by Jane Holland
She’s holding Harry in her arms.
My heart jolts.
Harry is lying against her chest, dressed in a sky-blue romper suit that ends at his knees, leaving him bare-legged despite the cool interior of the house, only a pair of white knitted bootees covering his toes.
‘Harry, oh Harry.’ I stare at my son, hungrily devouring him with my eyes. ‘My gorgeous, darling boy.’
Treve’s mother seems shocked to see me in her house, her mouth dropping open, eyes widening in surprise and alarm.
‘What the hell is she doing here?’ she demands of her son.
Treve says nothing.
Did he fail to tell his mother that I’d found them? Or perhaps he assured her that he was going outside to get rid of me. Now here I am, still on their land, in their actual house, still very much a threat. I wonder what her son might have in store for me now that I’ve discovered their secret hideaway.
Nothing very pleasant, I expect.
Harry is not crying anymore, thankfully. But he looks pale and lethargic, his head tilted against her shoulder as though he’s too tired to hold it up on his own. His blue eyes are dull as he glances around the hall, his gaze barely pausing on my face.
I struggle to hold back my tears. Forcing a smile to my face, I say lightly, ‘Don’t worry, sweetheart. Mummy’s here now. Have . . . Have you missed me?’
Treve’s mother’s face hardens, looking from me to her son in silent accusation. She whisks Harry back into the room, then slams the door. I hear him start to cry again, a high piercing wail of despair, and it makes me want to kill her.
‘Please don’t hurt him,’ I call after her. My voice trembles with rage and I try to suppress it, to beg for mercy instead of threatening her. ‘I’m sorry if I made you angry. I didn’t mean to. Please don’t take it out on Harry. He’s not to blame.’
Treve twists a hand in my hair and hauls me up the uncarpeted stairs like I’m a piece of furniture, my bare feet and shins banging against each stair.
Tears start in my eyes at the pain, but I ignore them.
‘Please, please, please don’t hurt him,’ I call out to her again, staring back down at that closed door. ‘He’s only a baby.’
I know she must be able to hear me.
Whatever Treve has told her, whatever insane lies he has spun to get her on his side, surely she can’t blame a tiny baby for her son’s problems? She’s a woman, and a mother too, and she seems to have been doing her best to look after Harry since his abduction. Perhaps even if I can’t make her empathise, I can at least make her understand.
‘Shut up,’ Treve tells me roughly.
‘But Harry’s sick, can’t you see that?’ I’m shouting the words like a crazy woman, struggling against the pain of having my hair practically ripped out. ‘He has a serious condition. He needs urgent treatment. Has he had his medication today?’
‘I said, shut up.’
He turns me towards him like a rag doll, then slaps me round the face.
My eyes sting and blur. The sheer force of the blow shocks me into silence, and he drags me the rest of the way up the stairs without any resistance. All I can think is that, if he can hurt me like this with so little provocation, how much harm could he do to Harry if things get any more out of hand?
At the top of the stairs, I get my breath back.
My mouth is numb where he caught me hard with the back of his hand, yet somehow I still manage to mumble, ‘I’m begging you, please take Harry to a hospital. Before it’s too late. Whatever I’ve done to upset you, I’m really sorry. You can do whatever you like to me. Have whatever revenge you want. I won’t try to stop you. But please, let your mother take him to a hospital first.’
Treve stops on the landing, releasing my hair, and jerks me round to face him. I can see frustration in his face. ‘I’ve always thought of you as an intelligent woman, Meghan. But you still don’t get what’s going on here, do you?’
‘Explain it to me.’
‘I thought I had been explaining it.’
‘Please.’
‘I’ve got a better idea.’
He throws open the bedroom door to his right, and pushes me inside.
‘I’ll show you instead.’
His shove is so hard, I end up sprawling on the floor. There’s an old fleece partially covering the wooden floorboards near the door. It stinks. The smell is so bad, I almost retch.
What is that stench? Urine?
Choking, I look up and see a bed. Or not so much a bed as a bare mattress. A bare mattress in an old wooden frame, no sheets, no pillows, no covers.
Lying on the mattress is his wife, and she’s staring at me.
Camilla has been placed on her side, facing the door. She’s dressed in a short, tight skirt and strappy top, as though for a night out, and is still wearing a pair of red high heels, open-toed with a thong-style ankle fastening, very glamorous. But her make-up is tired and smeared, her mascara dried in streaks down her cheeks as though she’s been crying. Her beautiful blonde hair, usually so flawlessly straightened, is matted and tangled, and there’s a strip of silver tape across her mouth and binding her hands and ankles.
Her eyes are fixed on me, wide open and terrified.
‘Oh my God,’ I gasp.
Then I realise she is not the only person in the room.
Slumped in a chair near the old-fashioned wardrobe is a man in a crumpled shirt and grey pinstripe trousers, his jaw dark with stubble.
There’s a dark stain at his groin. That explains the stink in the room. But not what he’s doing here in the first place. His eyes are closed, his feet bare, his mouth stuffed with what looks like a balled-up blue tie. He looks unconscious. His handsome face is covered with cuts and bruises.
It’s my husband.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
‘Jon.’ I lurch forward, and my hair is almost torn out by its roots as Treve twists his fingers, dragging me back. ‘Shit, you bastard. That hurts.’
‘Then stay where you are.’
‘But he’s hurt. He’s bleeding.’
‘So what?’
‘How can you be so callous? Look at the state they’re both in. Your own wife too, for God’s sake. Why the hell are you doing this?’ I glance at Treve sideways, and see the conflict on his face. ‘You said, retribution. Is this it?’
‘Yes,’ he agrees, his cold gaze fixed on his wife. ‘For adultery.’
‘Adultery.’ I look from Camilla’s scared face to Jon’s bloodied and unconscious figure. ‘Between your wife and my husband.’
‘You didn’t seem to know about it just now. But now you don’t sound so surprised.’ He jerks on my hair, his voice rising on a bitter note. ‘Were you lying to me, bitch?’
‘No, I didn’t know about them. Of course, I’m not blind. I saw the way things were going between me and Jon. I suspected . . . something.’ I swallow, aware of a deep sense of hurt and betrayal filtering through the fear. ‘But not this. Not Camilla.’
Camilla’s eyes widen even further at her name, and she starts to tremble. As though she thinks I have been brought here to be her judge.
I ought to be furious, I think, staring back at her. I remember her knowing looks and smiles, the way she and Jon were together, the times I saw them glance at each other. I thought it was friendship. Neighbourliness. A memory comes back to me, of seeing her in the front garden with Jon, her arms around my husband, comforting him after Harry’s abduction, as I thought.
How she must have laughed at my ignorance.
No wonder Treve tried to seduce me. It was not physical desire, as I thought at the time, but a deliberate act of war. He wanted to get even with my husband, to enjoy Jon’s wife as Jon had enjoyed his.
Yes, they played us for fools. And Jon does deserve punishment. But the humiliation and financial punishment of a divorce, not this kangaroo court. Right now all I feel towards Jon and Camilla is numbness. My fury is directed towards Treve’s mother. The woman who is holding my baby s
on prisoner. Perhaps even torturing him.
I have to get back downstairs.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to do that without incurring Treve’s wrath myself. And I will be no good to Harry if I get myself killed.
‘So now you know the truth,’ Treve is saying hoarsely, ‘do you understand why I had to take your son? Why all of this was necessary?’
‘No, I don’t. Why hurt a baby?’
‘Because hurting Harry hurts his father too. Like this does.’
Treve drags me across the room and kicks Jon between the legs.
With the reinforced toe of his boot.
Jon gives a stifled grunt of pain, then blinks and raises his head, abruptly returning to consciousness. He stares at Treve, then sees me and seems to stiffen, something new in his face. He groans incomprehensibly against the tie stuffed into his mouth, and rolls his eyes towards the door.
‘Yes, I have your wife too,’ Treve tells him, seemingly entertained by the faces Jon is pulling. ‘But she’s not here to save you. She’s here to watch you die.’
He kicks Jon in the knee, and stands watching as he writhes in agony.
‘After I left you last night, I found the two of them together in some woodlands off the Falmouth road, shagging like teenagers in the back of her car. Silly bitch didn’t realise I’d stuck a GPS tracker under the driver’s seat.’
I feel sick.
‘He was so proud of himself for fathering a baby,’ Treve explains to me. ‘As if any fool wasn’t capable of that simple act. He deserved the pain of losing his child. I lost my wife to him. Why shouldn’t he lose his baby to me?’
‘But why not take me instead? You said, an eye for an eye.’
‘He didn’t care enough about you,’ Treve points out coldly. ‘It had to be Harry. You were never love partners.’
You were never love partners.
I think back to those heady days after the wedding. The lovemaking, the excitement of learning about each other’s bodies, the sadness of being apart, even for a few hours. But even then I was aware that the emotion was more on my part than his. From the start, Jon had not wanted a girlfriend. He had wanted a wife. A woman to keep house and help with the mortgage and raise a family. And I had come along at exactly the right time.
‘No, he loved me once,’ I insist. ‘If things went wrong between us, and he turned to Camilla for comfort, it . . . it was my fault.’
‘You still want him? After everything he’s done?’
I have to lie. If I don’t, he’s probably going to kill us all.
‘He’s my husband.’
‘I hope you’ll enjoy being a widow, then.’
‘Treve, you can’t be serious.’
‘Give me your phone,’ he demands, yanking on my hair again.
‘I don’t have one.’
‘What’s that, then?’ He points to the bulge in my front jeans pocket. ‘Do you want me to kick him again?’
I fumble the mobile out of my pocket and offer it to him. What difference does it make now? My situation is not particularly good, and there’s no signal anyway.
‘Turn it on,’ he orders me.
I do as he tells me.
‘Now show me the last few calls.’
I thumb through the screens, then show him the list of calls. He points to the last missed call, which is from DS Dryer.
‘What’s that?’
I hesitate, wondering whether to lie. But he could easily find out by using another phone to call the number back. ‘The police.’
‘You missed the call.’
‘I was driving and couldn’t reach the phone.’
‘Show me your outgoing calls.’ He studies the list of calls. There are several made recently to Paul Dryer’s number, I’ve been in touch with him so frequently this past day or two. ‘Do the police know you were following us? Do they know about this house?’
‘Yes,’ I lie, ‘and they’re on their way.’
His hand whips up and he slaps me round the face again. My vision blurs and I stagger backwards, dropping the phone.
‘Liar,’ he says, a vicious note in his voice. He hits me again. Another explosion of pain, this time behind my nose, and more blurred vision. I overbalance against the mattress, landing on my back next to Camilla, who moans behind her gag and draws her knees up to her chest.
‘If they were on their way, they’d be here already.’
‘I couldn’t give them the exact location.’ I sit up slightly, leaning on my elbows, watching him. Blood is running down my face. ‘But they know the rough area. They’ll be searching houses around here. It’s only a matter of time.’
‘Time, yes.’ Treve lifts his booted foot above the phone, then brings it down. Smashes the phone to pieces. ‘And it’s just run out for you.’
He marches to the window and lifts a corner of the yellowing net, staring up at the blue sky, scouring the air in both directions. ‘No sign of any helicopters,’ he comments, and then lowers his gaze to the driveway. ‘No sirens. No flashing blue lights. If they’re even in this area, which I very much doubt, it’s going to take the police a while to find this house.’
‘As soon as they see my car, they’ll know where I am.’
His face tightens, and he glares down at me. ‘You think you’ve been clever, Meghan, don’t you? That you can force me to abandon my plan. But you’re wrong. Yes, it’s an annoyance. But I don’t have to give up, sorry to disappoint you. I have to move more quickly than planned, that’s all.’
He pauses, studying me on the bed. ‘You know, when you turned up here, I thought it would be a wonderful twist to shag you in front of your husband. After the way you responded to me last night, I expect you’d enjoy that, wouldn’t you?’
Jon makes a noise behind his gag. Despairing and enraged at the same time.
Treve ignores him.
‘But I guess that can’t happen now,’ he continues coolly. ‘You’ve spoilt my plan. So now I have to think of an alternative.’
I struggle up off the bed, but stay out of his reach. I need to keep Treve talking for as long as possible. Because the police aren’t coming.
Which means I am the only person who can get my son out of here alive.
‘You were going to rape me? Is that your idea of an eye for an eye?’
He says nothing.
‘When you found out about their affair, why take Harry? Why not come straight round, tell me to my face?’
His look is one of disgust and incredulity. ‘Openly admit that I can’t keep Camilla happy in bed? That your husband is banging my wife every chance he gets? I don’t fucking think so.’
‘So all this, Harry’s abduction, Jon and Camilla, whatever comes next . . . It’s all about your personal pride? Your manhood?’
‘There are worse sins than pride.’
‘What, like murder? Jon screws your wife. So you steal his son. That’s just charming. How did you manage that, by the way, given that you were sitting with us at the dinner table the whole evening?’
‘Not the whole evening. It only took a couple of minutes, and it was easy to slip away for that long without drawing attention to myself. You and Jon were so wrapped up in your own little world that night, I could have stolen your baby a thousand times over and you wouldn’t have noticed.’
Guilt boils over inside me. Is he right? Was it my fault that Harry was taken?
‘I locked the front door. I’m sure I did.’
‘Yes, you locked it,’ he agrees calmly.
‘Then how—’
‘I went back inside on some errand for you, acting the helpful dinner guest. Then I slipped into the hall and unlocked the front door. My mother was waiting outside in her car, as arranged. I gave her the signal. She ran upstairs, took Harry from his cot as quietly as she could, then went back out the front door. I closed it behind her, and rejoined you in the garden while she was driving away. It took a maximum of two minutes, I’d say.’ He smiles. ‘Not particularly difficult.’
/>
‘You bastard.’
‘The only issue she had was when she saw the chart on the wall. All Harry’s medicine. She knew he wasn’t a sturdy child, but she wasn’t expecting him to need so much care.’ Treve makes a face. ‘She’s a soft touch, my mum. I think Camilla told you she used to be a nurse. I suppose old habits die hard, because she grabbed some of the syringes and the chart. Took them with her when she stole him.’
He looks at me wryly. ‘I expect she has some fantasy about keeping your boy, raising him like her own grandson. But of course that’s impossible.’
I hate him so much, I don’t care if he hits me again.
‘I thought you were such a nice bloke when we moved in,’ I spit at him. ‘Someone kind and generous, someone we could trust. The man next door who was always there for us. But now I see you for what you really are, Treve.’ I pause. ‘A fucking psychopath.’
He shrugs.
I wipe the blood from my face on to my jeans, my hands sticky with it. ‘If you kill us, you’re going to spend the rest of your life in prison. Or do you expect to make it look like suicide?’
‘Why not? The cliffs are very dangerous along the Atlantic coast.’ His voice thickens, and he pauses for a moment, clearing his throat. ‘Beyond the trees, it’s a few hundred feet to the cliff edge. There’s no chance anyone could survive that fall. No one’s survived it before, at any rate.’
My eyes narrow on his face. There’s something in his voice. ‘Someone you knew fell from the cliffs and didn’t survive,’ I hazard.
‘My grandfather.’
‘Did he fall from the cliffs?’ I hesitate. ‘Or jump?’
‘He had lung cancer. Terminal.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘It was his choice.’ He’s snarling now. ‘But there has to be retribution. Some decisions can’t go unpunished. Not forever.’
He pounces on Jon, drags him to his feet, holding him upright by the front of his shirt.
Jon sways, clearly in agony from his hurt knee, staring wildly from me to Treve. There’s terror in his face now.
He kicks the bed. ‘You too, get up,’ he orders Camilla, no emotion in his voice whatsoever. When she moans and shakes her head, he looks at me. ‘Help my wife off the bed. We’re all going for a little walk along the cliffs.’
