Run Away With Me : A fast-paced psychological thriller

by Daniel Hurst

  ‘We have to call the police. Things will be so much worse for you if you don’t,’ I say, just as I feel another kick in my belly, and Samuel’s enthusiastic squirming is a reminder of how much is at stake for us right now. It’s not just mine and Adam’s life that could be ruined tonight. It’s an innocent baby boy’s too. I don’t want to have to raise a child on my own but most of all, I don’t want my child to spend the first few years of his life making visits to a prison just to see his father.

  But what else can we do?

  ‘Let’s pack some things and just leave,’ Adam suggests, suddenly grabbing my hands. ‘We need to go tonight. Before the police can find me. We’ll run away. We can go anywhere. We’ll be together. We’ll have Samuel. This doesn’t have to be the end for our family. It could be the beginning.’

  I stare at my panic-stricken husband as if he’s a crazy prisoner speaking his last thoughts while awaiting his fate on Death Row. He’s gone mad. He has to know that running isn’t an option. So why is he still looking at me like he’s serious?

  ‘We can’t just run away!’ I cry, pulling my hands away from his even though I’m desperate for the comfort of his touch right now.

  ‘Can’t we?’ Adam replies, and I’m struck by the sudden switch in his demeanour. He no longer looks timid and terrified.

  He looks like he has a plan.

  ‘What about our family? Our home? Our jobs? And what about the police? They’ll find us and then what? Things will be even worse and not just for you. I’ll go to prison too and what will happen to Samuel if we’re both locked up?’

  ‘What will happen to him if we don’t go?’ Adam asks, turning the questions back onto me. ‘He won’t know his father until he’s starting secondary school. And will you be able to bring him up by yourself? You won’t have the money from my wage for a start.’

  ‘We won’t have any money if we run! Yes, things will be bad if we stay, but they will be so much worse if we go.’

  ‘Are you sure about that?’ Adam asks me, and the fact that I don’t have an immediate answer tells me that I’m not sure at all. Yes, running away would be bad but would it actually be worse than staying and going through the hell of trying to raise a newborn child while my husband goes through a doomed trial and begins a lengthy prison sentence?

  I don’t know, but I can’t believe it’s a dilemma I’m even having to contemplate. Ten minutes ago, the only thing I had to worry about was getting a couple of hours of sleep in between Samuel kicking me. Now, I’m trying to figure out if I want to watch my husband get put into the back of a police car or pack a bag and run away with him.

  I put my hand on my stomach again and I can feel Samuel in there wriggling away.

  Meanwhile, his parents are in the outside world trying to wriggle out of this.

  4

  LAURA

  ‘If we’re going to go, then we have to go now,’ Adam says to me as if I needed the reminder of how fast the clock is ticking.

  I don’t need that reminder because I’ve already spent the last few minutes running through every scenario in my head. It’s been half an hour since Adam came home. The lane is quiet at this time of night, but another motorist must have been down there by now and spotted the dead body. Presumably, they weren’t quite so eager to flee the scene, meaning an ambulance would have now been called to tend to the victim. Based on our remote location, that would have taken around fifteen minutes to arrive so it might be there already, it might still be on the way. But one thing is for sure. There won’t be anything they can do for the poor guy lying on the concrete road when they do try and help him.

  Then it will be a matter for the police.

  I don’t know how long it will take them to check the camera footage on that lane, but when they do, it won’t be long until they spot Adam’s car and make a visit to the address it is registered to. It won’t be tonight, but it will probably be tomorrow. That means that in twenty-four hours, I could be all by myself in this house, and I will be left that way for many years to come. Or worse, we’ll have to sell the house because we can’t afford it with Adam behind bars and I will have to move into a cramped council flat, where I will try and raise Samuel to the best of my inexperienced ability while making several trips back and forth to the local prison to visit my husband while he serves his time.

  It’s the kind of life you see a character living in a television drama. It’s the kind of life I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy. But it’s the kind of life that could now be my own.

  Unless I do what Adam is suggesting.

  Unless I run away with him.

  ‘What if you say your car was stolen?’ I speculate after the thought of running hasn’t gotten any easier to comprehend.

  ‘It won’t work,’ Adam replies quickly as if he has already thought about that option himself. Maybe he has. My husband is now a man trying to figure out which crimes he can get away with and which ones he can’t. I meant every one of my vows on our wedding day, but I don’t remember the part about having to figure out the best way to lie to the police together.

  ‘Why won’t it work? You can report it stolen. Say you looked outside just before you went to bed and it was gone. That would mean somebody else was behind the wheel on the lane tonight, not you.’

  ‘They’d never buy it. Plus the times wouldn’t match. Everyone at the party tonight knows I was driving home, and they know what time I left.’

  ‘Maybe it was stolen just after you got back?’ I say, just making suggestions even though I feel like my brain has checked out and I’m being operated by somebody else now.

  ‘The neighbours might have seen me come back,’ Adam replies. ‘Maybe the body was found not long after I left. If so, the times won’t match. The emergency call might have gone out to the police before I even made it back here.’

  ‘Then why did you come back home? You should have left the car somewhere!’

  Adam seems surprised by my outburst, and he’s not the only one. I can’t believe I’m making out like there was an easy way out of this. Of course there isn’t. He’s screwed and now so is our family.

  ‘I didn’t think. I was in shock, I guess. I still am.’

  Adam slumps back down onto the sofa with that glazed look in his eyes that I’ve never seen before tonight, but now it’s becoming his permanent appearance. For the first time since he walked through the door, I don’t just feel sorry for myself, my unborn child and the poor guy lying dead in the lane. I feel sorry for my husband too. He’s just killed a man by accident.

  How do you get your head around that?

  ‘Come here,’ I say to him as I take a seat beside him and put my arms around him. I can still feel the cold on him from when he was outside. It must be freezing out there. I wouldn’t know because I’ve been sat in a warm house all evening.

  I’ve been sat here while my husband has been out there making a terrible mistake.

  It’s just as Adam is burying his head into my shoulder and starting to sob again when I realise that I am partly to blame for this mess. It was me who persuaded Adam that he should go to the leaving party tonight. He wasn’t that fussed about it and said he could take it or leave it. He wasn’t even that close to the departing colleague it was in aid of anyway, apparently. But I told him he should go, mainly because it would be one of the last nights where he would get to enjoy himself before Samuel came along and put a stop to frivolous drinking for a while. But if only I had told him to skip the party and stay in with me. We could have spent the evening curled up on the sofa together, talking to my bump and feeling each and every kick it made together. Then we would have gone upstairs to bed and fallen asleep with a smile on our faces because we have so much to look forward to.

  A healthy son. Forty more years of life.

  Our freedom.

  Now that’s ruined. We’ll still have our son, and we still might get the forty years, but they won’t be the same. Adam won’t be free, and without him, I won’t feel free eith
er.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Adam says, lifting his head from my tear-stained shoulder and looking at me like a wounded puppy. ‘I should have stayed at the scene. I should have done the right thing. I’m just so scared of losing you and Samuel.’

  He puts his hand on my stomach, and I feel like I could cry. I silently urge Samuel to give another kick right now so Adam can feel it. Maybe it will make him feel better. But Samuel doesn’t comply. He only kicks when he wants to, and he never seems to do it when Adam is waiting for it. He just does it for me. I guess that’s how it will always be when he’s born too. He’ll just do things for me.

  He will barely even know his dad until his prison sentence is served.

  I suddenly feel nauseous and put my hand to my mouth as I get up and rush to the kitchen. I’ve spent enough time being sick over the last nine months to know when I can keep it in and when I can’t, and this time it is definitely coming out.

  I make it to the sink with only a second to spare, and then I feel the awful burning sensation of stomach acid rushing up through my throat.

  I dry heave over the clean stainless steel, but nothing comes up. Not yet anyway. But Adam is quickly beside me holding my hair and rubbing my back, and I know he is just trying to be supportive, but it’s not helping right now. I need space.

  Space to breathe.

  Space to think.

  Space to decide if there really is a way out of this sorry mess that we find ourselves in.

  I brush Adam’s hand away from me and I feel bad for doing so, but his touch is reminding me of how much I need him. The thought of losing him now while he serves out several years of a prison sentence is unbearable. But I have to try and remain objective. I have to try and see things through the eyes of a sane person and not those of a heavily pregnant and hormonal wife who would do anything for the man she loves.

  When I’m confident that I’m no longer in danger of being sick, I lift my head out of the sink and get my breath back. The acrid taste is still burning at the back of my throat, but the worst of it has passed. The worst of the nausea, at least. The worst of Adam’s situation is still right here staring me in the face.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ Adam suggests, somehow managing to look more worried about my predicament than his own right now.

  But I don’t want to sit down. I need to go outside.

  I need fresh air.

  I unlock the back door and step out onto the wooden decking we had installed in our back garden just in time for last summer. While we haven’t been able to get much use out of it since the weather turned a couple of weeks ago, we did enjoy many afternoons and evenings sitting out here entertaining family and friends with barbecues before it did. But now winter is setting in and the good times are over, in more ways than one.

  ‘I always imagined what our garden would be like when we had children to play in it,’ Adam says from his position behind me by the door. ‘A set of goalposts over by the back fence for Samuel to kick a ball into. Maybe a swing set for him and Alice.’

  My eyes water at the mention of the second child we had hoped to have after I had gotten over the stress of the first one on my body. While there was obviously no guarantee that we would have a daughter if we had another baby, that hadn’t stopped us from speculating and coming up with a name for the possible child.

  But now that is just a distant dream.

  Or is it?

  ‘Say we did run,’ I speculate. ‘How would it work? Where would we go?’

  I’m expecting a brief silence as Adam formulates a plan. But there isn’t one.

  ‘In the short term, I was thinking Kat’s cottage,’ he says. ‘We could get there by sticking to the back roads. That way we wouldn’t be seen on CCTV.’

  I consider Adam’s idea. His sister purchased a cottage not too far from here. It’s a lovely stone property set by itself on a hilltop surrounded by picturesque countryside, and it’s only a thirty-minute drive from our house. Kat gave us a spare key to the property a couple of years ago so that we could use it whenever we liked. It was a friendly family gesture, but it was also because we could tell Kat wasn’t getting as much use out of the property with her own family as she wanted to, and she didn’t want it to go to waste. Adam and I have been to the cottage a couple of times this year, and it would certainly make a good place to hide. But it might be too good. It’s miles from anywhere, and there is no phone signal once you leave the main road. We would be well hidden up there, but we would also be completely cut-off from the world.

  ‘You think that’s a good idea?’ I ask him.

  ‘It wouldn’t be for the long term, of course. I’m thinking Scotland if we have to go further. But it’s somewhere close that we could lie low until we know if I’m in trouble or if I’ve got away with it.’

  I can see that Adam has thought this through a lot more than he was originally letting on, which makes me wonder what else he has planned.

  ‘What do we do when we get there?’ I ask to test him out even more.

  ‘We can check the news on the TV every day. See if there are any reports on the hit and run. Find out if anybody is looking for me.’

  ‘What if there are none?’ I ask optimistically. ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Adam replies, though he doesn’t seem as positive about that outcome as I do. ‘If there’s nothing in the news after a few days then we could come back. We wouldn’t have to tell anybody where we’d gone. I’d just phone in sick from work for a few days.’

  ‘And if they are looking for you?’ I ask because we have to discuss the dreadful alternative too.

  ‘Then we can’t come back here ever again,’ Adam replies, and the words send a chill down my spine that has nothing to do with the cold weather out here.

  My dream home. My dream family. My dream life.

  Am I about to give it all up for my dream man?

  I think I might be.

  5

  LAURA

  How do you pack to go on the run? Do you take as much as you can or just the essentials? Do you pull out all the suitcases or just throw a few things into a backpack and head for the door?

  I’ve no idea, which explains why I am currently standing beside my bed staring at the sea of clothes hanging in my wardrobe and wondering what to do. Packing is hard for me at the best of times.

  Going on holiday. Moving house.

  Running from the police.

  I usually make a list of what I need to take, but there’s hardly time for that right now. I just need to do something, but I’m overwhelmed. Fortunately, Adam doesn’t seem to be having the same problem.

  He’s already scooped up all of our toiletries from the bathroom, and he is now throwing a few old t-shirts and some underwear into the rucksack he usually takes to the gym. By the looks of things, he’ll be ready to go in five minutes, whereas I haven’t packed so much as a spare pair of knickers yet.

  Am I really cut out for this?

  ‘Are you okay?’

  Adam’s question snaps me out of my trance, and I turn to look at my husband who by now has zipped up his bulky bag and appears ready to head for the door.

  ‘I don’t know what to take,’ I reply, gesturing to my wardrobe that has enough clothes in it to overwhelm even the most professional of packers.

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just grab a couple of things. Something warm. We can figure out the rest as we go.’

  I nod and step towards my wardrobe, going in search of the warm clothes I have just been advised to take. I know there are a couple of pairs of cosy jogging bottoms and some thick sweaters on the third shelf in here, so I guess they will have to do. I locate the items and pull them out, ignoring the sea of summer dresses that hang beside them because it’s not the time of year for those clothes and I’m hardly likely to need a dress for a while considering where we’re going.

  I place the selected items of clothing on the bed before going in search of something to carry them in. I decide the suitcase is t
oo much, so go for my own backpack instead. I’ve had this backpack since my early twenties when I travelled around India and Asia on an adventure that would see me end up as far as Australia and New Zealand by the time I was done. Back then, I had put my clothes into this backpack with a sense of excitement and a knowledge that my best days were ahead of me, but now I’m packing it with a different feeling entirely.

  It feels like one of the last acts I’ll make as a free woman.

  The sharp kick in my stomach is powerful enough to stop me from packing for a moment, and I draw in a sharp intake of breath to ease the pain. That was a big one and not as enjoyable as the smaller kicks that remind me of the life growing inside me. That kick was more of a reminder of the other side of being pregnant. It’s not all good. Sometimes, it’s just plain painful.

  Just like marriage, I suppose.

  ‘Are you okay?’ Adam asks me again when he notices that I’ve stopped packing.

  ‘Yeah. Just another kick. It was a big one.’

  ‘He’s eager to get out,’ Adam says with a flicker of a smile.

  That could be it, I think. Or maybe he’s warning me. Maybe the kick was to tell me to stop being so stupid and stop packing before it’s too late, and that thought of Samuel speaking to me from the womb gives me pause for thought again.

  ‘I don’t think I can come with you,’ I tell Adam just as he is gathering up some of the items we had bought for the arrival of our son. I see the milk bottle, the baby monitor and the little teddy bear we plan to give our boy when we finally meet him. Those items were going to be just a few of the many things that were going to help us raise him during his early days.

  Now they might be the only things we have.

  ‘Laura, I know this is hard, but please. I need you. I need you both.’

  Adam looks down at my bump, but I wish he hadn’t because that is just making things worse.