Run Away With Me : A fast-paced psychological thriller

by Daniel Hurst

  ‘All I know is I was on my way to the car when I heard the crash. I was lucky it didn’t hit me.’

  Laura’s puzzled facial expression tells me that she isn’t convinced, but I don’t need her to be. I just needed her to not see the news. Thank God I came back when I did and not ten minutes later. Then she would know by now that the man she had an affair with is missing. She would also know that there is currently no ongoing search for me or anyone else in connection with the ‘hit and run’. It wouldn’t be good if Laura found out about either of those two pieces of information on their own, never mind combined. Then she would really start to suspect that something was seriously wrong. But I’ve just averted a minor crisis. She doesn’t know about any of it. Not yet.

  All I need now is one more day and then she can know everything.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I ask when I notice she is staring at the TV, but she ignores my question.

  ‘Laura?’ I try again, and that snaps her out of her trance and gets her to look at me. But she still seems distracted.

  What’s going on in that mind of hers?

  ‘I’m fine. But I might go and have a lie down,’ she eventually says.

  ‘I’ll come with you if you like?’ I offer.

  ‘No, it’s okay. Do you mind finishing unpacking the shopping?’

  ‘Sure.’

  I watch my wife carefully as she climbs the stairs until she is out of view before I return to the kitchen and take out the last few items in the plastic bags. I think about making a sandwich with some of the items I picked up on my way back from the police station, but I stop because something is bothering me. Laura seemed different with me then. I expected her to be annoyed about the satellite dish getting broken, and even a little angry, but it’s not that. It’s something else.

  She seemed troubled.

  But why? Does she suspect that I’m not telling her the truth about how the dish got broken? Or was I too late to break it? Did she see something on the news before it cut out?

  The unsettled feeling in my stomach makes me feel like it is the latter.

  35

  LAURA

  What the hell is going on? What has happened to him?

  Why is Bradley missing?

  I saw and heard just enough of the news report on the TV before the signal cut out to learn that the man I started an affair with a year ago is now missing. I saw his photo on the screen. I heard the news presenter say his name and inform the viewers that concerns are growing for his safety because he hasn’t been seen in three days. And I even saw footage of his teary wife sitting on her sofa opposite a reporter, presumably just about to tell her story.

  But then the screen went black, and I couldn’t watch anymore.

  I’m not sure what happened, but I know what I’m supposed to believe. I’m supposed to believe that the wind brought down half of the satellite dish. That’s what Adam has told me. But is it the truth?

  I’m back in bed and trying to get some rest because I’m feeling a little jaded right now, but it has nothing to do with the baby I’m carrying. It’s because I’m trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I don’t know what could have happened to Bradley. If only I’d been able to watch the full report. All I know is that it didn’t sound good and his wife looked distraught.

  His wife.

  I know that the reason for my bad feelings at this moment aren’t just caused by the stress of the situation I’m in or the shock of seeing Bradley’s photo flash up on the news. They are also caused by the guilt I felt when I saw his wife on the screen because I know something about her husband that she doesn’t.

  I know that he isn’t the perfect man she thinks he is.

  I regret my affair with Bradley, and I’m glad it stopped before any real damage was done to either of our marriages. Neither Adam nor Holly, Bradley’s spouse, found out about what we did behind their backs, and I’m thankful for that because what happened wasn’t worth blowing up two marriages for. Bradley and I were just two co-workers who had a little too much to drink one night and ended up kissing. The fact we continued to meet up in secret for several illicit rendezvous in the couple of months that followed is regrettable, and I don’t really know what got into me. My marriage with Adam had been perfect at the time, and it wasn’t as if I had a wandering eye for anybody, let alone a guy I shared an office with. It just happened after a particularly boozy night of work drinks. We ended up on our own, away from the rest of our colleagues. We were drunk. The music was loud. I temporarily forgot about the world that was waiting for me outside that little pub by the station. I welcomed in the idea of him kissing me. And then it happened on the platform.

  So began a three month affair.

  I wanted it to stop. I told Bradley it had to, and he agreed with me each time I said it. I loved Adam. He loved Holly.

  We were just being silly.

  But we just couldn’t help ourselves.

  We went out drinking together several times, often cosying up in the corners of pubs and bars and kissing over a couple of drinks like we were two love-drunk teenagers. We even went for a few meals together, although we spent less time eating and more time playing footsy underneath the table. And much to my eternal shame, we even went to a hotel room a few times, locking ourselves away from the world for two hours before walking back separately through the reception and catching the train home to the person we should have been with all along.

  It took me longer than it should have to stop it. Once is bad enough, but three months is a long time to be seeing somebody who isn’t my husband. I guess it made me feel good. It reminded me of my youth. It reminded me that there used to be more fun things in life than just commuting, working and saving money for a rainy day. Most of all, it reminded me that I was alive.

  But I eventually put a stop to it. I told Bradley enough was enough one day in the kitchen at work, and he agreed, though this time we both actually meant it. Fortunately, he got a new job across the city only a couple of months after that, so I didn’t have be around him for forty hours a week, and now I haven’t seen him in months.

  Until today.

  The sight of his face has brought up all manner of emotions inside me, but the prevailing one is shock. The fact that he is missing is scary because as much as what we did together was wrong, and as much as I never wanted to see him again, I still hope nothing bad has happened to him. But it must have. People just don’t go missing for good reasons. He must have come to some harm.

  Unless he has been having another affair and this time he has left Holly.

  But even if he was seeing someone else like he had done with me, he wouldn’t just vanish. He has a job. He has commitments. He has a wife to divorce.

  So that leads me to think that something bad has happened to him.

  I rest my hands on my stomach and almost right on cue, Samuel delivers a swift kick to my insides, causing me to gasp slightly in pain. The little boy wants to get out. He knows it’s time. But I don’t want him to come yet. It isn’t safe for him out here. There’s too much uncertainty in the world.

  I want to know what happened to Bradley. I want to know if Adam is being honest with me about the TV. And I want to know if I am going to be a good mother.

  One thing is for certain: I’m not a good wife.

  I know that because the father of the baby inside me right now is not the man I married.

  It’s the man I cheated on him with.

  36

  LAURA

  EIGHT MONTHS EARLIER

  Today is the day I tell Adam that I am pregnant. It should be exciting. It should be magical. It should be one of the happiest days of our entire lives. But it’s none of those things, at least not for me. That’s because I know that Adam isn’t the father.

  That means everything I do from this point on is just pretending.

  I’ve known about the baby growing inside me for two weeks. That was when I was late, and when I got a test. It’s also how I know that Bradley is
the father. He was the only man I slept with in the whole month before that missed period.

  I panicked when I saw the positive result. I thought my marriage was over. I thought I’d ruined everything. But then I had an idea. I didn’t have to tell Adam about the baby just yet, and I didn’t have to tell Bradley about it at all. There was a way to keep my marriage intact and not ruin lives. All I had to do was be careful.

  The day I found out I was pregnant sent me into a tailspin, but it was only the next day when I regained my composure and charted a path out of this mess. I went home from work that night, and I made love to Adam. Because it was our first time in a month, it wasn’t the easiest thing to make happen. There were two reasons for the dry spell. One, I‘d been sleeping with somebody else. I can’t blame my husband for that one. But two, Adam had been different lately. He was always tired, always grumpy and quite often coming up to bed stinking of booze. He put it down to being stressed at work and told me he was going to quit and get a better job, and I agreed it was for the best. But this period was hardly a recipe for physical intimacy between us.

  But I managed to get our sex life back on track that night and while it wasn’t great, I did what I needed to do. I created the opportunity for me to tell Adam that I was pregnant a few weeks later and make him have no reason not to believe that he was the father.

  Now I am just waiting for him to come home and I will give him the news. He knows nothing of my affair so he will have no reason to think the baby is anybody else’s, and he has no idea that I am almost a full month into my term. I will tell him that I only recently missed my period and got a test, rather than admitting it happened a fortnight ago before we made love. What that means is that I will need to lie about the baby’s due date with him.

  I’ll need to tell him that it is slightly later than it really is. Hopefully, the baby won’t come early. If it arrives after exactly nine months, Adam will just think it is early, and if it comes late then it will actually be right at the time when Adam believes it should be.

  I will tell Adam my due date is 14th November, but really it is 24th October. The morning sickness hasn’t started yet, so that’s good, and I’m hoping it doesn’t at all, but even if it does then I won’t have to try and hide it now anyway. Adam is going to know about the baby because I am going to tell him and then we are going to enjoy this special time together. I’m going to do my best to push all thoughts of my past out of my mind and focus them on the future instead. Bradley is history. Adam is, was and always will be the man for me. I just lost my way for a while, but I’m back on track now. It’s just a shame I hadn’t ended things with Bradley before I fell pregnant.

  I’m not even sure how it happened because we were as careful as all of the other times but what’s done is done, and I can’t change it. I’ve also never entertained the idea of not having the baby. I don’t want to go through an abortion, and I definitely don’t want to deprive the life inside of me of the chance to exist just because I made a mistake that needs to be covered up. I will have the baby, everybody will think that it is Adam’s, and I will spend the rest of my marriage being the best wife I can be.

  But I do need Adam to play his part. Either he leaves his job soon, or he finds a better way to cope with it because I can’t have him coming home so moody all the time, and I certainly don’t want him drinking as much as he has been when there is a baby to look after. He thinks I haven’t noticed, but I have. I’ll see how he takes this news first. Maybe it will be the making of him. Maybe he will go back to the way he was a few weeks ago, before he started acting differently around me. And maybe this whole thing will work out well in the end.

  I can’t predict the future, but I think everything is going to be okay.

  Isn’t it?

  37

  ADAM

  The thought of my wife with another man’s baby inside of her is the one that has led me to this very moment right here in this cottage. Laura is upstairs resting on the bed. The TV satellite dish is lying on the ground in pieces outside. And I’m counting down the hours until all of this is over and I finally get my revenge.

  It was eight months ago when I came home from work to find Laura holding a positive pregnancy test in her hands. I’d already had three beers before I’d driven home that evening, but I disguised it well enough, and she was too excited about her news to notice I was tipsy as she threw her arms around me and told me that we were having a baby.

  At the time, I did think that it was possible that the baby was mine. While I knew about the affair, I believed it to be over because I hadn’t seen Laura and Bradley together for a while. The last few times I had followed Laura had resulted in nothing more than seeing her leave the office and catch the train home. The sneaky visits to the pubs, restaurants and hotels had seemed to come to an end, not that it was much consolation for them happening in the first place. I also knew that we had been intimate with each other a few weeks earlier, so it was plausible that I was the father.

  It was plausible right up until the moment I saw the text message flash up on Laura’s mobile phone.

  It was an appointment reminder from Carlisle Hospital confirming her three month scan the next day. The problem with that was that Laura had told me that her scan was in a fortnight. I said nothing about the message, and when I asked her later that night about her plans for the following day, she said nothing about going to the hospital for a scan. That’s when I knew that the secrets hadn’t just ended when her affair with Bradley had. She still had reason to lie to me, which made me wonder why she was doing it. But there was only one possible explanation for her to lie about dates with the baby.

  She had got pregnant before that night we had sex.

  It was Bradley’s baby, not mine.

  I wanted to be as sure as I could be before I jumped to any conclusions, so I did my best to catch Laura in another lie surrounding the pregnancy. That came a few months later when I insisted on Laura having another scan because I had been too busy at work to accompany her to the earlier ones. I waited until after the scan while Laura was getting changed before I asked the nurse about how best to prepare for the due date of November 14th. The nurse corrected me and said the due date was 24th October.

  Laura definitely got pregnant earlier than she told me she did.

  I thought the night my best friend broke the news about my wife’s affair was as bad as it could get. But that day in the hospital when I knew for sure that my wife was lying to me about our baby was far worse. That was when I really started drinking heavily.

  But it was also when I met Gemma.

  Gemma has saved my life. I have no doubt that I wouldn’t be here now if it wasn’t for her. She found me at my lowest point, and she picked me up and got me feeling like I used to feel before my wife ripped my heart out.

  She also gave me the idea on how to get my own back on Laura and Bradley.

  I open the fridge and take out one of the beers inside that I picked up from the supermarket earlier. I didn’t get many because this isn’t a holiday, but I can allow myself the odd one because I’ve worked hard over these last few days and I deserve a little break before the big finale. I pop the cap off with the bottle opener and then take a long swig of the ice-cold lager, feeling instantly refreshed, as well as experiencing the familiar rush of endorphins that I always get when I consume alcohol.

  I wouldn’t class myself as an alcoholic, and I drink far less than I used to a few months ago, but I do have a fairly bad relationship with the demon drink. I find myself unable to resist it when times are hard like they have been over this past year, and that means there have been plenty of occasions where I have been under the influence when I shouldn’t have. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve got behind the wheel after several beers, and I know it is a miracle I haven’t killed myself or anybody else in that time. But there was one night when I came close to disaster.

  It was the night after I found out Laura had lied to me about the baby’s due date.


  That night, I’d consumed half a bottle of whiskey at my desk while the office was empty and then I had got in my car and prepared to drive home, although I had little intention of actually completing the journey. I was ready to end it all. I knew the exact wall I was going to drive into. I’d even calculated how fast I needed to be going to ensure I had no chance of surviving the impact.

  It was as I was approaching the road that I needed to be on when I saw the blue lights in my rear-view mirror. A police car was right behind me, and while I moved over to let it pass, they stayed on my tail.

  It was me they were after.

  I thought about taking them on a high-speed chase through the country lanes near my house before eventually ploughing my vehicle into the wall when the police car made a quick manoeuvre and passed me before coming to a stop, blocking the road so I could no longer drive on. I considered running, but I was far too inebriated to have the coordination for that. In the end, I slumped back in the driver’s seat and accepted that I was going to be punished for this crime. My suicide would have to be postponed for a later date.

  I had watched as the female police officer got out of her vehicle and approached my window, and I saw her expression when she registered how drunk I was. But most importantly of all, I saw the sympathy she had for me when I blurted out my story to her.

  I told her everything.

  “My wife had an affair.”

  “She is pregnant with that man’s child.”

  “I’m a loser for not doing anything about it.”

  The police officer told me to get out. She made me wait on the back seat of her vehicle while she moved my car over to the roadside to where it wasn’t blocking the road. Then she drove us off the lane and down into a quiet country road where nobody was around.

  She told me her name was Gemma.

  She told me she knew what it was like to be betrayed by the person she loved.