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

by Lucy Dawson

  Ben hesitated. ‘Alex is clever actually – he’s just not practical.’

  ‘He’ll be fine.’

  ‘But Dad, when we were at Oscar’s party the other day, before you came to get me and talked to Alex, he was making some toast – which is weird anyway at someone else’s house in the middle of the afternoon – and it got stuck. He set off the smoke alarm and was going to put a knife inside the toaster to get it out, only Cass stopped him.’ He bit his lip worriedly.

  Thank God I had taped him up. ‘He’ll be fine,’ I repeated. ‘All he’s got to do is eat and watch movies.’ I stepped back out of the cockpit. ‘We, on the other hand, really will be in trouble if we don’t go now. Get your gear on and come and push us off. It’s high time we were away from here.’

  ‘We’re coming back for him tomorrow night, though?’

  ‘Absolutely,’ I said smoothly. ‘Tomorrow – for sure.’

  Thirty-Two

  Julia

  ‘I wasn’t worried at all. He seemed his normal self when he left.’ My phone lights up. ‘It’s Dom!’ I snatch it up. ‘Where have you been? I’ve been trying and trying to reach you!’

  ‘I’m on my way back to Mum’s.’ He sounds bewildered. ‘It’s my aftercare day and we’re not allowed mobiles. I went for a meal in Oxford with two of the other blokes when we were done. I’ve just switched the phone on and there are all of these messages from you and Mum saying to call? What’s happened?’

  ‘Alex is missing. He went into Exmouth this morning and he hasn’t come back. You haven’t heard from him? Or seen him?’

  ‘No. I’m not in his good books, remember?’

  ‘Can you ring me immediately if he does contact you?’

  ‘Of course. Does he?—’

  ‘I’ve got to go,’ I cut across him. ‘The police are here.’

  ‘At your house?’ His voice sharpens with fear. ‘Hang on, so he went into Exeter this morning—’

  ‘Exmouth,’ I correct. ‘I’ll call you right back, OK? I need to finish talking to them first… sorry about that.’

  I return to the two uniformed officers still looking around Alex’s bedroom, carefully picking their way over discarded bits of Lego from his brand-new Millennium Falcon – barely started – on the carpet. ‘My ex hasn’t heard from Alex or seen him.’ I try not to look at the empty bed. ‘Sorcha was right: Dominic has been on his rehab aftercare programme in Oxford all day.’

  ‘I’m really sorry, but I have to mention this,’ Ewan says. ‘Alex’s father has made a few unscheduled visits to the house since we’ve been here. On one occasion, he bought giant stuffed toys as presents for the kids in huge, oversized black bags – big enough to fit a person in.’

  I stare at my husband.

  ‘I’m just reporting facts. You said at the beginning,’ Ewan addresses the officers, ‘whatever we think of, however odd it might seem, we should say it. Dominic was unhappy about us bringing Alex down here from the start.’

  ‘That’s true, but I do think his behaviour then was erratic by the nature of his addiction. Things are different now. Alex’s passport is still here,’ I remind them, ‘and I don’t believe Dominic would hurt him. Plus, he’s just told me he’s been hundreds of miles away all day. That’s pretty conclusive.’

  One of the officers opens the drawer in Alex’s bedside table, and Ewan sighs tersely. ‘He’s hardly in there, is he?’

  The policeman shuts the drawer again. ‘I understand that you’re worried, Mr Wilder, and want us to get out there and find him as soon as we can, but this is all part of building an overall picture. Have you got a loft space? This seems quite an old house, so does it have a cellar area too? We’ll do in here first, though.’

  ‘Are you going to want to look in my daughter’s room again, or can she go to sleep now? In fact, can I leave you to it so that I can go and sit with Cass again for a bit?’ Ewan looks at me.

  I nod, and he disappears. ‘I’m sorry about my husband,’ I apologise. ‘He’s just very frightened, that’s all.’

  ‘Could I ask you for some recent images of Alex?’ the female officer says. ‘Two or three would be ideal. Ones that show him as close to how he looked this morning. I’d also like to have your permission to take his toothbrush, if that’s OK?’

  ‘For a DNA profile?’ I am lightheaded with fear.

  ‘The vast majority of items we collect in searches never see the inside of a forensics lab,’ she replies gently. ‘It’s a precaution, that’s all.’

  Once the police have left, Ewan calls me into Cass’s bedroom. She’s sitting up in bed, tear-stained and pale, twisting a tissue into a spike between her fingers. She starts to cry again as I come into the room. ‘I’m really sorry, Julia! You told me to stay away from Ben and I didn’t. If I’d gone with Alex when he left the marina and not stayed behind with Ben, I would have seen where he went! This is all my fault!’

  ‘It’s not at all, Cass.’

  ‘I did go looking for Al when Ben’s dad turned up and told me you wouldn’t want me on the boat with him and Ben, but I couldn’t find Al anywhere by then.’

  ‘This really isn’t your fault,’ I say truthfully. ‘And you gave such a helpful description of what Al was wearing to the police. You’ve done brilliantly, don’t worry.’ I move to the door. ‘I’ve got to go and phone Dominic now, but Dad will stay with you and I’ll come and say goodnight in a minute.’ I give her a reassuring smile and hasten off downstairs.

  In the quiet kitchen, I open the back door for a moment and stare into the dark. It’s raining. Just as Al predicted yesterday, the weather has turned and the temperature has dropped significantly. Shivering on the threshold, I glance at my screen – now full of messages from a vast number of people ‘hoping everything is OK?’ wanting to know what’s happened and asking if there’s anything they can do to help, in response to the Facebook status – requesting people contact me if they’ve seen or heard from Alex – that I posted earlier. Friends I haven’t spoken to in months, school mums from this and the last school, former colleagues whom I’m pretty sure weren’t speaking to me when I left, current colleagues – they are all suddenly there; pings going off in my pocket when I most want my phone clear for Alex himself. I didn’t think it through; I just panicked, but no one has seen or heard from him.

  I take a deep breath and phone Dom. He picks up instantly.

  ‘The police have gone.’ I don’t bother with hello. ‘They’ve said they’re going to keep in touch throughout the night. Partly because he’s never done anything like this before, and his age, where he was when he went missing and the weather turning, they’re treating him as a high-risk case—’

  Dom swears.

  ‘…so it’s search dogs, helicopters, the coastguard – everything.’

  ‘Shit!’ he says over and over again. ‘Oh shit! They’ll want to speak to me then. They’re going to think I’ve got something to do with this.’

  ‘Promise me you haven’t?’ I can’t stop myself.

  ‘Of course not! You know how much I love him? Anyway… I can prove where I was, so don’t worry.’ He sounds confused. ‘Um – I’m sorry. That’s really knocked me, you asking that.’ He clears his throat. ‘Can I come up? I want to be there to help. To look for him.’

  ‘Maybe don’t drive right now. You’re upset – I don’t want you rushing and crashing. Why don’t you leave first thing tomorrow, if we still haven’t heard anything?’ But that’s not going to happen; Alex is going to come home. He has to.

  ‘Jules, I’ve done some stupid shit in the past, but I promise you – not this. Never this. Stay strong. He’ll be OK. He’s a tough kid.’

  But he’s not! He’s a trusting, naïve, innocent boy, barely mentally more than ten years old, in a gangly, thirteen-year-old body, out there somewhere in the dark, frightened and needing me. ‘I’ve got to go. I’ll call you if there’s news.’

  I hang up and swing round as I hear a cough behind me. Ewan steps forward. ‘I had to s
ay something about Dominic. You understand that, don’t you?’

  ‘Body bags, though?’ I reach for a tissue and wipe my nose. ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes. Really. I don’t have the same historical bias that you have towards Dominic – through no fault of your own,’ he adds quickly as my mouth falls open. ‘I’ll be chuffed to bits when I’m proven wrong – at which point it won’t matter that I said it anyway, will it?’

  I don’t answer, just move to the dresser and pick my car keys off the hook. ‘I’m going out to look.’

  ‘I’ll go,’ he says. ‘You stay here and—’

  ‘No!’ I say instantly. ‘I can’t bear it, Ewan. I need to do something.’

  ‘But you’re frightened…’ Ewan moves towards me desperately. ‘You’ll be no use to Alex if you take risks and get hurt.’

  ‘I just want to drive around. That’s all. I’ll have my phone right next to me the whole time. You won’t leave the house with Cass, will you? Or go to bed and lock the door?’

  ‘Go to bed?’ he says incredulously. ‘Al’s missing. How could I possibly sleep?’

  I know exactly what he means. I’m driven by a mad energy that makes me examine the streets of Exmouth with a forensic intensity that has no regard for the fact that it’s nearly half past ten and I ought to be tired. It’s like a ghost town for a Friday night, but it’s also January. No one with any sense is out tonight.

  Eventually, I return to the front, pulling up by the beach, feeling sick to see the coastguard building all lit up. The boat is out there now, cutting through the waves, searching. I open my window and a light drizzle buffets into my face. My hair whips up on the chill wind as I shiver involuntarily – the stuffy warmth I’ve built up inside the car bleeding away. The front is deserted and I can just make out the sound of the waves against the backdrop of a distant hum moving closer… echoing across the empty space of the sea. A helicopter… combing the open water and coastline for my son. I should feel reassured. They are looking, people are helping us, but the reality begins to hit me as the noise grows louder and louder, the vibrations moving through my body until it roars right overhead, and I scream against the volume of the blades cutting through the air, bright lights flashing, the search light beaming down onto the dark water as it blasts past. For Alex? This is for my Alex?

  The tears are streaming down my cheeks as it heads off in the direction of Sidmouth and the sound becomes a low-level burr again. I have covered my mouth with my hand and am shaking uncontrollably when headlights pull right up behind me, illuminating my wide, terrified eyes in the rear-view mirror.

  I’m aware of someone getting out of the car and walking towards me. I hear the radio crackling and voices talking, before a face appears at the open window. The police end up escorting me home, and I am furious at my own selfishness. I’ve pulled a car from the search when it should be out there looking for him.

  But I’m back, alongside the sea, at 7.30 a.m. It’s still dark, I haven’t slept and I told Ewan I wanted some air, but we both know I’m here to start looking again. Having parked up on Marine Drive, at the furthest end of Exmouth Beach, I march up the South West costal path, hands in pockets, one wrapped tightly around my mobile phone. I start to puff as the climb becomes steeper. The track levels out on top of the cliffs and I pass Orcombe Point, the Geoneedle landmark on the most westerly part of the Jurassic Coastline, the sea majestically sweeping out in front of me. I don’t care about the view or photo opportunities today. It’s starting to get light, but there’s a clotted dullness to the sky that suggests it could go either way. It might not bother at all.

  Where are you, Alex? I scan the fields to my left desperately, while trying not to look out over the edge of the cliffs to my right. My unbrushed hair keeps escaping out of my hood – pulled by the cold wind to swirl around my head – but remembering a hat wasn’t exactly a priority. I plough on. Sandy Bay sits below me as I stride towards the Devon Cliffs caravan park, growing hotter and sweatier by the second in my puffer coat, despite the fine drizzle that’s appeared in the air.

  The holiday park is closed for winter, and static in every sense as I walk down into it; each lifeless little box with curtains neatly pulled. I’m reminded of the rugby weekend and swallow a lump in my throat at the memory of Alex happily walking off to the pub with Nathan and Ben, chatting away. All I can hear is the sound of the sea, gulls wailing overhead and my own breath. There must be hundreds of virtually identical units here. Is he in one of them? Can he see me now?

  ‘Alex?’ I shout desperately, turning in a semi-circle, scanning rows and rows of holiday homes, but my voice carries away on the wind and no one answers. Not a single soul appears. It’s completely deserted. ‘Alex!’ I cry again, my hair blowing into my mouth, making my eyes smart. I turn towards the sea into the direction of the wind to clear my face.

  ‘Julia?’

  I whip round so fast at the sound of my name, I almost fall over, to see someone standing between two of the caravans where there was an empty space seconds before. I breathe in sharply. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Thirty-Three

  Hamish

  Julia looks like absolute shit. I recognise the waxy sheen to her face that means she’s been up all night. I’ve seen countless parents like her over the years, waiting for their children to come out of surgery or jolting awake on that crappy fold-out hospital chair that doesn’t quite make a bed, when I appear to do my morning rounds. They are all the same: exhausted to their bones, yet on anxious alert the second I pull back the curtain, hopeful that I have the answers they want to hear.

  And you know what? I do have some of the answers, Julia. I don’t know exactly where your boy is, but I’m ninety-nine per cent certain I know a man who does.

  I shove the keys to the caravans in my pocket as Max bounds across the grass to her, wagging his tail, leaping about, putting muddy paws all over her coat and shoving his nose in her crotch, making her wobble on her feet.

  ‘Come here!’ I call sharply, but the silly sod ignores me, continuing to nudge and sniff, forcing Julia to step back.

  I pull a lead from my other pocket, march over and clip it to his collar, yanking him well away from her. ‘He’s still struggling with doing as he’s told. He’ll learn.’ I look her up and down. She’s now plastered in mud. ‘Send me the dry-cleaning bill.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. I’d rather you didn’t call me a cunt than offer to clean my coat, to be honest.’

  Her tone is factual. I frown and stare out to sea. She’s not trying to point score, rather in that place where nothing else matters but the emergency you are mentally trying to deal with. You’ll say anything to anyone. But a measured response is required. One that suggests I care. One that won’t raise the alarm. ‘You’re looking for your son.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was sorry to hear that he’d gone missing,’ I say. ‘Professionally, I know there’s no love lost between us, but you must be very frightened at the moment.’ I try to scoop my hair back over my head, only for it to lift almost vertically on the wind again. ‘It’s a line we trot out at work all of the time – but I’m sure everyone is doing all they can.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘I’m equally sure he’ll be found.’ Because I WILL make Nate appreciate the sheer lunacy of what he’s done, how dangerous it is. ‘I’m due to join a bigger search party in about an hour, in fact, a bit further on from here.’ I point east. ‘Although I’ll be taking the dog back first. I’ve just been checking the units I own.’ I glance at them over my shoulder. ‘Nothing, I’m afraid.’ I hesitate, ‘although you’re welcome to come and look for yourself?’

  She recoils, and I curse myself instantly for making a stupid, off-the-cuff invitation that could easily be repeated to the police as being weird.

  ‘What I mean is, I know you’re aware I don’t like you, but I did look properly,’ I clarify. I really did, terrified that Nate might have the kid shoved in one of them, once I heard that
the last place the Blythe boy had been seen was on these very clifftops. In any case, if I wanted to hurt Julia, there would be far easier ways of doing that than luring her back to one of the caravans. I glance at the cliff edge, mere feet behind her. All of that space, stretching away. It would be so easy.

  ‘Thank you as ever for your candour, Hamish.’ She shakes her head and widens her eyes dramatically, which have started to fill up. Always bloody crying this woman.

  I reach into my pocket, pull out a packet of tissues and start to stride quickly towards her, my arm straight and outstretched, but something has caught her attention and she gives a little gasp, twisting her head away from me.

  I glance and see it too: movement on the beach below us, right at the far end. People, like little black ants, crawling over the rocks. Uniformed officers. I stop immediately, within touching distance of her.

  She wobbles on her feet, actually staggers back at the sight of them, and my fingers spring to life, curling round the fabric of her coat, grabbing at it roughly and snatching her inland. ‘For God’s sake come away from the edge! You’ll fall!’

  ‘I’m sorry! I’m sorry!’ she bleats. ‘It’s knowing they’re looking for Alex.’

  I step back, hands up and clearly in the air where they can be seen by anyone who might be looking. ‘I need to go now and I can’t leave you here like this, so either you come down with me, please, or you walk past the shop,’ I point to a path leading further inland, ‘which will take you down to the beach to join them.’

  ‘I’ll go down to them.’

  I nod and wait for her to do as she’s told. She puts her head down and walks off without saying goodbye. She stumbles on the path at one point, almost trips. I watch her descend. Architect of our misfortune. Will I look back on this as a missed opportunity, I wonder?