Run Away With Me : A fast-paced psychological thriller by Daniel Hurst (ebook reader ink txt) 📕

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