I have to go.’

  ‘Go—? What?… Why?’ He’s instantly irritated.

  ‘I rang Diane back…’ she stumbles. ‘It’s about the meeting on Monday. I have to prepare for it… See her and talk to her, maybe. I’m not sure.’

  Please go, please go, please just go…

  At the mention of work his face sets. ‘And this is because I’ve invited someone round, is it?’

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘All this’ – he waves a hand – ‘what shall we call it? This performance. Are you sulking about what I said on the phone, is that it?’ He narrows his eyes. ‘Is all this because my attention isn’t solely focussed on you?’

  ‘What? No!’

  ‘You seem to use Diane and work as an excuse for everything. Sure, I get it – you’re under pressure, but you do manage to turn everything back to you and your problems: your needs.’ He’s not even attempting to keep his voice down. ‘Y’know what, Frankie? How about doing something purely for me for a change? See how that feels, huh?’

  He pulls the door closed with a definite thump and she lets her knees give way as she slumps backwards onto the laundry box. There’s a flood of relief that he’s left. She catches sight of herself in the mirror. Her reflection looks like it’s a long way away. The face is white and pinched, the eyes are round and startled-looking. They’re reddened and bloodshot and mad.

  She has to get out of this house. She can’t bear it a second longer.

  Opening the door slowly, she stands on the landing, heart pounding, and listens. Her ears pick out Martin’s voice instantly as though he has a frequency all of his own. How she wishes she could block him out, stop her ears and run, and keep on running. She tiptoes down each tread to the front door and grabs her bag. Fumbling with the door catch, she makes it out onto the driveway and heads for the car.