After the screaming, the two of them might even start working out the terms of their split. Ben was very practical and Dominique was clearly a cold fish, so it made sense that they would start thrashing things out immediately. Splitting their assets, working out access to the children, there was a lot to consider. It could potentially go on way past the small hours.
Kendra needed to be more patient; she would hear something soon. She gave herself a hug, poured a large glass of gin and tonic and settled down to watch P.S. I Love You.
And checked her phone every now and again.
Eighteen
Ruby’s pen flew over the pages, vitriol spewing so fast it weaved over the lines. No chance of sleep – there never was lately, so she put the time to good use. On the front of the black cover she had scrubbed out the word ‘Diary’, stuck a red rectangle of paper over it. ‘Book of Hate’ now adorned it, in spikey black lettering.
Mouse is such an interfering little brat. Sneaking around in my room, trying to get me into even more trouble with Mum and Dad. Like I give a stuff what they say anyway. I wish they was dead. I wish I was dead, she wrote.
Now she was banned from seeing Harry. No way. Meeting Harry had been like seeing the stars and the moon up close and being blinded by them. She felt as if the secrets of the universe had been revealed to her. Being without him now would be leaving her in the dark once again, and the thought of going back to that made her shiver.
Never in her life had she felt so close to anyone; at the moment she had felt most alone, he had appeared. They had so much in common.
Nobody else liked him because he was annoying. Until he came along no one ever listened to me, she scribbled.
She surrounded the statement with love hearts, then realised how dorky that was and turned them into stars instead, which was slightly better.
Behind the goofy smile, Harry was clever. Maybe not academically, his grades were poor, but he was really quick and sharp. He seemed to know what was going on in her head better than she did. Which was why trying to keep the texts hidden from him was proving such a major pain in the backside.
Her parents were completely oblivious to the messages – and determined to ruin her life. They were the ones who had insisted on sending her to that expensive private school when she was eleven: Tennyson’s Exclusive School for Girls. It had almost destroyed her. She felt she was being rejected by her parents, especially as she didn’t even need to board overnight, because it was only a mile or so down the road. Father had been adamant it ‘added to the experience and made her a more rounded character’.
After three years, Ruby felt so rounded she wanted to roll under a stone and die.
Finally, she screwed up her courage, and confessed to her parents how she hated being away from her family at night, even though she was home every weekend. That she missed her little sister most of all. She had been four when Ruby went away, and starting school herself. Almost every weekend when Ruby came home, she could discern a change in Mouse: she had grown a little taller, learned something new, found a different game to play together, there was always something. Ruby was happy that she was happy at school, but worried, too. She needed to be home more, to keep an eye on things.
All of that was true. But it wasn’t the main reason why she was desperate to leave. She would never tell them the real reason.
Instead, she had begged and pleaded until her father had offered a deal. If Ruby got her grades up from Ds and Cs to Bs, she could attend a different school.
The relief.
It would be a challenge. Ruby wasn’t the most gifted person in the world academically, and knew it would be a miracle if she did it. But she had worked her socks off, sometimes doing homework until past midnight, spurred on by her dad’s promise. And she had done it. She’d got Bs in all of her subjects. All except maths. She was really, really bad at maths, but through sheer determination and a lot of tutoring, she managed to get a C and was overjoyed.
When she had given her parents her report card, she had been full of hope that her efforts would be worth it. That they would see how hard she had tried. That she had done everything that had been asked of her.
‘What about this C in maths?’ her dad asked.
He hadn’t even commented on the other grades, apparently blind to the huge improvement she had made.
In his eyes, she would always be a failure.
He had stood his ground and refused to let her leave the private school because he said she hadn’t kept her side of the bargain. She felt utterly betrayed by him.
To ‘encourage’ her to try harder, he had even persuaded the school to no longer allow her to be captain of the netball team.
‘To teach you that you can’t always get what you want,’ he had said.
She knew that for sure. Ruby never, ever got what she wanted, even when she did as she was told.
If her dad hoped that no longer doing the one thing she loved would concentrate her mind academically, he failed miserably. Ruby gave up trying. Why bother, when she couldn’t win no matter what she did?
She had got herself expelled in the end, thanks to getting drunk one night. When she first met Harry she’d told him about it, all full of bravado and making it sound dead cool. Only later had she told him the full story. A gang of the cool girls, led by Poppy Flintock, had been drinking and Ruby had been so desperate to impress them that she had joined in. She’d been delighted when they let her, thinking they were finally going to be her friend. But they’d got her to drink loads. Cheering and egging her on, telling her she had to finish a bottle of vodka as an initiation – that would prove she was good enough to hang out with them.
She’d done as they asked, not noticing that they were barely sipping their own alcohol. Once she was off her face, the giggling gaggle of bitches had then dobbed her in to a teacher. Led one right to her as she lay face down in the toilets, in a pool of her own vomit. Of course, they had only called a teacher once they had taken some video footage of her and a ton of photos to post online.
Father had been furious, but at least Ruby had got what she wanted – to leave all of her troubles behind and enjoy a fresh start at a local state school.
What a joke.
She should have realised that there is no clean slate in cyberspace. Videos do not disappear simply because you move away. There is nowhere to run and hide, no matter how far you go. Beginning at the new school in September had been the starter gun for matters getting even worse.
Beside her, her phone buzzed silently with a message, as if confirming her thoughts. She stiffened. Turned it over, to lessen the temptation to look at it. Carried on writing in her ‘Book of Hate’.
Thank goodness I have Harry. He has taught me how to cope. He tells me the way things really are, and makes everything so clear. Just a week or so after meeting, our first attack took place. That was the real turning point of our friendship. The point where we fell in love.
Bloodshed tends to bond people. One way or another.
She drew some love hearts around that sentence.
Nineteen
The rattling cry of the magpie sounded outside. Like it did every morning. Benjamin clenched his teeth, and turned over to stare at the alarm clock. He had been wide awake already but that didn’t stop him from wanting to shoot that bloody bird. Its call was the precursor to the alarm going off, and another day officially starting. He couldn’t face having to get up and try all over again. It being a Saturday made it all the harder somehow, thinking that the rest of the world was relaxing and having fun while he slogged it out.
Another guttural call came from outside. No light was seeping around the edges of the curtain. It was dark still outside, too early to get up yet. Why did the bird sit on the roof above his window every morning anyway? It was like a harbinger of doom. If he believed in that kind of thing. Which, of course, he didn’t. Successful people made their own luck.
As the clock’s digital read-out edged towards seven a.m., Benjamin t
urned the alarm off by touch alone. No point in waking Dominique yet. He gently pulled back the duvet and got up slowly so that the movement wouldn’t stir his wife. He couldn’t face her. Not yet. He needed time to gird himself for it.
Pausing as he scratched himself, he looked down at her face in the gloom. Smooth forehead, one hand resting on the pillow and slightly tangled in her long auburn hair, cupid’s bow mouth open the tiniest amount. She looked so peaceful.
Hate soured his blood.
The bitch didn’t have a care in the world.
Finding the energy to drag himself out of bed every morning was getting harder and harder for Benjamin. All he wanted was to curl up in a ball and cry. Crying was for wimps, though. Real men didn’t do that. So instead he got angry. Anger was a great force to power him. That and the fact that he didn’t want anyone to discover his lies. If people found out, everything would be lost.
As if Benjamin didn’t have enough on his plate, bloody Ruby was playing up again, too. He was sick of it. Why couldn’t she behave?
He put his shoulders back and didn’t shuffle to the bathroom; he strode, knowing that it would wake his wife. Good. He wanted her to realise he was still the virile, powerful man she had married.
He heard her sigh as she woke. The rustle of the duvet as she moved.
‘Good morning,’ she murmured sleepily.
Benjamin shut the door to the en-suite bathroom, pretending he hadn’t heard her. When he looked in the mirror, he fought to convince himself it was her he hated, and not himself.
As he did up his trousers, Benjamin had to breathe in, hoisting his gut up and in. Back in the good old days he had been something of a star on the rugby pitch, tackling people as a prop. He’d been solid muscle back then. Powerful and impressive. Now he had run to fat. Too many nights working late and scoffing dinner quickly before going to bed, exhausted. Too many corporate lunches with clients, eating rich food that gave him indigestion and heartburn so that he had to permanently live with a packet of Rennies in his jacket pocket.
With an audible huff, Benjamin let his breath out and his stomach sag. He slapped his hand on it, contemplating how his life had all gone wrong. He’d had it all worked out when he was a go-getting twenty-something, still lighting up the rugby field. When he had caught Dominique’s eye and swept her off her feet with his talk of how he was going to take over the world. By the time he was forty, he had told her, he would be a millionaire several times over. He would retire aged fifty-six, when all of his annuities were due to come to fruition, by which time the children he planned on having (a boy and a girl) would have both turned eighteen and be at university themselves, living independently, though still coming to their dad for advice because he would be their best friend.
The first disappointment had come, in fact, when Dominique gave birth to Ruby. He had wanted his son and heir born first, and hadn’t been entirely sure how he would connect with a daughter. But he’d convinced himself that she would, obviously, adore him, and that his son would come along soon.
It had been a long wait until Dom had fallen pregnant again. There had been talk of IVF, of mucking about with tests, and he hadn’t approved of that at all. If there was a problem, he didn’t want people finding out about it. Certainly, he didn’t want anyone thinking that it was he who had the problem. Benjamin was all man.
Not that he felt it lately.
After six long years of waiting, along had come Amber; their little Mouse. She was a strange one. He liked her more than Ruby, he admitted grudgingly to himself, then hastily reminded himself that he did love both his daughters very much – of course he did.
The truth was, his children were an enigma. Before fatherhood he had assumed he would automatically love his kids, and they would love and respect him. But they didn’t listen to a thing he said. They questioned things. They answered back, even when he gave them the simplest of instructions to follow. It was infuriating.
Benjamin had tried over the years to bond with his children. Neighbours would often have seen him in the park, when they were younger. He had tried to teach them how to throw and catch a rugby ball, but although Ruby had been keen at first, she didn’t have the sticking power and gumption to put in the hard work needed to be good. Such a shame, as she’d been fast and fleet with the ball. He had looked forward to those games in Greenwich Park, throwing the ball long to her; her face a picture of concentration as she followed it in the air, sprinting to get into place below it. Jumping and catching it, the elation in her eyes clear as the wind whipped her hair around her face. Dominique clapping her hands and calling encouragement, standing on the sidelines with Amber in her pram.
Afterwards, they would sit together with a little family picnic. Tired but happy, they’d look down the hill towards the Thames, sparkling in the distance, as they chatted and ate. Those had been wonderful days.
Then puberty had hit, and Ruby stopped wanting to play with her old dad. At first Benjamin had been disappointed – felt rejected, even – but he realised it was a waste of his valuable time teaching her. A girl would never become a great player and represent her country. And people might think it was odd if she got too good at it anyway – he didn’t want to be known to everyone as the bloke with the butch daughter.
Benjamin didn’t like to be different, he wanted to be exactly like everyone else. Only better.
Still, he had tried to be there for Ruby. Done his best to encourage her. When she had been struggling academically at school, instead of giving in to her demands to leave, he had insisted she stick it out. He had faith in her, knew that with enough carrot and stick she would get there. The worst possible thing for her long-term would be to give in, because then she would learn that failure was rewarded. He wanted her to realise that if she applied herself, she was capable of realising her dreams. So, he had made her stay at that private school, told her that she could leave only if she got good enough grades.
But she had let herself down.
Bad enough she had failed to get her grades, but to be thrown out for drunken behaviour was unforgiveable.
She was getting worse and worse, and he had no idea how to help her. Benjamin didn’t have time to pander to her, she needed to pull herself up by the bootstraps and get real.
He looked at himself once more in the mirror as he did his jacket up. The Savile Row suit fitted him perfectly, hiding the worst of his stomach and giving the impression of broad shoulders and slim-ish hips still. The blue tie exactly matched his eyes – which was the reason why he wore it.
He’d still got it, baby. He was still a winner.
If he played his cards right, no one would ever know what he had done…
Twenty
‘It’s an angel, playing a harp,’ cried Mouse, excitement making her shout, her slippered feet dancing. She moved to the next advent calendar, eyes darting around the picture of Santa and his reindeer pixellated by smaller images peering through windows. Where was today’s number?
Dominique smiled as she watched, and could see the tension of her daughter’s body as the hunter found her prey. Sharp nails picked at the edge of the cardboard door…
‘A beautiful snowflake! It’s all sparkly with glitter,’ she gasped. ‘And look, only seven days to go.’ She pointed to the inside of the door, which contained a countdown. Mouse was almost beside herself. ‘This time next week it will be Christmas.’
Unable to contain her glee, she curled up her fists and jumped up and down in her baggy-bottomed sleep suit.
Dom’s stomach dropped at the sight. What would Christmas be like, knowing Benjamin was carrying on with another woman? Even if she were ready to confront him, she would have to keep quiet for the children’s sake, so they could have one last festive season all together as a family. Even if it was a charade. Once Christmas ended she would tell Benjamin that she wanted a divorce.
Did she though?
Between worrying about her marriage and Ruby playing up, no wonder she had started sleepwalkin
g again. Dominique felt better for having warned Ruby off Harry, though. Dominique hadn’t had the chance to really get to know the other parents of children at the school, but she’d chatted with a handful who had been eager to fill her in on rumours about Harry and his no-good mother. They lived on a rough estate, Harry’s father had disappeared long since, and his mum had fallen apart and turned to drink – maybe even drugs. One mum had gleefully told her about a time a few years ago when Harry’s mum had been sacked from her job in a supermarket because she was slurring and clearly the worse for wear. It was disgraceful. The estate they lived on was well known as a drug den, too; it was always in the news. So, it was all too likely that Harry himself was dabbling. How could he not, raised the way he had been. The conversation she’d had with Fiona, far from soothing her fears, had added to them. Dom only hoped her rebellious daughter listened to her for once.
Still, part of her felt guilty. If she and Benjamin split up, then the teen was going to need all the support she could get. But the relationship with Harry was so intense it was almost claustrophobic.
No, it was the right thing to give her daughter some enforced breathing space. She was too young to get involved in a serious relationship, and when it inevitably fell apart, she would be devastated. Just like her mum felt. Better Dominique stepped in now and saved Ruby further pain in the future.
Right now, though, Dominique was going to enjoy Saturday with her youngest girl, who had now opened all her advent calendars.
‘Do you want to help me put up the decorations?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’ Mouse’s mouth formed a perfect circle of elation.
Her Last Secret: A gripping psychological thriller Page 7
