by Daniel Hurst
I quickly walk out of the bedroom, away from the pile of clothes on the bed and my husband who is the one responsible for throwing my perfect life into turmoil tonight. Walking across the landing, I enter the room at the end and turn on the light, before looking around at the small but lovingly decorated surroundings.
The white crib sits against the back wall beneath the hanging star lights and beside the rocking horse that was to be purely for decoration until Samuel was eventually big enough to sit on it himself. The walls are papered green, and several colourful dinosaurs are dotted around on it because according to all the books I’ve read, you can’t go wrong with dinosaurs for a baby boy’s bedroom. I’m not sure what it is about the enormous and mostly murderous creatures that parents find to be so perfect for their child to look at during their formative years, but dinosaurs always seem to be popular with babies. A lot of love and care has gone into the decorating of this room, but now I’m faced with the possibility that Samuel will never get to see it at all.
‘Laura?’
Adam’s voice behind me is a grim reminder that I don’t have time to be standing in our child’s future bedroom and imagining what it would have looked like when he was here to sleep in it. But I don’t turn around because I don’t want to start crying again.
I feel the hand on my shoulder, and my husband’s grip is firm but comforting. I place my hand on top of his as if to draw out some of the strength that he possesses and get it into my body. But it’s not working. I’m feeling weaker by the second.
‘This is silly,’ Adam says, removing his hand from my shoulder and walking away.
‘Where are you going?’ I ask him, concerned by his sudden change of tone.
‘To do what I should have done an hour ago. I’m calling the police.’
I turn and see Adam taking out his mobile phone.
He’s still walking away.
I feel like he’s walking out of my life forever.
‘Wait!’ I call out and rush towards him, snatching the phone from his hand before he can complete the call.
‘What are you doing?’ Adam asks, looking surprised at my sudden urgency.
‘I’m saving our family,’ I reply, and I check the phone to make sure we aren’t connected to the emergency services right now. Fortunately, there are only two number nines on the screen and not three.
‘It’s obvious you don’t want to leave,’ Adam says. ‘And I understand. I’m asking too much of you.’
‘No, you’re not,’ I tell my husband. ‘You could never ask too much of me. We’re married, which means we’re in this together.’
Adam seems genuinely touched by my display of love, but I’m not thinking sentimentally right now. I’m thinking practically. He needs me, and I need him. Therefore, he can’t go to prison, and I can’t stay here on my own.
‘Give me two minutes,’ I tell him as I head back towards our bedroom. ‘Go and get the car started.’
6
LAURA
The car engine is already running as I step out of the house with my backpack on my shoulders. I can see Adam loading up some hastily packed bags of food into the boot, and I join him at the back of the car where I unload my baggage and make a quick check on our inventory.
Alongside the rucksack and backpack full of our warm clothes, we have two ‘bags for life’ filled with packets of pasta, tins of soup and a couple of jars of sauces that I don’t recognise, which means they have probably been at the back of the kitchen cupboard for years. But it doesn’t matter. We can make a proper plan for food later. The main thing is we aren’t going to starve in our first days away from home.
Wedged in beside the bags of food is the small satchel containing Samuel’s belongings and I can see the teddy bear’s arm sticking out through the zipper. Part of me wants to reach down and release the bear because it might be uncomfortable, but it’s an inanimate object. It can’t feel pain.
Lucky thing.
‘Have you got your phone and your purse?’ Adam asks me as he closes the boot.
‘Yep,’ I say. ‘My handbag’s in the front.’
‘Okay,’ Adam replies, patting down his trouser pockets to presumably check that he has his own phone and wallet.
‘Right. I think that’s everything,’ he says. ‘Everything we need anyway.’
We both take a moment to look at our dark house, and it’s a sobering experience for the pair of us. Is this the last time we will ever see our home? Maybe. Or maybe we’ll get lucky and the police won’t track Adam’s car from the CCTV. Then we can move back in again in a few days’ time. Maybe this whole mess isn’t as bad as it seems.
Maybe everything is going to be alright.
‘We should go,’ Adam says, and I nod my head, moving towards the passenger side door as Adam double-checks the door to the house is locked, and then we are all set.
But just before Adam starts the engine-
‘Turn your phone off.’
I notice he is already turning off his own device.
‘Why?’ I ask, reaching for the handbag by my feet.
‘If the police are looking for us, they could track us through our phones. We need to keep them switched off so they won’t know which way we went. We can turn them on at the cottage, but they’ll have to be on aeroplane mode in case we connect to a phone tower. I know there’s no service up there, but there’s no point taking any unnecessary risks.’
I’m surprised by Adam’s presence of mind to think of such a thing, as well as a little unnerved by it. He really is thinking several steps ahead. But I do as I’m told and turn my phone off before dropping it back into my handbag as Adam engages the engine.
I keep my eyes on our home as Adam reverses off the driveway and I only stop looking when we have driven out of view of it. Then I fix my eyes on the dark road ahead and tell myself to think to the future and not the past.
‘What are we going to do about money?’
Adam’s silence suggests that was one thing he hadn’t thought about ahead of time.
‘We should get some out,’ he eventually replies. ‘Preferably as close to home as possible.’
‘Okay,’ I reply. ‘How much do you think we need?’
‘What’s the limit to take out these days? £500?’
‘Something like that.’
‘We’ll take £500 each then. We can always get more later.’
‘What if they freeze our bank accounts?’
‘It would take a few days for them to do that, even if they were on to me. I can visit a branch tomorrow and get more out.’
I nod my head as I stare at the row of houses passing by the window. Most of the lights are still on inside because it’s only half-past ten, but some of the houses are in darkness, and I think about the people who live inside them. They are probably in bed now sleeping soundly on their pillows and looking forward to a new day tomorrow. I’m so envious of them. I wonder how long it will be until I get a good night’s sleep again now. Will I ever get one, or will I always be keeping one eye open for fear of the police coming through the door and dragging me into custody?
It’s funny.
I thought being a new mum would ruin my sleep, but it turns out all I needed to do that was to go on the run.
‘There’s a cash machine up here, isn’t there?’ Adam asks, pointing up the street as we keep driving.
‘Yeah, I think so,’ I reply, not completely sure. It’s been a long time since I needed to use one. There isn’t as much of a need for physical money anymore when most things can be paid for by the tap of a credit card. I do most of my shopping online these days too, so the concept of withdrawing cash and handing it over to a store assistant seems very old fashioned now. But I guess that’s how we’ll be buying things for the foreseeable future. Criminals love cash because it’s harder to trace and I guess we should re-learn to love it too because that’s what we are now.
Criminals.
‘Here we go,’ Adam says when he sees that th
e cash machine is in fact where he expected it to be. He parks the car in front of it and then turns off the engine.
‘Can I have your card?’ he asks me, and I pick up my handbag from the footwell and pull out my purse. I take out the shiny piece of blue plastic and hand it to my husband before he opens his door and gets out.
‘Be right back,’ he says before slamming the door and leaving me alone.
I watch through the windscreen as Adam reaches the cashpoint and takes out his own card to use alongside my own. As he works with his back to me, I think about the money he is withdrawing and about the things we had planned to spend it on before tonight had happened.
We’ve both always been good with money and saved a decent portion of our wages each month once all the necessities of life have been paid for. That has allowed us to build up a healthy amount of savings which we figured we would need as our family grew and with it a need to move into a bigger home. But now it seems we are going to need those savings for something more than simply paying the mortgage and keeping the fridge full.
We’re going to need them for keeping ourselves one step ahead of the police.
My stomach lurches when I think about the thought of a police officer standing on the doorstep to our home and knocking on the door to question us about the hit and run investigation. But it lurches even more when I think about how we won’t be there to answer any of those questions, because then we will be found guilty in absence and the hunt will begin.
I wonder how the police will go about trying to track us down. Will there be a TV appeal like they have in the police dramas that Adam and I love to watch? Will our faces be splashed across the front pages of the national newspapers for all the public to see? And will our private lives be dissected on news broadcasts and talk shows as people speculate on who we are, what we have done and where we have gone?
It’s a scary thought to be on the run from the law, but it’s almost as scary to think that millions of people might know my name in a few days and be talking about me on their lunch breaks or with their partners over their evening meal.
“Do you think they did it?”
“Would you run?”
“When will they get caught?”
Adam and I have always been fairly private people. We aren’t the type to court drama or attention, and we certainly have never sought the spotlight in any of our endeavours. Yet here we are, potentially only several hours away from being one of the most talked about couples in the country.
What will our families think? What about our friends? And what about Samuel when he grows up and finds out what his mum and dad did just before he was born?
As I watch Adam at the cash machine, I suddenly realise I can’t go through with this. This has gone too far. We’re making things worse, not better. I can’t bring Samuel into this world with the risk of both his parents being in prison for the first part of his life.
With the sudden rush of clarity that thought brings me, I decide to put a stop to this before it can go any further. I reach for the door handle and pull, planning to get out of the car and tell Adam to stop withdrawing a chunk of our savings and instead just drive me home where we can do the thing we should have always done.
Be honest and call the police.
But the door doesn’t open. It’s locked. Adam must have pressed the button on the car keys just after he got out. He has a habit of doing it when I am sat inside it because he saw a story once on the news about a woman who was mugged inside her vehicle while she waited for her partner outside a shop. While it’s sweet that Adam always worries about the same thing happening to me, it isn’t helping me right now. If I can’t get out of the car, then I can’t stop him taking more money out and bring a halt to this crazy plan of ours.
I knock on the windscreen to try and get his attention, but he doesn’t seem to hear me, so I think about pressing the car horn. I know you’re not supposed to use the horn in a built-up area at night unless you really have to in case you wake people up, but that’s the least of my worries right now. I’m trying to figure out what is best for my family, not some stranger who may or may not be sleeping nearby.
I’m just about to toot the horn that will probably cause my husband to jump out of his skin when I see him turn around and walk back towards the car. I guess he’s already withdrawn the cash. Never mind. That’s not important. The important thing is we drive back home from here and not out into the countryside as we had originally planned. We’re still close to home. There’s still time to try and put this right.
There’s still time to give Samuel a chance at having a normal start to life.
The driver’s door opens and Adam gets back into the car, holding my card and a wedge of £20 notes in his hand.
‘All done,’ he says as he hands me my card and stuffs the money into his wallet.
‘Adam, I’m sorry, but I can’t do this,’ I say, my voice shaking. ‘I know I said I could, and I know I stopped you from calling the police, but this is wrong. We shouldn’t be thinking about what’s best for us. We should be thinking about what’s best for Samuel.’
Adam looks at me and even though it’s dark in this car, I can see the disappointment on his face.
Am I a bad wife for not going along with this plan?
Or am I the only sane person in this marriage right now?
I’m expecting some kind of protest from Adam. Perhaps a referral to Samuel again and about how hard it will be for me to raise him if Adam is in prison. Or maybe a plea for help and about how scared he is to be punished for one stupid mistake. But I get none of that. Instead, my husband nods his head and starts the engine.
‘You’re right,’ he says as he puts the car into reverse. ‘Let’s go home.’
I’m surprised by his agreement, but I need something more from him.
‘No,’ I say, putting my hand on his leg to show that I’m on his side even though it isn’t going to seem like it when I finish my sentence. ‘Let’s go to the police station.’
7
LAURA
Maybe this is my fault for being a bad wife. Maybe I should have just gone along with the plan like Adam suggested. Maybe I wouldn’t be in this mess now if I had just kept my mouth shut.
Or maybe this was always going to happen, and now I’m trapped.
I had been surprised by how little Adam had protested when I had told him to drive to the police station, but it had soon become clear that he wasn’t just going to hand himself in as easily as that. We had been about five minutes away from the station when Adam had suddenly taken a sharp left turn and headed for the back roads into the countryside.
I begged him to stop. I told him to think of Samuel. I even threatened to leave him if he kept going. But he didn’t listen to me. He just kept driving, by which point we were going so fast that I didn’t dare to try and get him to stop by grabbing the wheel or hitting his body.
Now we have left the suburbs of Carlisle and are heading into the countryside, and I fear that the time for going to the police isn’t the only thing that has passed us by.
I fear that my chance to escape may have passed too.
‘Adam, you’re scaring me,’ I say as our car approaches a bend and slows down a little. I’d been too terrified to speak for the last few minutes as we drove out of fear of Adam becoming even more distressed and veering into the stone walls beside us. I don’t like to think that my husband would become so desperate to avoid prison as to be willing to sacrifice himself and his family, but I can’t risk it. Before tonight I wouldn’t have thought that my husband was capable of drink driving and fleeing the scene of a crime, so how do I know what is really going on inside his head? But now we are going a little slower, so I feel slightly more confident to speak.
‘Adam, I love you, but you’re only thinking of yourself,’ I say after he has ignored my first words in a while. ‘Think of me and Samuel too. What will happen to us if we keep running? I’ll be just as guilty as you are, and our boy will grow
up without parents when we get caught.’
‘If we get caught,’ Adam replies, a little too confidently for my liking. He seems to be completely focused on where we are going and not on what we are leaving behind, which is terrifying because I’m thinking the opposite.
I don’t care where we are going.
I care about what we are losing to get there.
Not for the first time since this car journey began, I regret stopping my husband from calling the police when he had the phone in his hand. If only I had left him to make the call, then none of this would be happening now. Yes, the police would have come to the house, and yes, they probably would have taken Adam away in handcuffs, but at least Samuel and I would be safe and then we could have figured things out from there. Maybe Adam would have got a good lawyer, and maybe his sentence could have been shortened so that he wouldn’t have been away from us for too long.
So what if we had to move out of our house and go into some tiny flat while he was inside? I would have stood by Adam regardless, because it was an accident, and he is still a good man who had just made a mistake. Hundreds of people drink drive every day, and as wrong as it is, nearly all of them get away with it without incident. Adam had just been one of those who hadn’t, and it was a harsh lesson to learn, but it was one he needed to be punished for because it was a mistake all the same. But it doesn’t make him a bad person, and it didn’t have to spell the end for our family. But now we have fled, and I fear that everything that is going to happen from here on out is going to be much worse for us than if we had stayed and faced the music.
‘I can’t believe that you would put me and the baby through this,’ I say, trying to appeal to his sensitive nature. But he fires back with his own accusation.
‘I can’t believe that you would agree to run with me and then change your mind. I was willing to call the police, remember. You stopped me.’
‘I know I did, but it was a mistake.’
‘It’s a little late to say that now.’
‘No, it’s not. Just turn the car around, and we can go home. Maybe we’ll get lucky. Maybe they won’t see your car on the CCTV, and they will never know it was you.’
