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

Then he was on the floor, lying on his side, his face pressed into the cold kitchen tiles, her cardigan half covering his face. The clock told him he had lost four more precious minutes. He must have passed out. He lay still for a moment. His hand beginning to hurt where he had cut it. Chris inhaled and Julia’s scent lifted from the cardigan, which remained potent after so long.

The dark, lifeless world began to fade into the background as the light of a beautiful moment from their past took over. One that he had forgotten they shared. She was in bed, lying on her side and looking at him. Her skin glowing in the way it did after they were intimate. He stroked her face, running his finger over her eyebrow, across her cheekbone. He remembered telling her that she was beautiful and she hid her face more with the duvet. He laughed, unable to say what he really wanted to. He’d been scared by the intensity of the feelings he already had for her.

She asked him who he admired. Chris said that one was easy, and he told her about his father and of his kindness and strength. About how he always managed to find light, even in dark times. He also talked about his father’s father, a man who passed away when Chris was just eight or nine. He died not through illness or accident but because he wanted to.

Chris remembered telling Julia how his grandfather and grandmother met when they were young, and they fell in love instantly. His grandfather a bugle boy in his army outfit, playing on the steps of York Cathedral to thousands of people. When he hit his solo he saw her in the crowd, looking at him. As soon as he finished, he went to her side and then never left. Just like the old movies.

As they got old she developed cancer and at seventy-one she died. He, being a healthy man of seventy-four, with no illnesses, died less than three months later. His grandfather told Chris’s father with his last breaths that the world was beautiful for different people for different reasons. And that his reason for it being so beautiful for him was waiting somewhere else. Chris remembered telling Julia he wanted to be like that; he wanted to love so much that he couldn’t live without it.

He remembered Julia saying it was the most beautiful story she had ever heard.

He remembered how she then kissed him and he tingled at the touch.

Then he remembered the last time he kissed her. Her lips cold and blue.

Taking shuddering breaths, Chris cried. In the rare moments when he allowed himself to cry, he did so quietly, gracefully, and completely unnoticed. This time was different. A loud wounded noise, almost like an animal dying, fell from his mouth. There was no restraint, no modesty in his grief. Its origin unknown, but from some deep and dark part of his body. A part that he had learned to keep behind a door, one that had been forced open only once before in his life. He clutched his stomach, thinking he may burst wide open, hoping he would, and he sobbed long and hard. ‘What do you do now? Jesus, Chris, what do you do now?’

Only the ticking clock could be heard in reply.

Chris staggered towards his back door, unlocked it, and stepped into the cold night air. He walked towards the back of his garden where his shed was, barely visible through the overgrown weeds that had strangled Julia’s buddleia. He looked behind him to make sure he couldn’t be seen. Satisfied, he unlocked the door and stepped inside.

Stepping over his lawnmower and reaching to the furthest corner from the door, Chris lifted a large metal tool box and put it on the counter he had built years before in an effort to be more organized. Using the key he had left with the letter, he opened the box. He needed to make sure its contents were still inside. He counted them off in his head. All seven items were there. Untouched, smelling of damp earth, iron, and rust.

He moved the mobile phone that was switched off and picked up a large hardbound book. Inside were the words of his murdered wife. A diary that wasn’t his to read. He took it, flicked through the pages. Her smell coming from them. He stopped at a page from August – the summer after they married.

‘He took me to a live gig last night, an up-and-coming band that neither of us had heard of. The crowd was young and rowdy and when we got there he led me to the bar, holding my hand tight, not letting me go. People pushed, as people do in busy bars, but somehow no one walked into me. He stepped in front or to the side to make sure they bumped into him instead. I don’t remember anyone being so protective …’

Chris didn’t remember that night. It didn’t seem to him it was noteworthy, but that moment clearly meant a lot to her, and he had no idea. He flicked forwards in the book, to the following November. At first she spoke of her mum, and her failing health, and how he and Julia visited a few times a week, bringing her flowers, taking her for something to eat. If she was feeling up to it.

This day she wasn’t. She was tired but in good spirits. They just stayed with her watching Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Her talking about when Julia was little and how the cartoon lion had frightened her. Julia pretended to be a little girl to make her mum laugh. He did remember that and couldn’t help but smile as he read it.

Flicking again, another year passed as he read the first line of an entry and stopped himself. He knew what it said. He also knew he wasn’t strong enough to read it. Instead he flicked backwards and read one of the first she had put in, just after they met. But rereading her words made him feel a warmth he didn’t deserve, so he closed it and held the diary close to his chest.

It allowed him to think more clearly. Work for a solution. She lived in those pages. Speaking of her love. Telling him the things she couldn’t say out loud. Remembering the dozens of things they had done that he had forgotten.

After a few minutes, he put it back carefully with the other items and locked the box before hiding it once more in the dark recesses of the damp shed. Chris knew he couldn’t wait another year, another anniversary – it was too hard. He would spill something, putting someone else in danger. But the date he did kill himself on had to matter. A bittersweet gift.

He took his phone from his pocket and went to the calendar to find something suitable. Her birthday: too far away. His birthday: too difficult to vanish without people being aware. It had to be a date that only mattered to him and her. A date that no one would find suspicious if he was missing. And then he knew when he would do it. After scrolling forward, he stopped and counted backwards.

Twenty-eight days.

Perfect.

Twenty-eight days was all he had to wait. He didn’t know why he hadn’t considered this date previously. It was a better date to honour his late wife. It would be exactly a year after the day she died.

Going back into his house he felt different somehow. Like a small part of him had passed away on the platform when he had failed to kill the rest. A small part that was good. A small part that was what his father had given him. It had been fading since Julia died and he knew it was nearly gone.

His voice now seemed quieter among the others that shouted in his head. Now he would have to wait quietly, patiently, for another month without it, without the good. The fine line between right and wrong slowly evaporating.

Chris made a note of the things he now needed to do. He knew he didn’t need to, but the first thing on his list was to resign from his job. If only to cement his new plan in his mind. It was something easy to tick off, help him regain control. He would ring first thing – around 6 a.m. before the office opened – and leave a message.

He knew they would accept his resignation when they picked it up without the need to call him. He’d been signed off for depression for so long he doubted anyone would be shocked or even care. He would also follow it up with an email and once done he would have some power back. And a new plan would be set in motion. Knowing it was the first step made him feel like he had a sense of direction. It would also be one less reason to be outside in public. Making his secrets easier to keep.

One of which wasn’t so secret anymore because of the train girl who had no doubt found his note and owned his stone. He hated her for her stupidity in not reading that he wanted to be left alone, and her naivety in assuming she could help him. For a moment, he pictured himself hitting her, wondering why he hadn’t just done that. If he’d slapped her hard right across her delicate face she would have run away and called the police and by the time they'd arrived, he would have been a smear on the track below.

It seemed so simple a solution and yet he didn’t think of it when it mattered. That was the part that had died. The part that could do no harm. It made him hate her even more.

Chapter 7 (#ulink_0f7dacb7-1651-55ba-864f-5584aaa6cab2)

Julia’s diary – June 2011

I used to keep a diary as a little girl. All of the girls in my primary school did. It was like you had to in order to be cool. I had a bright pink one, one of the ‘My Little Ponies’ on the front. The ribbon that was stitched into the seam and tied around, holding all of my six-year-old secrets, was rainbow-coloured.

I found it again a few years ago. My first entry was about a boy I liked in class. My first ‘love’. I carried that diary everywhere I went and would always been seen writing in it. I guess, if I really think about it, it was from there the seed was planted to be a writer. Capturing stories, revealing truths. I remember I would often talk to myself in the diary – I guess like I am doing right now. Saying things like, ‘Julia, you have to remember Kyle (my crush in primary school) is an idiot.’ Or ‘Julia, don’t forget it’s Mother’s Day next week.’ But then I grew up and other things became more important.

Studying took over, then boys, then a little of both in my college years. My first twelve years of life was well documented by my family pictures and my childish diaries, and nothing much after. It’s kind of sad when I think about it. All those years, uncaptured and being lost as I get older. Recently I’ve had time to think about life a little more and it seems I’ve not saved the big adventures I’ve had in any way.

My secondary school and college days that I loved are only seen through Facebook pictures added by old friends, long forgotten. Showing we all had bad hair and the sense of style that came with the late Nineties and early Noughties. All of us looking like we want to be in the Spice Girls.

My university years are just fondly remembered hangover-fuelled dreams of late nights out – going to gigs of bands who were going to be the ‘next big thing’ only to disappear as quickly as they arrived. And my father: a complicated man who left my mum for Australia when I was in my teens. He’s just a speck of an idea. His bad jokes and silly stories seem to have been lost in the dark spaces of my memory. We speak a few times a year – birthdays, Christmas. But the conversations are always short and forced.

I struggled with him leaving and, as an adult, I’ve forgotten all of the good qualities he had. Ones that Mum couldn’t forget. She often tells me he was the kind of man that you rarely see. Funny, charming but fiercely protective of his family. That is, right up until he left us.

In those moments when Mum talks of him before he packed his bags, I can see myself as a child again, lying on his broad chest, his breathing raising me up and down as we both dozed in the garden on a spring morning. I see the bedtime stories, his St Christopher necklace gently hitting me as he gives me a kiss goodnight. His breath smelling like rolling tobacco.

Yes, loads of years have been lost to the archive in my head but, as you can clearly see, I’m going to change that. So hello, diary. Welcome back to my life. You might be wondering why I’ve decided to come back. It’s a good question. One that’s embarrassing but as it’s just you and me I’ll just say it as it is.

Yet again, there is a boy. Meeting him has ignited that part of me that needs to write it all down. It’s made me not want to lose anything that I might think fondly on later in life. (Or not.) ‘The new man’, as my friends like to call him, really he should be called the first man. In my adult life so far I’ve not met anyone who has interested me in the way he does. There is something about him. Something you can’t quite put a finger on. A depth to him I have never seen before. It’s exciting.

I’ve got a good feeling about this and I thought it would be nice to put it down in words to find again when I’m old and grey. Who knows who might be by my side? Perhaps, maybe, him? Just writing that makes me feel funny.