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

and over this, Alex. None of this is important. I know we have this fabulous old rambling house, but it’s stones and mortar. I want us to get back to where we were. I want you to get back to the person you were. I want you to be happy.’

‘Then let’s sell it.’

‘What?’

‘Let’s pack up and go somewhere and do it all again. Deep into Wales, maybe. Somewhere with proper land and outbuildings. Think of the kids you work with. You’ve always said the challenge for the sixteen to eighteen-year-olds is that no one will give them a chance – well, I will, Frankie. I’ll give them a roof over their head and some kind of future. I’ll do that – We can do that. We’ll talk to the local education authority and see if we can apply for grants to become a bona fide training provider. I’m qualified aren’t I? I’ll teach them skills: woodworking, carving, upholstery. It would be a massive change for both of us. But it would mean I can start again, properly. I could be my own person, and you could be involved in something real and meaningful, not just day after day of systems and paperwork procedures and dead-end dross.’

The glass swings back, the wine sloshing dangerously.

She opens her mouth but then changes her mind.

‘Go on. You were just about to tell me I’m wrong.’ He’s prickly, she can tell.

‘I don’t see my work like that.’ She keeps her voice small.

‘But that’s how I’ve heard you describe it Frankie – more than once, so why aren’t you excited?’

‘I was probably frustrated about something when I said it. I—’

‘You’re not even prepared to talk about my idea, are you? Why are you defending a job you know doesn’t give those kids a proper chance?’

‘I’m not defending it.’

‘Yes, you are. You know you are. You’re defending a rubbish system.’

She knows where this is going. The direction it always goes.

‘We’d free up so much capital by selling this place and then buying in Wales, you know that. It’s a no-brainer. It’d give you everything you say you’ve dreamt about doing – you can really change kids’ lives and we can have a proper life again.’

She pauses. The pause is a mistake.

‘So it’s not about the kids?’

‘Of course it’s about the kids. It’s always about the kids.’

‘But it feels like something else is holding you there too.’

She watches his eyes narrow a little. ‘Or should I be saying someone?’

‘Oh, for fuck’s sake, Alex!’

As soon as the words leave her lips, she instantly regrets it. His face blanches a little, and then his mouth hardens into a thin, hard line. He turns his face away.

‘Don’t worry. I’ve known it for a while now – I know what you really think of me. And do you know what? I don’t blame you. I feel exactly the same.’

He lurches from aggression to victim in seconds. Drinking just makes it so much worse.

‘So, go on then, tell me, what’s our future then, eh? What does it look like? Give me a picture of how you see us living over the next five years, Frankie, and I’ll be able to see how I slot in.’

And so it starts yet again. She listens, knowing the argument as intimately as if she’s the one reciting it: a downward spiral that never goes anywhere. Soon he will move onto why they haven’t talked about having children of their own. She’s thirty-three. How much longer does she plan to leave it? Or does she plan to leave it forever? It is the subject they can never discuss.

She knows why.

But he doesn’t.

Christ.

Her phone suddenly bursts into life, shrilling loudly on the counter-top where she left it. He stops talking as her eyes flit across. His own wince with rage and go dull.

‘Go on then. Answer it. I know you want to.’ He turns away, back to his food, banging his glass on the table and hunching his shoulders against her.

‘Alex—’

‘No. Go on.’

She wavers for a moment, thinking it might be about Keeley, before reaching to pick it up.

‘Hello?’

‘Ah. Frankie.’ It’s Diane.

She bites her lip, hard.

‘I suspect you know what I’m going to say.’

She sighs. Now of all times. This is all she needs.

‘You know I’ve always backed you up. I’ve always taken your side and argued your case. You know that, don’t you?’

She knows the word ‘but’ is coming.

‘But on this occasion, I’m afraid you’ve crossed the line.’

‘I know.’

She looks across at Alex.

‘It’s out of my hands.’

‘Yes.’

He’s sitting staring at the wall.

‘My boss’s boss wants a conversation.’

Frankie can’t imagine who the boss’s boss might be. Someone ministerial? She really is done for.

‘Just as a head’s up, you’re probably going to get a written warning this time.’

‘Right.’ She feels her cheeks burn with humiliation.

‘Go on.’

‘Go on, what?’

‘Prepare me. Give me the worst of it. I’ll have to hear it twenty times over from my boss, so I might as well get it from the horse’s mouth first. Do I need to sit down?’

‘Err… Probably.’ Frankie squirms a little and clears her throat. She looks across at Alex. He’s chewing, staring at the far wall. She knows by the set of his neck this is it for the night.

‘Frankie?’

‘Oh, yes. Sorry…’

‘You told Declan to unlock the storage container and get the ladder.’

Frankie cringes at the memory. Diane is right, it was utterly, utterly reckless.

‘And then what?’ Diane sighs.

‘I went up it.’

‘I gathered that.’

‘Onto the ridge tiles.’

Frankie hears Diane’s sudden sharp intake of breath. ‘And?’

‘Mmm.’ Frankie bites her lip even harder.

‘I didn’t catch that.’

‘I told her I’d jump off the roof with her.’

‘You encouraged a vulnerable teenager to jump off a roof, Frankie. Have I got that right?’

‘Sort of.’

‘What does “sort of” mean?’

‘I said “you jump, and I jump too.”’

‘Dear Lord, Frankie.’

Frankie finds her lip is sore where she’s chewed it so hard. Thing is, she knew she understood Keeley. She’d glanced up at that poor frightened kid, feeling the last rung of the ladder skid a little against the guttering as