by Daniel Hurst
I run my hand along the back of the TV set, but I can’t really see what I’m doing, so I carefully try and manoeuvre the screen away from the wall so I can look behind it. It’s not easy, particularly with my huge bump getting in the way, but I’m finally able to make enough of a gap behind the TV so that I can look behind it.
I see several cables going into the back of the set as well as two switches on a small display panel. I notice straight away that they are both on opposite settings.
One is up. One is down.
Surely they both have to be the same way if one is on and one is off?
I try to figure out which way is which until I just decide to make both switches face up and use the remote to turn on the set and see if there’s any progress.
I’m expecting to see the black and white static fill the screen as usual, but it’s a massive surprise when I see Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby sitting on the sofa in the This Morning Studio.
I’ve got the TV working!
I’m amazed by my prowess with technology although I know that I didn’t actually do anything technical. All I did was flip a switch. Anybody could have done that.
So why hadn’t Adam tried it?
I’m puzzled by how my husband could have failed to do what I have just done so easily, but I’m not too bothered about that now because the TV is working and that is all that matters. Now I’m not going to die of boredom, and I don’t just have to rely on the titbits of information Adam gives me from the newspapers when he returns from the village each day. Instead, I can just check the news for myself.
I leave behind Holly and Phil and scroll through the channels looking for a news broadcast. Ideally, I want the local news because they are the most likely ones to be reporting on the hit and run accident involving Adam, but it could be on the nationals too. I feel a wave of dread at the thought of Adam’s face being displayed for the entire country to see as the police hunt him in connection with the death of poor Steven Owen. But I have to see it for myself.
I just need to find the news.
The problem is that it’s only 11 am so the news isn’t on yet. I’ll have to wait until lunchtime. I think it’s usually on about half twelve. At least Adam should be back by then, and we can watch it together. He might not want to, but it has to be done. We need to find out if there have been any developments in the case.
I bet he’ll be amazed when I tell him that I have got the TV working. It’s good as well because now it means that he won’t have to keep going out to check the news. We can keep tabs on it from right here, reducing how much risk we have to take in the future.
I’m feeling rather proud of myself as I sit on the sofa and count down until the news bulletins at lunch. I feel like I haven’t been much use to my husband since we went on the run and I’ve probably been more of a burden if anything. An overweight, moody and sleep-deprived burden.
But now I’ve actually done something useful.
I can’t wait for Adam to return to the cottage and see how useful I can be.
32
ADAM
I’m almost back at the cottage, and my meeting with Detective Cleevely went well. I have made him aware of my wife’s affair, as well as the fact that the man whom she had that affair with is also missing at this moment too. I haven’t drawn any conclusions as to what that could mean myself, but I have given the detective the opportunity to do it, and I am sure he has.
After all, it is certainly suspicious.
Two people who were previously involved with each other have both been reported missing by their respective spouses around the same time. It could be a coincidence. It could just be that they were both unlucky enough to come into trouble at the same time. Or it could be how I want it to look, which is that they have both sneaked away together for a romantic rendezvous, leaving their original partners in the dark.
Detective Cleevely didn’t ask me if I thought that was possible, but I know that is only because he didn’t want to make me feel any worse than I was already presumably feeling. He’ll believe that I’m suffering enough with the disappearance of my wife without leading me to think that she might have left me for another man. Of course, I know that Laura has not left me, and she is not with that other man. I know exactly where she is.
I also know exactly where he is.
His name is Bradley Taylor, and while I can’t be sure exactly how long him and my wife were intimately involved, I know it went on for a while. Laura has no idea that I found out about the affair, but I did, and my life has never been the same since. It was ten months ago when I got a phone call from my best friend, Jeremy, who had some troubling news for me. He told me that he had been on his way home from the office when he had decided to stop off for a pint before catching his train. He ended up in a pub near the station, and while it was busy in there, he was able to see who was sitting at the table in the back corner. It was Laura, and she wasn’t alone. She was with another man, and it was clear that they were close.
It became even clearer when Jeremy saw her kiss him.
I’ll never forget where I was or what I was doing when I received that phone call. I was standing in the freezer section of my local supermarket holding a packet of chicken dippers in one hand and my phone in the other. The dippers were a treat for Laura because I knew they were one of her guilty pleasures, so I was adding them to the weekly shop that I was completing while she was working late in the city. At least that’s what I thought she was doing. But the words I heard down the phone in my other hand that night told me that Laura was doing something else entirely.
She was cheating on me.
Everything was a bit of a haze after that, but I do remember telling Jeremy not to approach Laura and to just leave instead. I also remember completing the weekly shop, although I did put the chicken dippers back as if that was somehow my way of getting revenge on my wife for what I had just found out about her. Then I had gone home and unpacked the shopping before waiting patiently on the sofa for Laura to return where I planned to tell her exactly what I knew and make her explain herself or the marriage was over.
Except I didn’t do that. I didn’t say anything when she got home. I didn’t let on that Jeremy had seen her in the pub with that other guy. I was too scared.
In the end, I pretended like everything was okay.
At the time, my tactics weren’t part of any great masterplan in which I expected to get my revenge at a later date. I simply chose to say nothing because I was afraid. Afraid to lose Laura. Afraid for my marriage to be over. Afraid to be the poor guy who people offered sympathy to because they knew he had been betrayed by the one person in the world who he thought he could trust above all others.
But I did start to keep tabs on my wife. I noted when she said she was working late again or going for work drinks and instead of doing the shopping or waiting at home, I went into the city centre and I waited for her to leave her office. Then I saw what she was really doing. All the times she told me she was sitting at her desk or sharing a drink with several colleagues were, in fact, the times I saw her walking with that man. She went into pubs with him. She went into restaurants with him. And she even went into a hotel with him one time.
A quick check on the employee page of the company website where Laura works showed me the photo of this man who was with my wife, and that’s how I learnt the name of the person whom Laura was risking our marriage for.
It was while I was standing out there on the streets during those dreadful few weeks watching my wife going behind my back when I felt myself changing.
I wasn’t just broken.
I was destroyed.
I could feel the life leaving me. Colours became less vivid. Sounds were dulled. Nothing seemed to matter anymore. By the third evening of watching my wife run around the city with another man, I had given up. I didn’t care about anything, and I just wanted the pain to be gone.
My hands grip the steering wheel as I think back over that period in my l
ife when I had hit rock bottom. It’s a wonder I didn’t kill myself or someone else. I had genuinely stopped caring about anything.
I became reckless. I started drinking heavily.
And I wasn’t afraid to get behind the wheel when I did it.
Through that difficult time, Laura never noticed the change in me. That’s because I was always there when she came home late from ‘work.’ I was always sleeping beside her in our bed. And I was always available to answer her calls and texts, just like a caring husband should be. On the outside, I still seemed like the same man. But on the inside, I had changed forever.
I was dead.
But it wasn’t long until I was reborn again.
I see the cottage up ahead as I turn onto the dirt track and it’s not long until I am parked up and heading inside. But I freeze just before I open the door because I catch a glimpse of something through the window.
The TV is on. Laura is watching it. And it looks like the lunchtime news is just starting.
This isn’t good.
This was not part of the plan.
33
LAURA
The news hasn’t been on yet, which is annoying. But Adam is back so at least I can show him what I have achieved since he has been gone.
‘Look! I got the TV working!’ I say as he walks through the door with a couple of carrier bags of supplies.
‘I can see that,’ he replies with a smile. ‘How did you manage it?’
‘I just turned all the switches on and off on the back.’
‘Oh. That’s weird. That was the first thing I tried.’
‘Maybe it just needed a woman’s touch.’
I join my husband in the kitchen where he is starting to unload the items he picked up, and I’m relieved to see the cartons of cranberry juice because I feel like I’ve already been having withdrawal symptoms.
‘We can get the news now without you having to look at the papers,’ I say as I pour myself a glass of my favourite drink. ‘That means you don’t have to go out as much.’
Adam nods his head. ‘Great. Has the news been on yet?’
‘No, but it’s almost lunchtime so there should be something on any minute.’
‘I was thinking we could unpack these and go for a walk,’ Adam suggests, and I frown because I can see how wet he got just walking inside from the car.
‘I’m not sure we’ve got the weather for a walk,’ I say. ‘Besides, we’ve finally got the TV working. It’ll be nice to just relax in front of it for a while. Maybe we can find a movie to take our mind off things.’
‘I don’t think a movie will do the trick.’
‘I know, but still, you have to admit this is much better now we actually have something to help us pass the time.’
Adam doesn’t reply and instead continues to busy himself with the unpacking of the shopping. I’m a little disappointed that he isn’t more enthusiastic about the fact that I have managed to get the TV working, but I suppose it is only a small victory. It’s hardly going to improve our situation massively in the grand scheme of things. Not if the police are looking for us.
‘The news is coming on!’ I call out when I hear the familiar music playing on the TV, and I rush back to the sofa to grab the remote and turn it up.
‘I doubt they’ll be reporting on hit and runs on the national news,’ Adam says from where he remains standing in the kitchen. ‘There must be dozens a day in the UK.’
‘They might be. You said it was in the national newspapers,’ I reply.
‘Yeah, but it’s a new day, and there must be a hundred new stories to fill the slots.’
‘Well, let’s hope there’s nothing but you never know,’ I tell him as I take my seat to watch the bulletin.
I don’t recognise the female newsreader behind the desk, but that’s only because I’ve never made a habit of watching the lunchtime news. I know who mans the desk for the 10 pm bulletins because we always watch them in bed, and I sometimes catch the early evening updates if I’m home from work in time or if I remember to put them on while I’m busy making dinner. But I can’t recall the last time I watched the news this early in the day, and I can tell the difference between the number of people who must be watching now compared to the peak times in the evenings.
This news presenter is nowhere near as glamorous as the woman who gets the evening slot.
The first couple of reports are about the usual hot topics that dominate the headlines. Conflict in the Middle East. Scandal in the corridors of US politics. I wasn’t expecting to see my husband’s face pop up as the first item on the agenda, but it’s still a relief as more reports go by without hearing any mention of the hunt for the perpetrator of a hit and run.
Fifteen minutes go by, and the rest of the broadcast is full of short reports on all sorts of things from a small earthquake in Nepal to a lion that has escaped from a zoo in China. But Adam was right. The news story we are most interested in hearing about is not big enough to make it onto the national broadcasts today.
But now it’s time for the local news.
I feel a wave of nausea rising up inside me because I know that this will be when our luck runs out. This will be the bulletin that will discuss the hit and run.
This will be the one that reminds us why we are here and what we are running from.
‘The weather’s getting worse,’ Adam says, and I notice he is looking out of the window. The rain doesn’t seem any stronger than it has been for the last hour, but I don’t really care about that right now. The news is on.
Why is Adam more bothered about the rain than watching this?
‘I’m going to move the car around the back of the cottage. It’s too exposed out there, and I don’t want it to get damaged,’ Adam suddenly suggests as he heads for the door.
‘It’ll be fine. You can do it after this.’
‘No, it’s getting bad out there.’
I hear the door slam behind me, and Adam is gone. I see him outside the window rushing to the car, and the conditions aren’t great, but it’s hardly a hurricane. I’m not sure why there is such a panic to move the car somewhere safer. Then I figure it out. He isn’t bothered about the car or the weather. He is bothered about what he might see on the news. He doesn’t want to be reminded of it. But I need to see it, so I turn back to the screen.
The first story is about a gas explosion on a street in Currock, an area of Carlisle that I know well because I used to date a guy who lived around there. The report says that there may be casualties and I believe it because the images accompanying it shows a pile of rubble where a house once stood. How terrifying. But nothing about the hit and run yet.
The second report is about the seizure of a large quantity of narcotics in a warehouse in the city centre, and the images show several police officers who have cordoned off the area. But still nothing about the hit and run.
Then the third news item flashes up, and I feel my heart skip a beat.
My breath catches in my throat.
I can’t believe what I am seeing and hearing.
Then the screen goes black.
34
ADAM
I had to do something. I can’t have Laura watching the news. It will mess everything up for me.
I look down at the broken piece of the satellite dish lying on the wet grass in front of me, and I’m satisfied that I have achieved the purpose I came out here with.
There’s no way the TV will be working now.
I quickly return to the car and hop behind the wheel just in time to see Laura open the front door of the cottage and look outside. The rain is bouncing off the windscreen in front of me, but I can make out the confused look on her face as she stands there and presumably tries to figure out what just happened. Without further ado, I get out of the car and run towards the cottage to tell her.
‘Get inside! It’s dangerous out here!’ I call to her as I run towards the cottage through the driving rain.
‘The TV’s just cut out!�
��
‘I’m not surprised. Half the satellite dish just got blown down by the wind!’
I reach the door and she steps aside to allow me in before I go to close it behind her, but she wants to see the damage for herself first.
‘Don’t go out there! The rest of it might fall down!’ I call, but it’s no use. My wife is stubborn, and she has made her mind up. She wants to inspect the satellite dish for herself.
But I don’t mind. She can look all she wants. The broken pieces of the dish on the ground will only confirm what I have told her. It came down in the wind. We’re in the wilds out here, and it is certainly getting wild out there right now.
In reality, the dish would have survived the weather conditions quite easily, and the only reason it is now broken is because I threw a rock at it a couple of minutes ago. I had to do something to kill the TV signal before Laura could finish watching the news and see the report about Bradley being missing. I don’t want her to know about him yet, just like I don’t want her to know about the fact that there was no hit and run and no Steven Owen.
I need to keep her in the dark for just a little while longer.
As dark as that TV screen is right now.
‘Laura, come back inside!’ I call out into the wind, and I’m relieved when I see her return to the front door a few seconds later, wet and frustrated.
‘How the hell did that happen?’ Laura asks as she returns to the cottage, and I’m finally able to close the door.
‘I told you, the wind got hold of it. We’re on top of a hill up here. It wouldn’t take much to do some damage to this place.’
‘It’s not that windy,’ Laura says as she looks at the black TV despondently.
