Her Last Secret: A gripping psychological thriller

by Barbara Copperthwaite

  A Manchester man who beat his father to death while asleep.

  A chef who woke to discover he was hitting his wife with a claw hammer.

  A New Zealand father who strangled his four-year-old son and killed the poor mite, before his shocked wife woke him as he attacked their other child.

  Homicidal somnambulism was the technical term, apparently. Dominique hoovered up the facts, each case scaring her but also making her more determined. Her family would not suffer at her hands.

  She put her tablet down and concentrated hard on her imagery rehearsal therapy.

  The gurgling noise was laughter. The shotgun in her hand was a broomstick. Ruby was wearing a red dress.

  Blood red.

  Seventy-Six

  Apart from the occasional bad dream, sleep had never caused Dominique any problems until Easter 1992. Back then, she had been such a different person, with a totally different life path mapped out. She was going to be on stage and screen, make it as a famous dancer. She was just coming to the end of her first year of studying dance at the University of Birmingham, and had loved every second of it.

  One night during that Easter, a noise had woken Dominique. Her eyes felt gritty as she blinked them open, and she gave a sigh, not worried, only annoyed. She lived in a houseshare with five other students, so it was no big shock that someone was sneaking around.

  Hang on…

  Her sleep-addled brain took a moment to catch up. There wasn’t anyone to make a noise. Everyone else had gone home for the long weekend, but she had decided to stay behind to get some extra practice done. A career as a professional dancer was all she had dreamed of since she was a child.

  It had felt wonderfully indulgent to have the entire house to herself, and she had taken full advantage the previous night and day. Leaving the washing-up, knowing that there was no one to nag her. Buying a carrot cake as a treat and leaving it in the fridge in the knowledge it wouldn’t have disappeared as if by magic the second her back was turned. She’d sung along with Bryan Adams to ‘Everything I Do, I Do It For You’ at the top of her voice. Later she’d gone to Blockbuster and hired a video, then spent an indulgent evening watching Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves, with no one to interrupt.

  It had been wonderful having the large 1930s semi-detached house to herself.

  Which begged the question: why could she hear someone moving around downstairs?

  Someone must have broken in.

  Her heart thumped in her throat, seeming to cut off her air supply. What should she do? The only phone in the house was downstairs. Only show-offs and rich businessmen had mobiles.

  Maybe she should hide. In the dark, she ran blindly through all the possible places in her room. The wardrobe had a small mountain of shoes in the bottom; there was no way she could clamber on top of it without stumbling and making a noise. Under the bed would involve pulling out the random items she had shoved under there – her suitcase; the step for her exercises; a couple of boxes of jumpers that were too bulky to fit into the tiny chest of drawers.

  No, hiding wasn’t an option. The noise was getting closer. Soft footfalls on the carpet. The creak of the floorboard outside her bedroom door. Low voices.

  She was trapped. To escape would mean running right past whoever was in the house. Thieves, rapists, murderers.

  Scream. She should scream for help. She’d be lucky if anyone heard her. Unless she threw the window open, and then yelled. Yes, she’d do that. She grabbed the corner of the duvet to fling it back – and saw the door handle moving downwards.

  Panic. She curled into a ball and hunkered under the duvet like a child. Felt sick with nerves. She was the mouse, quivering in fear of a cat, knowing that any second could bring death. Her back was against the cold of the wall, but she stayed still, holding her breath. Hoping, praying, that the intruders would not look closely at the heaped-up duvet.

  The sound of the door opening. Time seemed to stretch out.

  A rush of cold air. A feeling of exposure as the duvet no longer protected her. A loud expletive from somewhere in the darkened room.

  Dominique stared up at two torches, unable to see behind the blinding yellow discs filling her vision.

  ‘I thought you said this place was empty,’ hissed one voice. A man’s, with local accent.

  ‘Shut up.’ Another man. Older. More in control.

  A torch’s pool of light grew larger, heavy breathing closing in, bringing the smell of cigarettes and the faint whiff of beer.

  ‘You’re going to stay nice and quiet. Because if you make so much as a peep, I’ll cut you. Understand?’

  A whimper was her only reply.

  She didn’t think to scream. Didn’t imagine for a second taking them by surprise by jumping up and bolting past them. Her mind was as frozen as her body.

  Please, don’t hurt me.

  ‘You’re going to count to 500, and then you’ll be free, okay? Move before 500 and we’ll be back, and we’ll slice you from ear to ear. Tell me you understand.’

  A finger ran light as a butterfly over her skin to demonstrate. She opened her mouth. All that came out was a croak.

  Sliced from ear to ear. The agony. The blood pouring down her face. They’d laugh, enjoying her mutilation.

  ‘Start counting when we get to the top of the stairs.’

  The two men backed away. She could only guess from the difference in torch heights that one was taller than the other.

  ‘One, two, three…’

  Stairs creaking. Front door opening.

  ‘… thirty-seven, thirty-eight…’

  No sound of the front door closing. Had they really left? She imagined them downstairs, waiting for her to mess up, waiting for her to move before she reached 500.

  ‘… one hundred and twenty, one hundred and nineteen…’

  Wait, she’d messed up the counting, her mind so numb it refused to function properly.

  ‘Move before 500 and we’ll be back, and we’ll slice you from ear to ear.’

  She didn’t dare make a mistake and move too early. She didn’t want to die or be sliced. She’d have to start again.

  Dominique didn’t stop once she reached 500, continuing on to 1,000 in the darkness, using her shivers to keep time. Even then, she waited some more. Listening. Clutching at her hair to try to stop her head from bursting with terror.

  When she crept downstairs, she didn’t stop by the telephone. Instead, she bolted through the wide front door and finally let rip to the screaming fear inside her, hammering on the door of a neighbour until they opened up to find her a gibbering, sobbing wreck on their step.

  * * *

  The police had been called. As she sat at her neighbour’s kitchen table – a neighbour she had previously not even said hello to – she sipped over-sweet tea and gave her statement.

  Only as they probed her did she realise – she hadn’t even seen a knife. Had they really had one? Why hadn’t she fought back? Why had she believed them? Why had she frozen instead of screaming for all she was worth?

  The police told her she had done the right thing. Her parents, when they arrived pale and trembling-lipped, said she had done everything she could. Fiona came to visit her, leaving her own law studies, and gave her a stern talking to that obsessing over the past wasn’t going to change the present – that she was alive and safe and should be bloody grateful.

  But the guilt and anger at her own helplessness ate away at Dominique. She was furious, not with the burglars but with herself.

  In her mind, the scene played over again and again. If only she had done this… If only she had done that… If only…

  Even in sleep, she couldn’t escape. Her dreams morphed into nightmare reruns. Over time they transformed into something even worse, as if the reality were not a scary enough scenario any more and her mind needed to really torture her. The men no longer left. They carried out their threat. Cold steel sliced across her flesh. Sometimes slow, sometimes fast, sometimes the blade forced into he
r mouth and tugged sideways to give her a ‘smile’. Occasionally they held her down and raped her. She never fought back, frozen by her own abject terror.

  She grew used first to waking up screaming, then to waking in the middle of her room, standing by her bed, arms raised as if warding off a blow, heart pounding. Sweat poured from her. This became her nightly routine. She hated to close her eyes, dreaded going to bed, did everything she could to avoid it. She felt as if she were going mad from lack of sleep, yet it was the very thing she dreaded more than anything – anything other than being left alone. Only leaden exhaustion drove her to close her eyes, and then it was generally in front of the television.

  Her parents stayed with her at university, at first, then her friends offered to do shifts to make sure she was never left alone. It wasn’t enough. Within a month of the attack she had quit her course, unable to face her old room or former life.

  Weight dropped off Dominique. She became obsessed with being in control of everything, from researching what she bought, to the food she put in her mouth. Everything had to be perfect, because only then could she relax and know she and no one else ruled over her life.

  Still the dreams haunted her. Dominique started to sleep with a knife under her pillow, her fear growing with every nightmare, the ‘what ifs’ looming larger each time she closed her eyes. If anyone got in again, she’d be ready.

  * * *

  Two months after the attack, at the end of the semester, Fiona returned to her parents’ home for the long summer break. She tried her best to encourage Dominique to get out of the house.

  ‘Let’s have a night out. Bit of dancing will cheer you up.’

  ‘A dark room full of strangers and flashes of light. No way. I’m sorry.’

  Just the thought made her tremble.

  ‘Okay, well, how about a sleepover? I’ll bring over a couple of bottles of wine, we’ll have a night in, put the world to rights, maybe watch some films. Hmm?’ She wiggled her eyebrows.

  Dominique caved. ‘Okay, that sounds good.’

  They had a good time and for a few wonderful hours the teenager felt herself relax. There were entire sections of the evening where her mind didn’t creep back to the time she had woken in the darkness.

  The giggling pair went to bed merry, Dominique in her bed and Fiona on the floor beside her. They chatted until the words grew slower and heavier and both drifted into the land of nod.

  * * *

  The dream that night had been horrific. In it, she could hear the noise outside coming towards her. The two men, their faces visible this time, features melted like something from a horror film, breath fetid. This time she wasn’t going to go down without a fight. The confidence of seeing Fiona soared through her veins.

  They grabbed hold of her arms, smashing her with promises of what they were going to do, the pain they would inflict with the huge hunting knife they pressed against her flesh. She fought with everything she’d got. Lashing out, kicking and screaming. The weight on her grew, but she was wild with adrenaline and terror. Kicking free, her hand slipped beneath the pillow and she slashed at the closest assailant.

  A high-pitched scream rang out. Dominique’s eyes flew open. She was transported back to reality. Only this time the blood hadn’t disappeared like it usually did. It had stayed, running down her arms. Fiona was standing in front of her, wrestling with her as they stood in Dominique’s bedroom at home. As truth sank in, Dominique realised she was holding something.

  The carving knife she kept under her pillow for protection.

  Shocked fingers sprang open. It dropped to the floor. Fiona, panting, glared into her eyes.

  ‘Dominique. Are you awake? Are you okay?’

  She nodded, slowly, as if still in a dream.

  ‘What’s happening?’

  ‘It’s okay… But we need to call an ambulance. You need to call an ambulance…’

  Fiona sank heavily on the bed. Blood oozed from her side.

  Dominique had stabbed Fiona.

  The wound had turned out to look worse than it was. A few stitches and Fiona was fixed up. Dominique had needed some too – in the struggle to disarm her friend, Fiona had twisted the knife around and Dominique now sported two lines on her arm as a result.

  The police had charged her with assault with a deadly weapon, but thanks to Fiona, along with expert testimony from Dr Madden and the London Sleep Clinic, she had been found not guilty.

  The scars of both women had faded silver. What hadn’t faded was Dominique’s terror of knowing she had no control over her own body, and that she was capable of stabbing her best friend. She could so easily have killed Fiona.

  After that, Dominique had retreated from the world, leaving behind her dreams of being famous and replacing them with a desire to stay at home and avoid stress. When she got together with Benjamin, it was perfect. A traditional man, he’d been happy she wanted to stay at home and raise children, and even in the years before she fell pregnant they had both been content for her to be keep house.

  * * *

  Now, though, Dominique’s night terrors were back and she was scared of who she might hurt next. What if Dr Madden was wrong? What if she ended up like those poor people she’d discovered during her Internet search; people who had taken the lives of loved ones while they slept. The Christmas lights blinked at her, giving no answer as she wrapped her arms around her legs and tried to find the courage to go to bed.

  What if, this time, she did kill?

  Seventy-Seven

  No matter how hard he stared at the whisky in the tumbler, it refused to give Benjamin any magical solution to his problems. His jaw ached as if he had lockjaw, from it being permanently clenched. He opened it wide trying to crack some of the tension away.

  He was in his study. Drinking. Again. Everyone else was in bed. He couldn’t face joining Dominique there. Wasn’t sure he could face her ever again. His grip on everything was slipping, and trying to keep hold of it all felt like trying to pin down water.

  He sighed and stopped staring at the glass; instead, turning his attention to the ceiling.

  A muscle in the far corner of his right eye twitched.

  He was going to become a father again.

  How could he even be sure it was his? It wasn’t like Kendra didn’t have plenty of time on her hands to have someone else on the go. Maybe she thought she was onto a good thing with him, that she’d struck gold. Over the years he had showered her with expensive presents, but only because he was trying to make himself feel vibrant by having a younger model on his arm and in his bed.

  Now they were having a child. No, she was having a child. There was no ‘they’. He should have ended things with her a long time ago, but he had become addicted to her, his hit of the elixir of youth. Both of them knew it wasn’t a deep and meaningful relationship, though; he had explained to her as soon as he confessed about Dominique, four years earlier, that he would never leave his wife and children, and Kendra had accepted.

  Still, he stared at the undeniably positive pregnancy test Kendra had gifted him, tied up with pink and blue ribbon. It sat on his desk, gazing back expectantly. Guilt stirred. He couldn’t turn his back on a child of his.

  Keeping it quiet from his family was going to be impossible. He was going to lose them, if not through this then because of his money woes.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw a huge countdown timer with red seconds of his life bringing him closer to zero. That was what he was going to be left with when all of this came out: a big fat zero.

  If he was lucky.

  For the first time in his life, Benjamin felt frozen with indecision and fear. He had always been the sort who acted on instinct, didn’t need to think too much. He was a big believer in ‘he who hesitates is lost’. Benjamin liked that attitude, it was one he could relate to. Usually. Not today though. He was on the ropes, no option but to throw in the towel.

  Was there an obvious trick he was overlooking? A scam he could pull to buy some
time? A deal he could land?

  There were no options left.

  All his hopes of where he would be by this age were shattered. As for the future, he would probably end up in prison, and be penniless when he finally got out. What would his kids – all three of them – think of him then?

  Liquidating his assets by selling the house, flat, cars, jewellery, wouldn’t happen fast enough. Plus, it would get him the money he needed for the taxman but not the rest of his debts, and wouldn’t change the fact that he would now be arrested for fraud and embezzlement, and was facing prison time.

  If he only had a bit longer, he was sure he could come up with something.

  Someone was moving about upstairs. Creeping around. He chucked back the whisky he had been cradling, and swallowed hard as he stood, letting the fury at his situation leap to the source of the footsteps: that Harry boy. He must have come sneaking back here again. Benjamin would teach him a lesson he’d never forget.

  * * *

  Silent as death, he climbed the stairs without turning the light on. He cursed the fact he had moved the shotgun from his study to under his bed, but he didn’t need it to deal with the skinny teenager. He couldn’t wait to get his hands on the little scrote.

  A figure was illuminated by the Tiffany lamp on the landing. But it wasn’t the man-child Benjamin had been expecting. It was his wife, sobbing.

  Her eyes were open but vacant. Poise, manner, expressions all seemed slightly altered, as though someone who looked identical to his wife had taken her place.

  She was sleepwalking. Crying over some imaginary scene playing out in her head. Even as she looked at him, he knew it. It was nothing he could put his finger on, and yet he knew, as only someone who has known and loved that person for twenty-two years can know.

  Benjamin’s anger transformed into pity. He crept towards Dominique, as if she were a wild animal that might take fright any second and bolt away from him. She responded to the soothing sounds, her tears slowing. When she seemed ready, he gently led her back to bed. Curled up beside her, he murmured nonsense and stroked her hair until she closed her eyes and fell into regular sleep once more.