The Secret Within: A totally gripping psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist Read online

It couldn’t be simpler: doing a good deed for Julia of this magnitude – smoothly getting rid of her troublesome ex – was going to make me appear very likeable and fast forward me through several weeks’ worth of earning her trust via smaller-scale gestures. It was a bargain for a measly £100.

  ‘A hundred quid. No questions asked,’ I said. ‘Deal?’

  He sighed heavily. ‘We both know I need it…’ He shrugged and looked so bleak for a moment I almost felt sorry for him. He scrunched his eyes closed the way children do when they think that means you won’t be able to see them anymore.

  ‘Deal.’

  That’s right, I thought, as we lapsed into silence again. You just focus on how much vodka you can get for that, there’s a good chap. I briefly wondered what he’d been before the booze took over, but then realised I didn’t care.

  We pulled into the station. ‘Stay here,’ I ordered, stopping in front of the entrance, jumping out and pulling my wallet from my pocket. I withdrew one hundred pounds from the cashpoint, returned to the car, opened his door and held out the small fold of twenties.

  He took it slowly, counted it, the cheeky git, and undid his seat belt, tucking the money in the pocket of his denim jacket as he climbed out.

  ‘Nice to meet you, Nathan.’ He offered me his hand, swaying slightly.

  We shook and I held him steady when he nearly wobbled over, but when I let go, he just stood there uselessly.

  ‘Yeah, I’m going to need to see you board the train,’ I said. ‘Come on, it’ll be here in a minute and you need to get through the barrier. Where’s your ticket? You have got one, I take it?’

  Luckily, he found it after a stressful – for me – hunt through numerous pockets; but it was so creased from being sat on that it didn’t work when he tried to feed it into the slot with the exaggerated slow motion of extreme concentration. He missed twice before getting it right, straightening up with all the smugness of having successfully threaded a needle. He lurched through onto the platform and blankly stared up at the monitor, straining to read it, scratching his head, then visibly losing what little focus he had, pulling out the money, starting to count it again and looking around him – no doubt for a platform café selling tinnies.

  I swore under my breath and approached the guard on the gate.

  ‘Sorry, could I just come through to put my friend safely on the train?’ I nodded over at Dominic who had dropped one of the notes and was bent over, struggling to pick it up off the floor, missing repeatedly.

  The guard frowned. ‘He’s intoxicated, isn’t he? I’m afraid I can’t let him on the train in that condition.’ He drew himself up self-importantly. ‘I shall have to alert the Transport Police. I also can’t let you onto the platform without a valid ticket for security reasons.’

  I eyed him coldly. ‘See it, say it, sorted’ seemed rather to have gone to his head. Everyone is such an officious wanker these days. Dominic wasn’t a walking bomb: he was a bit tipsy. We’d all been there. Well, maybe not at four in the afternoon on a school day, but still, whatever happened to kindness? Plus, someone like him didn’t get to tell me what to do.

  ‘You think my friend is pissed?’ I said softly. ‘Are you aware that cerebral palsy sufferers spend most of their lives having to deal with people like you, mistaking their disability for drunkenness?’ I paused to give that statement time to sink in. ‘I’m astonished that someone in a customer-facing role, in this day and age, hasn’t had sufficient staff training to recognise the difference between the two. Actually – I’m appalled by what you’ve just said. I might have to tweet about this. What’s your name?’

  The guard paled, glanced at Dominic and swallowed nervously. ‘I’m sorry, sir—’

  ‘Doctor,’ I interrupted, demoting myself from my ‘Mr’ status – as befits a consultant – to make the point. He was nearly sick on the spot.

  ‘So sorry, doctor.’ He swung the gate open. ‘Please let me know if I can be of any further help, to either of you.’

  I gave him a final glare – now actually outraged – until I remembered it wasn’t real. Still, the point was a valid one, and perhaps next time he decided to be an unpleasant little jobsworth, he might stop and consider if the ‘evidence’ in front of him was really the whole picture.

  I swept through the gate then hurried over to Dominic, who had finally managed to pick up the cash. The train was pulling in.

  I led him over to the quiet-zone carriage, assuring him that the buffet trolley would come around once the train had left the station. He settled down very nicely and appeared to be already snoring, his face mashed onto the window, as they departed. The first stop wasn’t until Taunton – and I was confident he’d sleep past that too… all the way through to Basingstoke. We were home and dry.

  I sauntered out to the foyer, nodding curtly at the guard who immediately swung the gate open for me again, and climbed back into the car, which didn’t have a ticket, despite my having dumped it on a double yellow. The gods were smiling.

  I thought for a minute, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel, and called the school as I pulled away. The secretary answered and in my best Bond voice I asked her to pass an important message to Julia Blythe, mother of the new boy, Alex, in year eight, that the packet had been returned to its original destination.

  It was fun – I nearly called her Moneypenny but managed not to. As I hung up, a euphoria swept through me at having set Julia’s world right that was so thrillingly visceral, I sped up and accidentally ran a red. Hesitation is the cause of most accidents. Once you’re committed, you’ve no choice but to go for it. I heard the squeal of brakes, a blast on a car horn and earned myself an angry man shouting silent obscenities through his car windscreen as I sailed past him, unperturbed.

  When Julia had – out of nowhere – driven into the car park in a white Mini, I’d found myself temporarily thrown. My brain had gone into overdrive as it attempted to assimilate this unexpected, brand-new information. She was here, at pick-up time? She had kids at the school too? I silently cursed my wife’s insistence that I collect Ben on his first day back. I’d already planned my first meeting with Julia – and it was me busily sweeping into the office before a full day’s list – not hanging around the school gates like some self-employed, made-up-job dad with too much time on his hands. I’d crossly looked down at my phone in an attempt to appear busy and important, thinking that if I didn’t catch her eye, maybe she wouldn’t come over and start chatting. I wouldn’t then have to do the excruciating bit of admitting I knew who she was, when she had no idea who I was. It was too annoying for words. Not the start I wanted at all.

  But then something quite extraordinary happened. She walked right up to me, introduced herself, told me entirely unselfconsciously that she’d noticed me the day before at the hospital and reached out to take my hand… simply holding it in hers, quietly and gently. It was astonishing. My heartbeat slowed right down and I could feel her goodness transfusing through my skin as she touched me. I am not a spiritual man but it was a moment of complete, calm connection. I stared into her kind, make-up free eyes in amazement. They were utterly without guile. She withdrew her hand, and I blinked. She was frowning slightly.

  Immediately worried that the strength of my reaction had unnerved her as much as it had me, I was about to pretend she had something on her face to excuse my looking into her soul, when it dawned on me that she had simply noticed the mismatch of my eyes.

  I quickly – and far more breezily than I felt – gave her the usual explanation, leaning right in so she could get a closer look, and I could smell her… Pears soap – I didn’t even know they made that anymore. I was suddenly in my grandmother’s house as a child on summer holidays, and when I pulled back, Julia gave me the sweetest smile of recognition – as if she’d seen straight through to the small, floury boy chattering away happily, shaping offcuts as my kind grandmother methodically kneaded bread at the table, her skilled hands turning the dough this way and that. I felt complete
ly exposed but oddly unafraid of the honest intimacy – although I garbled some conversational cardboard about hoping she was liking the hospital, while I tried to recover myself. She started to talk but I didn’t hear what she was saying. A million thoughts were exploding in my head. I wanted her to touch me again… I wanted to make her smile like that again too.

  Where was the woman as cool and intellectually slippery as running water that I’d been expecting? I was ready for the usual dance to begin, prepared to lure her into submission against her better judgement… but watching her mouth move softly as if she was in silent prayer, I realised this was going to be like corrupting an angel; a prospect which at once both terrified and enthralled me.

  I was still shell-shocked when Dominic arrived seconds later – I didn’t hear a word he said either – I was only able to focus on her face. She was obviously deeply distressed at the prospect of her son seeing his father half-cut on his first day, and quite simply, I wanted to help. The strength of my urge to protect her was overwhelming, in fact. I swung into action, determined to get him as far away from her as possible, as quickly as I could.

  Putting my foot down and roaring back up the hill to collect poor abandoned Ben from after-school club, however, I began to gather my thoughts a little. I don’t subscribe to the concept of ‘the one’; it’s a notion I have always scoffed at. Both of my wives were right at different times of my life. The first, Serena, wanted a Catholic wedding, which meant several meetings with the parish priest while he puffed fruity smoke from a pipe and asked me what I thought made this relationship so different to all of the others. The truth was, I had no idea; everyone around us was getting married – it just seemed the thing to do. Storm, I took to Vegas – her mother has never forgiven me – where I suggested she have a tattoo of my initials either side of a heart, in lieu of a permanent wedding band (we used my signet ring for the impromptu service). To my enormous surprise, she agreed – although it hurt… fingers do, the skin is so thin… and the wide platinum band I had to buy her to cover it up on our return because she wasn’t feeling quite so rebellious by then, cost a bloody fortune. On neither of my wedding days did I experience any rush of emotion, certainty or a binding of souls.

  As I thought of Julia now safely able to drive her son home, having been rescued from Dominic, however, the sense of purpose I felt was – I had to admit – very gratifying. That said, now I wasn’t stood directly in the glare of her dazzling purity, I began to wonder if I was simply going to have to recalibrate my pursuit. Less a duel to the death, more a chase through a verdant forest that would see her caught and vulnerable, panting in my arms, eyes wide. Both are enjoyable in different ways, of course.

  Except, I shivered involuntarily at the thought of holding her. It was something akin to being ambushed with an injection – writhing in protest – finding myself unable to prevent a sting then shock at feeling medication coolly infusing the blood, soothing the stomach, finally arriving as a taste in my mouth. Sensations over which I had no control but could acknowledge as a desire to be a better man, for her, while simultaneously feeling like a king.

  My God. For the first time in my life… was I falling helplessly in love?

  I laughed, but the sound was tinny and uncertain. Almost afraid.

  Six

  Julia

  ‘So tell me about your day!’ I said brightly as we stopped at some traffic lights, trying not to panic as it occurred to me that just because we were no longer at the school, it wouldn’t stop Dom returning and making a scene anyway. What if he was at this precise moment walking around the car park, yelling drunkenly for Alex by name? I swallowed anxiously.

  ‘No one really talked to me,’ Alex said, cheerfully. ‘I think they will, though. It just takes time.’

  I glanced at him quickly in the rear-view mirror. ‘Is that what someone said to you or what you think?’

  ‘Both,’ he said, but didn’t elaborate further.

  ‘The headmistress made us stand up in the whole school assembly so everyone could get a better look at us.’ Cass stared out of the passenger window. ‘Which was really great of her and not at all epically embarrassing.’

  ‘What?’ I glanced at her in dismay. ‘Why would she do that? What about all the new year threes having their first day too? Did she make them stand up as well?’

  ‘Nope. Just us. Then she said Mr Wilder was our father, and Dad stood up, so Al said “He’s actually my stepdad; my real dad is called Dominic and he’s an artist but not a famous one.” Everyone laughed – not all at him, I don’t think, just most of them – and the whole time, I’m just standing there with everyone looking at me, so it was awesome.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, Cass. I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘Well, now they all know who we are, and that we moved up from Surrey and two more things… technically, three… because the headmistress also said we had to tell everyone a fact about ourselves. Al said he wants to be an artist or photographer and he believes guinea pigs are the ideal pet’ – she shook her head in disbelief – ‘then I said “my mother died from cancer when I was eight and I don’t want to talk about it”.’ A brief, triumphant smile flashed across her face and she looked out of the window again. ‘That shut her up.’

  My mouth fell open in amazement. ‘You didn’t really?’

  ‘She did,’ Alex confirmed. ‘Word for word.’

  There was a moment of silence. ‘I think you’re brilliant, Cass,’ I said, truthfully.

  ‘Thanks.’ Cass leant her head back and closed her eyes. ‘Can we just go home, then you come back later to get Dad? I don’t want any cake.’

  ‘We’re not going to go home just yet, actually.’ Dominic had the new address. What if he was already on his way there?

  ‘But I’m really tired!’ she complained, lifting her head up and scowling at me.

  ‘Me too,’ agreed Al. ‘It was exhausting today. Actually, someone did speak to me. I think Ben likes me. Although he mostly asked about you, Cass. I said you don’t tell me stuff like if you have a boyfriend and he should ask you himself.’

  ‘Quite right, Al. Well done,’ I said. ‘Cass can absolutely talk for herself.’

  Cass swung round in her seat. ‘Don’t tell him anything,’ she ordered, before turning back. ‘Urgh. I hate boys.’

  ‘Except me,’ Al said.

  ‘Yes, but please stop talking to people about guinea pigs, OK?’ She sighed again. ‘I heard you at break. They weren’t asking you because they were interested; they were teasing you. Tell them about your photos, or your art – whatever – just nothing about animals, all right?’

  ‘Good to know, thank you.’ He nodded.

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  My heart broke a little for both of them, and I had to bite my lip to stop my eyes from welling up. Damn Dominic. We drove in silence for five minutes while I tried to think of a plan. I couldn’t go back to the house. I simply wasn’t prepared to let Alex see his father that way, when he was still learning to feel secure in his new surroundings.

  Cass pulled a face. ‘Where are we even going? It looks like we’re just driving around in circles. Why can’t we just… Oh – your phone is ringing.’ She reached into my bag in the footwell by her feet and pulled it out. ‘It says “Newschool”.’

  ‘Can you answer it? It’ll be Dad.’

  ‘Hey Dad – oh – sorry – hello. Nathan who did you say?’

  ‘Can you give me that, please?’ I reached out immediately. ‘Now!’

  ‘No! You’re not hands-free!’ She leant away, then glared at me. ‘Six points and a fine. It’s never worth it. Sorry, can you repeat the message again? The original what? OK. Yes, I will. Thank you.’

  She hung up. ‘A message from Nathan Sloan. He wants you to know the package has been returned to its original destination.’ She spoke carefully and precisely. ‘What does that mean?’

  I caught my breath. ‘You’re sure that’s what he said?’

  ‘It wasn�
�t a man. She said she was the school secretary. What package? What’s she talking about?’

  He’d put Dominic on the train home? Because that’s what that message meant, didn’t it?

  I was astonished. How on earth had he managed that?

  ‘Has the time come to block Dominic from seeing Al for a bit?’ Ewan took his trousers off and dropped them in the dirty clothes basket.

  ‘A restraining order, you mean?’ I’d had a bath in an attempt to relax before bed, but accidentally made it so hot I’d had to climb out after a few minutes, feeling sick. My skin was still livid pink; crossing our room in my pjs to pull the curtains, I briefly leant my forehead against the cool window as raindrops cascaded down the glass, distorting my reflection.

  ‘I don’t want to do it.’ Ewan sat down on the bed to take his socks off, balled them up and threw them in the basket too. ‘But he can’t turn up drunk out of his mind at school like that. It’s unacceptable.’

  ‘I know. If it hadn’t been for Nathan Sloan…’ I turned and stepped round a couple of boxes we hadn’t yet unpacked. ‘Although the fact that he had to help is obviously horrendous. I spoke to Dom’s mum earlier. He’s back at hers now, sleeping it off, apparently. She couldn’t have been sorrier.’ In fact, poor Sorcha had cried down the phone. All that money, yet none of it able to fix her son. I peered at a scribble in black marker on one of the boxes.

  ‘Do you know what’s in these? It says “loft” on here. I don’t think they’ve been opened since the last move.’ I tried to push one of them. ‘They weigh a tonne.’ It was almost certainly CDs or DVDs of Friends from a time when boxsets were cutting edge and streaming was something kids still did with welly boots and a jam jar. ‘Do you mind moving them a bit more out of the way for now?’

  ‘Sure.’ Ewan put his weight to the first and then the second, shoving them tightly into the corner. ‘But just to finish what we were saying – today can’t happen again. I want us to have a chance to settle properly.’