The Choice

by Lake, Alex

  What pressures? she had wanted to say. You try having kids and a family and bills to pay and trying to write novels.

  She hadn’t. She didn’t want to be accused of complaining, so she had murmured how lovely. Now she wished she had told him what she actually thought.

  ‘Guy,’ she said. ‘Why would I be glad?’

  He smiled that uncertain smile.

  ‘You know,’ he said. ‘You know why I’m doing this, and if you know that, then you know why you should be glad.’

  ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘I have no idea. But whatever it is, it’s over. I’m going home to my family.’

  In an odd way it was almost a relief it was Guy. It might be scary and weird, but it was Guy. She’d known him since she was fourteen. He was – at least he had been – a known quantity. There was nothing for her to be afraid of. If it had been a crazed psychopath, that would have been different. But it was Guy. A friend. He had screwed up somehow, but she could handle him. She could reach him.

  And she knew he would not hurt her, not really hurt her. He didn’t have it in him. He couldn’t, or she would have seen it over the years. You couldn’t hide something that big for that long. No one could.

  So she was going to leave. She was going to walk past him and leave this room and this house and this nightmare. And he would not stop her.

  She walked towards him. He held up his hands and his lips twitched. ‘Annabelle,’ he began, ‘I don’t th—’

  She tried to push past him and he grabbed her by the elbow and twisted. The pain bloomed through her shoulder and she screamed.

  He increased the pressure.

  ‘Guy!’ she gasped. ‘No. That hurts.’

  ‘Annabelle. I don’t think you understand.’ Still holding her elbow, he pushed her back into the middle of the room. ‘You can’t leave.’

  He levered her down until she was sitting on the end of the bed.

  ‘And you don’t want to leave,’ he said.

  ‘I do,’ she said. ‘I do.’

  ‘No, you don’t. More to the point, Annabelle, you wanted this. It’s your idea, Annabelle. You don’t need to pretend any more.’

  ‘Pretend what, Guy?’

  ‘That you don’t know what this is about.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  The frantic look in his eyes grew wilder. He licked his lips. ‘Annabelle—’

  ‘I don’t know what this is about, Guy. How could I? How could I know anything about this? It’s fucking insane!’

  ‘No, it isn’t,’ he said, his tone insistent. ‘And you do know about it. It was your idea. You made me do it.’ He frowned. ‘I don’t know why you’re denying it. It’s not helpful, Annabelle. It doesn’t help us to move on with our plans.’

  Our plans? She felt lost, bewildered by what he was saying. They had no shared plans. She had no idea what he was talking about.

  ‘I have to say, I’m a little disappointed,’ he said. ‘I mean, I’ve gone to all this effort and we’re finally here, together, like you’ – he pointed at her, his arm fully outstretched, and his voice rose – ‘wanted, and now you pretend you don’t know what’s happening? I mean, are you trying to ruin this deliberately? Because that’s how it seems.’

  She sat and looked at him. She had no idea what to say next.

  He took a deep breath. ‘Shall we start again?’

  Even though she felt like she was lost in a thick fog with no sense of which way safety lay, starting again sounded like a good idea, because the terror was back, and the relief that it was Guy had vanished. This was not the Guy she knew. That Guy was gone, replaced by someone she did not recognize at all.

  ‘OK. Let’s start again.’

  ‘Good.’ He smiled. ‘That’s the right answer, Annabelle. Well done.’

  Wynne

  DI Wynne walked into DSI Marie Ryan’s office and closed the door. Ryan looked up from the file she was reading. ‘Take a seat.’

  ‘No thanks,’ Wynne said. ‘I’ll stand. I’ve been at my desk for the last hour or two,’ she said. ‘Good to get the blood flowing.’

  ‘So, what do you have?’

  Wynne looked at the window, then back at DSI Ryan. ‘Nothing,’ she said. ‘We have absolutely nothing. Unless you count questions. We have plenty of those.’

  ‘Take me through them.’

  ‘Why, first of all. Not why does someone want Annabelle Westbrook – that could be revenge or obsession or another reason, although that leads us to who, and we have no suspects – but why kidnap the kids, and then exchange them for the wife?’

  Ryan nodded. ‘All that does is complicate matters. If it’s revenge or obsession, why not just kidnap her and be done?’

  ‘Right. There must be a reason to involve the kids.’

  ‘Indeed, but it may be so specific we won’t be able to guess it.’

  ‘Which makes investigating it a challenge.’

  ‘What if the kidnapper wanted to tie her in psychologically? Make her complicit.’

  ‘We thought about that. But how does this make her part of it? She had no choice.’

  Ryan shrugged. ‘That’s how we think about it. But we’re rational people, DI Wynne. This person is not. Still, let’s move on to question two. Who?’

  ‘There’s no one obvious. No disgruntled friend or colleague. We considered obsessive fans – one name came up, but we’ve ruled him out – and then there was an ex-girlfriend of the husband. She was pretty intense: lied about being pregnant to try and hang on to him, showed up at the christening of the first child threatening revenge.’

  ‘Sounds promising.’

  ‘We talked to her. We considered her husband, but his alibi checks out. Hers too. She’s in the clear.’

  ‘What about Annabelle’s husband? He’s a lawyer, right? Any enemies?’

  ‘Not that he can think of. But we’ll check. We’ll interview his colleagues.’

  Ryan bit her lip. ‘Did the wife have a lover?’

  ‘We can’t ask her, obviously,’ Wynne said. ‘But she didn’t mention anything to her husband before the handover.’

  ‘She wouldn’t.’

  ‘You think? With the kids at stake? I think she would have confessed.’

  ‘It’s possible she didn’t.’

  ‘Possible,’ Wynne conceded.

  ‘And if it is that, find the lover and you find her,’ Ryan said. ‘What else have you got?’

  ‘Nothing. We’re looking for the van he put her in. We have it on CCTV leaving the car park at the truck stop, but there’s been no trace since.’

  ‘Vans don’t just disappear, DI Wynne.’

  ‘I know they don’t. So the fact we can’t find any sign of it suggests he hid it and switched to another vehicle.’

  ‘In which case we would have no idea what we’re looking for,’ said Ryan. ‘You have to find that van.’

  ‘That’s what we’re working on,’ Wynne said. ‘It hasn’t shown up on any of the ANPR cameras in the area, so we’re assuming it was hidden quite close to the truck stop. Say within fifteen miles. But there’s a lot of places to hide a van within fifteen miles of that truck stop.’

  ‘Keep looking for it,’ Ryan said. ‘This isn’t a random kidnap, DI Wynne. There’s a reason for this, and if we can find out what that is, we’ll find Annabelle Westbrook. Interview everyone you can think of, everyone who knows Matt and Annabelle. Friends, family, colleagues, ex-boyfriends and girlfriends. Find anything you can that might be a motive.’

  ‘We will,’ Wynne said, and she hoped for the sake of Matt, Annabelle and their kids that something came up, because as things stood she was completely in the dark.

  Annabelle

  1

  ‘So,’ he said, a thin smile on his lips. ‘Aren’t you glad we’re finally here?’

  She studied him. It was clear that something was wrong. This was not the Guy she knew; he was urbane, intelligent, kind. This person was unhinged. It was possible he had experienced a trauma she didn’t know about
which had left him like this, or he had suffered a breakdown of huge proportions.

  Whatever it was, she couldn’t think of him as harmless old Guy. Not now. Not until he was better.

  Until then she had to treat him like he was dangerous. Which, the pain in her shoulder constantly reminded her, meant going along with him.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I’m glad.’

  ‘Glad?’ he said. ‘Only, I thought you’d be more than that. Ecstatic. After what you’ve been through.’

  ‘I am,’ she said. ‘I said glad, but I meant delighted.’

  He sat next to her on the bed and put his arm around her shoulder. He rested a hand on her thigh and she flinched away. ‘I’m so happy to be near you.’

  She shifted so their hips weren’t touching. ‘Me too,’ she said.

  His eyes narrowed, and he moved closer to her. ‘Good,’ he said.

  She felt an intense discomfort at the touch of his hip. It was far too intimate. She didn’t want to antagonize him, but she had to break the contact, or she was worried she might be sick.

  She shuffled away. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s – I need some space.’

  He nodded. ‘I understand. It’s too soon. That’s understandable. And we have all the time in the world.’ He smiled, reassuringly. ‘All the time. He’ll never find you here. I made sure of that. You’re safe now. You’ve got everything you ever wanted.’

  Her head spun. Safe? From what? From Matt? She tried to piece it all together. He had said it was her idea, that she had made him do this, that these were shared plans.

  That she wanted to be here, was safe here, as though she was running from something.

  But she had no idea what he was talking about. There was nothing in her life she wanted to flee; quite the opposite. And as for the fact that she’d made him do it – that was simply ridiculous. She had never told Guy that she needed him to kidnap her kids and then exchange them for her. Why would she?

  But he believed it, and she needed to know what he thought and why or she would never get out of this mess.

  Which meant swallowing her fear and playing along, for now.

  ‘Guy,’ she said. ‘How did you know what I’d been through? I mean, we never talked about it.’

  He raised his eyebrows in an exaggerated, theatrical gesture that said, Are you crazy?

  ‘We didn’t talk about it, but you told me everything. More than you could have by talking. I mean, come on, Annabelle. I can’t even believe you’re asking.’

  ‘I know what I did,’ she said. ‘I want to make sure you do. So? How did you know?’

  He turned to the shelves and held his hand up to her books.

  ‘You wrote it all in these,’ he said. ‘In your books. As you well know. You wrote it all in your books, so I would know every detail. I suspected it as soon as I read the first one.’

  ‘Suspected what, exactly?’ Her mouth was dry, and the words came out softly.

  ‘How unhappy you were.’ He leaned forward, his eyes wide. ‘But more than that, I understood the true message of the book.’ He inhaled, his nostrils flared, as though he was about to taste a fine, vintage wine. ‘And then you did not change your name. You remember that conversation with your publisher? We discussed publishing as Annabelle Westbrook, given you were engaged, but you chose to stay Annabelle Anderson. That was you telling me that what was in them was the true you. It was a relief, Annabelle. More than that. A vindication. I had suspected it all along, but it was a wonderful day when it was confirmed.’

  She could see that what he was saying had an internal logic. If you took all the evidence he had amassed and looked at it the way he was looking at it, his conclusion made sense. He had built the entire edifice piece by piece.

  The problem was that the foundations were entirely rotten.

  ‘When what was confirmed?’ she murmured.

  ‘I’m glad you’re testing me,’ he said. ‘It’s proof that you are as serious about this as I am. I can tell you I was glad to finally find out that you loved me. That you had always loved me, but hadn’t realized it.’ He smiled. ‘And that you needed my help.’

  She couldn’t think of any response, so she just watched him.

  He stepped towards the desk and picked up the champagne bottle. ‘This can wait. I have to go now. Trust me – I know you’ll understand – I want nothing more than to spend the day with you, but duty calls. I’m going into the office. They’ll notice if I don’t show up, and I can’t risk calling any attention to myself by doing anything out of the ordinary. Not now. Not when they’re looking. They’ll stop soon enough, and then we can do whatever we want, but until then I’m afraid I have to be careful!’

  She watched him leave the room and heard the click of the lock, then closed her eyes.

  This – and she would not have thought such a thing was possible a few minutes earlier – was worse than she had thought.

  2

  Annabelle looked at the door, then the lake, and then the plastic champagne flutes.

  She was starting to see what was happening, and it filled her with a sense of dread. There was something deep and longstanding and powerful and immensely troubling behind all this, and, although she didn’t fully understand it, she could tell it was out of control.

  Guy was in love with her, and it seemed like it had been that way for a long time. That alone was flabbergasting, but on top of that he thought she loved him. And the reason was her books.

  He was mentally ill, she realized, and in the way that some people heard voices or saw secret codes all around them, he saw in her books a secret message, and his belief it was the truth was so profound that he was prepared to do all this as a result.

  She tried to think through what he was seeing in her books.

  Still Waters, in which a woman marries a man she doesn’t want to because he knows something secret about her and she has to resort to desperate measures – involving another man – to escape him. Deep Cover, a love story in which a young couple fail to recognize they are meant to be together and marry other people, only to find each other when they are much older. The Knot, in which a wife, suddenly ill, discovers that her husband is not who he said he was, a discovery which changed everything for her and put her in danger. Danger she is rescued from when an old friend helps her out.

  And then This Is Not the End, her most recent book, about a new mother suffering from post-natal depression, and, in the deepest stretch of her depression, questioning whether she even wants her child.

  But deciding she does.

  Evidently, Guy thought they were about her. He thought they were autobiographical. But there was more than that.

  He thought they were a message from her to him. A woman forced into marriage, a wife in danger, a mother who questioned her motherhood. A coded plea. A cry for help.

  A call to arms.

  And he had responded by rescuing her.

  But that left a question. Why kidnap the kids? Why not just abduct her?

  She didn’t know; she was sure he would tell her in time. For now she needed to be calm and figure out how to get away.

  Annabelle looked out of the window at the lake. It was visible through a stand of tall trees. Pines maybe, but certainly evergreens. All the other trees around were deciduous.

  She wondered if the pines had been planted to provide a year-round screen, shielding the house from the lake. Surely Guy had not gone to that much trouble?

  She pictured a boat slowing to a stop by the shingle beach and rocking gently as two people got out for a picnic, then looking up at the window and seeing her frantically waving.

  Except they wouldn’t see her. She could see down to the water, but the view up would be blocked by the trees. If someone really looked hard they might, at a stretch, see the window, but would they see her? And see that she was gesturing for help?

  And no one would stop there, anyway. It was private land, and she was certain that Guy had thought all this through. He would have made s
ure there were signs telling people to stay away, and, even if they disobeyed them, it wouldn’t help. There was no way he would have given her a window if there was any possibility that she would be visible to anyone. There might be boats out on the water – he couldn’t control that – but all they would see was a peaceful lake house.

  So she was going to have to get out of here herself.

  She put her hand on the window. It was clear from looking at it that it was much thicker than normal glass. She pushed it; there was no movement at all. She looked at the frame, where the edge of the glass was visible.

  It was perhaps three-quarters of an inch thick.

  Unbreakable.

  She turned the door handle. Locked, obviously. She tried to rattle it, but it was fixed, fast. It was made of a thick metal. She banged on the wall. Stone, she thought. Either the whole house was made that way – which was not impossible for an older house – or he had built this room specially.

  However it had come about – and the architectural history of the room was of no interest to her – she was not going to smash her way out of her prison.

  She would have to find another way.

  She looked around for a weapon. There was nothing, especially since he had taken the champagne bottle.

  Maybe she could persuade him to let her out for a bit of fresh air and run away. Or fake an illness.

  He would not fall for that. He was too smart. He always had been.

  She had known him since they were fourteen, when he had moved to the house down the street from her and started at her school. She had a boyfriend – Connor – and Guy had started going out with Heather Stanford, who was generally considered to be unattainable by every other boy in the school.

  She had, for a few months, had a crush on him. One day, walking to school, she had tried to let him know.

  What would you tell a friend to do if they were secretly interested in someone, but that person was just a friend? Should they tell them?

  She had hoped he would guess that the friend she was talking about was her, and give her a sly look, then take her hand in his and stop walking and turn to look at her, and then they would kiss.