Keep My Secrets by Elena Wilkes (management books to read .txt) 📕

This isn’t working.

There’s something about being in the car at night: that feeling of not really being alone. She keeps thinking that there’s something else in here with her—

Her eyes flick up to the mirror.

That back headrest is just a headrest. She’s fully aware of that. It’s not a man sitting with his head bowed. Don’t be ridiculous Frankie Turner, you’re thirty-three years old, not three.

But her three-year-old self knows that if she keeps watching she’ll glimpse a movement, a darkness that will slowly detach itself, and if she keeps listening she’ll detect the quiet draw and pull of someone breathing.

No.

Stop it.

There’s no one there. You know there’s not. She chews her lip. You know this because you deliberately checked the back seat.

The rain is beginning to slant in fine shards through the beam of headlights, the skeins twisting down the windscreen, forcing the wipers to dash pointlessly back and forth. She grimaces, screwing up her eyes, trying to peer through the pouring streams.

Home soon, home soon, home soon…

What’s with all this front, Frankie? her head says. Who are you trying to kid? Just look at you – Look at you in your fancy Range Rover, desperate to get back to your nice upmarket husband and your upmarket country cottage. You’re such a fraud, you know that? Drive as fast as you like Frankie-girl, the past is coming up right behind you.

She swallows and stares hard into the lashing water. All she has to do right now is stay in control and not get spooked. It’s not difficult; she’s been doing it long enough. All she needs to do is stay in control of the car… Of herself… Of her life.

The radio station suddenly clears and she grips the wheel tighter. Come on Frankie, you’ve got this. She hesitantly begins to hum along. She likes this song: it’s ‘Where is the Love?’ by The Black Eyed Peas. She even knows some of the words.

That’s better.

She smiles.

The radio fizzes and crackles. She goes to adjust the scan button, but it drops into silence.

There’s a sudden flash.

The interior of the car lights up. She squints and takes a glance in the mirror. There’s nothing but the searing dazzle of headlights behind. She dips the mirror and checks again. All she can see is a maddening white light and a ghost-like blur bobbing in her sightline. The tension in her gut mounts.

Keep a hold now. Keep it steady.

The lights rear up again like a charging beast. It’s getting closer now: too close. The blazing flash patterns and strobes across the dashboard, momentarily blinding her. Her right thigh begins to shake, trying to hold the accelerator steady. She daren’t brake. The road twists and bends in the bouncing arc of headlights as she desperately tries to concentrate, leaning into the windscreen and blinking like crazy. The familiar road is suddenly dangerous and unfamiliar. Christ…

Acute curves come up where there were none before, making her grip the wheel. She clicks the mirror up and snatches a glimpse of the car behind. There’s a black figure, silhouetted in the driver’s seat. A tiny knot forms in the base of her stomach. She hovers from brake to gas, not speeding up, not slowing down, and tries to breathe as the panic rises.

He’s too close… Far too close… Any second, any second now…

A phosphorescent light floods the whole space. Each pulsing second ticks by; she can almost hear each one counting down before she’ll feel the juddering tap and thud of the car touching her back bumper. There are trees and ditches on either side of the road and then just blackness going on and on, empty fields full of nothing and no one. If he runs her off the road… If she’s trapped in this car…

Suddenly with one brilliant flash and a roar, the car pulls past. She glances quickly across. There’s just a dark shadow whizzing by as the taillights flare red into the darkness. He guns away, disappearing round the bend into the black cavernous road and she finally manages to calm down, her stomach unfolding rapidly, the sudden relief quivering through her arms and legs. Not him then, it wasn’t him, just someone being stupid, that’s all. That. Is. All.

Dropping her speed to thirty, she attempts to collect herself as the Black Eyed Peas carry on singing and everything feels ordinary again. She tries to hum along, but knows that this time it won’t work. Nothing’s working. He wants her to know he’s out there.

Every few days odd things have been happening. Whispered phone calls dropping into silence; a bouquet of flowers arriving on her work desk with no card; notes left under her windscreen wiper or propped against the front door, waiting for her. She’s terrified Alex will find them. Every time she leaves the house or gets in the car, she finds her eyes flitting – looking, checking – because she knows that it could be today, or tonight, or in the early hours that she’ll open her eyes to find he’s taken it one step closer; it won’t be a note or a call this time – it’ll be a figure standing over her, staring down. She knows it’s only a matter of time. And time is running out.

She swallows.

She knows he’s circling. Because three days ago, she was followed.

He couldn’t have known where she’d be and what time.

Unless he was watching the house.

The thought of it sends her almost hysterical.

That was the whole point of moving here.

When Alex had suggested a village in the Welsh Marches she’d jumped at the chance. He was stunned.

‘Are you sure? You know it’s a different way of living, don’t you?’ he’d laughed. ‘You won’t be able to move an inch without them noticing.’

But all the time she’d been thinking ‘Yes, nothing gets past them, he’ll never slip past them.’

But it seems he had.

She’d felt stupidly safe that day. She’d been at a conference in Ludlow