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

is looking at her questioningly. ‘What’s the problem?’

‘Nothing… I…’

Irritated, he turns away from her. She can’t watch as the two men exchange goodbyes and she hears them making arrangements for this evening. She feels the car bounce a little as Martin gets in beside her, slamming the door and reaching for the safety belt. He raises a hand to wave to Alex as she closes the door and starts the engine.

She drives, aimlessly. Her entire body is screaming but her brain just feels numb. She feels his gaze resting on the side of her face.

‘Hello Frankie.’

Her eyes manage to make a forty-five-degree sweep, taking in the bottom of his jeans, blue, his shoes, trainers, his knees with their acutely familiar shape, but she can’t get any further. She yanks the car into a lay-by and a car horn blares out behind her.

‘I’ve missed you so much.’

‘Stop this.’ Her voice comes out in a kind of croak.

‘Have you missed me?’

‘I said stop.’

Her eyes sweep across to take him in properly. Christ, she hadn’t realised how much he’d changed. The shock makes her giddy. His hair is longer; there are lines like furrows down the side of his face. His hand is resting on his knee; she sees the age on the back of it, the grime around the knuckles that sends a jolt through her heart.

‘How did you find me?’ She realises she’s breathless.

‘Find you? I never lost you.’

‘You need to stop this, Martin. You have to leave me alone.’

‘You know you don’t want that.’

‘Yes, I do. Yes, I do want that. I want that more than anything.’ She feels fear, but it is coupled with anger.

‘Why did you do it, Frankie? Why did you give the court that statement?’

Her anger rises. ‘How can you even ask that question? You disgust me, you are abhorrent, you are—’

‘I wrote to you in the very beginning. I told you what happened. I told you that you’d got it all wrong.’

She rounds on him, the anger taking over fully now. She bites down, hard. ‘I’m not interested in your lies, Martin! I don’t want to hear your excuses; not then, not now. Jude burned everything you sent.’

‘Burned my letters?’ He looks incredulous.

‘Look! You need to leave me alone, for fuck’s sake! I don’t want you, Martin! What you did – what happened…’

‘You do want me, you always have. Neither of us can forget what we had.’

It’s as though he can’t hear her; his face is full of tenderness.

‘We have nothing – do you hear me? You murdered a girl. You raped a girl. You’re a monster!’ Her voice rises to a shriek.

‘I don’t know what you thought you saw that night, Frankie, but it wasn’t me. You know that on some level. You know it wasn’t me.’

Her hands snap up to clamp her ears; she can’t hear this. She can’t listen to any of this anymore.

‘I’ve been to the police; I’ve shown them the stuff you’ve been sending.’

He pauses, searching her face for a second and then his head shakes slowly from side to side. ‘No you haven’t.’ He starts to smile.

‘What are you talking about? I have, I—’

‘Because if you’d given the police my name, they would have recalled me by now.’

‘I – I—’ She can hear the words blundering pointlessly.

‘I think you were pressurised back then.’ His mouth is set in a grim line. ‘I think you said those things to the court because you were a confused and pregnant kid who could be led to say all manner of things and end up believing they were true.’

‘No one wanted to lead me anywhere! I know what I saw, Martin! Can you imagine what it was like? Listening to a girl begging for you not to hurt her? Can you imagine that, you… you—’ But he talks over her.

‘They wanted someone to pay for what happened, Frankie, and I happened to fit their plan.’

‘“They”? Who’s “they”? What plan?’

He looks at her wide-eyed. ‘Charlotte’s parents.’

‘Vanessa and Peter? Don’t be ridiculous!’

‘They would have done anything – you could see that in their faces. They were out of their minds with grief. They could have suggested all of it to you… Fed you the lines… told you—’

‘No… No!’ She shakes her head vehemently. ‘None of that happened.’

‘So what did happen?’

‘I told you!’

‘I mean about our child.’ He’s looking at her with those eyes and an odd smile.

She hates him; she hates this. ‘We don’t have a child.’

His smile drops. ‘What are you saying?’

She stares resolutely out of the window.

‘You owe me that much, Frankie.’

‘She was adopted.’

He blinks, taking a moment. ‘She,’ he says finally. ‘A little girl. I can’t quite get my head around that.’

‘Arrgghh!’ She slaps her hands on the wheel. ‘We can’t do this, Martin.’ She skews round in her seat, forcing herself to look directly into his eyes. It’s as though the person she once knew is behind a deeply lined mask that’s bruised and scarred.

She swallows. ‘You are nothing to me. I am married to Alex. I have a life with him, a home.’

‘But you don’t have a child with him. You have a child with me.’

‘I wish I didn’t.’

‘You don’t mean that.’

‘We don’t have anything, Martin. She’s not ours.’

‘We made her. She’s ours. Who adopted her? Do you know where she is?’

‘No.’ The lie caught in her throat. ‘But listen—’

‘No, you listen.’ His face changes completely. ‘I found you. I can find her.’

‘No, no—’ She shakes her head from side to side. ‘You can’t do that, Martin. For god’s sake, haven’t you done enough?’ She feels the heat in her face growing. ‘You can’t.’

‘Of course I can. She’s older now, what? Fifteen? She’ll want to know—’

‘No! No, she won’t!’ Frankie almost reaches out a hand to touch him but then snaps it back to her throat. ‘She needs to be left alone to live her life. Don’t drag her through the dirt, too!’

She knows she’s pleading; she feels as though she’s pleading for everyone. ‘We all need to be left