Run Away With Me : A fast-paced psychological thriller

by Daniel Hurst

  ‘Neither do I,’ I reply curtly, and while I don’t suspect that he has hidden it from me, I am confused as to how it could have vanished from the bedside table. It was definitely there when I went to sleep because I always keep my phone next to me when I’m in bed, even if I can’t use it. That means if it’s gone then there is only one real explanation. Adam must have moved it. But why would he do that?

  I’m just about to ask him when he suddenly holds something up in front of me.

  It’s my phone.

  ‘It was under the bed,’ Adam tells me, shaking his head.

  ‘How did it get down there?’ I query as he hands the device to me, but my husband doesn’t seem in the mood to entertain theories. He is already back over at the light switch by the door.

  ‘Can we go back to sleep now?’ he asks, and I nod as I climb back under the duvet and place my phone on the bedside table.

  I think about how strange it was that it ended up under the bed as the lights go out and I feel Adam crawling under the duvet beside me, but I soon stop worrying about that when I feel his arm go around my waist. I have always loved lying like this with him, so I take a moment to enjoy it before he removes his arm and rolls over to go to sleep. But then, with the darkness and silence restored to the cottage, I have time to think about the dream that I just had. But I know it wasn’t just a dream. It was something more than that.

  It almost felt like a vision.

  A glimpse into the future.

  I’ve had things like that before, though not for a few years. They’re not just dreams, they’re not just nightmares, and they’re not always what I would call flashes of my future, but they are something that I’ve never been able to properly explain. All I know is that there have been times in my life when I have seen things in my sleep that have later come true. Like the time in my twenties when I had the most amazing dream in which I was living a carefree, almost euphoric existence in some kind of exotic land. It was only a year later during my backpacking adventures in Asia when I recognised the beach resort I was staying at as the one I had seen in my dream. I actually cried when I realised it because not only was I there in real life, but I was feeling as carefree and euphoric as I had when the dream had come to me a year earlier. I also had experiences of dreaming about being a mum long before I got pregnant and while that might not seem particularly clairvoyant, the fact that a doctor had once told my mother that I might struggle to achieve pregnancy after a childhood accident meant it was significant for me. Yet again, that dream came true in the end.

  But what about this latest dream? The one in which I’m standing in my home, and I don’t recognise it. The one in which Adam is laughing at me while standing with another woman and a baby that I felt was Samuel but may not have been. Surely that can’t have been a vision of my future. Surely that was just some weird nightmare made up of an amalgamation of some of my worst fears, caused by the amount of stress I am currently under as I go through the late stages of pregnancy while being on the run with my drink-driving husband.

  At least I hope that’s the case.

  Heaven forbid that dream comes true like the others.

  21

  ADAM

  It’s a new day, and I’m feeling relatively refreshed, although not as much as I would have been if Laura hadn’t woken up in the night and made me turn the lights on. In the end though, I was fortunate to get away with what I had been doing so I can’t feel too aggrieved to have gone through that little dramatic episode.

  She could have caught me with her phone, and then I would have had some explaining to do.

  I’d waited for Laura to fall asleep last night before I’d crept out of the bed and picked up her mobile from her bedside table. Then I’d taken it into the bathroom where I’d done what I needed to do before making my way back, where the plan was to return the phone to the table and get back into bed. Unfortunately, I came back to my wife already aware that her phone was missing.

  Thankfully, the bedroom had been too dark for her to notice it in my hand when I re-entered the bedroom and I managed to conceal it by tucking it into the waistband of my boxer shorts underneath my t-shirt before I turned the light on. Then I had to pretend to be looking for the phone around the bed with her until I was able to discreetly remove the phone from on my person and put it on the carpet by the bed. Five seconds later and I miraculously found it. Laura seemed to buy it, and we went back to sleep shortly after.

  Disaster averted.

  Now I’m preparing for the next part of my plan, and I hope this goes a little more smoothly. I will tell Laura that I’m going to make another trip into the village to check the newspapers, but I have a feeling she isn’t going to be quite so willing to let me go by myself as she was last time. She is going to want to come with me.

  I need to find a way to persuade her that she shouldn’t.

  The best method of doing this is to tell her that if the police are looking for me, one guy on a crowded high street wearing a baseball cap isn’t particularly memorable to anybody. But that one guy with a heavily pregnant woman might be, and that may be all the police need to know when it comes to a witness making a statement. I’ll convince Laura that there is much less of a chance of me being recognised and remembered if I go alone, as opposed to with her. It’s not a perfect reason for her to stay, but I’ll sell her on it because I have to. My entire plan depends on her staying here and not going into the village.

  But then I walk back into the bedroom after my morning shower, and I see that I might not need to make up any excuses about why my wife should stay behind after all. That’s because I get a glimpse of her on the bed and I realise she won’t be going anywhere today.

  She looks terrible.

  ‘Are you okay?’ I ask as I rush over to her bedside and reach for her hand.

  ‘I don’t feel great,’ she tells me, and a gentle touch of her forehead confirms she is running a slight temperature.

  ‘Is it the baby? Are you in any pain?’ I ask, hoping that labour isn’t the next obstacle that I’m going to have to deal with.

  ‘No, the baby’s fine. I just feel drained.’

  ‘You have a bit of a temperature. Perhaps you have a cold.’

  Laura lets out a long sigh. ‘That’s all I need.’

  ‘It’s okay. Just stay in bed and rest today. You’ll be fine in no time.’

  ‘No way. I’m coming into the village with you.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s a good idea.’

  ‘I don’t care. I’m not staying here by myself again.’

  Maybe I will have to start delivering my rehearsed excuse to her as to why she can’t come with me, after all. But then Laura attempts to get out of bed and it’s clear she isn’t as fit as she needs to be to make the journey.

  ‘Urgh,’ she mutters, and she stops moving with her legs halfway out of bed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ I ask, holding onto her shoulder which she will take as me being supportive but really, it’s because I’m making it harder for her to get up to her feet.

  ‘Everything’s spinning,’ she says as she settles back down onto her pillow.

  ‘I told you that you need to rest,’ I say, pulling the duvet back over her and tucking it in around her. ‘I don’t want you getting out of bed until you are feeling better.’

  ‘This is so annoying,’ Laura says. ‘I never get ill.’

  ‘It’s probably the weather. You’ve caught a cold.’

  ‘I wasn’t the one out in the rain. You were.’

  ‘Yes, but your immune system is much weaker than mine at the moment. You’re carrying a child, remember.’

  ‘How can I forget?’ Laura replies, resting her hands on top of the part of the duvet that is covering her massive bump.

  ‘Just relax,’ I say, feeling myself relaxing now that I’m sure Laura is not going to mention coming into the village with me again today. ‘Can I get you anything?’

  ‘A glass of cranberry juice,’ she replies, wh
ich doesn’t surprise me, and I nod and head for the bedroom door.

  ‘What would I do without you?’ she asks me just before I can leave.

  I turn back and look at her lying in the bed, and it’s quite the sight. She’s sweaty, bloated and exhausted.

  Lucky me.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about that because you’ll always have me,’ I tell her, cringing internally at what I have just said, but also feeling quite smug because I know that it is a lie. It won’t be long until she has nothing. Not her freedom. Not her baby. And certainly not me.

  ‘Be careful today,’ she tells me as she sinks down into the bed even further. ‘I need you here. We both do.’

  She rubs her hands over the bump in the duvet again, and I smile.

  ‘I’ll be back before you know it,’ I tell her. ‘You don’t have to worry about me.’

  22

  LAURA

  What rotten luck. I was finally about to get my chance to get out of this cottage and go with Adam into the village when I’ve been struck down by some flu bug. I feel dreadful, and the only trip I’ll be making now will be to the bathroom and back. I’m hot. I’m all bunged up. And I’m tired. But most of all, I’m frustrated.

  Frustrated that I’m alone in this damn cottage again.

  Adam left ten minutes ago, and while he has promised me that he will try and be quicker to return than he was last time, I’m not feeling happy about being left on my own again. I understand that he has to go into the village to check on the news, but it’s just annoying that we can’t do it from here. It would be so much easier if the TV was working because then we could just sit together on the sofa instead of him taking the risk of going out in public and me being left stranded in the middle of nowhere.

  Feeling fed up, I stretch out a weary hand for the cup of cranberry juice Adam left for me on my bedside table and take a sip. I’ve drunk so much of this stuff over the last few weeks, but I haven’t got sick of it yet. I wonder if I will be able to look at it the same way when I’m no longer pregnant. Probably not.

  Feeling a little refreshed, I put my cup back down and rest my hands on my bump, thinking about the tiny and precious life that I am carrying around inside me. I can’t wait to hold Samuel in my arms, but for now, I am glad that he is inside where it is safe and not out here in this crazy world where everything seems to be going wrong. I feel like as long as he is inside me then I can protect him, but the second he leaves me, anything can happen.

  I know I’m feeling this way because of the dream I had last night.

  It was disconcerting for many reasons, but the main one was seeing Adam and Samuel with another female. There’s only one thing scarier to me than losing my husband and my son, and that is losing them to another woman. I wonder if that deep-seated fear was somehow awoken within me last night and it manifested itself in that particular dream.

  I haven’t got any particular reason to worry about losing my husband and child to another woman, but that doesn’t mean it’s not something I’ve never worried about. I’ve definitely entertained thoughts of Adam coming home one day and telling me that he is leaving me. I know I shouldn’t think like that, but it’s more of a morbid curiosity as to how I would feel to hear the man I love say that he has found somebody he likes more than me. It’s a terrifying concept, and it’s been made even scarier by bringing a child into our relationship. Now it gives me the chance to not only imagine Adam with another woman but my son with one too.

  Never mind imagining someone else holding hands with my man, kissing my man and making love to my man; I have imagined her carrying my baby, buying him presents and forming her own bond with it that could one day supersede my own.

  I’m aware they are the irrational fears of a tired, anxious and overactive imagination, but I have had the thoughts, and I guess they have now become wedged in my mind so much that I am dreaming about them. I hope that’s all they are. Dreams. Whimsical wisps of silly ideas that occur deep within my REM stage of sleep.

  Rather that than an ominous foreboding of my future.

  I already feel thirsty again even though I’ve just had a drink, so I reach out for the cup of juice again, but I’m not looking at what I’m doing properly, and accidentally knock the cup to the floor.

  ‘Shit!’ I say when I remember that the carpet in here is cream coloured and the liquid inside the cup is bright red.

  I grimace as I peer over the edge of the bed and see the red stain on the carpet. I guess Adam’s sister is going to know somebody has been staying here after all. Desperate to find out if there is some way that I can salvage this disastrous situation, I get out of bed and leave the bedroom, having to hold onto the wall as I go because I’m still feeling weak and woozy.

  I reach the bottom of the stairs and walk into the kitchen where I search through the cupboard under the sink for anything that I might be able to squirt into the cranberry-coloured stain to make it appear less obvious. I manage to find a bottle of carpet cleaner at the back of the cupboard, and while the cheap branding on the bottle doesn’t make me feel confident that it will work, at least I have a chance now.

  I drop to my knees as soon as I get back to the bedroom and start scrubbing the carpet with the liquid from the bottle and an old sponge that I found beside it. At first, it seems like I’m just making it worse, but then I can see the red stain is fading slightly, and that gives me the confidence to work faster.

  After using half of the contents of the bottle and a lot of elbow grease, I pause for a break because I’m shattered. It’s as I am taking my break from cleaning the carpet that I look at the bed frame beside me. The base of it is completely flush to the floor. There is no room for anything to get underneath, unlike my bed at home where I keep all sorts of things stored out of sight. I’d miss having that kind of storage space in my own house, but that’s not what is bothering me the most right now. What is bothering me is that Adam told me he found my phone under the bed when he was helping me look for it last night. That was clearly a lie because nothing can get under this bed.

  So why did he say that?

  And where was my phone if it wasn’t under there?

  23

  ADAM

  I made it back to our house two minutes before the police car arrived.

  I’d just about managed to get inside, make the bed look like it had been slept in and get changed into my scruffiest of clothes before the knock on the door. When I open it, I see two police officers on my doorstep. One male and one female. The man looks to be around my age, but the woman is much younger, possibly early twenties. I believe they would call her a rookie if we were in America, but we’re not, which is a shame because they have the death penalty in certain states there and some people deserve that.

  ‘Mr Stevenson?’ says the male officer with a hint of a Scottish accent.

  ‘Hi,’ I reply, doing my best to appear polite but stressed. This is a pre-arranged visit, so I don’t need to act surprised by their appearance, but I do need to look like I didn’t get much sleep last night.

  I need to look like a man who is worried about his missing wife.

  ‘I’m PC McGregor. This is PC Stone. May we come inside?’

  ‘Of course.’

  I step aside and let the two polite PC’s in before closing the door quickly behind them. I imagine several of our neighbours are peeping out of their windows right now to try and find out why there is a police car parked on the street. Nosy neighbours. Curtain twitchers.

  Welcome to life in sleepy suburbia.

  But they don’t need to try and spy on my house today to find out what is going on. They’ll read about it soon enough in the newspapers.

  ‘Would you like a drink?’ I ask the two officers if only to break the awkward silence, but they both decline, so I show them through to the living room where we all take a seat on the sofa before PC McGregor gets to the point.

  ‘We’re here to have a look around the home and see if there is anything that we c
an use that might help us in our search for Laura. But we have a couple of questions first, if that’s okay?’

  ‘Sure,’ I reply, making sure to remain sitting on the edge of the sofa cushion and not recline as I normally would under more relaxing circumstances. I need to look like a man who can’t relax until he knows where his wife is, instead of a guy who would love nothing more than to put his feet up right now and watch the telly.

  ‘Laura is thirty-five weeks pregnant, is that correct?’

  I nod my head.

  ‘How has the pregnancy been for her?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Has she enjoyed it?

  ‘I think so, besides the usual side effects. You know, morning sickness. Lack of sleep.’

  ‘Of course. But was she looking forward to becoming a mother?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘She never indicated that she was fearful of the future or anything like that?’

  ‘No. Why would she be? We’re having a baby. It’s what she always wanted.’

  ‘I understand. We’re just trying to determine if your wife’s disappearance has anything to do with a change in her mental state in the weeks leading up to it.’

  ‘She had lost her temper with me a couple of times and was occasionally distant. I put it down to pregnancy hormones as she’d never been like that before. I did answer these questions in the form at the station.’

  ‘I know you did, sir, but we’re just going over everything to see if there are any details that you might have forgot to mention during the initial report.’

  ‘There isn’t.’

  PC McGregor nods and jots something down in his notebook, but I’m not sure what it is that I could have said that would be of any use. I look to PC Stone sitting beside him and notice she is looking at one of the photos of me and my wife above the fireplace.

  I wonder what the rookie is thinking.

  What a shame, they used to be so happy, perhaps.