P Kane - Her Last Secret

He craned his neck to see what was going on, but this scene was also familiar to him. He’d filmed ones just like it, with the police flitting around, tape flapping and crowds gathered. There were even TV crews setting up in the distance, vans with logos on the side that he recognised – some of them competitors. How long before his station showed up? he wondered. And he thought briefly then that he should have let someone there know where he was going, what he was doing.

But he didn’t really know what was happening, did he? Not for sure. Had to find out for definite – that’s what all this was about. Something had clearly happened here, but that didn’t mean it was Jordan. Let it be someone else’s daughter, he thought, then felt terrible for even contemplating such a thing.

Enough. Time to get this over and done with, get rid of the lump in his throat and the fist that was opening and closing in the pit of his stomach. It was time to really go home.

Except it wasn’t his home anymore. The house he pulled up outside, when he’d finally got past the jams that were snarling up the centre of Redmarket, belonged to other people now. He remembered coming here with Julie, looking around with the estate agent: a simple three-bedroom semi, but it seemed like a palace to them after their flat. It had not long been built back then, but looked so old and tired now, maybe reflecting all the sorrow it had witnessed over the years.

Nothing as sad as this, though. Not if it was true.

It couldn’t be. Just couldn’t …

Even as he was getting out of the car, another door was opening. The front door he’d entered through and exited from so many times; once permanently. It wasn’t Julie standing there, however, it was Mathew Newcomb. A blast from the past, an old mate he hadn’t seen in …

A policeman.

That was when he knew for sure, when the lump and the fist became permanent additions.

That was when he knew it was his little girl they’d found dead in the market square last night.

The darkness was his friend tonight, he welcomed it.

That was one of the reasons Jake was sitting with the lights off, hadn’t bothered to even turn them on when he crashed in through the door. There was still enough light coming in from the window to see, to make his way to the edge of the bed, casting off his jacket as he went. He’d thought about one of the chairs, but reasoned – while he was still capable of doing so – that he would end up on the bed at some point anyway. Sooner rather than later, he hoped; he’d put the whole of this wretched day behind him and wake up the next morning to find it had all been some horrible nightmare. An anxiety dream, didn’t they call them?

Jake took another swig from the full bottle of whiskey he’d opened back in the corridor, pulling it from its plastic bag and ignoring the filthy looks some of the other people staying in the hotel were giving him. A place that hadn’t even been there when he was young, back before he and Jules had …

That was why he needed the darkness, because unlike those memories, unlike the past – dulled by time, by heartache – the ones from today were so, so bright. Like they’d been seared into his brain, would probably never, ever fade. And they hurt. By Christ, did they hurt, worse than anything physical he’d ever endured. These were wounds that wouldn’t, couldn’t ever heal as far as he could see.

And now, in spite of the way he was working his way down that bottle – having already been in the hotel bar the last few hours – those memories were playing out in front of him like a projector throwing out images on the cinema screen. Or a home cinema, like he had back at his own place: hi-def, the sound crystal clear. Maybe it helped to think of all this as a movie … No, he decided, shaking his head and almost falling off the end of the bed, it didn’t help at all.

That was still Matt, his old friend, now a copper, waiting for him when he pulled up outside his old home. Not some character in a script, not an actor playing a part, but his actual best buddy. Waiting there in the doorway to confirm his worst fears. That there hadn’t been some kind of mistake, a mix-up; you heard about those all the time in cases like this. Mistaken identity, people getting the wrong end of the stick. Families suing because of the trauma of getting it wrong.

But no. Matt’s face said it all. He knew this particular family, knew Jordan as well. He wouldn’t be putting them through this if there wasn’t just cause.

Jake couldn’t remember getting out of the car, or even closing the door again, locking it – that didn’t matter anyway, not in the great scheme of things – but suddenly he was at the door with Matt, who was just shaking his head. Didn’t have the words, clearly.

So Matt was stepping aside instead, letting Jake pass through. It felt weird to be back, and if this really had been a film he was directing or something, he would have noted how the carpets had changed; the wallpaper and pictures, photographs hanging from those walls. All reflecting how things had moved on, how it was no longer a place he shared with—

Suddenly there she was, in the living room: the woman he’d spent so many years with. The love of his life, he would have said at one time – still was, probably, there’d been no one else who’d been serious since her anyway. She was rising, albeit shakily, getting up off the couch. He was aware of someone else in the room, another woman standing, Matt saying something behind him, maybe trying to introduce her, something about liaising? Jake wasn’t really listening, because all he could see and hear was Jules.

Standing there, as striking as he remembered her with that auburn hair falling about her shoulders. Those freckles on cheeks that were still wet with tears, reminding him again why he was here. Her green eyes doing the same, moist, cloudy; looked like they could barely focus on him. Yet she knew who he was, instantly, just as he had when he walked in. There had always been that unspoken connection between them, they could always tell when the other one was nearby.

If he’d needed any more proof that she recognised him, she provided it by saying his name, though it came out as more of a squeak than anything; a noise that would have been comedic in any other circumstances. ‘Jake … Oh, Jake.’

She was shaking her head as well, just as he was back in that hotel again now – mirroring her actions, playing them out with her. Jake drank deeply from the bottle and watched as more of it unfolded, as he was about to go to her. About to take her in his arms and try to comfort her, if that was at all possible, drawn by that look on her face he’d seen many times before (not least when she’d told him she was pregnant), scared and in desperate need of a hug.

But then realising that there was yet another person in the room with them, someone who’d come through from the kitchen or even upstairs; yes, the sound of a toilet flush. Someone who’d shoved past Matt and caused Jake to start. Someone who’d skirted around this newcomer in his house. Who was stepping between them, ensuring that Jake could not reach Julie. Someone snaking a hand around her waist, not to try and tell her that it would all be okay, but telling everyone else that this woman was his property … that’s very much how Jake saw it, anyway.

The action made him feel physically sick and his eyes flicked away, coming to rest on another new addition to the décor of this house: their wedding photograph, Julie and Greg Allaway, the happy fucking couple. About two stone lighter in that, there was a meanness to the man’s face even back then. Jake had to ask himself again, as he did when he first heard the news: what the hell had Julie been thinking? And the answer, not that it was anything to do with him anymore, was that Greg had been there for her when Jake had not. But he also knew that in times of stress, people act hastily, act without thinking, and he had to wonder whether she regretted her decision now.