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

He eases around the table and makes a grab for the back of the chair to steady himself as he lurches towards the door. Martin’s eyes are immediately on her.

‘I need to talk to you, Frankie,’ he hisses. ‘I need—’

But she doesn’t want to hear it, any of it.

‘No! This has to end, tonight, Martin.’ She leans across the table, glowering steadily. ‘I don’t want you here. I don’t want you in my life. This can’t happen.’

There’s the sound of Alex searching in the cupboard under the stairs and muttering to himself. She knows she only has minutes.

‘Frankie, listen. This is really important. You have to—’

‘I mean it, Martin. No more coming round, no more phone calls or following me. Are you hearing this? I’m going to tell Alex the whole story, and from that moment on, you don’t exist. No more blackmail. Are you listening? Otherwise I go to the police. I don’t want to do that to you, but if you force my hand, I will.’

‘Phone calls? Blackmail? Following you?’ His face furrows. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

Frankie glances at the door. ‘Stop it. I don’t want to live in the past. The past has gone, Martin. Gone. Dead. No more. Please.’

‘But I really haven’t—’

‘Maybe there’s a new bottle in that box in the garage,’ Alex’s voice calls out from the hallway. ‘I know we’ve got some somewhere. Hang on.’

They listen to the front door opening before she gets up, reaching beneath the dresser where she had shoved the box of letters.

‘Here – look. This is what I’ll take to the police.’ She opens the box and pulls out one letter at random and then pulls another from its envelope. ‘The rest are at the police station already. You were right, I didn’t give them your name. I gave them a fake one, but I can just as easily tell them the truth and it would—’

But he’s frowning and shaking his head. ‘No, no, no – this isn’t me.’

‘Not you? Of course it’s you.’

‘No it’s not. Look.’ He reaches for his jacket from the back of the chair and pulls a bit of paper out of his wallet. ‘Here.’ He puts it on the table, turning both bits of paper round. ‘This is my writing – see the way the “y” loops and the curve of this “r” there? Yes? Now look at this one. This clearly isn’t me. You don’t know my writing?’ His eyes search hers.

She can only stare, dumbfounded. ‘I told you – I – Jude – burned your letters.’

There’s the clatter of the front door closing, and Frankie hurriedly pushes the papers back into the box and drops it next to her feet. Alex walks back into the room with a bottle of port held aloft. The bottle slowly descends onto the table as he looks from one to the other.

‘Sorry, did I interrupt something?’ He’s smiling sarcastically and clearly very drunk.

‘Frankie was just telling me about her work.’ Martin picks up his wineglass and finishes the dregs. ‘I’ve been hearing about kids in care. Heart-breaking isn’t it?’

‘Oh yeah, heart-breaking.’ Alex sways a little. He seems like he’s debating taking the sarcasm further but then changes his mind. ‘Just goin’ to the loo. Back in a tic – Where’s those glasses, Frank? C’mon! C’mon! Chop-chop!’ He pushes the bottle towards her and disappears out of the door.

Martin listens to the creak of the stairs before he glances round.

‘How long have you been getting these letters?’

She looks back at him, stunned. ‘Um… A little while… I don’t know, I just assumed you’d got out and—’ She stares at him. ‘You’re honestly telling me that these aren’t from you?’

He shakes his head.

‘Then how do you explain this?’ She reaches down to the box and finds the jiffy bag and slides it across the table. Martin carefully opens it and cautiously shakes out what’s inside. The red fabric makes him jump back in his seat.

‘Fuck! Fuck…’ he says. ‘Jesus Christ, Frankie.’ He pokes it away from him. ‘Someone sent you that? My god…’

‘You remember it?’

‘Yes… Yes, of course I do. Charlotte was wearing it the night… Jesus…’ He pauses, staring at the hairband, appalled, but his brain is clearly working.

‘I told you, this is Peter Vale,’ he says suddenly. ‘It’s obvious.’

Frankie watches his face. ‘You can’t mean that.’

‘This—’ He waves his hand. ‘I get it. I understand now. The necklace – who else could have got it back into that house? I’m telling you, this is all Peter Vale.’

‘No!’

‘Look at it, Frankie! Think about it! It’s him. It has to be. But why would he do it to you? Why now?’ He frowns for a second. ‘There’s a connection here, somewhere that we’re just not seeing. There has to be.’

She stares at it all, dumbly.

She feels his eyes scanning her face. ‘What is it you’re not telling me, Frankie?’

‘I can’t Martin. I can’t.’

There’s a crack of floorboards on the landing.

‘You can. There’s something, isn’t there? What is it?… You know something about Peter Vale, don’t you?’

She can’t bring herself to tell him.

‘Have you remembered something about that night, Frankie? Think back. You didn’t see me that night on the boat, did you? Was it him?’

Her head instantly swims with the scene on the boat, but she tries to fight it.

‘I know you told the court that it was me but can you absolutely say, right now and beyond all doubt?’

Jack’s words about Peter Vale come back to her – ‘is it possible he was involved in how she died?’

‘I thought…’ but she doesn’t know. Not really know.

‘All this, Frankie, all of it has to come out, you have to come clean about all this – about everything. You have to tell me, the police, Alex—’

‘I’m dealing with this.’

‘Dealing with what? You have to tell me. Please.’

‘I can’t do this now.’

‘Yes, you can. You don’t have any choice. There are things you’re not telling me. I’ve been convicted of