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

is lying slumped against the far wall. Disorientated, she becomes aware that there’s paper, lots of it, bits of paper dropping from the back of the smashed shelves. It’s not paper, her brain tells her… This isn’t ordinary paper… These are photographs.

Hundreds of them.

She grapples to make sense. Pale naked images of flesh slide across the floor towards her – she sees arms and legs, breasts and buttocks… Photographs… loads of them, slipping from their hiding place and floating to the floor. Charlotte. Charlotte… more of Charlotte. And then her eyes catch another: it’s Chloe, partly dressed, her arms crossed above her head as she takes off her top… Then there’s Charlotte again: her bare back and shoulders. Frankie’s hand reaches out to touch it, as a sudden yell rents the air. She turns to see Jack. He has crawled and grabbed the lighter. He raises it in the air as their eyes lock. The moment seems to last an eternity as the blur of Martin moving in front of her paralyses everything. There’s a flash of what looks like lightening, and a piercing shriek from Jack. She shields her eyes in the sudden flare, as the heat, a searing, sudden heat, crackles all around and a caustic stink scours her nostrils.

‘Frankie!’ She can hear someone bellowing. ‘Frankie!’

Then there are hands around her waist, pulling her backwards. All she can hear is a terrible screaming that goes on and on and a smell that’s so, so dreadful… She gags and retches, bending double. Dragged by a sudden massive force, she finds herself on the landing and half-stumbling, half-falling down the stairs and out through the front door. She gags and retches again, hands on knees, coughing and spitting, her eyes streaming with tears as she fights to get the words out.

‘Jack…’ she splutters. ‘Jack…’

She glances up. Martin’s arms are still around her as he hauls her out into the street. Palls of smoke are billowing high into the night air. There’s a terrific crack and roar of flames and suddenly the upstairs window shatters, sending shards of glass tumbling down into the garden.

She sees Martin with a phone and is yelling, panicked. ‘Please! Fire brigade and ambulance!… Hurry!’

She looks back up at the house with tears flooding down her face. ‘Oh my god…’ she whispers softly. ‘Oh my god…’

But Martin’s arm tightens around her. ‘Come on,’ he says gently. ‘Come and sit in the car. There’s nothing we can do. Leave it, Frankie. Just leave it.’

She allows herself to be guided. Her feet feel as though they’re barely making contact with the ground. Martin holds the door open, helping her into the passenger seat. She’s not really there; her hands and face feel numb. He slips off his jacket and wraps it around her.

‘Your shirt—’ she can barely get the words out. ‘Look at your shirt—’

He looks down. He’s soaked in drying blood.

Clamping her jaw, she swallows hard. ‘W-What happened, Martin? W-What the hell just happened?’ Her eyes are full of grit and smoke. She can barely see. Martin doesn’t reply. He looks round into the wall of blue and red flashing lights that are coming down the road towards them. His face looks pinched and weird in the maddened light.

‘What’s that?’

Her eyes follow his.

She realises she’s clutching one of the photographs. The room is Charlotte’s bedroom and in the foreground is a face she instantly recognises: Jack. He’s looking back over his shoulder, smiling impishly into the camera lens.

‘I don’t know,’ she says automatically, but even as she utters the words, she knows that she does.

He gently takes the photograph from her, tipping it into the light. There’s a sudden glare of headlights and the photograph is lit in all its obscene clarity.

There in the background is Charlotte, naked and asleep on the bed, one arm sprawled above her head, one hand clutching the covers part-way across her breast as though seeking a little modesty. He pushes it back at her.

‘I don’t want to see that. I don’t want that filth in my head.’

There are shouts from the fire fighters and a group of police begin to swarm from their cars.

‘We’d better go and speak to them.’ He sounds utterly exhausted. ‘Or I will. Yes, you stay here, Frankie. They’re going to want to talk to both of us, but I’ll tell them we’re going to the police station.’

She watches him walk slowly towards the officers, his gait leaden with weariness. They can’t escape. She leans her head back against the head rest. Martin is a black outline against the blaze of lights. Groups of people in their dressing gowns have gathered on the pavement to watch. Every face is a mask of disbelief. Somehow, in the midst of the horror, she feels a kind of appalling relief that Chloe is safe, that Vanessa is with her—

But Jack.

She can’t get his face out of her head. Jack. What he told them; none of that could be true, could it? She knew Jack. He was kind to her. They laughed together, chatted together. The person in that house tonight wasn’t the boy she knew. She starts to cry, the tears and sobs choking and unstoppable down her face as the recollection of what took place tonight plays over and over. He caused such unbearable suffering, such horror… how could he have done all that? Jack – The other Jack. The one she didn’t know. The tears start to flow, as the darkness of her reflection stares back at her in the window. She rests her forehead against the glass, grinding the bone until it’s painful.

‘What didn’t you see, though?’ a voice inside her says. ‘How blind are you? You never see what’s right in front of you.’

Chapter Twenty-Nine

‘We’re holding your boyfriend for questioning.’

Frankie’s eyes follow D.S. Markham as she walks around the table and sits down opposite her again. ‘Can I get you a cup of tea?’ She smiles casually, as though they are a couple of old friends