The Hearts Series

  I remained frozen, not understanding how this was happening.

  “No, no, no, no, no,” he began to mutter, running his palms down his face as he shook his head. “What have I done? What have I done?” King repeated his words over and over, his entire form shaking.

  He went to his mother and dropped to his knees, pulling her into his embrace. “No, Mum, wake up. Wake up.”

  Tears filled my eyes and ran down my face. This was all too much. Too much. This couldn’t be happening. I didn’t know what to do. What could I do? Should I call the police? Should I not call the police? I felt like calling Lee, but I wasn’t sure I should be involving anyone else in this situation.

  King’s father had just killed his mother.

  And King had killed his father.

  It was a Greek tragedy come to life, and I felt like I’d suddenly stepped out of reality and into a dream. I’d woken up this morning to the sun shining. It had been just another ordinary day, but not anymore. I wanted to rewind the clock so I could erase it all. But that wasn’t possible. King was crying now, holding his mother to his chest and just letting the tears flow. The sounds of his weeping filled the room. A cold sweat covered my skin, and my heart was thrumming a mile a minute. My hands were shaking. I took a few steps forward until I was beside him, and dropped to my knees. He didn’t even register my presence until I put a hand on his shoulder.

  He stopped crying.

  Silence filled the room.

  He turned his head.

  He stared at me in horror and realisation that I’d been a witness to everything that had just happened. His face contorted, and so many emotions flickered past I could barely count them. Shame. Pain. Loss. Fear. More shame. So much fucking shame I could barely breathe with it. He reared away from my touch like it had burned him, his mother’s body slipping from his arms as he stood, backing away.

  “King,” I said, a crack in my voice. “Oliver.”

  He began to shake his head, his eyes huge with fear as he took in the scene. And then he was gone. It took me a moment to get to my feet and run after him. I dashed from the kitchen, down the hall, and to the front entryway, where Bruce’s muscle still lay crouched on the floor in pain. I ran outside, looked up and down the street, but he was nowhere to be seen.

  I returned to the house, searching each room to make sure he wasn’t still inside. The place was empty. I walked back down to the kitchen, my gut recoiling at the sight of Bruce and Elaine’s bodies and all that blood. I’d never get it out of my mind, would never be able to wash my memories clean. I had to do something, had to act. I saw the phone on the wall and knew calling the police was the right action. King beating his father was self-defence. He wasn’t in his right mind. Bruce Mitchell was a criminal. Bruce was the one with the gun, the one who killed Elaine. Any jury in the country would be able to see that.

  I walked to the phone, picked it up, and started to dial nine-nine-nine. I was on the final nine when I heard a weak cough and looked to my left. My heart soared when I saw Elaine’s eyes flutter open and her chest move up and down with her breathing.

  She was alive!

  There was so much blood I wasn’t sure how it could be possible, but it was. I hit the final nine on the dialling pad.

  “Nine-nine-nine emergency services, how may I help you?”

  “I need an ambulance,” I croaked out. “I need an ambulance right away.”

  Part II

  After

  Sixteen

  London, six years later.

  * * *

  My hands were shaking.

  All I was doing was holding a piece of paper, and my bloody hands were shaking. I was standing by the open window, trying to get some air, but it wasn’t working. I felt woozy. I had to sit down. I’d already read the letter three times. So I read it again.

  Dear Alexis,

  I hope you don’t think my letter intrusive, but I found you through the agency you run and some of your past modelling work. My name is Lille Baker, and I’m an artist. I work in a travelling circus, the Circus Spektakulär. We perform all over, but right now we’ve stopped to do some shows in London.

  I’ve wanted to send you this letter for weeks, but I held out. I had to wait until we were close enough for you to come. You’re probably wondering why I didn’t just email you. Or call. Letters are sort of a lost art form now, right? But what I have to tell you is of such great importance that I felt an email would be too impersonal. A call too abrupt.

  I apologise. I’m going off topic. So yes, the circus.

  It’s run by a woman named Marina Mitchell. Perhaps you’ve heard of her? Anyway, Marina has a brother. His name is King, Oliver King. He stays with her most of the time; other times, he wanders on his own. I suppose you could say he doesn’t really have a home. King carries around a picture of you, Alexis. It was taken six years ago on a beach in Rome. Do you remember? He treasures this picture, goes crazy if anyone tries to take it.

  Why is the picture so important to him?

  Did you love each other once?

  Do you ever think of him, wonder about him?

  I’m sorry. I ask a lot of questions sometimes. It’s just that I worry for King. He’s been on a destructive path for years, and I fear that if something drastic doesn’t happen soon, he’s going to kill himself. He drinks far too much, more and more each day, it seems. I try to help him, we all do, but there’s no point trying to help a person who doesn’t want it. Then I think, if you came, if he could see you, then maybe he would want to be helped. Maybe he’d have something to live for. I see glimpses in him, Alexis, glimpses of a fascinating mind, of a great man from whom circumstance has stolen everything.

  Please come and see us. I think you’re the only one who has a chance of saving him.

  Yours sincerely,

  Lille.

  Tears filled my eyes again as my heart pounded. King. He was alive. For so long I’d lost hope. I hadn’t seen him since that night at his mum’s house, where he’d fled after he thought he killed his father. He hadn’t killed him. The paramedics managed to revive Bruce, and just a few short weeks later, he was sent to prison for the attempted murder of Elaine. It was a hard time for all of us, especially since King had all but become a ghost. We searched high and low, spoke with everyone he’d ever known, but he’d vanished without a trace. I even quizzed Elaine about the gypsy woman, but she had no clue who I was talking about. She was the one missing link, and I knew deep in my heart that if I could just discover who she was, I would find him.

  Now I held a letter in my hands that explained everything.

  On the other side of it was an inner city location where the circus was currently camped for shows. It was no more than a car journey away, and my skin prickled to think he was so near. Was this real, or was someone playing a trick?

  No, it had to be real. No one other than Bruce would think to do something so cruel, and he’d died in prison six months after he was put there, shanked by a young guy who didn’t want him coming in and taking over. I thought it was a fitting death.

  Bruce Mitchell.

  Marina Mitchell.

  King had a sister. How had I not known this? How had Elaine not known? A memory of the gypsy woman King once said was family flashed in my mind again. This Marina must have been his half-sister, born of Bruce and a different mother. That’s why Elaine didn’t know her. But why the hell would King be living with someone who had anything to do with that monster? It was all too much to take in, too confusing. I leaned back in my chair, trying to make sense of it.

  After he’d disappeared, I’d gone through all the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and then finally acceptance. Now each of those stages were rushing back all at once, becoming a strange muddle of hope and anger, happiness and fear.

  I’d finally settled into my life. How could a single letter flip everything on its axis?

  Four years ago, I’d stopped modelling and started up my own agency. It did so
well that I’d finally saved up enough money for a mortgage, and had purchased a small two-bedroom house in Waltham Forest. Elaine, who I’d grown close to over the years, sold her big house in Bloomsbury that held too many bad memories, and bought herself a small cottage in Waltham in order to be close to us.

  Us.

  The very thought made my tears increase. Life had been so hard since King disappeared. For a long time, I couldn’t move on. My heart refused to believe he’d stay away of his own volition, but at the same time I understood the trauma he must have been suffering to think he’d killed a man with his own bare hands. Now I was being told he was out there, close enough for me to reach. To touch. To pull close.

  And yet, here I was living in my little house with the love of my life. The one who’d come along after King and mended my broken heart.

  I heard him pull on the doorknob and step into the room, probably wondering why I was upset, why I was crying. I wiped at my tears and tried to plaster on a brave face, not wanting to worry him.

  “Mummy,” he asked, “what’s wrong?”

  My boy was so beautiful, so like his father with his pale blond hair and blue eyes. I didn’t even realise I was pregnant for a long time after King vanished. I’d put it all down to heart sickness. Yeah, I thought I was vomiting my guts up every morning because of how much I missed him. I soon came to realise that wasn’t the case. Apparently, the pill isn’t always one hundred percent effective.

  But still, some small part of me was grateful. My love had disappeared, but he’d left something of himself behind. Nevertheless, I was depressed for much of my pregnancy. Karla and my parents were worried sick. Elaine, too. She wanted a grandchild so badly. And then, my Oliver came along, and I fell in love again.

  My strength returned. I needed to live for the little one who needed me. So I put my all into my career, began modelling as much as I could. Elaine helped out with money until I was doing well enough to go it alone. I think the combination of Oliver’s birth and Bruce’s death changed something in her. She started going outside more, becoming independent. She even played piano every once in a while. She was often sad, as she grieved for her missing son, but she was no longer the shell of a woman she once was.

  Even though I’d accepted the fact that he was gone, I grieved, too. Every day. For King.

  I think it was the fact that we had so little time together that made it worse. I had all these possibilities to wonder about. What might our lives have been if certain events hadn’t come to pass? It’s different from losing your love at eighty after a lifetime together. The pain is so much sharper, more cutting. It guts you to the core, because you’d once held perfection in your hands, only to have it drift away like mist. You have to go on knowing you’ll never feel how he made you feel ever again, knowing no one else will ever compare.

  I had to go to him. And yet, I hesitated.

  The words in Lille’s letter frightened me. What would I find at the circus? What sort of man? Summoning some strength, I knew I still had to go. For him. For our son. For my heart.

  I pulled Oliver up onto my lap and gave him a soft squeeze. “I was just thinking of a sad story, that’s all.”

  “Why do you think about sad stories?” he asked, curious, fingers going to my damp face.

  “Because sometimes my brain makes me,” I answered, and his hands travelled to my forehead, giving it a poke.

  “Brain, stop making Mummy sad.” His words made me laugh. In just a couple of months he was going to turn six. The time was flying by so fast. Sometimes he’d ask about his dad, ask if he had one, because all the other boys at school did. I told him that his daddy was far, far away. I hated the sad tilt to Oliver’s mouth afterwards and wished I could have come up with a better answer.

  It felt unnatural to see him sad, because he was such a happy, gregarious child. He was never shy or insecure, always open to the world and the possibilities each day might bring. He made friends easily, too. The teacher of his Montessori class said he was always the one bringing the kids together, making suggestions for new games they might play.

  I let him off my lap and went into the kitchen to prepare lunch. It was Saturday, my day off. Usually, either Elaine or my mum took Oliver when I was working, but I always had him on weekends. If I asked one of them to babysit tonight, they’d want to know why, and I didn’t want to explain Lille Baker’s letter yet, not to anyone. I especially didn’t want to tell Elaine in case it wasn’t real. Getting her hopes up would be too cruel.

  After I’d made Oliver his food, I went and called Karla. We were still as close as ever, even though we no longer lived together. We didn’t get to see each other as much as we used to, but we spoke on the phone almost every day. Having been my rock when Oliver was a baby, she loved my boy just as much as I did, and I knew she’d jump at the chance to have him for an evening. In fact, she’d be so happy she wouldn’t think to ask questions.

  Not asking questions was key.

  I gave her a quick call, and she said she’d be over in a couple of hours. With that sorted, I tried to play with Oliver for a while, but my heart wasn’t in it. I couldn’t focus. Slotting a DVD into the player, I settled him in front of the TV so I could go shower. I was nervous. I’d gotten out and was wrapped in a towel when I began to shiver. My stomach twisted and turned. I hadn’t been able to eat a bite since morning. My throat was clogged with nerves and hope, annihilating my appetite.

  I stared into my closet with no clue what to wear. My fashion sense, if anything, had only become more distinct over the years. When you work in the industry, you tend to become a little obsessed with the latest trends. My hands were shaking again as I pulled out a pretty lace top and some skinny jeans. I paired them with some leather boots and allowed my hair to dry curly.

  My heart thrummed.

  I couldn’t believe I was doing this. He was out there, alive and breathing. For a brief second, it took all my willpower not to rush out of the house right away and go find him.

  Shakily swiping on some lip gloss, I gave my appearance one last glance before I heard Karla knocking on the front door. I hurried down to answer it and found I was wrong about her not asking questions.

  “You look nice. Going anywhere exciting?”

  I rummaged in my bag for my car keys. “Just meeting up with Bradley and his new boyfriend for some drinks. I should only be a couple of hours.”

  “Ah, right, well, have a good time.” Her brows knitted together, which was usually a sign that she thought I was lying. I didn’t know why she’d suspect anything, because my story seemed airtight. It was only as I slid into the driver’s seat that I realised my mistake. If I was going for drinks with Bradley, then why the fuck would I be driving? I swear, this whole thing was turning my brain to jelly. My mind wouldn’t stop racing, and I just wanted to get to the circus and see King with my own two eyes. Prove to myself this was real.

  Hope flooded my veins, filling me with anticipation.

  I could have him back. We could have him back for good.

  It took forever to find a parking spot close enough to the circus, and in the end I had to leave my car a ten-minute walk away. It was seven-thirty, and the tent was all lit up for the night’s show. People queued up outside to buy tickets, and I didn’t know where to go. Should I buy a ticket? Should I ask around after this Lille person? I’d brought the letter in my purse, as though I’d need to show definitive proof before they’d let me see him.

  Unsure of what else to do, I got in line and bought a ticket. I walked alongside a couple of young women as I went into the tent and took a seat close to the back. My skin prickled with awareness. My body hummed. King was here somewhere. It was almost like he’d shown up on my internal radar, sending everything into a fritz.

  There were about another twenty minutes before the show would begin, and I was too antsy to just sit there. Standing, I made way down the aisle to an open doorway that led backstage. The place was a flurry of activity as I stepped through.
A middle-aged woman wearing some kind of glitzy stage outfit passed me by.

  “Excuse me,” I said, and she turned to face me. “I’m looking for Lille Baker.”

  The woman smiled. “She should be out front at the face-painting booth.”

  A tall, dark-haired man who had seemingly overheard my question stopped, arching a curious brow. “You’re looking for Lille?” he said. His voice was deep, his accent Irish.

  I stared up at him, a little intimidated, if I was being honest. He had dark shoulder-length hair, and wore jeans, boots, and a wife-beater vest. His body was a fucking masterpiece of muscle and sinew, and it was a little much for me to take in all at once. I hadn’t been with a man in a long, long time, and he was one of the hottest male specimens I’d ever seen. He must have been a part of the show. These types always were. Finally, I nodded.

  “Who are you….” He paused for second, trailing off, as something like recognition lit up his eyes. He looked like he knew me, which made me feel weird. Running a hand over his stubbled jaw, he swore under his breath. “Fucking hell, Lille.”

  “You know Lille?” I questioned breathlessly, my heart rate picking up as I stepped closer.

  “Yeah, I know her.” He nodded to the back of the tent. “Come with me.”

  Instead of leading me out to the front, like the woman had instructed, he led me in the opposite direction. We exited the tent and he stopped, pulling out a smoke and lighting up. He side-eyed me, not saying a word.

  “Um….” I began, feeling nervous. He might have been sex on a stick, but he was also scary and intimidating. These days I was used to hanging around my clients (who were all women) and my little boy. Men were an area I was completely out of practice with. Of course, I had my brothers, but I didn’t see them very often.

  “How did you know to come here?” he asked.

  Anxious, I fumbled in my bag. “I got this letter.”

  Now he was swearing again. “For fuck’s sake.”