by Daniel Hurst
Stepping towards him, I crouch down and will myself on to get this over with as quickly as possible. Reaching into the front pocket of his jeans, I hold my breath as I check for the keys while keeping my eyes on his face. I can see the blood from where I hit him with the weight. Some of it is on his face, and some of it is on the garage floor. But there’s not as much as I expected considering how hard I hit him.
I doubt he had time to process what was happening to him just before I struck him, but if he did, then he would have surely wondered how I had ever been able to lift one of his weights and hit him across the face with it. But that would only be because he had underestimated me. He presumably hadn’t expected me to start trying to lift the dumbbells every day, but I did. Little by little, inch by inch, more and more over the past several weeks until I eventually got to the point where I could lift them just the once. While I was still a long way off being able to curl one of the dumbbells, I have strengthened my arms enough to at least pick the weight up off the ground, which was all I needed to do.
My plan had originally been to bang on the door and call out to Craig before grabbing the weight and hitting him when he walked in. But then I had decided to see if he would enter of his own accord when he thought I was sleeping, and it turned out that he had.
I knew he had been putting sleeping tablets in my food. That meant that he wanted me to sleep. So that’s what I had done.
Or at least that’s what I had pretended to have done.
I had hit him as he had tried to pick me up. It had only been after I had sent him falling to the floor that I turned around and noticed the belt hanging from the beam above my head. So that had been his plan. He was going to make it look like I had hung myself. I would be his second wife to commit suicide.
Except he would know the truth.
He would know that he had killed me and got away with it.
With no movement on Craig’s face, I feel more confident as I continue to search in his pockets. But a search of his front pockets yields no results, and I’m starting to think that he has deliberately hidden the keys somewhere in case I ever managed to find my way out of this prison.
But then I put my hand into his back pocket, and I feel them. The keys to the front door. The keys that will take me to my freedom.
I pull them out of his pocket and turn to run.
But just before I can go, I feel my husband grab my ankle and pull me back towards him.
76
CRAIG
This stupid bitch. I don’t care about making it look like suicide now. I’ll kill her, and I don’t care who finds out about it.
“Get off me!” Megan screams as I climb on top of her and fight to restrain her flailing arms.
The diary in her left hand falls to the floor. She had obviously planned to take it with her before she left, removing the evidence in the house linking her to my ex-wife which would no doubt make her claims of abuse at my hand seem more likely. But the diary will remain in here.
Just like she will.
There is no doubt that she is physically stronger after her time in here, but she is still no match for me. She caught me off guard with the weight, but there will be no surprises now. I have the upper hand again, and this time I will make sure that I use it to finish the job.
“No!” she cries as I put both my hands around her throat and begin to squeeze, ignoring the scratches from her nails on my arms and face as I work.
She quickly loses the ability to speak with the pressure I am applying to her larynx, and I expect her to stop fighting completely in another thirty seconds or so.
Her body continues to wriggle and writhe beneath me, but I refuse to let go. Her hands have stopped hitting me now and are instead reaching desperately for something to attack me with. But the weights aren’t close enough to help her now. The only thing close enough to her is the diary that she just dropped.
She manages to grab hold of it again and slams it against the side of my head, temporarily dazing me but not enough for me to let go of her neck. She hits me again, and the sharp edge of the diary digs into my temple. That hit was much more painful than the first.
Now I have to address it before she can do it again.
I remove one of my hands from her throat and hold it out to the side to defend myself from any further blows. But that gives Megan enough leeway to wriggle out from underneath me, and I lose my balance as she topples me off her and sends me to the floor.
She tries to run again, but I grab her, pulling her down.
She reaches out for the belt hanging from the rafters and uses it to stay on her feet. She is putting up much more of a fight than I had anticipated. But it’s all for nothing.
I will kill her.
There is no escaping me now.
As Megan fiddles with the buckle on the belt, trying to undo the noose, I get to my feet and hold my hand to my head, touching the tender area where the diary clattered into my skull. For some reason, it’s hurting a lot more than where the weight hit me.
That part of my head has gone completely numb now.
“What are you doing, Megan?” I ask my wife, shaking my head at her as I reach down for one of the dumbbells. She thought she could kill me with one of these. It will be poetic if I end up killing her with one of them instead.
I’m just about to turn around and finish my wife when I feel the tightness around my neck. Pulling at the material around my throat, I feel the leather belt digging into my skin, but I’m unable to get my fingers beneath it to relieve the pressure and get some oxygen back into my airways.
Driving myself backwards, I slam Megan into the concrete wall but to my surprise, she keeps a firm grip on the belt, still using it to strangle me.
Now I’m beginning to get worried. The blows to the head have weakened me considerably, yet Megan seems only to be getting stronger.
She wants this just as badly as I do.
Pushing myself back as hard as I can, I hope that crushing my wife into the wall will do the trick and get her to let go of the belt around my neck. But it isn’t happening, and now things are starting to get serious.
I can’t get out of this.
I can’t breathe.
And now the edges of my vision are starting to go black.
My last thought before I lose consciousness is that I have severely underestimated my wife.
77
MEGAN
I’m finally out of the house now. I’m finally breathing in the fresh air.
And I’m finally free of my crazy husband.
I wasn’t initially sure if the blow to the head with the weight had been enough to kill him. But I know the slow strangulation with the belt has more than done the job.
I held the belt around Craig’s neck for several minutes after he had stopped moving, wanting to ensure that there was no coming back for him this time. When I finally let go and checked for a pulse, there was none.
My husband is dead.
I am now officially a widow.
I am also officially a very good runner. Not only did Craig make a mistake leaving me in a room with the dumbbells that he thought I could never lift, but he also made a mistake leaving me with the treadmill. I ran on it every day while I was in captivity, which means that I am now more than capable of making the two-mile run to the nearest house to ours. I was running ten-minute miles on the treadmill so that means that I should arrive at my neighbour’s house in around twenty minutes from now, sweaty, exhausted and covered in cuts and bruises. I’ll bang on the door, I’ll fall into the homeowner’s arms when they answer it, and then I will tell them what has happened.
My husband locked me up.
My husband tried to kill me.
My husband is now dead.
As I run through the quiet country lanes, I see the first hint of sunrise cresting on the horizon. The tint of orange isn’t yet enough to illuminate the dark fields around me, but it is only a matter of time until this rural part of the world is flooded
with sunlight. Just like it is only a matter of time until I am safe.
I know I am in shock right now. I know the enormity of what I have just done hasn’t hit me yet. And I know I am going to have some explaining to do with the police when they ask me to tell them what has happened. But right now, all I want to do is get as far from my house as possible.
I will have to return to the home I shared with Craig at some point, but for now, I just want to put as much distance between that building and myself as I can. I’ll keep running. I’ll keep the adrenaline pumping. And I’ll keep trying to forget how much my life has fallen apart ever since I found out who my husband really was.
The sky is much brighter by the time the neighbour’s house comes into view at the end of the lane. I’ll be at the front door in a couple of minutes, which is good because I’m now struggling to keep going. I feel like I’m on my last legs and the adrenaline is fading fast, replaced instead by the fatigue that has threatened to consume me over the past few days. But before I reach the house and collapse in a heap at the feet of whoever lives there, I have the presence of mind to do one last thing.
I duck off the road and dart into the trees, picking up the trail of the stream that I know runs through here. Then I stop and look down at the diary in my hands. I’ve carried it all the way here on my run. But this is where the journey ends.
With a quick flick of the wrist, I toss the book of Anna’s last words into the water and watch it disappear downstream.
78
MEGAN
ONE MONTH LATER
I take out my earplugs to listen to the announcement over the train tannoy.
“We are making our arrival into Birmingham New Street. We apologise for the slight delay, and on behalf of myself and the staff on board, we would like to thank you for travelling with Cross Country Trains today.”
Looking out of the window, I can see the array of tall buildings that have sprung up around this city, making it look just as cosmopolitan as London or Manchester. I’ve never actually been to Birmingham before, and I’m excited to explore a new place. But most of all, I’m excited to catch up with an old friend.
Standing up from my seat and taking down the suitcase that I have stored in the overhead spaces, I am eager to get off this train and get my feet onto the platform. I can’t wait to get started on all I have to do today, and this feeling of looking forward to the future is one that I haven’t been experiencing much over the past few years.
But things are looking better for me now.
Even if I had to go through so much pain to get here.
As the train comes to a slow stop and I join the group of people standing by the doors waiting for them to open, I take a moment to reflect on how far I have come in the past month. I’ve gone from being an abused wife, locked away in a garage and fearing my deadly husband, to putting that terrible past behind me and being able to begin the next chapter of my life.
I’m a widow now, which makes things different for me. I seem to get more sympathy from everyone I meet. It was good when I got it from the police because it meant that they weren’t too forceful with me when it came to their line of questioning about what happened in that house between Craig and I. I simply told them the truth about how he had locked me away and tried to kill me and they believed me. But I can tell that they felt sorry for me, which isn’t how I want people to feel when they are around me for the rest of my life. Yes, I have lost my husband, and yes, he turned out to be a complete psycho, but I’m hoping that doesn’t have to define who I am for the rest of my existence. I’m still Megan, the chatty, friendly, eager-to-please woman I have always been. I just want to make friends, have a purpose and maybe fall in love again.
I hope I can have all of those things.
That is all I ever really wanted.
Stepping out onto the platform, I allow some of my fellow passengers to walk ahead of me while I fiddle with the strap on my suitcase, before finally getting it right and proceeding to follow them towards the inside of the station. Checking the time, I see that we are eight minutes late in arriving here, but that shouldn’t affect my plans too much. I have packed enough for a week’s stay, but I am hoping that I will be here a lot longer than that. It just depends on how things go with my friend. She doesn’t know that I am coming, which gives me butterflies in my stomach, because I don’t know what her reaction will be when she sees me. I hope she will be pleased. I expect she will be a little surprised. But most of all, I know she will be glad to see me doing so well again after what I have been through.
I put my ticket into the machine and the barriers fling open, allowing me to walk through without needing the intervention of one of the ticket officers that are standing nearby. I’m hoping to get back into the working world soon, but I don’t think I could do their job. Hanging around all day on a train platform doesn’t seem like much fun, although I could be wrong. But I think I’m more of a nine to five office girl, so that’s what I will try and do first.
I move quickly through the busy station, my suitcase rolling on its wheels behind me as I head for the exit where I presume there will be several taxis waiting to take all the passengers here to wherever they want to go next. Sure enough, I see several cars parked in a line as soon as I step outside.
It doesn’t matter what city you’re in.
There is always a taxi rank at the train station.
Smiling at the man behind the wheel in the first car in the line, I manoeuvre my suitcase towards him as he hops out and opens the boot. Like a gentleman, he takes my luggage and puts it into the back of the car for me, allowing me to get inside and take a seat where it is a little warmer. When he gets back behind the wheel, I tell him where I want to go and we are on the move.
I resist the lazy temptation to look at my phone as we drive, instead keeping my eyes on the buildings passing by my window. It all looks unfamiliar to me at the moment, but I hope that this place will feel like home in the future. All these strange bars, restaurants and clubs. All of them to explore and enjoy.
All I need to do is have somebody to explore them with.
The distance from the station to my destination was much shorter than I had anticipated and it’s only a couple of minutes until the driver is telling me that we have arrived. I look through the window at the non-descript office building outside and feel a little surprised that this is where my friend has ended up working. It’s certainly not as glamourous as where her last office was located, but appearances can be deceptive.
I know that better than anyone.
Paying the driver, I hop outside and remove my suitcase from the boot myself. It’s funny how he has suddenly stopped being a gentleman now he has my money, but never mind.
Turning my attention to the double doors in front of me, I march towards them with confidence.
I can’t wait to get inside.
I can’t wait to see my friend again.
79
SALLY
I was not expecting to see Megan again.
Ever.
Yet here she is, sitting across the table from me in this wine bar just around the corner from my new office in Birmingham. She seems well. And she has quite the story to tell. But first, she wants to know what Craig said to me about her.
“He told me that you weren’t well,” I say, shifting uncomfortably in my seat. “He said you had a habit of getting attached to people and that it was best if I leave before you get any closer to me.”
“That bastard,” Megan replies, and she seems genuinely angry about what I have just told her.
“I didn’t know what to do. But he was quite forceful. He told me to leave and never contact you again, or else there would be trouble. So I did.”
“It’s not your fault,” Megan says, reaching across the table towards my hand.
I allow her to take it because she seems so soft and vulnerable right now. Not at all like how Craig described her to me.
“My husband was very manipulative
,” she continues. “He was good at getting people to do what he wanted. That was his thing. He did it to me, and it took me years to realise it.”
“How so?” I ask, taking my hand back slowly. I feel a little bad about doing it, but I think I have a right to be a little untrusting considering how much upheaval I have had to endure in my life ever since Megan and Craig came into it.
“He got me to move down south away from all of my family and friends. He made me quit my job. He dressed it up as me being free to have all the time in the world, but he just wanted to isolate me. I ended up miles from anyone. No social contact. No job. Nothing except him. I was entirely dependent on him, and he knew that.”
“Is it true that he locked you in the garage for months?” I ask, referencing the news article that I had read online.
“Yes,” Megan replies, and I shake my head in disgust.
“Oh my god, that is awful,” I say, and now it’s my turn to reach for Megan’s hand.
“It wasn’t supposed to be made public, but somebody leaked the story to a journalist. I guess you saw it.”
I nod.
“I couldn’t believe it,” I say. “I thought about going to the police after I saw the article and telling them how Craig had followed me after our drinks that night. But I didn’t. I figured it was over and you were free. He is dead, after all.”
“Yes, he is,” Megan says, picking up her glass of wine and taking a long gulp.
That reminds me that I have barely touched my drink since we sat down in here. I quickly pick up my glass and put it to my lips, and by the time I return it to the table, it’s almost empty. Boy, did I need that. As if life hasn’t been crazy enough over the last few months, Megan only went and turned up in the reception of my new workplace. I couldn’t believe it when I had gone down and seen her sitting there waiting to see me. I had never expected to see her again.
Maybe I had hoped to never see her again.
