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

called me. He’d got Charlotte on the deck; she was in a bad way. I tried to calm things down, but Charlotte wasn’t having any of it. She started screaming, saying she would go to the police, that she’d tell everyone what we’d made her do—’

He stops abruptly, taking a breath. Frankie stares out of the window. The road runs smoothly out in front, but she’s not seeing it. All that’s in front of her is the film-reel of that night: a flick-book cartoon, appalling image after appalling image.

‘I saw Charlotte had hurt her head. She kept trying to get up. I tried to help her, but all the time I’d got Jack in my ear… He was going on and on and on about how if she told people, we’d be dead; we’d go to prison. She had evidence, my father would be finished as an MP – the shame of it all – but I said I wasn’t going to listen to him, how could I? And then Charlotte lost her balance somehow – I don’t know how it happened – and suddenly she was in the water. She was still holding my arm.’ A little choke escapes from the back of his throat.

‘I tried to pull her out, but I had Jack there, fighting me and fighting – and every time I grabbed her I could feel her getting weaker, until…’ The choke becomes a strangled sob. ‘I tried to save her! I tried. I really tried!’

‘You picked up her hairband,’ Frankie hears her voice saying. ‘And Jack picked up the necklace. You tidied up between you.’

‘We were kids, and we were scared!’ Alex’s eyes flash round at her, blood-shot and desperate.

‘You both raped her. You both murdered her.’

Vanessa’s voice is almost a whisper. Frankie barely hears the words. For one tiny instant her eyes meet Alex’s but something else happens.

There’s an immediate sensation of heightened reality – a strange light and buzzing in the air that tells her that something terrible is about to unfold. She doesn’t see the knife blade move, only a clean brilliant red line lighting up on his neck. The wheel drags and there’s a sudden swerve, weaving them into the far lane and a lorry – its headlights on full beam, the horn blaring, the roar of it bearing down on them.

The brilliant white light shows up the dark spatter of blood across the windscreen as Frankie finds her hands reaching out to grope for the wheel. Somewhere she registers the odd feel of it at the wrong angle, the speed, the bellowing thunder of the engine, as she heaves the weight in her hands in the opposite direction, feeling them slip and give.

There’s a moment’s silence. Then everything begins to slide. The lorry booms past in a claxon wail as they slew wildly into a lay-by – no brakes, no control – and her eyes take in what’s right in front of her before her brain can process what’s about to happen.

A roadwork sign bears down on them, broken and twisted, its arm-like poles bent: reaching forward. She sees it before she hears it: the splintering crack of glass as the metal smashes through the windshield, buffeting them backwards and spinning them round in an uncontrollable shrieking of tyres and crumpling metal. There’s a jaw-slamming judder as the car spins out of control, a whirling merry-go-round of muted colours whizzing past, as a valley: a wide expanse of green, plunging from the side of a bridge, tips dizzyingly towards her—

And then the world goes black.

Chapter Thirty-Two

She remembers some things.

The sensation of someone holding her, rocking her on their lap, their arms around her. She can hear the knit and creak of the mattress as they move gently to and fro.

Knit. Creak.

‘Shh’ someone’s saying, ‘it’s okay, you’re safe. You can go back to sleep now.’

She can hear the quiet hiss of a water tank filling somewhere and the steady thrub-thrub of their heart.

‘Hear that, how strong it is?’

She nods into the warmth against her cheek.

‘That means I’m never going to leave you.’

She opens her eyes.

For the next few seconds, nothing makes sense. She wonders if this could be heaven.

There are birds twittering somewhere. She can see an expanse of rolling hills and a watery pre-dawn sun that’s just flickering on the horizon.

There was some kind of childhood dream. She knows someone loved her, but she can’t remember who.

Martin’s face comes back to her. She remembers his warmth. It was real and solid, and she yearns—

Crack!

Her eyes snap open and her body goes rigid. There’s no Martin and no dream.

Slowly, she turns her head. The windscreen has gone. There’s only a watery carbon sky out there and a cold breeze. Vanessa is lying between the front seats, her head twisted against the dashboard, her cheek and eye socket crushed into a bloody mass, but her mouth is trembling.

‘Vanessa,’ she croaks, her voice barely a whisper. ‘Vanessa… Vanessa… can you—?’

There’s an alarming shunt and the world teeters forward.

Frankie’s head shoots back and she stares outward into sky. Sky, and nothing but sky. Early morning birds fly in a ‘v’ shape in the far distance.

She blinks. What happened? What the hell happened?

There’s a soft squealing of metal against metal. She allows her eyes to track sideways.

Alex.

Only it’s not Alex.

There’s a space where Alex used to be.

The wind is blowing softly. Spatters of rain begin to patter onto the seat and onto the steering wheel, now buckled and bent. The bonnet is rucked up like an unmade bed. There’s a mound of metal on the bonnet, dark, and spread out in the half-light, that appears to be moving. Her eyes close and open again, a dull webbed blur sends the world splintering into weird light. Through the fog, great girders of wires span through the sky in a geometric arch; she guesses they must be on some kind of bridge. Out there, to her right and left are acres of green: trees, bushes, miles