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

was enveloped in blackness. Flashes came back to her: that night, the boat, the pitch and swell of the water. There was a sudden stink of boat diesel… She saw the yellow rectangle of cabin light that her hands had reached for as her head dipped to go inside… She had the sudden recollection of the girl’s voice… Not just the voice this time, but the words.

‘You don’t want to do this. You know you don’t.’

The way she had pleaded. She’d sounded scared: panicky.

‘You can do whatever you want, I promise I won’t say anything.’

She knew in that split second: this was Charlotte begging for her life. This was Charlotte begging not to be raped.

The last few stairs beneath her feet came back; her hands groped for the wall as she hauled herself back through the door and she collapsed: her cheek and chin hitting the marble floor, the shock of its coldness and the taste of blood as her lip split wide.

‘Jesus Christ! Bloody hell… Hang on there, let me get someone.’

‘Frankie…?’

There was a squeal of shoes and she lifted her head. Peter was walking swiftly towards them. ‘Frankie? Are you alright?’

She tried to lift her head but the floor kept dragging her down.

‘My god!’ Peter was kneeling at her side. ‘What the hell’s been going on?’

She watched his face as though from very far away.

‘She’s been visiting a prisoner,’ the officer said.

The atmosphere instantly changed. The room was tilting around her, blurring, coming in and out of focus.

‘Can someone call an ambulance please?’

‘I don’t want an ambulance.’ She suddenly found her voice, tremblingly managing to sit up, and pushing the hair back out of her eyes. She wiped her mouth on the back of her hand and then took the tissue that Peter was proffering. It instantly went red. The tears started, running down her face, unstoppable. She needed to speak; she wanted to speak. She struggled, grabbing onto Peter’s arm for support as she saw a sweep of black gown about to walk past. It was the barrister for the Prosecution who turned towards her, clearly wondering what the commotion was all about.

‘Mr Bain!’ Frankie held up her hand to stop him. Everyone looked round. ‘Mr Bain!’ Her lip felt thick and stupid as she scrambled to her feet. She realised, in those seconds, he was going to keep on walking.

‘It’s about Martin Jarvis!’ she called to his retreating back. ‘I was there!’

He paused and slowly turned. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I was there, that night, on the boat!’ She was aware of Peter’s eyes on her face, the paralysed shock, the disbelief; she was making some sick kind of joke, wasn’t she?

‘I’m sorry, do you know what you’re saying? Are you being quite serious?’ Mr Bain came towards her, the thick spectacles making his eyes look small and pig-like. They stared at her, unblinking.

‘I was there that night. The night that Charlotte died. I was on the boat. I saw them – Martin and Charlotte Vale. I was there when he—’ She stopped, bringing the tissue to her mouth. She couldn’t look at Peter, knowing the profound agony that would be drawn in his eyes. But she would say it; she had to say it; she’d make herself say it.

‘I saw things. I heard things. The night she was raped.’

She was aware of the movement of her bruised lips forming the words, listening to the echo of a voice that didn’t sound like hers, saying things that couldn’t possibly be true, but knowing, until she was sick to her heart, that they were.

Charlotte. This was for Charlotte.

‘I heard her crying out – she said-’

She told him what she’d heard, and she told him what she’d seen. She watched as the last shreds of her love disappeared into the appalled frown on the barrister’s face.

And then she stopped with a gasp. There was sudden, acute pain, like something giving inside her: a stabbing punch that knifed into her belly and slammed into the top of her skull. She instantly doubled over.

‘Frankie… Frankie? Can you hear me?’

The floor came up to greet her. All she was aware of were endless shoes moving in front of her eyes in a strange kind of dance. They moved oddly, and then white trainers took their place as the marbled floor began to billow slowly in an ever-increasing ripple.

‘I’m only twenty-nine weeks so I’m fine,’ she heard herself say. ‘The baby won’t be born yet.’

She didn’t remember much else.

There were the snatches and drifts of memory, like a camera angle that was focused off centre. Other recollections were sharp and clear: a stretch of ceiling lights, ribboning above her head in a dizzy stream of yellow, the sound of sirens, a patch of sunlight on a wall, a box of surgical gloves with the cardboard top torn raggedly, dust motes spiralling in a cone over flashing and beeping machines. She knew they were there to keep her daughter alive. A daughter, someone said. You have a girl.

She remembered the feel of her head on the pillow turning to look at her baby’s tiny frame. The drugs twitching her frog legs taut, her tiny chin shivering. Frankie closed her eyes and thought about the things she wanted to tell her: how she’d always be there to look after her, how she’d never leave her alone, how she’d face the worst horrors in the world just to make sure she stayed safe. She remembered a doctor and a nurse sitting on her bed with that look on their faces. She knew exactly what their look was saying: was she capable of any of those things? Could she even look after herself?

She kept her head under the covers for what felt like days. She remembered hearing Vanessa’s and Peter’s voices as they sat by the side of her bed for hours as she pretended to be asleep. She couldn’t face them. What had she done?

Slowly, she emerged. The hospital noises grew louder, the curtains swished