The Secret Within: A totally gripping psychological thriller with a jaw-dropping twist

by Lucy Dawson

  We got going with the deeper tendon repair before turning our attention to the microvascular surgery, but it took time and once we’d finally finished re-knitting everything, I was hungry and tired. I wanted to be at home already and was making my way down the main corridor leading to the car park, when I noticed a man striding briskly some distance ahead of me. He stood out simply by virtue of the fact that most hospital visitors are slow, nervous walkers with no clue where they are going. They’ll often stop dead to inspect signs with no warning – or you come out of a lift to find them frowning at it in confusion, like they’re not sure what it does – only for them to shout ‘excuse me?’, right at the last minute when you’ve just disappeared round the corner, to ask for directions. This man walked with a confidence like he knew the place inside out. A couple of passing nurses greeted him and he stopped to speak to them.

  He still had his back to me but I watched their body language change in response to what he was saying. One of them made a face of mock outrage then pouted. The other put her head on one side and began to twist her hair flirtily round her finger, before he said something that made both women laugh louder than was necessary. I couldn’t help rolling my eyes. The exchange lasted seconds before the three of them parted company, but as he turned the corner and stepped into bright sunshine, I got a glimpse of cheekbones sharp enough to cut something on, amused, heavy-lidded eyes and a definite smirk. I couldn’t see if he cast a shadow or not, but the reputation behind him was clear as day.

  I quickly accosted the nurses as they walked past me.

  ‘Sorry to disturb.’ I smiled. ‘I don’t want to hold you up, but that man you were just talking to. He is?’

  They glanced between each other.

  ‘Nathan Sloan. Just back from his holidays. He’s—’

  ‘…one of our top plastic surgeons!’

  They were younger than I’d appreciated now I was up close to them; finishing each other’s sentences, fancying the doctors, misguided and inappropriate familiarity… I was reminded of my own junior days and felt bad for judging them. ‘Thank you, both.’

  I didn’t miss the ‘top’ reference though. Mr Nathan Sloan: the one consultant in the department I had yet to meet, with whom I’d be sharing an office…

  I sighed and carried on my way.

  OK, so one of my new co-workers was possibly a bit of a prick. This was not a problem. Pricks are everywhere; you can’t avoid them, especially in surgery. And being a prick does not make you a dangerous and reckless maniac who deserves to be in prison. This was NOT going to be a repeat of my experience at the Royal Grace.

  Nonetheless, I googled Nathan Sloan once I was back in the safety of the car and pulled up all of three lines of his NHS bio:

  Mr Nathan Sloan, Consultant Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon

  * * *

  A consultant for over fifteen years, his specialist interests include breast and microvascular reconstruction.

  Another quick search revealed he had a private practice in Exeter, providing a full range of cosmetic surgery. From the testimonials, he focused on breast augmentations and uplifts, although he also offered reconstructive work after trauma and cancer. It was all very uncontroversial stuff, apart from the most ludicrously glamourous picture of him giving blatant come-to-bed eyes to the camera. It was more like a headshot for a movie casting than a normal surgeon’s picture. But as private plastic clinics were entirely based on promoting enhanced appearances, I could hardly blame him from trading on his own good looks. It was all part of the package, so to speak. Even the nicest and most dedicated consultants undertook some private work. I saw nothing there that was cause for alarm. Plus, if he were to google me…

  I shivered briefly in my stupid short sleeves – and decided perhaps it was fairer to assume nothing about him at all, until I’d had time to form an opinion based on fact, rather than impression.

  With any luck, he’d afford me the same courtesy.

  My unexpectedly full-on Sunday of surgery made me doubly glad I’d requested Monday off to take Alex and Cass in on their first day of term. Cass was particularly nervous. Unlike Alex, she had enjoyed a consistent popularity at their old school. She was putting a brave face on it, but I knew she missed her Surrey friends. We also now had the added complication of Ewan being on site, both in a professional AND parental capacity, which was a big adjustment for all three of them to make. We’d decided in advance that it was important for him to keep a bit of distance, at least to give Cass and Al a chance before the other pupils realised they were related to the new, year three teacher, Mr Wilder; although it was such a comparatively small school, I was sure everyone must know already.

  Arriving horrendously early, as Ewan was due at a quick welcome coffee with the headmistress and another new member of staff before kick-off, the kids and I took ourselves upstairs to hang up their coats and orientate before everyone else arrived. Cass looked around the classroom in disbelief once we’d trailed up several flights of wooden stairs, polished from years of use, to the top of the school and found the door marked ‘8F’.

  ‘It’s even more tiny than I remember.’ She wrinkled her nose.

  ‘Cass!’ I said quietly. ‘Give it a chance.’ I knew she was only being prickly because she was nervous. ‘I think it’s really sweet.’

  ‘I think it’s mental.’ Cass glanced at the old-fashioned desks and the large sash windows overlooking the empty playground below. ‘It also smells funny.’

  That was true; the sweaty aroma of meat and vegetables already cooking, and on a large scale, had crept up the steep stairs behind us.

  Alex shrugged. ‘I like it,’ he said simply, and my heart swelled with hope.

  Please let this be the place where he would settle and make some kind, gentle friends.

  Cass rolled her eyes. ‘You would.’ She held up her coat. ‘So where am I supposed to put this?’

  I looked around me as a stocky teenage boy dressed in a blazer suddenly appeared in the doorway and stopped dead at the sight of Cass. His mouth literally fell open, and she gave him a withering look before glancing away. It was Alex who smiled and held his hand out.

  ‘Hi, I’m Alex!’ he said cheerfully. ‘I’m new here.’

  Cassia’s Nordic beauty seemed to have frozen their prospective classmate, however, and it was a few heartbeats more until he managed to tear his eyes from her and stare first at Alex’s extended hand then up at its owner. I attempted to keep casual and busied myself with finding my phone, which was starting to ring in my bag, while I prayed with my whole being for this boy to take my son’s gesture and not leave him hanging.

  The wait seemed to last a lifetime. I declined the call just as Cass sighed and stepped forward.

  ‘I’m his sister, Cassia.’ She offered the boy her hand too.

  He looked at her, flushed slightly and took hers first, then to my huge relief, shook Alex’s. ‘I’m Ben.’

  Cass nodded coolly and returned her attention back to me. ‘Like I said, where do I put this?’ She held up her coat again, and I mouthed a silent ‘thank you’ before saying aloud, ‘out here, I expect.’

  ‘They have actual pegs? No lockers?’ She was incredulous as we found a row outside the classroom. ‘And when do I get my phone back?’ She nodded at my bag as it began to ring again, before hanging her coat up with another sigh.

  ‘At the end of the day.’

  ‘What if there’s an emergency with Al?’ She folded her arms and looked at me, eyebrows raised.

  ‘There won’t be. It’s not going to be like St James. You’re not going to have to look out for him all the time anymore, Cass. I promise.’

  ‘Are you actually going to get that?’ she scowled at my bag.

  ‘No. It can go to voicemail. Even if there was a problem, Dad’s here now, isn’t he? You could just find him. But it’s going to be OK.’

  I reached out and tucked a piece of her hair back behind her ear. She flinched and quickly ducked away from me. A
s always, it was like trying to stroke a wild pony.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said. ‘You can go now. But can you please take Alex down to his form room with you? At least I don’t have to be in the same class as him here, I suppose.’ She still looked worried though, thirteen going on thirty.

  ‘He’ll be fine, Cass. Remember how friendly everyone seemed when we came to look round?’

  Just as I said that, an exceptionally slim and pretty woman in a trouser suit appeared at the far end of the corridor, called ‘Ben?’ impatiently, and when there was no immediate answer, stalked towards us at speed in her high heels, clutching a water bottle. She flashed the most perfunctory of smiles as she passed, enveloping us in a cloud of strong, floral perfume.

  Cass coughed and flapped the air melodramatically as the woman re-emerged without the bottle. She glanced at Cass and raised an eyebrow as I said ‘Morning!’ and smiled.

  She merely nodded at me, gave Cass another stare and walked off.

  ‘Yeah, Ben’s Mum seems super nice,’ Cass remarked, once she’d disappeared.

  ‘Point taken, but maybe just try and enjoy today? Give it a chance, you might like it?’

  Her eyes filled with sudden tears and she shook her head. ‘Enjoy today? Only someone who has forgotten what school is actually like and can’t imagine how it would feel to have to leave the one you were happy at, to start all over again, would say something like that.’

  ‘Oh Cass!’ I stepped forward guiltily, arms open.

  ‘Don’t!’ she hissed, moving back and wiping her eyes with her sleeves as we heard more voices approaching. ‘I’ll be fine. Just go! Please!’

  I did as I was told, taking Alex with me. My phone started up again as we made our way downstairs. I looked at the screen and sure enough saw ‘Dominic’.

  ‘Is that Dad ringing to speak to me?’ Alex said, with his usual pinpoint accuracy, trailing behind on the stairs.

  I took a deep breath. ‘Yes, it is. But you know what, Al? I think let’s call him back later. Don’t you? You’re a bit busy right now.’

  ‘He’ll have probably called me on my phone, but I gave it in at the front desk when the lady said “no phones allowed in school hours”. That’s why he’s trying you, I expect. Sorry, Mum.’ He pushed his glasses up his nose then gave me a spontaneous hug as we reached the corridor, his lanky arms wrapping tightly round me, before he pulled back and patted me affectionately on the head.

  ‘It’s fine, love, don’t worry about it.’ I declined the call as it began to ring again and smiled as another set of parents passed us. ‘The most important thing is that you have a great day – and I know you’re going to, OK? Now, let’s hang your coat up too, shall we? Well done! And where’s your bag?’

  I kept smiling even as I left the school, crossing over the busy car park, past small knots of parents who were catching up and chatting, feeling very conscious of my new role as Mr Wilder’s wife, not just Alex’s mum and Cass’s stepmother. My little family were all going to be OK, weren’t they? I thought about Alex being cheerful and Cass trying not to cry and felt suddenly near to tears myself.

  My phone began to ring for the hundredth time and I made a snap decision to bolt back to the car, rather than go in search of a quick coffee, as I’d planned. It simply wouldn’t do to have a row with my ex in front of everyone on the first day.

  I slammed the door shut and answered breathlessly. ‘Hello! Yes – I’m here!’

  ‘Finally!’ Dominic exclaimed. ‘I’ve been calling and calling! I want to say good luck to Al for his first morning.’

  I closed my eyes and mentally adopted the brace position. ‘He’s already gone in, Dom.’

  ‘What? But it’s not even eight a.m.! I’ve called loads on your AND his phone! You must have heard it! So you just ignored me?’

  ‘Of course not.’

  ‘I don’t believe this! You’ve been down there a week and already everything I said would happen, is happening. I’m being cut out!’

  ‘No one is cutting you out of anything. Ewan had to be in early today to have a coffee with the headmistress. That’s all.’

  Dominic laughed. ‘Whoa – hold up. So actually, I didn’t get to speak to my son on his first day – a really big deal – because your husband had a prior social engagement?’

  ‘A professional appointment. That’s different.’

  ‘Wouldn’t the easier thing all round have been for Ewan to get a job in one of the multitudes of schools in Surrey, so I could keep seeing my son and not have to live two hundred miles away from him?’

  ‘No, because MY new job is in Devon,’ I said patiently. ‘They’ve all come with me, not the other way around. You know this.’

  ‘Don’t do the patronising doctor voice,’ Dominic snapped. ‘And don’t make out like I’m overreacting either. I have every right to be concerned about my son’s education.’

  I sighed as I prepared myself for one of his rants, looking across the car park at the door of the school opening. Ben’s mother marched out, long black hair flowing behind her as she checked her watch, scowled and blipped a shiny Range Rover, before roaring off. The number plate was STORM 1. Did that refer to her name or nature?

  ‘You’re running away from your problems rather than facing them, which is forcing me to have to give up my relationship with my son,’ Dominic continued. ‘You’d done the hard part – they’d taken you back!’

  ‘But that’s the point, Dom! I forced them to acknowledge publicly that I wasn’t any of the terrible things they said I was, and that’s what made it possible for me to finally leave. No one would have employed me ever again if I hadn’t cleared my name first.’

  ‘No – you’ve taken Al away – you’ve deliberately manoeuvred me out of his life and I’m not going to stand for it.’

  ‘Oh, come on! You know that’s not true!’ I waited but there was no response. ‘Dominic?’

  He’d gone, hung up on me.

  I drove slowly home. As usual after an unexpected run-in with Dom, I felt jittery and slightly nauseous. I ate a couple of plain crackers from the box, standing up next to the larder because I couldn’t be bothered with making toast, only to regret my laziness when I decided to sit down to read the Sunday supplements I hadn’t managed to get around to the day before, with a cup of tea. Unfortunately, by the time I’d found my hydrocortisone cream and returned downstairs – I’d absently scratched and picked the eczema on the back of my hand until the red patches of skin were throbbing – the tea had gone cold. I gave up and looked around, distracted, unable to settle.

  I shouldn’t have taken his call – except he would only have kept on and on until I did. The newly naked branches of trees dancing madly around on the other side of the kitchen window caught my eye. The wind had picked up from nowhere, swirling golden leaves about our new walled garden. The sky had darkened against the old red bricks and it was obviously about to rain. So instead of going for a walk to clear my mind, as I’d planned, I started to attack the unpacking. I managed quite a bit and was making some good headway, as well as feeling calmer… until, while washing up my plate after lunch, I stopped dead at the sink, when Lise’s song suddenly came on the radio.

  I didn’t move – my rubber-gloved hands submerged in bubbles – just listened to the words telling me she loved me and hoped I would love her forever too. My sight blurred and I shook free of the gloves, wiping my hands first on my jeans, then the tears from my cheeks.

  I’m too old and jaded to believe in signs anymore – but I still closed my eyes, wrapped my arms around myself and imagined her hugging me. Before the music ended, I hurried out into the hall and picked up her picture, newly unpacked and on the sideboard; Lise cuddling a cherubic Cass, contentedly snuggled on her mother’s lap, sucking her thumb while my beautiful best friend flashed her killer smile for the camera, her naughty eyes dancing.

  Lise would tell me that the move was the right thing to do. I was certain of it. She’d say Dominic would calm down. Sh
e would also point out that life is too short to worry about things you cannot control.

  I wiped my eyes again, returned the photo and pulling on wellies and my mac to brave the stair-rod rain now determinedly falling, picked up my bag. I wanted to get something special for tea before heading over to collect the kids. I’d promised to take them out for a coffee shop cake, partly as a treat to mark the achievement of the first day, and also to allow Ewan enough time to finish up before coming to find us. It would be a back-to-front meal, pudding first and out, rather than at home, but it was good to shake routines up occasionally. I forced myself to breathe out steadily as the echo of Dom’s accusations rang in my ears.

  Nothing stays the same forever, thank God.

  I did the food shopping faster than I’d allowed for, but didn’t have quite enough time left to mooch around any of the nice clothes shops I’d noticed, so pulled up in the school car park early instead. Irritatingly, the sun had come out from nowhere, the sky had completely cleared and I was now uncomfortably warm in my boots and mac. On starting to slip my arms free, however, I noticed I had a small spill of something down my front. I stopped, sighed and reluctantly pulled it back on – and why on earth had I worn wellies? I inspected myself in the rear-view mirror. At least my eyes weren’t the slightest bit puffy from crying earlier. That was something. I took a deep breath and glanced up – to see Nathan Sloan lounging against the wall by the gates, frowning down at his phone.

  My heart sank. Although it was, of course, perfectly reasonable that he might also have children at the same school as mine… I would have so rather met him properly for the first time in a professional capacity; colleagues on a level footing in our to-be-shared office, rather than with me in school mum mode and dressed like I was going deep-sea fishing. I had no choice but to get on with it though, so I prepared to introduce myself and got out of the car. At least he was on his own; I didn’t have to do a meet and greet with anyone else listening in.