by Daniel Hurst
I think about continuing to act out the charade, but I’m so furious at the woman in front of me that all I can do is spit at her and scream obscenities. Unfortunately, all that does is get her to quickly stuff the gag back into my mouth.
I look to Bradley beside me as if he is going to miraculously be able to help get us out of this situation, but he looks as helpless as I feel. This has clearly been a long time in the planning, and now we are simply pawns in whatever game Adam and Gemma are playing.
I watch as the conspiring pair head for the staircase, and I wonder how long they are going to make us sit and suffer like this. It seems like it will be a while longer yet because they both climb the stairs and disappear from view, leaving me and my fellow prisoner in silence below them.
As we both struggle against our restraints again, I wonder what they could be doing up there.
But it’s not long until I get my answer.
Bradley and I exchange a disbelieving glance as we listen to the two people making love right above our heads.
47
ADAM
Like most parts of this plan, the lovemaking was Gemma’s idea. But I’m not complaining. Anything to infuriate my wife even more before she dies is fine by me. But now that is over with, it’s time to finish this.
‘This looks perfect,’ I say to Gemma as I look around the bedroom, and I’m not exaggerating. The sight of my wife and her lover lying unconscious on the bed is truly a sight to behold.
They are currently sedated by the chloroform, but that is only for the short term. In the long term, it will be something else that prevents them from ever waking up again.
All of their restraints have been removed, along with the majority of their clothing, and now the two mostly naked adulterers are lying still beneath the duvet looking as if they are sleeping off a very energetic bout of lovemaking.
I have removed all of my belongings from the room, as well as most of Laura’s items, although I have left her a few things. But I want it to look like she was only planning on being up here a few hours rather than a few days.
I have to admit, I’m enjoying this even more than I thought I would. Seeing the look on Laura’s face when I told her that I knew all about her affair and the baby’s real father was priceless and just reward for keeping my emotions in check about her infidelity until tonight. I also enjoyed seeing her reaction to the presence of Gemma, and we have made it clear that we are just as capable as getting up to the kind of things that Laura and Bradley did so many times. But now it’s time to put the unlucky couple out of their misery.
I make a final sweep of the bedroom to make sure there is no incriminating evidence on my behalf, but all seems okay. Besides, Gemma has already assured me that it is.
Feeling confident that I have got everything, I head for the bedroom door. As soon as I make it downstairs, I drop my belongings from the bedroom into my rucksack, before checking that there is nothing else down here that could be left behind that belongs to me.
When I am satisfied that there isn’t then I go to leave, but not before opening the fridge and removing the two bottles of beer that I have saved in there for this very moment. Gemma and I will enjoy these as we sit in my car by the roadside not too far from here and toast to a job well done and I can’t wait. But before the bottlecaps can be popped, there is one more job to tick off.
The goal here is to make it look like the two doomed lovers ran away to this cottage to spend some time together only to succumb to the poisonous fumes from a carbon monoxide leak and die together in the upstairs bedroom. Their ill-fated affair will explain both of their absences, and me and Bradley’s wife will eventually receive a sombre visit from a police officer when their bodies are eventually discovered the next time my sister makes a trip to this cottage for a weekend away, whenever that may be.
I feel bad that my sibling will have to be the one that discovers them, but it’s her property so it can’t be anybody else that does it. It will be a nasty shock for her I’m sure, but she will get it over it in time, just like I will have to get over the “news” of my wife going to the cottage to meet another man before ultimately passing away and leaving me a broken-hearted widow.
The idea is to make it seem like Laura and Bradley have been using my sister’s cottage as the meeting place for an affair that has been going on for a while. They would have planned to visit the cottage as usual and return to their lives straight after, but the fumes consumed them and left them lying dead for days, causing their worried partners to report each of them as missing, whilst unaware that they were actually together.
My visit to the police station yesterday to inform the police that I had discovered Laura’s affair with Bradley, and recognised his photo in the newspaper, was done to further cement this story in their minds and leave little room for doubt about what really happened.
Nobody will suspect that I was involved in their deaths, and even if they did, there will be no evidence to back it up. Laura and Bradley were carrying on an affair. They were using my sister’s cottage for their meet-ups. They got unlucky with the monoxide leak. They died.
End of story.
With them out of the way, it will leave me free to start a new life with Gemma in good time, once a respectable period of mourning has passed. Nobody will begrudge me a little bit of happiness after what I have been through, and when it comes time for me and the policewoman to tie the knot, we will do so with the knowledge that we are already bonded by something far stronger than love.
We will be bonded by what we did here tonight, and that is much longer lasting than some simple marital vows.
Gemma would never hurt me like Laura did, and I would never do that to her either. Why would either of us risk it? We both know what each other is capable of now. We daren’t break each other’s hearts lest we end up six feet under like the two unfortunate souls in this cottage.
As I look down at the unconscious couple on the bed, I say a silent goodbye to my current wife and then turn to walk out of the door with my future one.
Goodbye, Laura.
Sleep tight.
And good riddance.
48
ADAM
It’s 3 am by the time I arrive back at the house I share with my wife. Of course, I am alone as I walk through the front door, and I better get used to it. Laura will never be here again.
She may already have taken her last breath in that cottage.
After leaving Laura and Bradley under the duvet in the bedroom, Gemma and I worked on switching out the throat plate above the fireplace downstairs so that it wouldn’t properly disperse the fumes up the cottage chimney when the fire was on. Swapping the clean and efficient throat plate for a congested one we had created especially for tonight, we made sure the fumes would begin to build up inside the cottage before we made our exit. The miniature carbon monoxide alarm that started to sound several minutes after we had turned the fire on gave us the proof that we needed that the fumes were starting to spread dangerously around the cottage.
Leaving the unconscious couple upstairs and Bradley’s car parked outside, Gemma and I made our way back to the city in my vehicle, again using only the back roads to avoid any cameras. All the painstaking plotting of a route by my accomplice in the police has paid dividends, and we can rest assured that we have not been seen.
I drove Gemma back to her place before I returned home and now I am finally ready to crawl into my bed and rest, safe in the knowledge that Laura and her betrayals are a thing of the past.
I’m not sure how long it will be until my sister visits the cottage again. It could be weeks. It could even be months. No matter. In that time, the police will continue to search for the missing pair. There will be theories, there will be speculation, and there will likely be many more visits from the police before the truth comes out. But when it does, there will be no suspicions being thrown in my direction. It will just be seen as a terrible incident, a pregnant woman and her lover killed as they sle
pt by the hazardous fumes from the faulty fireplace, and while they should never have been in that cottage together cheating on their partners in the first place, nobody would have wished such an untimely death on them.
Nobody except me.
I walk into my kitchen and toss my car keys onto the side before opening the fridge and going in search of another beer. It’s not long since Gemma and I enjoyed a little drink as we drove home from the cottage, celebrating our evening’s work and toasting to a great future ahead. But I fancy another drink right now.
Fortunately, I manage to locate a couple of bottles at the back of the fridge, and I take them both out before opening them and heading for the stairs. The plan is to chill out on my bed for a little while with my drinks until I hopefully drift off to sleep, although I’m half-expecting not to get much sleep tonight. How can I with all this adrenaline rushing through me? It’s not every day that you get to take a life, and it’s not every husband who gets to exact glorious revenge on his lying spouse.
For me, this night feels like the culmination of a dream I have harboured for so long. The road has been long and rocky, but I never gave up believing that I would get justice for myself in the end. I couldn’t have done it without Gemma, but so much of it was down to my own hard work too, and I shouldn’t sell myself short when it comes to my accomplishments. Not everybody can carry out what I have just done. My wife had no idea what I was up to until the very last minute, and that took months of planning to make happen.
I switch on the bedroom light and place one of the beer bottles onto my bedside table as I swig from the other while heading into our en-suite bathroom. I plan to have a quick shower, but I change my mind when I decide that lying on the bed simply cannot wait any longer.
I return to the bedroom and sink down onto the mattress, feeling my tense body instantly relaxing with the combination of my horizontal position and the alcohol passing my lips every few seconds.
The house is eerily silent, and I suppose I better get used to that. Laura will never again walk these rooms, chattering away on the phone to her friends or calling out to me when I have left something lying on the floor that she now has to pick up. The TV will never be blaring out when I get back from work, nor will I hear her rummaging around in the kitchen cupboards or listening to music while she has a shower. I can’t say I’ll miss her, although I will miss the company. It’s annoying I’ll have to wait a while to have the same level of companionship with Gemma, at least publicly, but it’s a small price to pay for a lifetime of future happiness. For now, I’ll enjoy my beer, enjoy the silence, and enjoy the fact that my wife is lying dead in that cottage beside the man she thought was better than me.
I wonder what state their bodies will be in by the time Kat visits the cottage. I hope it’s not too gruesome for her. But a part of me kind of hopes that Laura is almost unrecognizable when they put her into that body bag.
Only time will tell.
Until then, I’ll make sure I’ve got a good supply of beer to count down the days.
49
KAT
THE MORNING
I’ve missed this place. The rolling hills. The wide-open spaces. The fact that nobody is around for miles in any direction. I really should get more use out of this holiday cottage, but then again, I think that every time I come up here. In reality, the hecticness of everyday life means it’s never quite as easy to get away from it all as I would like.
There are commitments and responsibilities vying for my attention every weekend, like taking my children to various parties and play dates, or having to look after the kids when my husband is out getting drunk at the football. I wish I could just drop everything and come out here to this serene little hilltop more often, but I can’t just abandon my family on a whim. Of course, I could bring them with me, but I’ve done that enough times now to know that it is more stress than it’s worth. Trying to get two children to pack their bags and get into the car on a Saturday morning before making the drive here is easier said than done. It’s much simpler to stick them in the playroom at home and leave them in front of the TV. But I’ve made it to the cottage today, escaping all my responsibilities with family in order to get a much-needed break for myself.
Or rather, a much-needed break from my husband.
Martin and I have been getting on each other’s nerves more and more over the last few months, and it reached breaking point last night. We screamed at each other during one of our usual arguments, and it became clear that we couldn’t go on like that, so I decided that I would take myself away from home for a day or two and clear my head at the cottage. I know he would rather have been the one to be up here instead of being left with the kids, but I was adamant I needed to be the one to go otherwise I wasn’t sure if our marriage was going to survive.
I think my admission shocked him, so he quickly agreed with my plan, so here I am, driving up to our holiday home cottage while he is back in ‘the real world’ dealing with our children. I feel a slight bit of guilt for leaving my kids behind on the weekend, but it wasn’t fair to make them have to listen to their mum and dad arguing all the time. At least this way, there will be no arguments today.
Even I can’t start an argument inside an empty cottage.
As I drive down the main road, I reflect on how I ended up here. Martin and I have been at each other’s throats for months now, a combination of stressful workdays, stressful childcare duties and stressful family dramas. It wasn’t always easy, but it’s been getting worse.
If only my marriage was as serene as my brother’s.
Adam and Laura don’t seem to be plagued by any of the problems that Martin and I have, and I always thought that he was the lucky one out of the two of us. While I had a chaotic marriage full of fights and friction, he seemed to have all the good stuff. I’ve never seen a couple more in love than him and Laura. I wonder what their secret is? I also wonder if the arrival of their baby boy any day now might be the catalyst for their marriage to become just as difficult as everybody else’s. Hopefully not.
I don’t wish marital problems on anybody.
I did consider going around to my brother’s house today instead of coming up here, offering him and Laura any support they needed as they prepare for the impending birth. But perhaps a little selfishly, I couldn’t face it. It’s not that I don’t love my brother or my sister-in-law, it’s just that I’ve got enough problems going on in my own house without going around to his and dealing with those. I also don’t want to burden him with many of my issues. As it is, I’ve decided to just get myself away for a night by myself, and I plan to call by Adam’s house on my way home to see if there is any progress on the arrival of little Samuel.
I slow down as I reach the turning, and then I pull off the main road and enter onto the dirt track that leads up to the cottage. As I pass through the trees that shield this property from the main road, I instantly see the vehicle parked outside the cottage. I don’t recognise it, but it wouldn’t matter if I did.
There shouldn’t be anybody up here.
As I drive closer, I try to work out who it could be but other than Martin, only Adam has a spare key. I gave him one as a nice gesture as I thought he and Laura could use this cottage occasionally to have their own little mini-breaks. I figured they might as well get some use out of this place as I barely manage to. But the car parked out front does not belong to my brother so it can’t be him. That means whoever is at the cottage is there without my permission.
I wonder if it could be a local, and although I’m not sure why they would be randomly calling by the cottage today on the chance that I was in, it would at least make some sense. Perhaps they are dropping off a notice about some upcoming event in the village, or maybe there are going to be some roadworks to deal with on the main road at some point this year, and they are being kind enough to let me know. As I get closer to the cottage, I think that would be the best-case scenario. The worst-case would be that the owner of that vehicle is here
because they are attempting to break in and steal whatever they can find inside. We don’t keep any valuables at the cottage other than a TV, but that’s not the point. The fact that I can’t see the driver anywhere outside the property as I approach makes me worry that they might already be in there.
I reach the cottage but park a little distance behind the mysterious vehicle, taking out my phone to call Martin as I bring the car to a stop. I will see if he has any idea who this uninvited visitor might be. It’s only when I put the phone to my ear that I remember there is no signal around here. I’d have to drive back to the main road to get one, but I don’t want to do that because it might give whoever is inside the chance to get away and I’ll never know who it was.
Therefore, the only thing left to do is get out of my car and investigate.
I open my door and step out onto the wet gravel, shivering a little as the cold wind blows around me now that I am not shielded by the bodywork of my car. I look up at the cottage for any signs of movements in the windows, but I don’t see any. If it wasn’t for the strange car parked outside, I wouldn’t even know that anything was out of order and I realise that’s a scary thought as I step towards the cottage. If whoever is here now had made sure to hide their car from view, I could have walked in completely unsuspecting that there was another person inside. At least now I’m on my guard as I reach the front door and turn the handle. The door is locked, as it should be. But that doesn’t mean this person hasn’t found another way in.
I take a deep breath and slot my key into the lock, twisting it and opening the door as quietly as I can. Maybe I should have just gone back to the main road and called the police, but I’m inside now, and with the grumpy mood I’m in, whoever is here should be more scared of me than I am of them.
The first thing that I notice is that the fire is on. That’s weird. Who breaks in and gets warm?
