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

the sonic boom of it, a great roaring in her ears that’s getting louder and louder. She glances up as a shaft of sunlight dazzles from in between the houses. She raises a hand to shield her eyes. She knows she can’t stop it; it’s coming for her and right now she’s utterly powerless.

The sunlight glints and moves and then she notices the figure by the gate. It’s oddly familiar. She pauses, and then there’s one great leap of realisation. It’s Jack. She almost laughs out loud at the sight of him. He takes a look back at the house, and then comes walking around the front of the car. He hesitates for a moment, pretending to look right then left as though checking for traffic but then quickly opens the door and slides into the passenger seat.

‘Oh my God, Jack! Is it you?’

He grins back at her. Real and solid and right here, sitting beside her as though the last fifteen years haven’t touched him.

His head ducks to look up at the house again. ‘Can I make a suggestion?’

‘I can’t believe—’ she starts.

‘I suggest you start that engine pretty smartish.’ He leans back in the seat so that he’s not visible from the windows. ‘You drive, then we can talk.’

Her hands respond automatically as she starts the engine, managing to the end of the road where she halts with a jerk and looks round.

‘Which way?’

‘Any way you please, we can just pull up somewhere.’

She drives a little further, finds a turning and pulls into it, yanking on the handbrake and slumping back in her seat.

‘Jack! I cannot, cannot believe—’

He shakes his head, as though he, too, is stunned to find himself here.

‘When you rang earlier, I had this premonition that you’d turn up. I’ve spent all morning trying to distract Vanessa—’

‘That was you, in the background?’

He nods. ‘I visit her. I live nearby to keep an eye on things.’ He twitches a small smile.

‘It’s been too long.’ She studies his face. Still the same, kind, Jack.

‘Far too long. I’m sorry I didn’t—’

‘No, don’t be.’ She holds up a hand. ‘I know how difficult it was back then. I wouldn’t have come here Jack, it’s just—’

‘I know. You’re scared. We’re all scared. None of us know what he’s going to do. If he goes to social services; if he alerts people to the situation—’

The situation. What they did.

Neither of them speaks as the memories come flooding back.

He clears his throat. ‘I thought of you a lot you know, over the years.’ He looks at her with real affection. ‘I still feel terrible. I could have, should have, helped you more—’

‘You don’t have to feel anything, Jack. I was a kid, a child, who was having a child. It was impossible.’

‘It didn’t have to be impossible.’ He sounds almost angry.

‘We were both kids. We were both in a mess. I don’t suppose we could have helped anyone, least of all each other.’

‘Yeah, you’re right there,’ he says bitterly. He rests his elbow against the door ledge and touches his forehead gently with his fingers. ‘I knew though, didn’t I? I knew it, I was there, warning you, and yet we both blundered into it blindly like we were sleepwalking or something.’ He rubs his forehead as though he would like to erase the memory.

‘You make it sound like—’ She stops before saying the words.

‘A trap,’ he says sullenly. ‘That’s what it was: a grief-driven, ghost-ridden madness that we all got sucked into.’

Frankie shook her head.

She’d left her baby. Christ. Was that the way it had been? No. It wasn’t like that. It wasn’t all planned and orchestrated, they wouldn’t have gone that far. It just happened – a whole train of events: one, then another, and another. That was the truth. Wasn’t it?

Chapter Fifteen

Then

April the sixth. Bright, cold sunshine, a brisk wind and white scudding clouds.

The day is all wrong from the start.

April the sixth. One year ago today she’d met Martin for the first time: a grinningly handsome dark-haired lad, full of front, and charm, and clever talk, and now here she was sitting in a courtroom, pregnant, staring down as they talked about death, and murder, and violence. How had it come to this?

There was an open folder on the jury bench showing Charlotte’s body: the marks, the bruises, the report on her lungs, the contents of her stomach, the drugs in her system, the state of her clothes. Frankie sat, head bowed in her seat, her shoulders heavy with an invisible weight as every piece of evidence sliced and stabbed and punched into her as though she’d been physically beaten and might never stand straight again. She listened to it all, but became aware, even with her limited knowledge and understanding, that although this terrible, monstrous thing had happened, there was nothing to tie it to Martin. The DNA evidence showed that Charlotte had been in the cabin, but that was all. There was no transfer of fingerprints from Martin to her; neither her hair nor her blood were on his clothes; the drugs in her system could have come from anywhere. The Prosecution were struggling, and that was becoming more and more evident.

The look on Jack’s face was enough to tell her how the family were feeling. Peter hadn’t been able to listen any longer and had walked out. Vanessa stayed mute and stony-faced, but the enormity of her hatred for Martin came off her in waves. They could all see this was a foregone conclusion – Martin Jarvis was going to get off. Vanessa and Peter would be eaten up with their own grief; they’d lost Charlotte, and now they would lose what was left of themselves to anger and sadness.

Her hand came up to her throat to touch the pendant that Vanessa had given her. It felt strange and unfamiliar around her neck.

Some forensic guy was talking. Nothing he said made any sense. Everything was swirling round in her head, making it ache. She closed