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

fingers through her hair she lets it snag until it almost aches.

‘Tonight, Alex… Tonight something terrible happened. I really don’t want to talk about it, but I have to.’ The images come back to her, bloody and horrible, but she knows she has to relive them. Her body starts to tremble. She sees his outline wavering on the other side of the glass; she just needs a bit of time to process the horror. She tries again.

‘Someone died… Two people died. I—’ She goes to say more but the words choke her.

Alex is still faltering on the other side of the misted screen. She’s not sure he’s heard her properly.

‘There’s so much that’s gone wrong and so much to put right. We just need a plan.’ He sounds so definite. Her hand shakes as she turns off the shower. It’s instantly quiet and she tries to find it in her to utter the words again.

‘Did you hear what I just told you? Martin’s been detained and taken in for questioning. I’ve been in a police station, Alex, I need to tell you, I’ve been involved in—’

‘Wouldn’t it be better if we just drew a line in the sand?’ He reaches back and grabs the towels from the rail, shunting the shower door open and passing them to her. ‘We should start again, Frankie, just like I said before, leave this place, go away, start a new life where no one knows us.’

She pulls one of the towels around her. She’s aware of the birds outside, a mad dawn chorus. Her eyes feel as though they’re full of grit and sand.

‘Alex.’

‘You need to get dressed. We can’t stay here. We need to hurry.’

She watches him as he shakes open the plastic bag and begins pushing her clothes inside. The stink of petrol and smoke is making her feel sick. She looks at the side of his face as he works. His lips are pushed forward in concentration, his brow slightly furrowed. A note of alarm begins to flutter inside her ribs.

‘Alex?’

He pauses and looks round at her.

‘Did you hear what I just said?’

‘Yes.’

‘Aren’t you shocked?’

‘What is there to say?’

‘Is everything okay?’

She knows it’s not, but she doesn’t know how or why. There’s just something seriously, seriously not right.

‘We’re free now, aren’t we?’ He turns to face her, smiling. ‘It’s all over… all that stuff is dealt with. Gone.’

‘Alex.’ His face is not the face she knows. His eyes are not his eyes. ‘What are you talking about?’

It’s like she’s seeing him for the first time in years. The shock is almost physical.

‘It was supposed to be so simple.’

‘What was?’ She tightens the grip on the towel.

‘It was just supposed to frighten you.’

Her mouth goes to form the words again, but can’t. She doesn’t know what he’s saying. It’s making no sense. Frighten her? What is he talking about?

‘The notes. The phone calls at night. The figure in the alleyway… All those things that were happening.’

She’s still not getting it. She stares at him.

‘You were testing me…? Was that it? To see if I would tell you? You were testing me because you thought I was having an affair?’

He doesn’t answer. He goes back to tying up the sack.

‘I always knew about Martin, you see. I always knew from the moment I touched you at that party, that I loved you.’ His face flinches as though he’s been stung. ‘And that you would never love me in return. Not really.’

He looks at her face and nearly laughs; it’s a bitter sound.

‘You don’t even remember me being there, do you?’

His words swim in the air towards her. Alex is the stalker? The notes, the flowers, the being followed – it was all him?

‘Please don’t say you remember me.’ He holds up a hand. ‘I know that you don’t. You don’t feel about me the way you feel about Martin. You never have. You were in the garden, crying… Crying over a man that was treating you like shit, but you couldn’t see it. He’d done that to you, given you drugs and booze and then dumped you… What kind of man does that to a beautiful girl?’ He presses his lips together as if to blink away the memory. ‘All the time I was talking to you – trying to help you, I knew you hadn’t even seen me. All you were doing was desperately staring into the space that he’d left as though he might magically come back.’

It’s as though she’s in some alternate reality. Everything around her looks ordinary and normal and okay, and yet everything is as far from okay as it can possibly be.

‘And I know – and have always known – that’s the way it is. That moment: your eyes searching somewhere past me; that’s the way it’s always been between us. You wouldn’t believe all the things I’ve had to do, Frankie,’ he chuckles sadly, ‘to move into your sightline. All I ever wanted was to have you look at me the way you looked at him that night. Your gaze was like a searchlight in the darkness. I’ve spent years trying to be picked out by it, to bathe in its warmth, but I’ve always been relegated to the shadows. You’ve always shown me kindness and regard and respect, but never love, Frankie. Not that deep, grinding, passionate love I saw on your face that night.’

His agony is palpable; there’s such a terrible, terrible yearning.

‘I kept thinking as the years passed: is this is the year she’ll forget him? Will she move on and stop thinking about him? But it never happened.’

‘Alex—’

There’s a sense of unravelling; a spooling out of reality – or what she thought was reality – stretching and lengthening in front of her.

‘Every time his parole date got closer, I could see what was going to happen. He was going to be let out and once he came out…’

She feels her face collapsing.

‘Oh yes, I knew all about his parole dates and when