Run Away With Me : A fast-paced psychological thriller

by Daniel Hurst

  ‘Since I came out of the coma, I’ve told everybody that I don’t remember being at the cottage or what happened to me,’ I begin. ‘The doctors. The police. Even my husband. They all think I have suffered memory loss.’

  ‘That’s what I heard too,’ the detective replies.

  ‘But I’m lying,’ I say, doing my best to keep my voice steady even though I am terrified about finally getting to tell the truth. ‘I do remember what happened at that cottage. And it’s not what everybody thinks.’

  For the first time since he arrived here, Detective Cleevely actually looks interested in what I am about to say to him, so I don’t waste his attention. I quickly run through everything that happened regarding my affair with Bradley, how we both ended up at the cottage together and how my husband and his policewoman accomplice planned to kill us and make it look like an accident. By the time I am finished, he looks like he is regretting not taking me up on my offer of a drink.

  ‘That’s quite a story,’ he replies, scratching his head. ‘But it sounds like that’s all it is. Unless you have any evidence of course?’

  I shake my head.

  ‘That’s why I didn’t tell anyone as soon as I woke up in hospital. I knew there was no evidence because Adam told me there wasn’t before he left me to die in that cottage.’

  ‘Well then it’s going to be a problem proving your story,’ the detective tells me, and I agree. Fortunately, I have a plan.

  ‘But what if Adam and Gemma thought there was evidence? Like security footage, for instance.’

  ‘And why would they think that?’

  ‘Because I would tell them there was.’

  Detective Cleevely runs his hand across his stubble and lets out a sigh. I’d have thought he would be excited by the prospect of a dramatic case to solve landing right in his lap, but he looks more tired than anything.

  ‘You say Adam’s partner is a policewoman?’

  ‘Yes. She’s called Gemma, but I didn’t get her surname.’

  ‘Okay. Well, let’s say all of this is true-’

  ‘It is,’ I interject.

  ‘If it is then obviously we need to look into this. It sounds like you have a plan to help us do that. So why don’t you let me in on it and I will be able to tell you whether or not it can work.’

  I smile at the detective because I am sure it can work.

  In fact, I’m certain of it.

  56

  ADAM

  I close the front door and let out a deep sigh. I’ve just got back from the hospital after visiting Samuel but any goodwill I was feeling towards the baby after the initial birth has now dissipated. Just as I thought before he was born, Samuel reminds me of nothing more than my wife’s betrayal.

  I only have to look at his little face to be reminded of Laura and Bradley sneaking into those hotel rooms together, which is why I was willing to sacrifice the baby’s life in the first place. I knew I would find it impossible to be around this child, and I was right. But I have to force myself to that hospital every day to stand by the side of that incubator and look as if I am the father because that’s who everybody thinks I am. Not going to the hospital would attract unwanted attention to me so I must persist. But it’s getting harder each day, and it’s just as hard coming home to the woman who should have been dead by now.

  I take off my coat and shoes and march wearily up the stairs on my way to the bedroom to visit Laura again. I detest seeing her just as much as that baby, but I have to keep monitoring her recovery if only to make sure she isn’t starting to remember anything about what I did to her yet.

  I reach the bedroom door and open it slowly, unsure if Laura will be sleeping or not. But I see her sitting up in the bed reading a magazine, and she smiles at me as I walk in. She actually seems pleased to see me, which is a good thing, I guess.

  ‘How is Samuel? Did you take another photo?’ she asks me, and I nod my head before taking my phone from my pocket and finding the image I snapped in the hospital. Laura has been asking me to take pictures of her baby when I visit because she can’t be there to see him herself for the time being, and I have been begrudgingly obliging. I can’t wait to delete these photos off my phone, but for now, I have to smile and show them to my wife.

  ‘Oh my god, he has got a little bigger. You can see it in the picture, can’t you?’ Laura cries, and I nod my head.

  ‘Yeah, he’s definitely put a little weight on.’

  He’s fighting for his life every day, but Samuel is still here.

  Just like his damn mother.

  Laura smiles at the photo, and I can see she is upset so I take the phone away from her before she gets any worse. I can’t be bothered with tears right now.

  ‘Is Kat coming to visit today?’ Laura asks me as she wipes her eyes.

  ‘I don’t think so. Why?’

  ‘It was just nice to see her the other day.’

  I frown because I can’t imagine that it was nice. I know what my sister is like. She promised me that she wouldn’t come up here and have a go at Laura when I said she could see her, but I’m sure she had a few choice words when they were alone together. But neither Kat nor Laura have told me much about what was said since they had their little discussion yesterday.

  ‘What exactly did you guys talk about?’ I ask, taking a seat on the chair beside the bed.

  ‘She said she was glad I was okay. I apologised for using the cottage. She wasn’t happy about that, but I can hardly blame her.’

  I nod. Kat was definitely not happy about finding out Laura and Bradley had been using her property for their illicit meet-ups.

  ‘Fair enough,’ I reply, and I stand up to leave because I’m tired and I don’t want to look at Laura anymore.

  ‘She also said something about how she wished she had checked the security camera more often because then she might have seen me going there sooner and she could have put a stop to it.’

  I freeze.

  ‘Security camera?’

  ‘At the cottage. I didn’t know she had a camera there. Did you?’

  I most certainly did not know that.

  ‘What are you talking about? Kat said there were no cameras up there. She told us that when she gave us the spare key.’

  ‘I know, that’s what I thought. But apparently there is. They obviously never look at it though, otherwise they would have seen me on it.’

  This is not good.

  ‘I can’t believe Kat never told me about this.’ I say, trying to figure out why my sister would lie to me.

  ‘She probably didn’t want us to feel like she was watching us when we went there on holiday,’ Laura suggests. ‘And...’

  Her voice trails off.

  ‘What?’ I ask, feeling my heart hammering in my chest.

  ‘She probably didn’t mention it either because she didn’t want you to know that she had footage of me and Bradley.’

  I know Laura was trying to dance around that point to protect my feelings about the affair, but that’s not what I’m bothered about right now. I’m more concerned that there might be camera footage of me and Gemma being at that cottage on the night we left Laura and Bradley to die.

  ‘I need to give her a call,’ I say as I pace towards the doorway.

  ‘Why?’ Laura asks me, but I don’t turn around to answer her. I just leave the room and close the bedroom door behind me before taking out my mobile and dialling my sister’s number.

  If there is a camera at the cottage then she will have the footage somewhere. I need to get rid of it before anybody can look at it. I’m just about to press the call button when I pause. Why hasn’t Kat looked at it already? If she has, then she would surely have seen that I was at the cottage with Gemma. The fact that she hasn’t said anything to me about it must mean she hasn’t viewed the footage yet.

  That means I still have a chance to get rid of it.

  I put down my phone and hold off on calling Kat. I need to think about this. I can’t just ring her and demand
to have the camera footage because then she will wonder why, and she will probably watch it herself. Instead, I need to be discreet and find out where they keep that footage. It must go to a computer at their house. I have to find it, and I have to delete it. But first I need to speak to Gemma. There’s no point ringing her because she hasn’t been answering my calls lately. I know she’s annoyed about how things turned out, and I don’t blame her, but we need to discuss things, especially this latest development.

  ‘I’m just going to the shops. Do you want anything?’ I call out to Laura.

  ‘No thanks,’ she replies, and I run down the stairs, not wanting to waste another second.

  But I’m not going to the shops.

  I’m going to Gemma’s flat.

  I need to tell her about the camera.

  57

  ADAM

  ‘What are you doing here?’

  I ignore Gemma’s question and push past her into the flat.

  ‘We might have a problem.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘I think my sister had a security camera at the cottage.’

  ‘You told me there was no camera there!’

  ‘I know I did, but now I think there might have been.’

  Gemma looks at me like she wants to hit me, and it’s a far cry from how she used to look at me. I wish I could go back to those days when we used to lie in bed together and talk about all the things we were going to do. It was much easier to make a plan to murder my wife in our heads than it turned out to be in real life.

  ‘How do you know about this camera?’

  ‘My sister mentioned it to Laura when she visited her. Said how she wished she’d checked the footage so she could have caught them and the affair sooner. But it’s not the footage of them I’m bothered about. It’s the footage of us.’

  ‘Has anybody seen that footage yet?’

  ‘Well, we’re not in prison, so I’m guessing not.’

  Gemma thinks about it for a moment, and I’m happy to let her decide what we should do next. She’s the one in the police force after all. If anybody should know how to avoid ending up in handcuffs, then it should be her.

  ‘You need to go to your sister’s and find out where they keep that footage.’

  ‘How do I do that without it seeming suspicious?’

  ‘I don’t know. Just ask her if she can delete it. Tell her you are embarrassed about it because it shows your wife and another man together. Use your imagination!’

  ‘And what are you going to do?’ Are you going to help?’

  ‘This is your mess. You clean it up.’

  Gemma opens the door again. Our conversation is clearly over.

  I shake my head at her and walk out.

  I guess I am sorting this problem out on my own then.

  58

  KAT

  My home life is still as troubled as it was when I decided to escape to the cottage for some alone time a few weeks ago, but at least it isn’t as bad as my brother’s. I might have to deal with a grumpy, unhelpful partner in Martin, but Adam has to deal with a cheating and bed-ridden partner in Laura. I’ll take my problems any day.

  ‘Kat, your brother’s here!’

  I hear Martin’s voice from downstairs, and I go into the hallway and look down to see Adam entering the house. I wasn’t expecting him, and it’s not that long since I last saw him, so I have no idea why he is here now. But based on all the drama in our lives recently, this visit could be about anything.

  ‘Hey bro,’ I say as I head down the stairs towards him. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Not much,’ he replies, a little awkwardly.

  Knowing my sibling as well as I do, it looks like he is trying to appear casual, but he seems as stiff as a board. I wonder if he has been drinking again. I know he likes a beer or ten when things get stressful, but I hope he hasn’t driven around here if he’s already started on the booze today.

  ‘Is Laura okay?’ I ask, more out of concern for him rather than for her.

  ‘Yeah, she’s fine. But she did mention something to me earlier.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  Adam pauses before answering as Martin walks through the hallway again. The two men nod at each other awkwardly before my husband disappears into the living room where I can hear a football match on the television.

  ‘Laura said you had a camera at the cottage?’ Adam eventually says to me when he seems to be sure that Martin is out of earshot.

  ‘A camera? Why would she say that?’

  ‘Do you?’

  ‘No, of course not.’

  I shake my head for emphasis. There is definitely no camera at the cottage.

  ‘We thought about putting one in when we got it. Remember, we told you. But we didn’t do it in the end.’

  Adam looks bemused.

  ‘Why would Laura say that you told her about a camera?’ he asks me.

  ‘I’ve no idea, but she’s lying. It wouldn’t be the first time, would it?’

  I feel bad for my last comment and go to apologise but Adam barely even seemed to notice it. In fact, he’s already halfway out the door again.

  ‘Is everything okay?’ I call after him as he leaves and heads down the driveway.

  He waves his hand above his head as he goes to signal that it is, but the fact that he is in such a rush tells me something is wrong. I watch him as he gets back into his car and he doesn’t wave goodbye as he drives away.

  I presume he is going back home to speak to his wife, but by the sounds of it, he isn’t going to get much sense out of her. I have no idea why she would say that we had a camera there. I explicitly told her that we didn’t only yesterday when I visited her. I guess that woman’s mind really is as scrambled as the doctors say.

  Oh well, what a shame.

  I’m just about to close the front door and go and tell Martin to turn the TV down when I notice the parked car opposite with two men sitting inside. They are both looking at me. I’m not sure how long they have been out there and why they are so interested in me standing on my doorstep, but they are definitely watching me.

  I close the door and head to the window, passing the TV and getting told off by Martin for interrupting his view of the screen as I go. But I ignore my husband and peer through the blinds to see if the men in the car are still there, and I catch sight of them before they drive off the street, leaving in the same direction that my brother just went in.

  59

  ADAM

  My hands squeeze the steering wheel as I speed back home to where my wife is waiting for me. I’m tense, I’m confused, but I’m mostly anxious. I want to know if Laura made a mistake with her memory when she told me that Kat had a camera in the cottage.

  Maybe she got mixed up. Maybe she is remembering fragments of past conversations when Kat mentioned the camera way back when we first started going to the cottage. That’s probably what it is. Nothing to worry about. The doctors said she would suffer with her memory and cognitive function for a long time after the carbon monoxide poisoning. I guess this could just be another example of that.

  So why do I feel so stressed?

  I turn the corner onto our street and increase my speed until I reach our driveway, parking up as quickly as I can and running out of the car back into the house. This reminds me of the night I came home from the work party and pretended to Laura that I had been involved in a hit and run accident that had killed a man. But unlike that night when I was acting, my fear now is very real.

  It’s the fear that my wife is playing games with me.

  I unlock the door and head inside, and I don’t need to call out to my wife because I already know where she will be. She’ll be on the bed resting because she hasn’t been anywhere else since she came home. But before I run up the stairs and ask her some questions, I pause and try to calm myself down.

  Yes, I’m worried about the fact that Laura might be tormenting me by pretending there was a camera at the cottage, but I need
to stay calm in case there is a simpler explanation to this. If my wife has remembered something, then I need to proceed with caution. If she hasn’t, then I still need to do the same because I’d hate to do anything that might help jog her memory.

  I take a deep breath and remove my jacket, hanging it over the edge of the bannister as I plot my next course of action. I’ll go upstairs calmly and quietly and take a seat beside my wife, asking her how she feels like I have done on all the previous occasions I have been to check on her. Then, when I am sure that she is relaxed, I will mention to her that I spoke to Kat about the camera and my sister confirmed that there is no such thing. Based on my wife’s reaction to that news, I will hopefully be able to tell if she knew that already.

  If Laura does remember what really happened, she would know that the prospect of a security camera would frighten the life out of me. That’s why I need to be guarded as I climb the stairs and prepare to walk in on her. I don’t want to frighten the life out of her too.

  But when I open the door, I see no sign of her in the bedroom. The duvet is pulled back, and she is not lying on the sheets like she was when I left her. The only thing I do see on the bed is a letter.

  I pick it up and read it as quickly as I can. But there aren’t many words on it.

  Only three in fact.

  I remember everything.

  The paper falls to the floor as I try to stay calm and figure out my next move. Okay, so Laura remembers. But so what? She has no evidence. The camera was a lie designed to panic me. But panicking won’t get a conviction. Neither will her story by itself. She needs proof.

  Does she have any?

  The fact that she isn’t here makes me worry that she might.

  I take out my phone and call my wife, praying that she picks up. I will be careful not to say anything to her that might incriminate me if she answers. I will keep calm and simply ask her where she is. My reaction then will depend on what she says to that.

  Laura picks up on the second ring.

  ‘I’ve been waiting for you to call,’ she says to me in a disturbingly calm voice.