Читать книгу Our Little Secret: a gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist from bestselling author Darren O’Sullivan - Darren O’Sullivan - Страница 13

Chapter 6

12.07 a.m. – London Road, Peterborough

Dropping the knife, its cold steel sounding louder than it should on the wooden floor, Chris couldn’t believe how careless he had been. Time had been his only companion, his only constant since Julia died and somehow he had neglected it. With Julia’s cardigan still in his hand, he ran downstairs to look at his wall clock, which continued on its forward journey, completely oblivious or uninterested in the commotion he was causing.

‘Please be fast, please be fast.’

Seeing it, his heart sank further. It said seven minutes past.

He was too late. It was now the 6th.

He had missed his date.

Not knowing what to do, he looked around his room for an answer. He wished he could turn back time, just eight minutes would be all he needed. But if he could turn back eight minutes, why not turn back ten months and stop the man that took his wife from him?

Rage bubbled to the surface and he buried his face into her cardigan to muffle his wounded scream. He screamed until there was no more air in his lungs. He screamed until veins in his forehead bulged, until he was desperate for more oxygen. He screamed until his hands tingled and his vision closed in on him.

Then he was on the floor, lying on his side, his face pressed into the cold kitchen tiles, her cardigan half covering his face. The clock told him he had lost four more precious minutes. He must have passed out. He lay still for a moment. His hand beginning to hurt where he had cut it. Chris inhaled and Julia’s scent lifted from the cardigan, which remained potent after so long.

The dark, lifeless world began to fade into the background as the light of a beautiful moment from their past took over. One that he had forgotten they shared. She was in bed, lying on her side and looking at him. Her skin glowing in the way it did after they were intimate. He stroked her face, running his finger over her eyebrow, across her cheekbone. He remembered telling her that she was beautiful and she hid her face more with the duvet. He laughed, unable to say what he really wanted to. He’d been scared by the intensity of the feelings he already had for her.

She asked him who he admired. Chris said that one was easy, and he told her about his father and of his kindness and strength. About how he always managed to find light, even in dark times. He also talked about his father’s father, a man who passed away when Chris was just eight or nine. He died not through illness or accident but because he wanted to.

Chris remembered telling Julia how his grandfather and grandmother met when they were young, and they fell in love instantly. His grandfather a bugle boy in his army outfit, playing on the steps of York Cathedral to thousands of people. When he hit his solo he saw her in the crowd, looking at him. As soon as he finished, he went to her side and then never left. Just like the old movies.

As they got old she developed cancer and at seventy-one she died. He, being a healthy man of seventy-four, with no illnesses, died less than three months later. His grandfather told Chris’s father with his last breaths that the world was beautiful for different people for different reasons. And that his reason for it being so beautiful for him was waiting somewhere else. Chris remembered telling Julia he wanted to be like that; he wanted to love so much that he couldn’t live without it.

He remembered Julia saying it was the most beautiful story she had ever heard.

He remembered how she then kissed him and he tingled at the touch.

Then he remembered the last time he kissed her. Her lips cold and blue.

Taking shuddering breaths, Chris cried. In the rare moments when he allowed himself to cry, he did so quietly, gracefully, and completely unnoticed. This time was different. A loud wounded noise, almost like an animal dying, fell from his mouth. There was no restraint, no modesty in his grief. Its origin unknown, but from some deep and dark part of his body. A part that he had learned to keep behind a door, one that had been forced open only once before in his life. He clutched his stomach, thinking he may burst wide open, hoping he would, and he sobbed long and hard. ‘What do you do now? Jesus, Chris, what do you do now?’

Only the ticking clock could be heard in reply.

Chris staggered towards his back door, unlocked it, and stepped into the cold night air. He walked towards the back of his garden where his shed was, barely visible through the overgrown weeds that had strangled Julia’s buddleia. He looked behind him to make sure he couldn’t be seen. Satisfied, he unlocked the door and stepped inside.

Stepping over his lawnmower and reaching to the furthest corner from the door, Chris lifted a large metal tool box and put it on the counter he had built years before in an effort to be more organized. Using the key he had left with the letter, he opened the box. He needed to make sure its contents were still inside. He counted them off in his head. All seven items were there. Untouched, smelling of damp earth, iron, and rust.

He moved the mobile phone that was switched off and picked up a large hardbound book. Inside were the words of his murdered wife. A diary that wasn’t his to read. He took it, flicked through the pages. Her smell coming from them. He stopped at a page from August – the summer after they married.

‘He took me to a live gig last night, an up-and-coming band that neither of us had heard of. The crowd was young and rowdy and when we got there he led me to the bar, holding my hand tight, not letting me go. People pushed, as people do in busy bars, but somehow no one walked into me. He stepped in front or to the side to make sure they bumped into him instead. I don’t remember anyone being so protective …’

Chris didn’t remember that night. It didn’t seem to him it was noteworthy, but that moment clearly meant a lot to her, and he had no idea. He flicked forwards in the book, to the following November. At first she spoke of her mum, and her failing health, and how he and Julia visited a few times a week, bringing her flowers, taking her for something to eat. If she was feeling up to it.

This day she wasn’t. She was tired but in good spirits. They just stayed with her watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Her talking about when Julia was little and how the cartoon lion had frightened her. Julia pretended to be a little girl to make her mum laugh. He did remember that and couldn’t help but smile as he read it.

Flicking again, another year passed as he read the first line of an entry and stopped himself. He knew what it said. He also knew he wasn’t strong enough to read it. Instead he flicked backwards and read one of the first she had put in, just after they met. But rereading her words made him feel a warmth he didn’t deserve, so he closed it and held the diary close to his chest.

It allowed him to think more clearly. Work for a solution. She lived in those pages. Speaking of her love. Telling him the things she couldn’t say out loud. Remembering the dozens of things they had done that he had forgotten.

After a few minutes, he put it back carefully with the other items and locked the box before hiding it once more in the dark recesses of the damp shed. Chris knew he couldn’t wait another year, another anniversary – it was too hard. He would spill something, putting someone else in danger. But the date he did kill himself on had to matter. A bittersweet gift.

He took his phone from his pocket and went to the calendar to find something suitable. Her birthday: too far away. His birthday: too difficult to vanish without people being aware. It had to be a date that only mattered to him and her. A date that no one would find suspicious if he was missing. And then he knew when he would do it. After scrolling forward, he stopped and counted backwards.

Twenty-eight days.

Perfect.

Twenty-eight days was all he had to wait. He didn’t know why he hadn’t considered this date previously. It was a better date to honour his late wife. It would be exactly a year after the day she died.

Going back into his house he felt different somehow. Like a small part of him had passed away on the platform when he had failed to kill the rest. A small part that was good. A small part that was what his father had given him. It had been fading since Julia died and he knew it was nearly gone.

His voice now seemed quieter among the others that shouted in his head. Now he would have to wait quietly, patiently, for another month without it, without the good. The fine line between right and wrong slowly evaporating.

Chris made a note of the things he now needed to do. He knew he didn’t need to, but the first thing on his list was to resign from his job. If only to cement his new plan in his mind. It was something easy to tick off, help him regain control. He would ring first thing – around 6 a.m. before the office opened – and leave a message.

He knew they would accept his resignation when they picked it up without the need to call him. He’d been signed off for depression for so long he doubted anyone would be shocked or even care. He would also follow it up with an email and once done he would have some power back. And a new plan would be set in motion. Knowing it was the first step made him feel like he had a sense of direction. It would also be one less reason to be outside in public. Making his secrets easier to keep.

One of which wasn’t so secret anymore because of the train girl who had no doubt found his note and owned his stone. He hated her for her stupidity in not reading that he wanted to be left alone, and her naivety in assuming she could help him. For a moment, he pictured himself hitting her, wondering why he hadn’t just done that. If he’d slapped her hard right across her delicate face she would have run away and called the police and by the time they'd arrived, he would have been a smear on the track below.

It seemed so simple a solution and yet he didn’t think of it when it mattered. That was the part that had died. The part that could do no harm. It made him hate her even more.