Keep My Secrets by Elena Wilkes (large ebook reader .txt) 📗

with my choices? You’ll feel so much better. Come on, get stuck in.’

She gazed at the array of different dishes.

‘If not, I can always pop over and get something else.’

There was a toasted cheese and ham sandwich, a bowl of chips, and a mound of delicious-looking guacamole with triangles of toasted pita bread sticking out of the top.

She felt her mouth watering but with hunger this time.

‘It looks lovely.’ She picked up a piece of pita and reached for the guacamole, loading it up and taking a bite. ‘Mmm. Thank you.’

She hadn’t realised how good food could taste.

Vanessa watched her approvingly as she chewed, before taking a slab of sandwich and cutting it daintily into smaller chunks.

‘I’m sorry about my reaction before. I’m all over the place. I know this sounds odd and mawkish, but the fact you look a little like Charlotte makes me feel strangely comforted.’ The knife paused. ‘It’s like there’s a bit of her sitting here and we’re doing something ordinary together. Does that creep you out?’

She shook her head but wasn’t sure that was the truth.

‘So tell me all about yourself, Frankie.’ Vanessa smiled and this time her face relaxed. She picked up a bit of sandwich but then paused. ‘I have to say this is a very funny way to make friends, isn’t it?’

Frankie smiled back. Were they friends now?

She told her the pat story that everyone got told: that she’d been brought up in care, that it hadn’t been too bad, that it was like belonging to a big family. None of it was true but it got people off her back.

‘So you weren’t ever fostered?’

The question was simple enough and so was the answer.

‘My birth mother left me when I was three. People don’t generally want three-year-olds, they want babies.’ She shrugged.

‘And do you remember her? Your mother?’

‘Umm… Only bits. Nothing much. I think she was very young. I don’t think she could cope.’

Vanessa seemed happy with the answer. They both ate in silence for a few minutes. ‘Young and unable to cope’ made people feel better. She had no idea what the truth was. She had no memory of anything. She’d seen the police report though, the one about how she’d been abandoned in a derelict house just before Christmas. She was only wearing a T-shirt. No one had any idea how long she’d been there or who might’ve left her. A homeless man called Frank had found her. She’d crawled amongst the filth and the garbage and had eaten newspaper to stay alive. She was left out with the rubbish. That’s what had always stayed with her. And the simple kindness of a stranger. That stayed with her too; hence the name Frankie.

‘She must have been very scared, your mum. You mustn’t be angry with her.’

‘No.’

‘And you seem a lovely girl, so something in the care system clearly worked.’

Did it?

‘People do all kinds of things when they’re not coping.’ Vanessa sighed deeply.

‘Peter, my husband, isn’t coping at all.’ She pushed her plate away wearily. ‘He’s not himself. It’s as though he’s pretending that nothing has happened.’ She glanced away for a second. ‘Here he is, a well-respected professional man who works for Children’s Services, who’s around therapists and counsellors and guidance people all day – and the irony is, he’s a man who’s utterly lost.’ She shook her head. ‘I just worry what will happen when he stops pretending and reality hits him.’ She blinked the thought away. ‘He’s not Charlotte’s dad, he died ten years ago, but Peter has always seen her as his own… Saw,’ she hesitated. ‘And Jack – even though he was only her half-brother, he’s always been super protective. That outburst in the court is how we’re all feeling. I only wish I could get a hold of my rage and scream and shout like that – I’d love to.’ She grimaced. ‘I think we’re all numb and angry and exhausted with grief, and we’re all dealing with it in different ways.’ She gazed blankly off. ‘I don’t think Peter or Jack can go through another session of all that. That’s why I’ve said they should go off together this afternoon.’

She placed her knife and fork very neatly on the plate of half-eaten food. ‘But I have to be there, Frankie. It’s like a compulsion. I want to feel something. Anything: any amount of pain. It’s the only way I can cope. It’s like I see the white-hot flames of this horror and I have to put my hand right in the middle.’ She stopped and wiped her fingers on a serviette. ‘Sounds mad, doesn’t it?’

‘No, I think I understand.’ Did she?

‘But maybe not quite as mad as being in a café with me must feel to you,’ Vanessa smiled. ‘But maybe we’re both sitting in that court because we’re trying to achieve the same thing. I’m guessing you’re looking for answers that you know you won’t find anywhere else. You want the whole picture so that you can try and make sense of all this, just like I do. Is that anywhere close?’

She hadn’t thought of it like that, but that was exactly how she felt.

‘I have this terrible, terrible driving need to know. No matter how excruciating, no matter how horrific, I have to be there and hear every single one of the details and know, precisely what my daughter went through.’

The sheer enormity of what she was saying crumpled her face into a mask of pain. Her hands came up to her mouth as though trying to stop the words, but now she’d started, she just couldn’t stop. She began to weep: sobbing and sobbing behind those trembling fingers. Frankie stared at her in horror.

‘I carried her inside me for forty weeks and then her birth – the long and agonising twelve hours of it…’ Her voice whispered. ‘We went through the blood, the sweat, and the tears together, and at the end I held her in my arms and she held