Behind a Closed Door: Is anyone ever really safe?

By Adele O'Neill

What if everything in your life was a lie? An emotionally tense story of love, loyalty, betrayal and revenge. Perfect for the fans of Louise Jenson.
DUBLIN - For the past two years Jill Ryan has tried to keep her darkest secrets deeply buried and remain relatively anonymous. Haunted by her tragic past and struggling to keep her life together, Jill soon realises that the last person she can trust is herself.

KILKENNY - Only Heather Martin knows the lengths her husband will go to teach her a lesson and Heather has had enough. Faced with the impossible choice of saving herself or staying to care for her ailing father, Heather has a choice to make. But does she have what it takes to survive?

When Detectives Louise Kennedy in Dublin and Tony Kelly in Kilkenny begin to investigate, their dark discoveries collide unravelling a complex web of secrets that stretch far and wide.

What readers are saying:

'O'Neill is back with an equally gripping sequel... A remarkable ability to get under the skin of characters... Page-turning prose' Sunday Independent Dublin.

'Behind a Closed Door blew my socks off and is a very cleverly written and addictive read' Ginger Book Geek.

'I thoroughly enjoyed reading this compelling book. Definitely recommend!' Dash Fan Book Reviews.

'I found it haunting, atmospheric, daunting, thrilling and gripping. It's one of those reads that will grip you and spit you out' Read Along with Sue.

'Dark and deep secrets! A well constructed plot that is deeply disturbing! Great story!' Cathy Thompson, NetGalley.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
• Release date: Mar 1, 2018
• ISBN: 9781786696793

Adele O'Neill

Adele is a writer from Co. Wicklow who lives with her husband Alan and her two teenage daughters. Influenced by writers across all genres she has a particular fondness for fiction that is relatable and realistic. Her debut novel was awarded The Annie McHale Debut Novel Award for 2017 and is a character driven story of survival, dark family secrets and sibling loyalty, just like life. Her second novel Behind a Closed Door is another emotionally harrowing tale of impossible choices, loyalty and friendship. Adele writes overlooking the Irish Sea, which she credits for the tumultuous dynamics in the relationships and lives of her unsuspecting characters in her third novel, When the Time Comes, another dark tale that tests the lengths we go to protect the ones we love.

Book preview

1

Dublin 2018

It’s not like me to swear and it’s especially not like me to swear at someone whom I have just met but she didn’t seem surprised at all when I told her to fuck off. Quite the opposite really, and when I knocked the plastic cup of water over as I stood up, drenching the teak wooden table top, she didn’t even flinch. That impressed me; that and the calmness of her unusually deep voice when she said that I was free to leave, like it was of little importance to her if I stayed or not. I wasn’t fooled of course, I knew she was testing me just as I was testing her and when she asked why I was there in the first place, I told her that my boyfriend Ben strongly suggested that I come. I didn’t tell her, no more than I told Ben, that every time I close my eyes I see my husband’s face dripping with blood, writhing in pain, calling out my name. I wish I could turn back time, I wish it had never happened.

I hadn’t gone with the intention of storming out but now that I have, the only image in my head is the image of the water seeping inside the table top, damaging the grains of wood and staining it white, its pristine condition forever compromised no matter what attempts are made to restore it, the beautifully crafted teak damaged beyond repair by the actions of someone careless, just like I was.

Doctor Davina Kennedy, as the numerous certificates from Trinity on her wallpapered wall suggest, is one of those women in their early fifties who seem to have it all. A self-assessed career where she can decide her own hours, a beautiful appearance complete with groomed hair, dresses from a designer rack in Harvey Nichols, a figure that any woman half her age would be proud of and a personality that seems genuine and compassionate. In fact, she couldn’t be more perfect than she already is. In stark contrast, I have imperfection oozing out of my ears and dripping from my mousey brown hair, with my rented basement flat in Blackrock, my non-existent college education, a cash-in-hand waitress job with no prospects and a monster of a past that threatens to swallow me whole. The shadows under my eyes are the bags with which I carry the weight of everything I have done and everything that has been done to me, and I flinch every time I think of it, my past.

There’s no doubt Davina has seen it all before, the client tantrums, the refusal to cooperate, the insults, my questionable behaviour makes me cringe as I stand here at the train station waiting for my train back to Blackrock in my jeans from Penny’s and my jacket from Dunnes Stores. I couldn’t feel any more inadequate if I tried. Strong accomplished women will do that to you, they may have the greatest will in the world folded carefully inside a deep sense of compassion but when you feel like you are the only duckling amongst the swans of life you can’t help but criticise yourself and wish that you could be like them. Why do I even try?

I’m a walking cliché really, a thirty-three-year-old woman who sat in a therapist’s office accusing her of insensitivity just to avoid answering her questions. I did answer the basic ones though: name – Jill Ryan; children – not anymore; relationship – yes; how long have you known him – a little over a year; do you live together – no, not technically; how did you meet – I work in a restaurant that he owns with his sister. I probably could have been a little more elegant in my references to Ben but the opportunity wasn’t there, she didn’t ask about whether he loves me or if I have fallen in love with him, maybe she would have asked more about him if I had stayed. She scribbled the answers I did give her diligently in her file, making all the right noises, creasing her face in all the right places. It was only when she asked more about my past that I fell silent.

My silence made her sit up straighter then, as though she was the lead detective on an unsolved case who had just found the missing evidence. She spouted something like we need to look at the past so that we can move into the future. She probably felt as though she was getting to know me, developing a picture of who she thought I was, where I came from and what my refusal to talk about it meant, but she doesn’t know me and I suspect she never will, not if I want to stay safe. No amount of Dr Davina Kennedy’s reassurance and non-judgemental head tilts are going to change that.

Just tell me how to move on, tell me what I need to do and I’ll do it, please don’t ask me what has happened before, don’t make me go back there because I don’t think I can, not without falling apart.

Safe Harbour House, Davina’s therapy practice, is in the front room of an old Georgian house that happens to be on the harbour overlooking Dublin Bay, a mere forty feet from a small sandy beach. Sandycove really is what they say in the tourism brochures: a beautiful seaside town nestled in the cove of Dublin Bay, just twenty minutes from the city. I presume the Safe Harbour House inference is intended so that people like me will see it as a place to dock to avoid the stormy seas. But people like me also know that the respite is merely temporary and the feeling of safety, fleeting. For people like me, there will always be stormy seas.

I did hesitate for a moment as I was storming out, maybe I should have stayed. I do agree that I need help but I’m not sure that talking about my past will help anyone, especially not me, and as I stand at the station twenty minutes early for my train, my father’s words are playing on a loop in my head: If I always do what I always did, I will always get what I always got.

My survival wasn’t because of some fearless strategy executed with precision and timing. It was never my plan to be the hero in my own and my baby’s life. But you don’t have a plan, do you? It’s instinct that takes over when you are in survival mode and the man you thought you loved is beating you to within an inch of your life, your bones already brittle from the number of previous breaks and your heart unfixable. It’s also instinct you rely on when your thoughts are consumed with how best to prevent the rage that bubbles underneath the surface of his tanned skin or, worse still, calm it when it explodes and all you can think of is your unborn baby and whether or not it will survive one more blow. It was instinct that helped me survive and it’s instinct and secrecy that is still keeping me safe.

The activity on the opposite platform increases as the southbound train arrives first but within seconds I can see my northbound train in the distance as it approaches the station; the headlights are like giant cat’s eyes in the haze of the rain. I can’t wait to get inside, close the doors behind me and block out the squawking from the screeching seagulls that have flocked overhead. I slump unceremoniously onto my seat and wait impatiently for the doors to shut so I can close my eyes. It’s only a ten-minute trip back to Blackrock but small snippets of sleep are better than none at all; the nightmares are keeping both myself and Ben awake.

With the hiss of the hydraulic break release, I take a deep breath, holding my bag to my chest, and am just about to close my eyes when I see Ben slinking through the closing doors sideways.

‘Ben?’ I blink rapidly to make sure that I haven’t already fallen asleep. ‘What on earth?’ I shake my head in astonishment as he takes the seat beside me leaning across to kiss me on the cheek.

‘I just wanted to check on you.’ He turns his wrist checking the time, his breath raspy. ‘I nearly missed you.’

‘You did?’ When he offered to come with me this morning I declined. I told him that it was something that I felt I needed to do by myself. Did he forget?

‘I saw you standing on the platform as my train was coming in,’ he explains, and clears his throat to slow his breathing. ‘I wasn’t sure if I’d make it across the bridge before this train took off.’ The air in the carriage is stuffy and stale, dampened by the spring rain outside. The windows begin to fog with the heat of the few passengers inside as the train glides away from the station.

‘What about work?’ I ask. Ben and I grew very close as friends when I first started working in The Cranberry Tree. He had a fantastic sense of humour and despite my self-imposed isolation I found myself drawn to him. He’s kind and caring and even though I thought I would never be able to trust another man again, I can’t imagine my life now without him.

‘Don’t worry, it’s all in hand.’ He brushes my fringe away from my eyes and looks at me. ‘I just wanted to make sure you were okay, that’s all.’

‘You didn’t tell Lisa, did you?’ I cringe in embarrassment as I ask. I do agree with Ben, my nightmares are getting out of control but I’m reluctant to discuss it with anyone, let alone Lisa, Ben’s sister, who also happens to be my boss.

‘Of course not, I promised you I wouldn’t, didn’t I?’ If there’s one thing I’ve learned about Ben is that he is as trustworthy as they come. If he says he’ll do something he will. ‘So… what did the therapist say?’ He looks at me expectantly. We’ve had many a lengthy conversation, with him asking me about my nightmares and me avoiding answering. It breaks my heart to have to lie. He’s almost childlike expecting a magic potion to make my nightmares go away and get back to the seemingly carefree days of when we first got together about a year ago.

‘Nothing really, it was more a fact finding mission for her.’ I look away through the fogged window trying to avoid his eyes. He has honest, brown eyes that feel like they can see inside my thoughts every time I look into them. ‘She just wanted to know my history, that type of thing.’ I daren’t tell him that as soon as she asked about my past, I panicked and left.

‘And did you tell her?’ Ben has been as patient as possible with my vagueness about my past. He understands that I’m reluctant to talk about it, he just doesn’t understand why. His question is an opening for me to tell him what he hopes I’ve spoken to Davina about.

‘Well.’ I hesitate. I know he’ll be disappointed with the answer I’m about to give him. He has asked me on numerous occasions to open up to him and explain why the nightmares happen but I can’t. ‘There isn’t anything to tell.’ I shrug and draw aimlessly on the foggy window. I can feel his shoulders slump beside me.

‘Jill, love.’ He waits till I turn to face him. ‘Bottling everything up is not the answer,’ He’s said this loads of times before too. ‘I just thought that when you weren’t able to talk to me that maybe you could talk to someone else.’ The corners of his mouth turn downwards in defeat, making my heart wrench for letting him down.

‘It’s not as though I didn’t talk to her at all,’ I plead. If it weren’t for Ben and the guilt that I feel for not telling him the truth, I would probably never have gone. ‘I’m going back on Monday, it’s early days.’ The uncomfortable silence between us makes me feel as though he is taking my lack of progress personally.

‘Jill.’ My heart races in anticipation of what he’s going to say. ‘I’m worried. I know that there is something that you are not telling me.’ He pauses and sighs, scanning the carriage to make sure he is not being overheard. ‘I can’t make up my mind if it’s because you don’t feel the same way about me as I do about you or,’ he rubs his hands in his face and then rakes his fingers through his hair, ‘or that you don’t trust me,’ he says, his voice soft and sad.

‘I do, Ben.’ I hate that I’m lying to him, I hate that he thinks that I don’t love him as much as he loves me but I can’t tell him the truth. I was never meant to be in Dublin this long and if I tell him the truth now, I’m afraid that he will never forgive me. ‘Look, everything will work out, okay?’ I lean in to his shoulder and smile up at him.

‘Okay.’ He sighs resignedly as Blackrock station approaches, knowing that this is where he has to leave me. ‘I’ll need to get back to the kitchen.’ He looks at his watch when I shift forward in my seat.

‘Sure, I’ll see you later.’ I kiss him on the cheek as I step across him, relieved to have the time to myself to think, the train now slowing to a stop. He nods and watches me, a melancholic expression on his face as I step out onto the platform. He really does have a heart of gold. Would I be as kind to him if I knew he was hiding something from me?

2

Kilkenny 2016

Through squinted eyes, she scanned the room for signs that he had been there. There were none; no leather boots, unlaced and flung on the floor to trip her up, no overpowering concoction of Lynx body spray or stale body odour for that matter. He was gone. The wooden lock box on the dresser, open and empty, his badge and licence to be a bastard gone with him, for now.

Heather Martin closed her eyes briefly and tried her best to settle her breathing, which was nearly impossible given the spike of adrenaline that was still coursing violently through her veins. Sleep was her only relief these days and waking brought with it an entire new wave of panic every day as she remembered the torment that Mike had rained upon her.

As quietly as she could, with her eyes still closed, she slid her left arm from underneath her duvet to touch her face, the tendon at her shoulder screaming at her in pain as she moved. With the crook of her finger she hooked the mop of brunette hair that had folded across her eyes and tucked it gently behind her ear. She could feel crusts of dried blood on her lobe. She paused then, afraid that even the slightest ruffle of her hair would alert him if he was still in the apartment, let him know she was awake and annoy him so much that he launched at her again. She lifted her head ever so slightly from the pillow to listen. The world continued to turn outside as morning birds quietened and car engines revved by, but behind her closed door she held her breath and waited. Could he still be there?

Tentatively she relaxed her head back on the cotton pillowcase and exhaled slowly, assured by the silence outside her bedroom door. Even though she was a fit thirty-year-old woman, her endurance was wearing thin, her bones becoming far too brittle and her ability to sustain the attacks diminishing. The pain in her arm ached with a deadening pressure as she inched it upwards to touch her jaw. There had been a time when he was more careful about where he would hit and it was no coincidence that as her father’s health declined, Mike’s control over her increased. With no one to answer to, her face was no longer off limits.

The more awake she became, the more her body throbbed, and within seconds a pounding pain reached her left temple and exploded like a badly timed firework behind her blue bloodshot eyes, leaving only damage and destruction in its wake. She winced and quietly cleared her throat as the sunlight that seeped through the curtains assaulted her every nerve cell; the bright orange glow behind her eyelids was what she imagined hell to look like, her living hell. The floating dust particles dancing in delicate patterns in the air were oblivious to the horrors that had happened the night before.

Through slatted eyes she focused on the blurry red digits on the bedside clock until they came into focus, 11.00 a.m. She blinked and checked again, really? She couldn’t remember the last time she had slept that late, only lazy and useless people sleep late. She shivered in fear as she heard Mike’s ominous voice inside her head. If only she had listened to her dad.

Detective Inspector Edward Clarke, Heather’s dad, and Detective Mike Martin had never seen eye to eye, mostly because Mike had been hauled into Inspector Clarke’s office on more than one occasion for a litany of reasons: insubordination, excessive force, requests by other detectives to not have to work with him and even a question mark over his affiliation to certain felonious groups. Inspector Clarke had seen enough to know that Mike Martin wasn’t one of the good ones and he didn’t want his daughter to have anything to do with him. He’s different when he’s at home, Dad; he’s only like that in work. She had defended Mike every time her dad had voiced his concerns and sure enough, as she settled into life with Mike, not only did everything that her dad predict happen, but even more than he could have imagined. Heather had learned the hard way.

‘Oh, Dad,’ she whispered pathetically, trying to remember her dad as the vibrant strong and clever man he had always been, and not the feeble empty shell that sat for hours in a wheelchair staring blankly into space in Riverside Nursing Home. Alzheimer’s was the cruellest of diseases and she hated it for what it had done to him – she hated it for what it had taken from her.

‘What kind of a human being does this?’ Her voice croaked as her fingers traced over the newly formed mounds of swelling that spread from her jawline to her right ear. She would be speckled black and blue; she didn’t have to look in a mirror to know that. The scars of his anger would always be imprinted on her somewhere, either inside or out.

She opened and closed her eyes, check, they still worked. Tentatively, she slotted her chin from side to side, check, it wasn’t too sore. She swallowed, check. Carefully, she pinched her thumb and finger on the bridge of her nose and slid them down towards her nostrils, check, no misalignment, or rather no further misalignment, then finally she placed both hands on her stomach.

Maybe this time the baby was gone, maybe this time it was for the best – nobody wanted to bring a baby into a world of violence and hate. The thought of having to tell Mike that she was pregnant was making her nauseous. When he had left for work one morning two weeks ago she had taken the test and her worst fear had come true, she was pregnant with her husband’s baby and by her calculations she was about four weeks gone. It wasn’t as though she had never wanted kids but now with her life the way it was and Mike as violent as any man could be, the last thing she wanted was to bring a beautiful innocent baby into their lives.

‘Bastard,’ she muttered under her breath, the pain intensifying like a toothache breaking through the anaesthetic as the effects wore off. She pressed her tongue on the inside of her swollen lip – it didn’t feel like hers – and ran it along her teeth to check for gaps; thankfully there were none. She licked a trickle of dried blood from the corner of her mouth. It was stubborn at first but then it dissolved eventually with the saliva from her tongue, the crusty bits she scraped away with her fingernail. Slowly she sat forward and took a breath, her eyes now more tolerant of the morning brightness that leached through the half-opened wooden blinds. She sighed, making a mental note to change the sheets. Mike hated it when the bed linen wasn’t perfect, and dark blood stains in jagged patterns, regardless of the fact that his violence had caused them, would give him another reason to beat her.

Before she met Mike, she had a job as a chef in Cathy’s Kitchen on Castle Street; she had a great friendship with the owners and a doting father who would have done anything for her, including giving her the deposit to get a mortgage for the two-bedroomed flat that she owned. Much to her father’s dismay, when she was twenty-five she met and fell in love with Mike and he moved into her apartment shortly thereafter. It wasn’t long after, without her father’s blessing that they married in Kilkenny Registry Office on a cold and wet Tuesday morning. She should have taken the miserable weather as an omen of the miserable marriage that was to emerge but she had been young and in love and yet to fully envision the tyrant that Mike was to become.

Everything that she had started out with before she met Mike had been systematically destroyed in one way or another, and while she couldn’t blame Mike for the awful disease that had consumed her father, she sure as hell could blame him for everything else. Mike Martin had taken everything from her life that was wholesome and special and crushed it right in front of her eyes.

She swung her legs over the edge of their bed, stretched out her hand to ease the stiffness in her fingers and placed her bare feet on the hardwood floor. With her dad’s help she had painstakingly sanded and stained the cherry wood floor when she had first moved in and he had driven her to and from every DIY shop in Kilkenny while she procrastinated over what colour to paint the walls. She had eventually decided on a warm yellow and the colour scheme had been the same ever since, except for the one patch in the hallway where she had to paint over stubborn blood stains from when Mike had rammed her head into the wall and her lip had split.

‘Shit.’ A prickly sensation twinkled across the hardened soles of her feet like pins and needles as she pressed them to the floor and a memory of broken glass in the lounge flashed across her eyes. ‘Shit, shit, shit,’ she said in a devastated whisper. Her dad’s glass coffee table had been shattered the night before and she had adored it. When she first moved in, her dad had insisted on her taking it from his house with her. It’s more yours than mine, he had said, and she had placed it with pride in the centre of her lounge.

Up till then, for as long as she could remember, it had stood in the centre of their living room at home in her father’s house, and when she was younger she would pull it across the room in front of the bookshelves and use it as a checkout desk for her imaginary library. Of all the things that had been smashed or torn or battered the night before, including her body, it was the glass top on her father’s coffee table that she lamented most. The coffee table was sentimental to both of them. She was six when her mother had died and she hadn’t understood what the word cancer had meant then, but ever since it had just been the two of them, and he would have done anything to make his little girl happy, including standing in an imaginary queue to check out a book recommended to him by his librarian daughter.

She pushed herself off the edge of the bed and stood, feeling every muscle and sinew contract as she did so. Then quietly, just in case he was still in the apartment, she padded across the bare wood bedroom floor to get dressed, the prickly sensation lessening with every careful step. She was way behind her schedule; normally she would have done her run and have visited her dad at Riverside by now. Her ribs ached and she grimaced as she gently stretched her left arm in the air to pull her running top over her head.

It was three kilometres from her apartment to Riverside Nursing Home taking the route across Wolfe Tone Bridge and along the banks of the River Nore. She ran it every morning rather than ask Mike for the car. She laced up her runners, pulled a make-up wipe out of a packet and tidied up her blood-stained face. Then she pushed her phone into her zipped breast pocket, pulled a peaked cap from the hook in her wardrobe and decided to give her normal run a try.

It was 11.30 a.m. by the time she got to the end of John’s Quay, her running pace slow and laboured. She wasn’t sure how much further she would get, but she was determined to persevere.

Holding her ribs, willing the pain to go away, she rounded the corner towards Canice’s Cathedral with her head hung in pain. She didn’t hear the shop bell of the old glass door as it opened and she didn’t see the man that stepped out on to the path from the coffee shop until it was too late.

‘Jesus, sorry.’ Heather jumped backwards and shuddered as a dart of pain shot through her damaged torso. She gasped, taking a sharp breath as the pain subsided. ‘God, I’m really sorry.’ Coffee from one of the two takeaway cups he was holding trickled down the leg of his jeans and gathered in a pool around his brown leather shoes on the ground. The other cup appeared to have remained intact. ‘Oh god, I’m so bloody clumsy.’ She froze in embarrassment.

‘No, it’s my own fault.’ He waited for Heather to look up towards him. It was then that he recognised her. ‘Heather, Heather Clarke, or I mean, Martin?’

‘Yes.’ She winced as she attempted an asymmetrical smile. ‘Oh hello.’ A shiver shot down her spine as she realised who he was. Mike would go mad, she shouldn’t be out looking like this and she needed to get away before Detective Kelly took too much notice of her face. Self-consciously she pulled the peak of her cap further down over her eyes.

‘Detective Kelly?’ Heather had known Detective Tony Kelly since her father was an Inspector at Kilkenny Garda Station but hadn’t seen him in ages. As a matter of fact she hadn’t seen anyone from the station, that was the way Mike liked it.

‘Yes.’ Kelly slotted the full cup into the now empty cup and wiped his hand on his jeans. ‘Lovely to see you again.’ He took her hand and held it for just a moment too long before he shook it. Heather cringed; she wanted to dart away, she wanted the ground to open up and swallow her whole. How was she going to explain her injuries? ‘God, what in the hell happened?’

Heather scrambled to find a plausible response, her mind full of what Mike was going to do when he found out she had left the apartment.

‘Heather.’ Kelly placed his hand on her shoulder and stepped her towards the coffee shop window out of the flow of pedestrians. ‘What happened, are you okay?’ At over six foot, Kelly towered over her small, five-foot-nothing build. ‘You look as though you’ve been in the wars?’

‘Oh, this.’ Awkwardly she lifted her hand to her jaw, still unable to meet his gaze. ‘I fell.’ Her heartbeat raced and she could hear the thump of her blood vessels inside her ears. She swallowed a ball of saliva that was beginning to choke her. ‘As you can tell, I’m a bit clumsy.’ She dropped her eyes to the puddle of coffee just to the side. ‘Exhibit A.’ She attempted to sound breezy. ‘I was running, yesterday, along the riverbank…’ She lifted her eyes briefly and connected with Kelly’s but quickly looked away again. ‘And I must have misjudged the grass verge – I went right over, hit my face.’ Her voice was timid as she fidgeted anxiously with her hands. Everyone in Kilkenny knew how the February storms had broken up the path along the river, maybe he would believe her lie.

‘Really? Wow, it looks so sore,’ Kelly answered. His eyes scanned the rest of her body as he spoke. She was dressed in black leggings, a red half-zip top and a beige baseball cap with NY on the front and had it pulled low on her face. She looked pale and Kelly was convinced that she was lying about how she got her