Our Little Secret: a gripping psychological thriller with a shocking twist from bestselling author Darren O’Sullivan. Darren O’Sullivan
than my editor Hannah Smith and the team at HQ for seeing the potential, having faith and guiding me through the journey in shaping Our Little Secret.
A special thank you also needs to go to the wonderful author and mentor Sarah May who I am lucky to know through the Faber Academy. Without her wisdom, passion, and support, I would not be the writer I am today. I must also thank the entire group of 2015-16 Faber Academy: Aysha, Bryony, Carly, Jean, Jen, Oz, Rob, Rosie, Sarah, Simone, Will, Yair and Zaz. Thank you for listening to the many readings of early versions and giving honest feedback. We had a wonderful six months together guys. I would also like to thank Nicci Cloke and Richard Skinner at the academy for helping to answer the many questions I had in developing this novel.
To Richard and Diane Card, thank you for reading early versions and giving feedback, and to Jacqui Howchin and Jonathan Austin, thank you for taking the time to pick apart the opening ready for submissions.
Mum and Dad, for, well, being Mum and Dad. As always you guys rock!
Hayley Chilvers, thank you for being a part of this since the early days of the first few chapters and being an ear for when doubt dances around me. Darren Maddison for being the rock who pops up when it’s most needed and John Ormandy, for helping me see that dreams can work with a lot of work.
The long nights at my computer and constant discussions about characters that took over my life were tough, so finally, to Helen, thank you for your understanding and patience.
For Ben, who shows me that anything is possible.
5th May 2016
The first final day
10.39 p.m. – March train station, England
Eight minutes.
Chris looked up at the analogue dials of the train station clock, its ticking unperturbed by what was about to happen. It read ten thirty-nine. He stood and watched the seconds pass by slowly. Eight minutes, that was all he had to wait. Looking around the station he noted how dilapidated it was. The benches that were once sky blue were now covered with an assortment of profanities – as were the walls behind them. Pictures of male genitals and insults to people’s mothers were lit by a dull orange light in the roof of the old station and the flickering of a half-empty vending machine.
The old Chris might have had an opinion about it. Not now. Not anymore. Instead, reading the walls and the bench just made him feel more tired, more ready.
The station was the kind of place that had damp autumnal leaves even in the middle of summer. The kind of place the wind always fiercely travelled. He listened as it howled and moaned its way through the entrance and past him, stirring empty crisp packets and bottles of beer that had overflowed from the bins.
Letting out a sigh, he could see his breath hitting the air like cigarette smoke. Although it was May, the weather was unseasonably cold, barely six degrees. He hadn’t noticed how cold until now. He hadn’t noticed much lately, besides time. It was his only constant.
Chris then observed, in the same way a person might observe through a window, that his shirt was wet. It was raining and, now more aware of his surroundings, he realized the wind was giving him a chill.
He had been painfully passing the time walking through the quiet streets of March, a small fenland town thirty-two miles north of Cambridge, for an hour before arriving here. A town that was tired and had been left behind, full of charity shops and bargain outlets that displayed items for a pound or less. The shop signs that hung above paint-stripped doors were crude and cheap, almost shouting their names at him as he passed by. He’d noticed those inconsequential things but not the fact it was cold and he was wet. He briefly wondered why before shaking off the thought. He had to keep his focus now more than ever.
He looked again at the clock, it still read ten thirty-nine, and he still had eight minutes. Just eight small minutes.
Then he would be dead.
Chris had chosen the location perfectly. At this time of night there were no passenger trains. The next one not for thirty minutes after the one that he had dreamt of and longed for. He had done his homework. In the months before there had never been another person on the platform on a Thursday night. Research that began after his grief and shock had turned into numbness. As soon as he had made the decision to end his life, he knew it could only be in one place. The one place that changed everything.
It was on this platform Chris had known he was in love.
The first time he stood in this spot he had to fight the urge to do it then and there. But it was the middle of the afternoon, and there were several people waiting to travel. Each and every one of them would see him die. Something he couldn’t live with. He knew it would have to be at night.
Every Thursday he went back to the platform to find the opportune moment. Then one night, a distant rumbling came over the track and Chris knew this train was different. As it passed, he counted the carriages. There were forty-two. He counted them each week. Sometimes there were more, sometimes less. But they were always in the dozens and always at the same time: 10.47.
He had found a solution.
Researching the company, London Concrete, Chris knew it would be passing through on the date he needed. It was perfect. Only God would witness this but the God Chris grew up to know didn’t exist anymore. There would be no witnesses; there would be no one hurt.
His memory tried to take him back to that night where Chris stood eye to eye with a monster as Julia lay dead at his feet. Before it could take hold, he grasped at a glimmer of something else. He closed his eyes, fighting to hold onto the image. He wasn’t ready for the other one. Not yet.
The memory that he desperately grabbed hold of was the moment when he had first laid eyes on her.
It was five years earlier, and he was with Steve, his best mate, who had dragged him out for a few drinks despite his protests. He remembered how that night had begun. Steve didn’t call or text, but turned up unannounced at Chris’s front door, leaving him no choice but to go out. A taxi sat waiting, engine running as Chris threw on an old T-shirt and jeans – the only things he could find clean, cursing Steve as he did. For a moment Chris felt like he was back there.
‘Come on, mate!’
‘I’m coming, hold on.’
‘Bloody hell, they’ll be calling last orders by the time you get your arse into gear.’
‘Well then ring me to say we’re going out before you turn up.’
‘No chance, you would have said no.’
He was right. He was always right.
It had only taken the five-minute taxi journey into the city centre for Chris to forgive Steve’s intrusion. An hour later Chris was glad that his mate had turned up; he hadn’t realized how much he needed to unwind. The drinks were flowing and he hated to admit it to Steve, but he was having the best evening he’d had in a long time.
Propping up the bar in their favoured place, unoriginally called The Corner Lounge due to its geographical location, Chris sipped his drink while people-watching as Steve chatted to one of the barmen. Chris couldn’t help but notice the similarity of everyone. How people all have their go-to outfits for a night on the town in order to stand out, only to blur together. The men all wore the classic jeans and jacket combo and the women all looked glamorous, perhaps too glamorous for a small bar in a small city. Looking down at his fraying jeans and old T-shirt he couldn’t help but smile wryly to himself.
The walls of The Corner Lounge were adorned with portraits of unknown people on top of wallpaper designed to make the modern space feel old and classy. Soft house music played in an undertone to the menagerie of conversations and laugher. He had to give the place its due: it had atmosphere.
Chris’s attempts to keep up with Steve’s drinking