Our Little Secret: a gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist from bestselling author Darren O’Sullivan

He took a lighter from the cutlery drawer and lit the corner of the paper, watching the orange flame take hold and burn upwards. Leaving nothing but charred carbon in its wake. He held it for as long as he could, the hairs on the back of his hands being licked by the flames before he dropped it into the empty sink and it burnt into nothing.

Then, reaching into the cupboard, he took a glass and poured himself some water. His hands shaking as he did. He wondered how long he had been shaking, and if the old driver had noticed. As he took a sip his entire body was flooded with the cool, crisp liquid. He realized that it was the first drink he had had since waking from a fitful dream that morning. He felt guilty for enjoying the sensation as he drunk the whole glass, followed by another.

Once the glass was empty, the relief of quenching his thirst turned to disgust that he had found small joy in doing so. Chris slammed the glass down with such force it exploded. Shards scattering over the bench surfaces and the floor of his kitchen. One large shard sliced against his hand, causing it to bleed. He didn’t notice at first. Instead he grabbed the edge of the sink and gripping hard he shook it, screaming in his own head, trying to loosen it from the side, trying to destroy something else. It didn’t budge.

Out of breath, he saw blood running down the side of his hand and onto his bare feet. Watching it he felt no pain or worry, only a mild curiously as to how much would come. After a few minutes, it became obvious that it wouldn’t be enough. It wasn’t deep enough and was already coagulating. He pulled on it with the fingers of his other hand, causing his skin to stretch and fresh blood to form but soon even that didn’t work and it began to heal.

If only all things healed that well.

A memory snapped into his mind like an electric shock. Like the single pulse of a strobe light. So fast he barely registered it, but so destructive. It was Julia as he never wished to remember her. It caused his heart to beat wildly and he felt the need to run. But he shut that out, closing his eyes against the invading memory. He thought back to the events on the platform instead.

It had taken months of meticulous planning to ensure that it would go right and instead it had just gone terribly wrong. Because of one person. Because of one stupid fucking person. Could she not see he was desperate to be alone?

Looking up, as if God himself would be on his ceiling, Chris was lost as to what he could do next. He silently waited for an answer, from God, from Julia, from his father. But he only heard the clock continuing to tick and pass time. As if nothing had happened. Before finalizing his 10.47 plan he’d contemplated taking an overdose or swinging himself from a noose. But he wasn’t happy with the idea of his body being found. He knew how scarring it was to see a dead human body. It haunted his dreams; it invaded his waking day. It had fundamentally changed him into a person more in shadow than daylight.

He made a rule in the aftermath of what had happened that night that he would not leave a complete him, so that no one else had to lose their light as he had lost his. The train was perfect. He would be just a red smear that dragged on for a mile and therefore no personification could occur by whoever had to clear him up. They might find a hand or an eye but without it being attached to a full body, one that had a soul, it would just be a surreal piece of flesh that might look like it could be a prop in a cheap horror movie or something found hanging in a butcher’s window. He wouldn’t look like anything that was once human and therefore he wouldn’t look like anything that could ruin someone’s life.

He realized that now the rules had changed. He realized that leaving a human form didn’t matter. He had done everything he could to protect other people. He had lied and hidden. He had grieved alone because it kept others safe. So focused on that, he’d almost failed to see the only thing that truly mattered. Julia. It would be a stranger who would find him, the police probably. Fuck them, they were not his responsibility. It had to be this date.

Realizing he didn’t need to care so much for someone else made Chris feel anticipation build and course through his body. Like an athlete might feel on a starting block, waiting for the gun to go. His plan hadn’t been executed the way he wanted but he was still going to join his wife. Opening his cutlery drawer Chris took out a small fruit knife, its blade about three inches and sharp. Perfect.

Looking around, he wondered where it would be best to do it. Only one place sprang to mind. The bedroom. The room where they’d shared their deepest fears and wildest dreams. The place where they could forget about the world, wrapping themselves up in their own little bubble, where they could laugh and love and lust for one another.

He went to his bedroom, sat on the edge of his bed and opened his side drawer. There were only two items in it: a book, one of its pages folded a third of the way through, which he’d not picked up in a long time, and under it Julia’s favourite light blue cardigan. He needed to be close to her as he took his last few breaths, to smell her smell, to have her with him. Although he didn’t deserve it.

The rest of her possessions were all boxed up in the small room that used to be an office. He wanted to hold her cardigan as he died. Clutching it, Chris pressed the knife into his wrist. It wasn’t ideal. Far from it. He knew that it would take between ten and fifteen minutes to bleed out and in that time most of his blood would cover the room that he and Julia slept in.

It was completely opposite to what he had tried and failed to achieve with the train. It would be messy; it would be disturbing for the poor person who found his cold lifeless body in an ocean of dark brown drying blood. But he would be by her side once more and in that ten to fifteen minutes as his life faded, he could think of her. Taking a deep breath, he glanced at the small digital clock as the flicking of one minute to the next caught his eye. The time it read stopped him before he spilt a single drop of blood.

Chapter 5 (#ulink_65d33d02-810f-590e-8d3a-c2c877dbacd7)

11.54 p.m. – Kings Road, Cambridge

I spent the journey watching the scenery rush past, unable to focus on what my vision took in as a heat burnt through my body. My blood pumped through my veins like lava, making my eyes sting. My breathing was shallow and tight. I was obviously in shock. The train went into a tunnel, making me jump and as my ears popped I caught myself in the glass that acted like a mirror against the vast black nothingness. The girl who looked back was blotchy and pale. Her mascara, which was designed to be waterproof, had failed after twenty minutes of crying.

I couldn’t keep looking at myself as a fresh tear rolled out of the corner of my left eye. Instead I focused on my hands, the polish on my fingernails chipped through picking. My hands shook slightly. I pressed them onto my thighs to try and calm them. It seemed to work. I tensed my arms, pressing down onto my legs and took a deep breath in. As I released my tension I let my breath out and, for a moment, I felt in control of my thoughts again.

Somehow, I felt like I had failed when in fact I had done the exact opposite. I should have felt empowered. I had just saved a life – and yet, I felt like a child, lost, needy. I tried to look at myself again, but as I did the tunnel ended and the flat, dark world came into focus again, broken only by lights from farmhouses and faraway villages until the city lights of Cambridge came closer.

Wrapping my cardigan around me tightly I saw couples sat in front of the television in the houses that lined the tracks as the train slowed into the city station. It bothered me less than I thought to see people happy together. I guess stopping a man from killing himself can change someone’s perspective.

Once I left the near-deserted station I wrapped my cardigan as tightly as I could around me and, crossing my arms, focused on keeping my breath under control. I began to walk home. Night was clinging fast to everything around me as I wandered down Station Road, making me involuntarily shiver. Shadows from street lamps transformed the Georgian student-filled town houses that were, by daylight, beautiful to look at into something more sinister. Usually if I was out this late I wanted to get home as quickly and as safely as I could, but not tonight. Tonight, I dragged my feet.

Although Cambridge on the whole was a safe city, it had its fair share of problems and streets you had to avoid after dark, like all cities do, and usually I would feel my senses heightened. Waiting for a noise or light that would make me break into a run. Somehow though, I feared the night less. Almost like my self-preservation had been detached. The gravity of walking out on the man I loved and hated simultaneously only to accidentally walk into the life of another man who was trying to kill himself was all a little too much for me to fully absorb. It seemed too bizarre for my small and ordinary life. It felt like I was watching a black and white movie instead of actually experiencing it first hand.

As I reached the botanical gardens I thought it was safe to relax a little, but as soon as I did an image flashed into my mind, like a lightning bolt illuminating a night sky. It was him, on the platform, jumping under the train as I helplessly stood by. So sudden and violent was the image, conjured up from my broken imagination, it forced the air from my lungs and stopped me in my tracks.

I had to sit down or I was going to black out. I tried to refocus on my breathing but it was too late. Flashing through my mind was Chris and his wet shirt and his note and his sad, fearful eyes that made my heart ache. They were spinning inside my head, shouting at me. Taking my last cigarette out of the packet I tried to light it. My unsteady hands making it impossible to do so. Each strike of the flint failing to spark the gas somehow pressed on my chest, crushing my lungs, until I had to stop and lower my head between my legs. The lack of oxygen getting in made me feel as if I was going to black out. I felt as if I was drowning, as if I wasn’t a part of the world.

When I closed my eyes, I saw his bare feet on the platform floor and heard his voice saying it connected him. Without thinking I unzipped my calf-high boots and struggled to get them off my feet before taking my socks off as well. My fumbling fingers felt like they didn’t belong to me anymore and I knew if I didn’t get control I was going to be sick. Hot bile began to rise from my stomach and my eyes were struggling to focus as I finally wrestled my socks off.

As soon as I managed to put my feet on the cold, wet, hard, uneven floor I could feel the world begin to slow down and for a moment I focused on the uneven chips and cracks under my cooling soles. It allowed me to get my breathing under control.

After a few minutes, I could feel the blood returning to my hands, enough for me to light my cigarette, inhale a deep lungful, and lift my head back up to hear the sound of the wind in the trees and rain hitting the leaves above me. I knew I should get back up and get home to safety. But I couldn’t. I needed to stay put and finish my cigarette barefoot.

Only eighteen hours earlier, I had woken up to just another Wednesday with its mediocrity of responding to emails and taking telephone calls. Only the nervous sensation of seeing John later and what that would bring letting me know I wasn’t entirely numb. Fast-forward that short time and everything had changed because of a man called Chris Hayes.

I saw him kiss that picture again. But in my mind, I was stood behind myself watching the whole evening play out in front of me. Like you would in a dream, and my heart ached once more. The poor, poor man. Why didn’t he just do it? Was it something he had to do alone or something more? I imagined his sad eyes on mine as he fell backwards in front of the train, the sound of it hitting him, and the way his body would explode on impact, it all happening so fast it would be like he wasn’t even there. It would have been something that would have stayed with me for ever – and I knew then why he didn’t do it.

With my boots and socks in my hand, my feet beginning to numb from the cold, I started to walk home again. The sinister shadows of older houses were replaced with new builds where the street lamps were more frequent and brighter. Usually here I would have my senses fully engaged for any movement from the alleys between the houses, or a sound of footsteps behind me, but tonight they weren’t. It felt like I was in my own sense-free bubble.

If he really did protect me from seeing him die, even though he wanted to die, then that made him a better person than anyone else I had ever known. It was the most selfless thing someone had ever done, and I knew that I needed to repay his obscure kindness. It was clear that whatever happened he felt like the only option was to end it all.

I could empathize with that. Sometimes pain can feel so great that ending it seems the best solution, but I also knew that if someone could reach out to him, he could find another way. Which meant I would need to find him. I just wished he’d said or done something that might tell me where to start.

Finally reaching the welcoming shape of my own front door, I suddenly realized how tired I felt. It was as if the comfort of home allowed me to finally concede to the night. Opening it I could hear the television quietly playing from the lounge, knowing what that meant – my sister Natalie and her partner George were downstairs. Probably both asleep on the sofa as that was what usually happened. I didn’t mind though. I desperately needed the familiarity right now.

I had never had that feeling of closeness Natalie shared with George with anyone, and it made me feel happy and jealous at the same time. Leaving my boots at the bottom of the stairs I stepped into my small cluttered front room with its walls covered in a menagerie of photographs. Lots of me and Natalie, some of John, most of Natalie and George. The bright HD light coming from the TV was cast over the sofa opposite, confirming my suspicions.

There they were, both curled up, her head on his chest, both asleep, barely visible above the sofa’s throw, which they used as a blanket. Their breathing in perfect unison. It was nice to see and I loved that Nat and I were so close and could live together in relative peace. But sometimes I wished for my own space, just so I didn’t have to feel like a third wheel in my own home.

Natalie was so similar to me in so many ways. Her looks, the way she talked, and yet Natalie managed to make everything seem effortless. She had excelled in school and was more popular despite being three years younger, and she’d managed to meet a wonderful man, one who adored her and who she adored in return. Again, something I didn’t believe would ever happen to me, and Natalie made it seem easy to maintain that mutual adoration.

Normally I would gently tap my sister and she would stir. She would then wake George and they would sleepily give me a kiss and go to bed, freeing the couch for me to sit on and perhaps wait for a text from John, or channel-surf for an hour to try help me switch off. But instead I left them there. It seemed cruel to disturb their peace, and after a day like mine I needed the idea of peace to exist. Seeing their tranquillity offered me a brief and fragile hope.

I walked up my narrow, steep stairs and stepped into the bathroom. I turned on the light, which temporarily blinded me with white and chrome. Turning the dial on the shower I undressed, foolishly looking into the mirror once naked. I noticed how red my eyes were, how tired I looked, and how I was beginning to show the early signs of age, the small and delicate lines around my eyes, the skin on my forehead not quite as tight as it once was, the slight thinning of my lips, and boobs that weren’t quite as pert as they once were, until the steam from the hot water blurred me from myself. Thank God.

I got into the shower and turned it up as hot as I could bear, so hot my skin reddened, and then I stood motionless, letting the water cascade over my head and face, trying to wash the day away. After I felt less dirty I wrapped myself in a towel and fell onto my bed, knowing I needed to get to sleep quickly. In six hours, I would have to get up and get ready for work. But playing in my mind on a loop was my moment with Chris.

As the hours ticked by, all I could think of was him and whether I could have done more before he walked out of the station and my broken little life.

Chapter 6 (#ulink_85114674-1b04-57bf-b937-0391b2ef7dc5)

12.07 a.m. – London Road, Peterborough

Dropping the knife, its cold steel sounding louder than it should on the wooden floor, Chris couldn’t believe how careless he had been. Time had been his only companion, his only constant since Julia died and somehow he had neglected it. With Julia’s cardigan still in his hand, he ran downstairs to look at his wall clock, which continued on its forward journey, completely oblivious or uninterested in the commotion he was causing.

‘Please be fast, please be fast.’

Seeing it, his heart sank further. It said seven minutes past.

He was too late. It was now the 6th.

He had missed his date.

Not knowing what to do, he looked around his room for an answer. He wished he could turn back time, just eight minutes would be all he needed. But if he could turn back eight minutes, why not turn back ten months and stop the man that took his wife from him?

Rage bubbled to the surface and he buried his face into her cardigan to muffle his wounded scream. He screamed until there was no more air in his lungs. He screamed until veins in his forehead bulged, until he was desperate for more oxygen. He screamed until his hands tingled and his vision closed in on him.