Keep My Secrets Page 19

  * * *

  For the next few days, she tried to let it all sink in. An excitement kept fluttering in her stomach. Could they? Could she do this? She forced herself to behave normally, but it was hard. She and Jack stayed away from each other. Vanessa was clearly losing patience with her. She began snapping angrily when she didn’t follow her instructions precisely: she wasn’t passing things over quickly enough, she wasn’t anticipating Chloe’s needs, she didn’t organise and manage her time properly… The list went on and on.

  ‘It’s just easier to do it myself,’ she kept saying. Peter was different with her too. Gone was the nice, smiley man. In his place was a man with strange eyes. Sometimes she caught him looking at her as if he couldn’t quite work her out. She wondered if he suspected anything. Jack was right. Jack had been right all along. Jack could make this happen. They really could leave. So she just had to put up with it all for a little while longer… It wouldn’t be long now…

  Each night, she secretly packed bits and pieces for herself and Chloe into a tote bag that she kept stuffed down the side of the bed, leaving the zip in such a way that she would know if anyone had touched it. Each day she checked it minutely to make sure, and each time she checked she was instantly reminded of Martin. She couldn’t carry on like this. She had to get away and start again. The zip stayed just as she’d left it, but the memories of Martin stayed there too.

  Chapter Nineteen

  ‘This afternoon.’

  ‘What?’

  She was folding Chloe’s clothes trying to follow Vanessa’s instructions so that she wouldn’t moan at her again.

  ‘It’s this afternoon,’ Jack whispered over her shoulder. ‘Make sure everything’s ready. We’ll leave at different times, but we’ll meet up here.’ He gave her a piece of paper with an address on it. ‘This is the address of the friends I was talking about. These are the people who will help us.’

  She nodded quickly, shoving the paper into the pocket of her jeans.

  ‘One o’clock, yes? That just gives you an hour. Do you think you can manage it?’

  She nodded again and Jack kissed her cheek, the heat and excitement of his breath still warm on her skin as she heard him in the hallway calling out to Vanessa that he’d see her later.

  She carried on folding, not really aware of what she was doing and glanced at the clock. She knew why Jack had chosen today: Peter was at work, and Vanessa had told them she was going out to meet a girlfriend for lunch. She wouldn’t be back for a couple of hours, by which point they’d both be well away.

  Pulling out her phone, she found Uber and quickly tapped in the address as Vanessa clip-clopped down the stairs and into the kitchen carrying a laundry basket.

  ‘What a mess you’ve made of that!’ she laughed, glancing at the pile. ‘Leave it, I’ll do it when this lot’s dry.’

  Frankie quickly slipped the phone back into her pocket; her face felt hot and bright.

  But then she caught sight of the laundry basket.

  ‘My friend cancelled at the last minute,’ Vanessa shrugged. ‘Very annoying. We’re going on Friday instead.’

  ‘Friday?’

  ‘Doesn’t make any difference to you though, does it?’ Vanessa hoisted the basket further onto her hip. ‘I’ll just put this load on the line and then it’ll be time for Chloe’s feed.’ She glanced up at the clock. ‘Won’t be a minute.’

  She watched dumbly as Vanessa went out of the back door to the washing line. Her brain went onto automatic pilot. Dropping everything, she raced up the stairs, dragged out the tote bag from the side of the bed and then gently scooped up Chloe and wrapped her in a load of blankets. Lifting her onto one shoulder, she pulled out her wallet and opened it. There were some pound coins but not much else. Head buzzing, she carefully made her way back down the stairs, peering along the hallway to make sure Vanessa was still in the garden. She glanced down; Vanessa’s open handbag hung from the stair post with her purse sitting on the top. Dipping her hand in, she pulled it out, swinging the tote bag onto her back and making for the front door. She hurried down the path, finding her phone and checking the time. She was too early for the Uber. She snapped a look up and down the street, praying and hoping—

  ‘Frankie?’

  A car drew up, its indicator flashing.

  There was Peter, his window was down with his anxious face filling the gap. She looked around desperately, her heart hammering.

  ‘Are you off somewhere? Hang on, isn’t that Vanessa’s purse?’

  Chloe started to cry. Her wails rang up and down the empty road as Peter bounced out of the car, abandoning it, and marched across the road towards her. She began to back away, dropping the purse, the cards scattering into the gutter. Her backing away broke into a run; Chloe started screaming. Peter was shouting things that made no sense about lying and betraying. if she could get around the corner she could lose him… Chloe’s screams went up a pitch – she was really bawling now – and then suddenly all hell broke loose. She glanced back. Vanessa was pelting up the street towards them, her white face frozen into a mask of terror. Frankie looked frantically: left and right, but there was nowhere to go. She felt Peter’s hand gripping her arm, swinging her round as his words tumbled thick and fast through the air. He was incandescent: What was she thinking? Running off with a new-born premature baby? Where in god’s name did she think she was going? There were accusations of theft, of putting Chloe in danger, threats to ring Jude and social services—

  ‘No, Peter! No! Stop this!’ Vanessa was shrieking.

  Chloe was beside herself. She was yanked from Frankie’s arms. Peter was shouting and shouting. He grabbed the phone from her hand and they both watched as the piece of paper fluttered to the ground.

  He immediately recognised the writing.

  ‘Jack.’ He looked at Vanessa, breathing heavily. ‘Jack. She was going with Jack.’

  Within seconds she found herself back inside the house and Peter turned to dead-lock the front door.

  ‘You have no idea, do you?’ He glared at her. ‘You’re just a stupid, stupid girl.’ He stared down at her phone for a moment. ‘Ring him,’ he said bluntly. ‘Ring him and tell him to get himself here before I do something terrible.’

  * * *

  Jack stood in the centre of the living room with his head hanging and his shoulders slumped.

  ‘Tell her.’

  He couldn’t even lift his head to meet her eyes.

  ‘Tell her,’ Peter commanded. ‘Tell her what will happen to you if you leave this house.’

  Jack’s face was bright red. She thought he might be crying. He sniffed. Her heart nearly broke.

  ‘If I ever leave this house…’ he choked.

  There was a pause.

  ‘Go on. What? Say it Jack.’

  ‘If I leave this house, I’m dead.’

  She stared at his blood-red cheeks in horror. ‘Why? I don’t understand—’

  ‘I got involved with dangerous people – I mean, seriously dangerous. Drug people—’

  ‘What?’ She couldn’t take it in.

  ‘I-I saw what Martin Jarvis was doing with his little deals here and there, and it looked so easy. I thought doing small stuff was stupid – I thought I was cleverer.’ His eyes lifted toward his father and then batted away again. ‘I got way out of my depth really quickly. I got in very deep shit. My dad has had to pay them off every month.’ His shoulders hunched around his ears. ‘I have to stay here and out of circulation. If they find me back on the streets again, they’ll kill me.’

  Peter snorted. ‘Exactly. I have to pay your debt. All our savings, my job and all my future earnings.’ He waved a hand around the room. ‘This house and everything in it so that you won’t die some horrible, tortured death.’

  Jack nodded dumbly.

  ‘So what the fuck is this?’

  She had never heard Peter use that kind of language before.

  He bent and picked up a holdall from behind the chair and drop
ped it onto the coffee table. It hit the glass with a thud. Reaching to unzip it, Peter upended it, shaking out three brick-sized rectangular packages.

  A jolt of alarm shot through her.

  Jack’s eyes didn’t move.

  ‘So what was the plan?’ He glared at him. ‘I have nothing else to give, Jack.’ Peter’s voice trembled with anger and fear. ‘Nothing else. It’s all gone. All that’s left now is your life, and I would have honestly, truthfully, given mine for yours. You’re my son. But not this time. This time you’re out on the streets; you’re gone. You can take your chances out there.’ He thumbed over his shoulder.

  Jack stared at Peter and then at Vanessa in shock. No one said anything. The only sound was Vanessa weeping and Peter’s ragged gasp of emotion.

  Then she heard Jack take a breath.

  ‘It’s mine.’ She heard her own voice leaving her throat as though it was coming from someone else. Jack’s head snapped up in shock. She wouldn’t look at him. She had no real idea what she was saying.

  ‘That’s why I needed to see Martin in the cells that last day at court.’ The words slipped easily from her tongue. ‘It was all to do with Martin. It’s nothing to do with Jack.’

  She couldn’t allow Jack to be punished after all that he’d done for her. She looked from Vanessa to Peter. She could see they wanted to believe her. Vanessa’s mouth was open and unchecked tears were streaming down her face. She made no attempt to stop them. Tiny whimpering cries left the back of her throat. Peter only stared at her stonily.

  ‘Don’t call the police or social services. I’ll leave now,’ Frankie said quickly. ‘No one has to know anything. I can make all this go away. I’ll be out of your lives and you’ll never have to see me again.’

  She bent to pick up the packages, pushing them inside her jacket and then picked up Chloe’s blanket from the arm of the chair. ‘I’ll be gone, Chloe will be safe, I’ll make sure of that, and… I’m sorry,’ she added quickly. ‘I’m sorry for everything I’ve done. I’m not a bad person, you have to believe—’

  But Peter cut her off.

  ‘You’re not taking Chloe.’

  Her spine stiffened. ‘What?’ She straightened jerkily.

  ‘You’re not taking her.’

  She stared at him and then at Jack.

  ‘You’re not capable of looking after a tiny baby. You’re associated with drugs and murderers and chaos. She wouldn’t be safe with you. We can give her security and love and every chance to be happy. You can’t give her any of that.’

  ‘You can’t…’ She felt her mouth trembling. ‘She’s mine. I’m nearly eighteen. You can’t…’

  ‘You’re seventeen and you’re in our care. Once you’re eighteen,’ he waved dismissively, ‘I shouldn’t think they’ll even remember you were on their books. Girls like you don’t exist. They live in squalor, they die in squalor, and apart from being a number on a benefit claim, no one even knows who they are.’

  ‘No. You can’t do that. She’s mine, I’m taking her.’

  ‘Okay then, Frankie, you take her.’ He folded his arms. ‘The moment you set foot outside that door, I’ll be ringing the police and social services about everything you’ve done. You’re already on their database, remember? You’re the girl who’s been in trouble all her life who no one wanted to adopt; you’re the girl in a relationship with a murdering rapist, the girl who watched our daughter being attacked and did nothing to help her. You lied, you manipulated us. You’re that girl, Frankie.’

  The breath wouldn’t leave her lungs.

  ‘You’ve got several kilos of coke there,’ he nodded at her jacket, ‘with your fingerprints all over them. You’ll keep Chloe for a while until you go inside and then she’ll be taken into care and probably be adopted. You’ll have no idea where she’s gone or who she’s with, or even if she’s still in this country. You know as well as I do, they’ll cut all contact with you because it’ll be in the best interests of the child. You know the reality. So – there we are. Walk out of here now and take that filth with you. Be a rubbish mother – we’ve seen all the evidence for that.’

  ‘No… No, Peter, please!’ The tears began to flood down her face. She gulped painfully.

  ‘Or, alternatively, tell Jude and the local authority that you’re still living here and Chloe’s fine. That way you might get to see her again. We’ll be reasonable. We’ll give you money to live on. We’ll act as guarantors for landlords and suchlike. You won’t starve or be on the streets. We’re reasonable people.’ His smile wasn’t pleasant. ‘The choice is yours, Frankie. You helped that man take our daughter, now we take yours. It’s entirely up to you.’

  Chapter Twenty

  Now

  Frankie stares through the grimed windscreen listening to the intermittent rush of cars passing on the main road. Jack is quiet beside her. She can tell they’ve both been thinking about the past. He reaches into his jacket and draws a rectangle of white paper out.

  ‘I thought you’d like this.’

  She turns it over. It’s a photograph of a young girl. The sunlight is behind her; her hair is like a curly blonde halo. She’s wearing a sunhat and is squinting off into the distance.

  ‘I took it when she wasn’t looking.’

  Frankie realises her thumb has creased the paper, from gripping it so hard. ‘This is Chloe now?’ She looks at him in wonder and then back at the photograph. She sees herself in that face, around the mouth and chin. Her heart clenches with another emotion: she sees she has Martin’s eyes. She traces a finger down her cheek. ‘Oh my god, Jack. You don’t know what this means.’

  ‘I can imagine.’

  ‘You were always so kind to me. I don’t know what I would have done without—’

  But he puts a hand on the photograph. ‘Please stop. I should have done more, had more balls. I was spineless. I know you must hate me. I caused you years of pain.’

  She looks across at him. She can see how awful he feels.

  ‘After everything that happened, I think I was in shock for a long time…’ She speaks slowly, choosing her words carefully. ‘It was as though I couldn’t think, couldn’t feel stuff. And then, I have to admit, I was angry: beyond furious, particularly the way Peter and Vanessa stopped me from seeing Chloe after they promised I could. But you weren’t to blame for their actions, Jack. You were at the mercy of them in the same way that I was. Think of us – we were bits of kids, that’s all! How could we have taken on Peter? A man that worked for Children’s Services, for pity’s sake! There was no way!’

  Jack shakes his head angrily. ‘You know what really gets me? There he was with a job like that; with power like that, all those people falling over themselves to hang on his every bloody word – and yet at home, what had he got? A son he could walk past in the street and a step-daughter he obsessed over.’ His face goes hard and dark.

  ‘And the danger you were in from those people, Jack! What happened to you?’

  He looks out of the window. ‘Well, I’m still here and breathing, so I clearly have my uses.’ His mouth sets in a grim line and he shakes away whatever thoughts have gathered. ‘You remember that address you went to… Sean’s house?’ Frankie nods. ‘Well, I picked up the packages from there. My dad thought he’d paid my debt and that would be it – Of course my dad is naive about these things – The truth is I’m caught in their net until the day I die.’

  Frankie shakes her head, appalled.

  ‘Which is one of the reasons I’m here now.’

  ‘Why? What do you mean?’

  Jack hears the panic. ‘Hey… No… I didn’t want to scare you, it’s just—’

  ‘What’s the matter?… Has something happened? It’s not Chloe is it?’

  ‘No, she’s absolutely fine. She’s happy. She’s a very together kid.’

  ‘So what is it?’

  ‘It’s my dad, he’s—’ He breaks off, shrugging.

  Frankie looks at him. ‘What?’

  ‘He’s got problem
s. Serious problems. It got so bad that he and Vanessa split up.’

  ‘But I thought…?’ She replays the earlier phone conversation. She had no inkling.

  ‘Things with him got worse after you left. I did tell you I thought that might happen, didn’t I?’ Jack looks out through the windshield at the empty street. ‘High-powered job, loads of stress and totally unsuited to that kind of work. He was a ticking time-bomb waiting to explode.’ He blinks away at the houses. ‘I think he had some kind of breakdown when Chloe was about five. That was the catalyst for it. He was hospitalised on and off for the next five years and then they finally parted. I got to see a bit more of my dad then. It was nice, y’know?’ He looks across with a sad smile. ‘Without Vanessa controlling him. I got my dad back. But then—’

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘It was the obsession with Martin Jarvis; it brought them back together: Jarvis came up for parole. It’s been like a wound for them both that would never heal.’ He looks at her. ‘But Chloe has been like a bright light in the middle of their darkness. She’s kept them going. They’ve told her she’s adopted; I don’t think she’s asked many questions. She thinks her dad died.’ He shakes his head. ‘They don’t want her to know the truth.’

  ‘And me?’ she blurts suddenly. ‘What have they said about me?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  He looks away but she knows he’s lying. The thought crucifies her. She suddenly can’t bear to hear any more. Her hands come up to her eyes to try and shut it all out.

  ‘Hey… Frankie.’ His hand reaches out for hers again and she feels the comforting warmth. ‘Stop punishing yourself.’

  She nods, knowing all the time that she can’t.

  His palm flinches for a second and he takes a breath.

  ‘Listen to me, Frankie. I have to tell you what’s going on.’

  ‘What?’ Her heart thuds.

  ‘My dad, like I said: he’s not thinking straight; he’s not in his right mind. He lost his job, his friends, his self-respect. Jarvis comes up for parole, and then Vanessa’s back on the scene—’ He pauses. ‘Things happened. He ended up in court and got sent down.’