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