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

Frankie feels her eyes widening.

‘The police? What have you done?’ screams Vanessa. The car echoes with the force of it. ‘What the fuck have you done?’

‘Vanessa, I haven’t—’

‘She knows where Chloe is, though, don’t you, Frankie?’ Alex blurts. ‘You took her, didn’t you? You knew it was wrong, but you took her because you were desperate. Isn’t that the way it was? Isn’t that right? You might as well tell Vanessa the truth… Don’t let her suffer…’

There’s a thin sheen of perspiration glistening across his forehead. He glances at the knife tip and then at Frankie.

‘Martin Jarvis is being questioned by the police about what happened to Peter,’ he says suddenly. ‘He… he’s…’

‘Peter? What do you mean “what happened to Peter”? What are you talking about?’

‘Martin… He…’

Vanessa’s grip on the handle of the knife gets tighter. ‘What’s he done?’

Alex shakes his head slowly as Vanessa begins to choke on her sobs.

‘I don’t believe you. You’re lying.’ The knife blade swings back and forth between them. Frankie cowers back.

‘That bastard Martin. This is you. This is all your doing!’ Vanessa is out of control. ‘Where is Chloe? What have you done with her?’ The blade tip presses to Frankie’s throat.

‘I haven’t, Vanessa! I haven’t!’

‘She’ll tell you. We’ll go there!’ Alex babbles. ‘Won’t we, Frankie? But I need to start the ignition, okay? I need to get you to her.’

The blade relaxes a little. Vanessa’s hand is trembling so much she can barely keep hold of it. ‘Okay, Drive then. Drive!’

Alex turns the engine over and the car bursts into life. The rain is beating down on the roof and the windshield is fogged with their breath. He rubs his sleeve across it. Frankie touches her neck; there’s blood on her fingers. Vanessa is weeping now; a high-pitched keening sound, more animal than human.

‘Which way?’ Alex looks across at Frankie as they get to a roundabout. She stares back at him, open-mouthed. ‘This exit?’ He gestures to the left and she nods, quickly. The road lays out in front of them, bare of traffic. It’s a desolate road heading towards the Welsh border. She has no idea where they’re heading. Vanessa doesn’t seem to notice. She’s rocking a little in and out of her sightline, backwards and forwards. The noise emanating from her now is a guttural whimpering. It’s a terrible sound. More than pitiful.

‘My girl, my girl,’ she whispers over and over. ‘What have they done to you?’

Frankie closes her eyes; she can’t listen.

Vanessa suddenly lurches forward into the side of Frankie’s face. ‘If you’ve hurt her, I’ll kill you, you know that don’t you? You know that,’ she mumbles. ‘I lost my beautiful Charlotte and I’m not losing Chloe too. I won’t survive it. I can’t survive another… Peter… My Peter… I’m all she’s got now… Me… Do you hear that?’ Her breath is hot on Frankie’s cheek. ‘She’ll be so scared if I’m not there. She’s scared of the dark, just like Charlotte was. She needs me. She hates the dark. That’s when the nightmares come. She has nightmares… things whispering her name—’

Frankie’s eyes snap wide. Something falls away inside her. She glances at the handbag at her feet where the corner of the photograph shows the side of Jack’s face.

‘What’s that?’ The knife moves down and points. ‘That’s Jack. That’s Jack!’ The tip of the knife trembles. ‘Why would you have…?’

Vanessa dips to reach for it. The knife tip wavers as her eyes and brain process what’s in front of her: the shape of her naked daughter on the bed, the protective curl of the bedcover, the smile on Jack’s face as he looks into the camera…

‘Jack…’ says Vanessa. But there’s a moment where they both see something else.

A gasp leaves Vanessa’s lips. Frankie stares down.

She hadn’t noticed it before.

Over Jack’s shoulder is a mirror. Jack isn’t smiling into the camera on the wall. It’s the wrong wall. Jack is smiling into the lens held by the person taking the photograph; their image is caught in the reflection.

It’s Alex.

Alex’s eyes don’t leave the road.

‘You said you were at the party that night,’ Frankie says slowly. ‘You were with Jack, weren’t you? That’s what you said.’

Alex looks grimly straight ahead. There’s the drone of the engine, the hiss and swish of the tyres, the shriek of rubber wipers against the screen. There’s the sound of Vanessa’s breath slipping in and out of her lungs as though she’s drowning.

‘I want. I want…’ She can’t get her words out. ‘I want to know what this photograph means.’

Alex doesn’t twitch a muscle. Nothing.

The blade moves to a centimetre above his eye. ‘If you don’t tell me, this blade is going into your brain.’

It flashes closer to his upper lid.

His mouth opens a little and he licks his lips.

‘Start speaking Alex.’ she sneers. ‘I’ll give you to the count of—’

‘It was a game,’ he says suddenly. ‘Jack told me it was a game. We were kids really, not adults – you have to understand that.’ He wets his lips again. ‘Charlotte wanted to be a model, that’s what she said. So we started taking photographs, you know, proper photographs, like we’d seen them do on TV. She wanted to send them off to people. We encouraged her… Jack encouraged her… And then the encouraging became more than that… It was more like forcing… He went too far. We went too far.’

Frankie can’t look at Vanessa. Her whole body is on fire. She can’t hear this. No Alex. No Alex…

‘Then Jack saw her with Martin at that party. He knew she was upset and thought she’d been telling him what we’d done. Jack confronted her. He said some things to her that night… Awful things. Things that you shouldn’t say… She ran off. Jack went after her and then saw her talking to Martin. He followed them down to Martin’s boat. I had gone down to the canal after Frankie, but I couldn’t find her. Jack saw me. He