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

door as hard as she can, she begins to shout, not caring who can hear her.

‘Vanessa! Open this door! Vanessa!’

Silence.

She bangs again, standing back, frantically scanning all the windows, begging to see some movement.

There’s nothing.

Snatching the phone from her pocket, she finds Vanessa’s number with shaking fingers, listening to the bland tone ringing out, giving nothing in return. Glancing up at the windows again, she makes her way around the side of the house, cupping her hands either side of her face and peering in every gap in the windows she can find.

The back door slams open.

‘What the hell do you want?’ Vanessa stands there, pink with anger. ‘I told you—’

‘Where the hell is he?’

‘Where’s who?’

But Frankie has already barged past her, pushing her way into the kitchen. She can smell him. It stinks of him. Peter. He’s been here. She knows it. She rounds on Vanessa.

‘I know,’ she snarls. ‘I know about your sick, sick, bastard of a husband… And you… Both of you. Don’t tell me you didn’t know.’ Her hands come up but she doesn’t know what to do with them. Her eyes are burning with violent tears of rage. ‘How could you, Vanessa? How could you have stood by and… Oh, Jesus Christ!’ She whirls round, tearing at her own hair. ‘This is absolutely beyond anything possible…’ She can’t find the words. ‘You took my baby, you sick bitch. You took my baby knowing… Knowing…’

Vanessa shrinks back against the door edge. The pink in her face has turned to white. The fear in her face translates into anger. ‘Get out of my house! I don’t know what you’re talking about!’

‘Peter. That’s what I’m talking about. Peter. Your husband. The sex offender. The man who…’ She can’t bring herself to articulate the words, to let her lips even form them. Her mind shows her pictures of his hand on her knee, squeezing it. The smell of his breath on her face as he leaned in to kiss her goodnight. The black figure in the bathroom touching her – Yes. Yes. She can see it all.

‘Sex offender…? Don’t be disgusting! This is bizarre and absolute rubbish! Why would you concoct such filthy lies? You know Peter! You know him, you know he would never, ever do anything to a child. You know that Frankie! Stop this! Stop!’

It’s as though she’s in some kind of bizarre state of denial.

‘Where is he?’ Frankie stands panting, her blood is singing in her ears. ‘Where is he? Where’s my daughter, Vanessa?’ She wheels round, angrily. ‘I want to see her. You can’t keep her from me anymore! Do you hear me?’ She marches into the living room with Vanessa right behind her. Every wall, every angle, every object in here is so familiar that the past is instantly dragged back to the present.

‘Is she upstairs?’ She puts her hand on the door to the hallway and pulls it open.

But Vanessa blocks her.

‘I won’t have this, Frankie! I won’t!’ Her whole demeanour is charged and indignant. ‘You can’t barge in here, shouting the odds about Peter, throwing your weight around as if you owned the place! Who the hell do you think you are?’ She uses her weight to force the door from Frankie’s fingers. She knows she’ll have to lay hands on her to get past.

‘Where have you suddenly got all this crap from?’ Vanessa stares at her and then her face changes as it dawns. ‘Oh… you’ve seen that bastard Jarvis, haven’t you? Oh my god, you’ve spoken to him and he’s fed you all this filth! Of course he has.’ Her mouth drops open as she shakes her head. ‘Even after everything he’s done to you, done to this family, you’re still there, aren’t you, Frankie? Standing in his shadow and watching from the sidelines. Have you any idea of what that man actually did to us? What he continues to do every moment he’s still alive and breathing?’

Frankie flinches but holds her ground. ‘I’m not in his shadow Vanessa. I’m not being manipulated by him.’

‘Ohh no of course you’re not! You never were, were you Frankie? – you with your drug-soaked, booze-raddled life where you turn a blind eye to a girl being raped and murdered! You’re never duped are you?’

The guilt grips Frankie’s heart. She can hear her own breath whistling high in her lungs.

‘And then you turn up here in your fancy clothes and your fancy car shouting and demanding to see Chloe. Look at you! You’re the same piece of rubbish you were back then. You’re not a mother!’ She sneers at her, up and down. ‘You could have walked past her a hundred times in the street and never known it! What kind of mother is that?’

Frankie recoils at the truth.

‘You helped destroy our lives, Frankie. Peter lost everything – his job, his dignity, everything. And so we decided that piece of filth needed to lose too.’ She’s shaking uncontrollably. ‘Sex offender?’ she scoffs. ‘I’ll tell you the truth, shall I? Peter sacrificed the tatters of his life and got himself put inside to have one good go at him – one good go. And I know he nearly got him.’ Her lips break into a terrible leer. ‘He very nearly got him. So near and yet so bloody far.’ The taunting mouth stretches wider into a grin, baring her teeth. ‘“Never mind,” I told him, “better luck next time…” And there will be a next time, Frankie. Martin Jarvis might try all the tricks in the book, but we’ll make sure he spends his life looking over his shoulder. Peter only has to get lucky once; Jarvis has to wake up every day wondering whether this is the day that it’s going to happen.’

Frankie feels the fight draining from her.

‘Oh for god’s sake, look at you!’ Vanessa turns and yanks at the door. ‘You’re pathetic. So go on – throw your life away on that man. It’s what you were born to do.’

She reaches