Shut Your Eyes (The You Don't Know Me Trilogy Book 3)

by Lee, Mandy

  ‘You’re back.’

  ‘I am.’

  I sit up, taking in the fact that he’s kneeling next to me, still wearing yesterday’s work suit. There’s dried blood on his collar, smeared across his sleeves and down the front of his shirt. And the bruises on his face are deepening now, contrasting with the pale grey of his skin.

  ‘You’re a state.’ I brush the stubble on his chin. ‘How’s Lily?’

  ‘She’s okay. She’s been checked by a doctor. She’s at home. Her parents are with her.’

  ‘Don’t you want to see her?’

  ‘Tomorrow. I’m too tired right now.’

  He readjusts his position, and I catch the slightest hint of discomfort in his expression.

  ‘Your leg’s hurting.’

  ‘It’s fine.’

  He’s lying, and I know it.

  ‘You need your pills.’

  ‘Later.’

  We stare at each other for a while. On my part, I’m just trying to enjoy the calm after the storm, but there’s something strange in his eyes, something that sets me on edge.

  ‘You stuck to the story then?’

  He nods. ‘Self-defence. They’re satisfied.’

  ‘So, that’s it?’

  He looks away.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  I’m answered with silence.

  ‘It’s over, Dan. Don’t let it get to you.’

  ‘It’s not over yet.’

  Suddenly, he buries his head into my lap, clamping his hands tight against my thighs. Perhaps it’s the shock and exhaustion catching up with him. The truth is I have no idea what’s going on inside his head, but whatever it is, I need to give him time. Smoothing his hair, I do my best to reassure him. A few minutes pass like this before he finally looks up, gazing at me as if I’m an object of worship, something he shouldn’t really touch.

  ‘I need to tell you something,’ he says.

  Flickers of uncertainty appear. Again and again, his lips seem to form a word, and then reject it.

  ‘Just say it,’ I prompt him.

  He nods and swallows, eventually making a start, his voice uneven, threatening to crack at any minute.

  ‘If you knew I’d done something wrong … could you still love me?’

  ‘If this is about Boyd, you didn’t do anything wrong. You had no choice. It was either you or him.’

  ‘I’m not talking about Boyd.’

  Suddenly, I’m cold.

  ‘Then who?’

  He closes his eyes, lowering his head back into my lap, clearly working up to an admission. Another bombshell … after all the promises that there’d be no more. I steel myself for the task ahead. Whatever it is, I’m simply going to hold my ground and hear him out.

  ‘Talk to me.’

  ‘I don’t want to lose you. I can’t lose you.’

  My stomach churns. Willing my body to behave, I take in a deep breath. If this is morning sickness, then it’s just about the worst time it can kick in.

  ‘That’s not going to happen.’

  He lifts his head again.

  ‘I tried to forget, tried to block it all out, but I can’t. It’s eating away at me, Maya. It’s been eating away at me for years.’

  ‘No more secrets,’ I remind him.

  ‘No. No more secrets.’ He hesitates, and then he tells me something I already know. ‘I killed Boyd.’

  ‘We’ve been through that.’ I cup his cheek, wondering why on Earth he feels the need to plough through this again.

  ‘It’s not the first time.’ Keeping his eyes fixed on mine, he watches my reaction. ‘It’s not the first time I’ve killed a man.’ Finally, he gives me the beginnings of the truth. ‘She looks like him,’ he says quietly. ‘Layla.’

  And that explains it all. I hardly need him to go on. Outside, the clouds shift, parting slightly, revealing a patch of blue, a glimmer of sunlight. And I already know what he’s about to admit.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  A shaft of sunlight falls across the apartment, breathing life into the picture of Limmingham. I urge him up from the floor, onto the sofa next to me.

  ‘I need a coffee,’ I lie.

  Because I don’t need a coffee at all. I just need a few minutes to sort this out in my head. Leaving him in silence, I go to the kitchen and set about fiddling with the coffee machine. I have no idea what I’m doing – pouring water in here, coffee there, flicking switches, pressing knobs – but something gurgles and hisses, and by some miracle, dark brown liquid begins to appear in the jug. As I watch it dribble out, the facts congregate from two separate directions, linking together, one by one: the beating, the brain haemorrhage, an ambulance over the road; an emptied bank account, a life abandoned, a two-year disappearance. So now I know why he ran, and why he came back a changed man. He was the stranger in that alleyway. I should be shocked, but I’m not. I can barely believe I never saw this coming.

  The hissing and gurgling come to an end. I pour out two mugs of coffee, and silently resolve to understand. He’s expecting me to take the moral high ground, but it’s a simplistic place, and for the second time in twenty-four hours I’m determined to steer clear. After all, we’ve come too far to jeopardise this, and he’s changing again, gradually reverting to his true self: very sweet, very kind, a little lost. Those were Lily’s words, and that’s the real Dan, the father of my child. Whoever he was when he turned up in Limmingham, he’s not that man any more.

  I carry the drinks over, and hand him a mug. Curling his fingers around it, he stares at the floor.

  ‘It all makes sense now,’ I begin, staying on my feet. ‘How you reacted with Layla.’

  He looks at me. I say nothing. Holding his gaze, I show no surprise, no judgement. I need to let him speak before I say my piece.

  Finally, he nods.

  ‘Every time I look at her, I see him, his face, his eyes.’

  ‘I’ve seen a picture of him.’

  ‘Then you know.’

  ‘I thought she reminded you of what he’d done to you.’

  ‘No.’ The mug shakes in his hands. ‘It was after I left Cambridge, the first thing I did … I went back to Limmingham. I didn’t know how I’d got there. I didn’t know why I was there. I had no idea what I was going to do. It was like someone else had taken over.’ He closes his eyes against the memory. ‘I was angry, confused …’

  ‘Grieving,’ I add.

  ‘I suppose so. I’d lost my mother, my family, my adoptive parents … myself. I suppose I was looking for someone to blame.’ Eyes open now, he focusses back on me, uncertainty clouding his features. ‘He was the obvious target, the first link in the chain. If he’d never existed, then none of this would have happened. I suppose that was the logic.’

  Leaning forward, he places the mug on the table, spilling a little coffee in the process. And then he clasps his hands, gazing at the floor again.

  I wait for his explanation. It’s not long before it begins.

  ‘I rented a room, hung about town for a few days, went to the same pub, watched him getting pissed, mouthing off, full of himself, oblivious to all the damage he’d done.’ He pauses. ‘He looked at me, once or twice, but I don’t think he recognised me. I’m not surprised. I was a mess. No one would have recognised me.’ A frown creases his forehead. ‘I saw her one day, walking through town, doing the shopping, getting on with her life. It was as if I’d never existed.’

  ‘So that upset you?’

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘I felt nothing. I had no feelings for my own mother. He’d taken those too.’ He blinks back a tear. ‘And then one night, I followed him home. I’d been drinking all day, trying to blot it out. He turned up in the pub. I watched him laughing, cracking shit jokes, acting like the big I Am. And then something broke.’ He stares at me, lips trembling with nerves and half-forgotten emotions. ‘I followed him home, and jumped him, and beat the shit out of him. He begged me to stop. He looked up at me … with those eyes, begging. But I
just carried on, because I couldn’t stop, because I’d never felt anything like that before. Rage. Pure rage. I was out of control.’ He glances out of the window, slowing down. ‘And then the begging stopped. I thought I’d killed him. I panicked, ran away, left the country.’

  Something jars in my head. Rummaging through the mass of details, I grasp for the relevant facts.

  ‘But he died of a brain haemorrhage,’ I say. ‘Two weeks later.’

  ‘I know. And it’s no coincidence.’

  ‘It might be.’

  ‘It’s not,’ he says emphatically. ‘I caused his death, and that’s three people, Maya. Three.’

  I put down my mug.

  ‘You didn’t kill your wife,’ I remind him. ‘That wasn’t your fault. And if you hadn’t pushed Boyd, he would have come back … time and time again. And what you did to your stepfather …’

  ‘Was murder.’

  ‘No. It’s just like what happened with Boyd, you didn’t plan it. That’s not murder.’

  ‘Then what is it?’

  ‘Legally speaking? Manslaughter, at the very worst …’

  He cuts me off, his temper on the rise.

  ‘Call it what you want, but I killed him. So, if you want to walk out of here, if you never want to see me again, I understand.’

  ‘What?’ Where the hell did that come from? He seriously believes I’d dump him over this? I begin to laugh, a quiet laugh of disbelief. He must be exhausted, utterly fuddled by the last few hours, because that’s the only decent reason I can think of for the rubbish that’s just spilled out of his mouth. ‘You’d give up that easily?’

  He narrows his eyes.

  ‘I love you. You’re the only woman I’ve ever loved, but I never want to see you miserable, and if staying with me makes you miserable, knowing what you know … I don’t want it.’

  Oh boy, he’s just said the wrong thing. Disbelief’s right out of the window. There’s no room for it, not with my own anger bubbling up like a pan of milk. When it gets to boiling point, there’ll be no stopping it.

  ‘I know what this is. You’re as masochistic as me.’

  ‘How do you work that one out?’

  ‘You thought you’d killed your stepfather, you thought you’d caused your wife’s death, so you shut yourself off from everyone … for years.’

  ‘I told you,’ he growls. ‘I’d caused enough hurt. I didn’t want to cause any more. That’s why I shut myself off.’

  ‘No,’ I growl back. ‘You were punishing yourself because deep down, you think you’re worthless. Deep down, you think you don’t deserve happiness. And you’d love to go on punishing yourself. You’d love me to walk out of here so you can wallow in your guilt. But guess what? That’s not going to happen. I’m going nowhere.’ Realising I’ve begun to shout, I raise an unsteady finger at him. ‘So, you’ll just have to deal with the guilt some other way.’

  ‘How?’ he demands. ‘How do I do that? I hurt my sisters. I killed their father. I destroyed their lives.’

  ‘Their lives were already destroyed. Layla told me she was glad he died.’

  ‘So, does that make it acceptable? Does it? Our mother drank herself to death because of what I’d done. Was Layla glad about that?’

  ‘Your mother drank herself to death because of guilt.’

  ‘Oh, come off it.’

  ‘Guilt, Dan.’ I glare at him, determined to get my point across, even though I haven’t got a shred of proof. ‘Guilt that she’d been such a shit mum. Guilt that she’d ruined your life. Jesus. It must be fucking genetic.’

  He bites his lip, obviously wrestling the urge to sling something back in my direction. But this has gone far enough. We’re sniping at each other, sliding into a full-blown argument. And this isn’t the time.

  ‘What you did,’ I say, ‘I understand.’

  He shakes his head.

  ‘After everything you’d been through, I understand why you lost it. I understand why you lashed out. I don’t condone it, but I understand. Get that into your thick head.’

  In a huff, I walk off to the window, cross my arms and stare at the blue sky. I need to calm down. I need to get this back on track. And I need to banish anger, because true to form, it’s achieving nothing. As the seconds tick by, I’m aware of a movement behind me. He’s getting up, coming to join me.

  ‘I’ll find a way to deal with it. I’m sorry.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re apologising. Life dealt you a shit hand. You made mistakes – we all make mistakes – but you’ve got a conscience, Dan. You regret what you did, and that’s why I’ll never walk away.’ I look at him. ‘Tell me this is the last bombshell … and mean it.’

  ‘This is the last,’ he confirms, his eyes softened. ‘I swear. I wanted to tell you, but there was never a right time.’

  ‘Never is.’

  ‘How do you slip something like that into conversation?’ He touches my arm. ‘It’s the last layer. You’ve peeled them all back, every one of them. You’ve got right to the heart of me.’ He pauses, watching my every reaction. ‘I just hope you can still love me.’

  ‘How could I ever stop?’

  Slowly, tentatively, he takes me into his arms.

  ‘So, how are we going to deal with this?’ I ask.

  He shakes his head. He clearly has no idea.

  ‘You need to tell Layla.’

  ‘She’ll never forgive me.’

  ‘Complete honesty. No secrets. You own up to what you did. That’s the only way you’re ever going to be able to face her.’

  ‘And what if she goes to the police?’

  ‘She won’t.’

  ‘People change when they find out the truth.’

  ‘Not always. I’ve just found out the truth, and I’m still not giving up on you. She deserves the facts.’

  ‘I can’t …’

  I place an index finger on his mouth.

  ‘No more arguing. I’m taking the lead on this, and you don’t have a choice.’

  He gazes at me. Despair and confusion take a bow, leaving admiration and love to step into their place.

  ‘The tables are turning.’

  ‘You’d better believe it, Mr Foster.’

  He pulls me in for a kiss. It’s long and patient and tender, and it does the job. Before long, we’re together again, completely together, two halves of a whole. So, is this the moment, I wonder? Should I reveal my own little secret? After all, I’ve just demanded honesty. It would be wrong of me to hold it back any longer. As soon as the kiss comes to an end, I study his face, deciding that today’s not the day. He’s dealt with enough over the past few hours. I’ll tell him tomorrow, when things have settled down a little.

  Or maybe …

  ‘Are you okay?’ he asks, dipping his head.

  ‘Fine. But you’re not. I’m giving you three hours.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘To clean yourself up and get some sleep. And then I want you in the bedroom.’

  That does it. He’s close to keeling over with fatigue, but the light returns to his eyes.

  ‘That’s my territory,’ he reminds me.

  ‘Not today.’ I glance out of the window. ‘Look at that sky. Bright blue. Have you noticed?’

  His arms tighten around me.

  ‘Every day’s a new beginning,’ he murmurs.

  I brush my lips against his. ‘And this is yours.’

  I wait until Dan’s in the shower, before I make a move. Opening the front door, I join Beefy in the lobby.

  ‘How is he?’ he asks.

  ‘Fine. Just cleaning up. Listen. I need your help. Can you find out his sister’s number?’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Layla.’

  ‘Probably.’ He pulls his mobile out of his pocket. ‘I’ll get onto Foultons.’

  ‘Get me the number, and then lend me your phone.’

  He clutches it protectively to his chest.

  ‘I’m not sure about that.’

&nb
sp; ‘I need it, Beefy. Mine was nicked.’ I give him a reassuring smile. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not going in the river. I just need to speak to her.’

  He stares at me, and I know exactly what’s going through his mind. The last time he colluded with me, it ended in disaster.

  ‘Look,’ I explain, ‘we both know what happened last time she visited. I’m not an idiot. I’m not risking that again.’

  His lips part.

  ‘It’s about the baby,’ I lie for good measure. ‘I need some advice. I need to talk to someone who’s been through it.’

  ‘You’ve not told him yet?’

  ‘No. Just trust me, it’s not the right time. But I do need to speak to Layla.’

  He grimaces.

  ‘Oh, come on, Beefy. I’m desperate.’

  He stares at me a little longer. Finally, his features soften. He taps in a contact.

  ‘And Beefy?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t say a word to Dan.’

  With surprising swiftness, Foultons provide the number. And with totally expected reluctance, Beefy hands over his mobile. Borrowing his jacket and taking my handbag, I leave the apartment and walk down the Embankment. Layla answers before I even make it to Lambeth Bridge.

  It’s a long conversation. After updating her on the latest events, including the fact that I’m pregnant, I take my time, passing on the facts of Dan’s involvement in her father’s death. A long silence follows, and then she confirms what I predicted: she’s not interested in contacting the police, and she doesn’t blame him either. She just wants her brother back. And there’s more to the story, she tells me. A few extra facts come my way, leaving me jittering with excitement. I want to run straight back to the apartment and blurt them out to Dan, but I promise to hold my tongue. She wants to tell him herself. We quickly firm up a plan, and decide to waste no time. She’ll visit on Monday. I just need to find a suitable location.

  By the time I end the call, I’ve reached the London Eye. Standing beneath the vast metal stays, I watch the crowds, look up at the pods, and a mad idea enters my head. It’s a long shot, maybe too short notice. But I’m going to give it a try.

  ‘Wakey, wakey, sleepy head.’

  Still dressed but under the covers with him, I brush my lips across his cheek. He stirs.