The Role Model: A shocking psychological thriller with several twists by Daniel Hurst (read aloud TXT) 📕

me would have been too risky as they may have easily spotted the difference between a red wine stain and blood splatter, so I had no choice but to do it myself. I knew I wouldn’t have been able to get it all up, and it would have been a very botched job, but all I needed to do was to get the blood-covered sections out before I could call a professional to come and finish the job. As for the sofa, I planned on just putting a throw over it and replacing that at a later date when I could afford to do so.

After what had been a full and painstaking day of cutting into my carpet and trying to pull as much of it up as I could with my tired and aching fingers, I had eventually decided that I’d made enough mess for one day and left it at that. But as darkness had fallen, and with Chloe having been collected from school by her grandparents and now safely out of the way over at their house, there had been no putting it off any longer.

It had been time to deal with the body.

Thinking back on that fateful night a decade ago, there are many similarities between that one and the one only a week ago when I had buried Rupert. The same feeling of dread as I moved the corpse. The same shovel used to dig the hole. And the same sickening noise when the body hit the bottom of the grave. But unlike with Tim, in which I am certain I have got away with that crime now, it is still far too early to say if I have been as fortunate with Rupert. The local papers and news broadcasts are full of reports about the search for the missing teen and all the speculation about the fate that might have befallen him. The searches have become more thorough now than they were that first day when he had been reported missing, as well as posters stuck to lampposts and appeals for information made on television.

It’s a tough time for the town right now as everybody is inundated with the bad news on a daily basis. It’s also a tough time for my daughter. Unlike me, this is her first experience of carrying a deep, dark secret, and I can see the strain it is having on her. She has become quieter, more withdrawn and has refused all my attempts to talk about what we did together with her. She seems to have her own way of dealing with it, and I guess I just have to leave her to it, besides letting her know that I am there for her if she needs me. But it’s not just the guilt and fear we carry from that night a week ago that is troubling me now. It’s also the fact that my daughter no longer sees me as a perfect role model.

Before that night with Rupert, while she might have treated me like a typical teenager with her tantrums and tetchiness on occasion, she always respected me, and I would like to think she looked up to me too.

But those days are obviously over now.

While I might have shown her how much I loved her by committing to hide the body and protect her from any potential problems with the police or general public, I have also shown her that there is another side to me.

A side that is capable of doing dangerous things and keeping them a secret.

The fact I have managed to keep what happened with Tim a secret from her after all these years is an achievement, telling her that after a brief disagreement between the pair of us, we decided to end our relationship and go our separate ways. But now she knows that I’m not the perfect parent I have tried to be all her life.

There is more to me than that.

I just hope she still loves me in the same way now she knows it.

21

CHLOE

I’m supposed to be revising for my first exam which is fast approaching, but try doing that when all you can think about is the dead guy that everybody in town is trying to find.

Seven days have passed since Rupert died and Mum saved me from a lifetime of being associated with the terrible event, but things haven’t got much easier in this house. I spend most of my time holed away in my bedroom, pretending to be revising while she is either at work or sneaking extra glasses of wine in the kitchen downstairs. She thinks that I don’t know how much she is drinking, but I do. I always have a look to see which bottles are in the fridge whenever I go to the kitchen for food, and the labels on them are changing all the time. Numbing her thoughts with alcohol is obviously the way she plans to deal with what we did, but I’m trying to deal with it in a much healthier manner.

I cry when I feel like I need to cry. I rest when I feel like I need to rest. And I listen to my favourite music whenever things seem particularly bleak because that is how I have always dealt with troubling times in my life.

I have used music to help me get through many sad periods in my youth, from the breakups of my favourite pop groups to the time Mum told me she had broken up with Tim and he wouldn’t be around to play with me at the park anymore.

I didn’t mind growing up without a father figure for the most part when I was younger, but I did like having Tim around for those few months that he was a part of our lives. I remember him as being so caring towards me, always trying to make me laugh and never growing tired of pushing me on the swings or spinning me on