Look Behind You (32 page)

I stared at him open-mouthed, the injustice of his words leaving me speechless.

He thrust his face towards mine. ‘You had nothing when I met you. In debt with a student loan! No house! No assets! You fucking owe me. I gave you everything. You should be grateful someone wanted you, and you repay me by going behind my back and getting pregnant! What kind of idiot do you think I am?’ He grabbed me by the shoulders, shaking me roughly, his fingers digging in so deeply I thought he would actually pierce the skin. I was too terrified even to cry out. ‘I’m not sharing you with anyone. Get rid of it,’ he snarled and stormed off to work as tears flowed silently down my cheeks.

Of course, I couldn’t ‘get rid of it’. I wouldn’t. It wasn’t just about me anymore. I was responsible for another being now. Even if I couldn’t give my baby the gift of life in the end, he or she gave me something precious: the courage to stand up for myself.

He knew. Knew I’d never kill my baby. When he got back from work that night, he had a huge bouquet of flowers in his hand and some champagne. He apologized profusely. He said it had all been a huge shock, and he didn’t know how to deal with it. But he’d had the day to think it over, and he was as happy as I was.

He ran me a bath and massaged my shoulders. He brought up a glass of champagne for himself and a glass of the tiniest amount for me mixed with orange juice. He toasted the baby and us, and as he watched me drink it, the hope returned. I wanted to believe everything really would be OK now, and when you want something so much, it’s easy to lie to yourself.

Later that night, the miscarriage started. I woke with stomach cramps, the feeling of sticky wetness between my legs. I rushed to the bathroom and wiped myself. The blood was everywhere. I didn’t know then. I couldn’t have guessed what I know now. He must’ve put something in the champagne to make me miscarry. That’s what I believe. And suddenly no life was inside me anymore. Just me and Liam again, the way he wanted it.

But I couldn’t do it anymore. Existing but not living. I remembered the hope and happiness I’d felt when I was pregnant. The idea of possibilities. I wanted that back.

My baby was the last straw.

When the depression hit, I thought about leaving him. Thought about it morning, noon, and night. When I got over the grief and felt better, that was it. I was going to get away. But somehow, he knew or suspected I’d end our relationship, and he couldn’t let that happen. The antidepressants from the doctor gave him the perfect means to hurt me. He tampered with them, I’m sure. Maybe he wanted me to go mad. That would be my punishment for daring to defy what he wanted. A taste of what would happen if I didn’t stay in his control. Or maybe he wanted to kill me then, but something went wrong.

When I came home from the psychiatric unit, I was still unhappy and grieving, but I was something else, too. Suspicious.

No one wants to think their husband can do something like that, but there were just too many coincidences. Losing the baby; losing my mind. I didn’t know what he would do to me next. Things were clicking into place, and I no longer believed the doctors when they said I’d just suffered a very rare and unfortunate reaction to the drugs. I knew it was Liam, and it was time to escape. And when I found out about his affair, it justified my decision and expunged any final doubt in my mind. It was the last nail in the coffin.

I just didn’t know then that coffin would be mine.

I couldn’t tell anyone about my suspicions. Liam is a good actor in company. He’s got the perfect husband routine down to a fine art. It was my word against his, and no one would believe me if I told them he’d tampered with my drugs, as I’ve found out since.

I waited for the right opportunity. When Liam told me he was going to Scotland, I knew it had to be then. He couldn’t stop me. I’d take the essentials for a few days. Just get out of the house. Flee to Sara’s then find a place of my own that he didn’t know about. I’d have a window of a week while he was away to sort it all out. But again, I played into his hands. He’d make sure he left me for dead, and he’d have a clear alibi for the time I was kidnapped.

The perfect murder.

37

I hear the door creak open and squeeze my eyes closed.

‘How can you sleep at a time like this?’ He kicks my foot.

I open my eyes and stare into the face of a murderer. I don’t point out how ironic his words are, coming from a man who can eat at a time like this.

He takes a long, shiny kitchen knife from his back pocket and straddles me, his knees on the outside of my hips, his weight on my stomach, pinning me in place so it’s hard to breathe. As he presses the knife to my neck, a smile lights up his eyes. I turn my head to the side, but I can’t get away from the blade against me.

He pulls down my gag and traces the knife slowly along my skin. It stings like burning fire. Blood dribbles out, tracking a line over my collarbone and down the back of my shoulder.

‘Please, don’t do this! Don’t hurt me,’ I whimper.

‘I could make this really slow and painful. You’d deserve it.’ He lifts the knife from his handiwork, leans down, and sweeps his tongue along the cut, licking my blood away to taste the very essence of me. ‘It would take hours to die. Cut by agonizing cut.’

His weight on top of me crushes my lungs. My pulse whooshes behind my eardrums. Beads of clammy, cold sweat break out on my forehead.

With any luck, I’ll suffocate before he can slice me up piece by piece. And If I’m going to die, then I only have one question for him. ‘How did you know I was leaving?’ I manage to rasp.

‘You think you’re so clever, but you’re just stupid. I like to check up on you when you think I’m at work.’ He shakes his head at me, lips pursed together, as if I’m a naughty child. ‘Sometimes I follow you, and you don’t even notice. Sometimes I come home unexpectedly to make sure you’re here when you say you are. I’m a concerned husband who likes to know what his wife gets up to when I’m not with her. Someone has to look out for you, don’t they?’

I grunt out a laugh then. A brittle, pathetic sound.

‘I like to know who you’re talking to and what you’re saying, so I bugged your mobile phone. It’s been bugged for years, and you didn’t even suspect a thing.’ He narrows his eyes. ‘Imagine my surprise when I hear you talking on the phone to Sara, telling her you’d had enough of being my wife and you were going to leave me. And you and that fucking pussy Jordan, plotting how you should get away from me. When all the time I was listening to every single move you made.’

‘Bugged?’ I shake my head with disbelief. ‘How could you bug it?’

‘It’s easy. I installed a simple software programme that uses the phone’s own microphone to record conversations. It leaves no visible trace on the phone that anyone’s virtually listening in.’

I think about the conversation with Sara. The one I can now remember. How I spilled out my plans to her. How she told me I could use her place indefinitely, but no, no, I’d said, it would only be for a few days, just until I could find somewhere safe that Liam didn’t know about. I can clearly hear her voice in my head when she told me I should’ve done it sooner. That I should go to the police in case anything happened to me. But what would I tell them, I asked her, when he appeared to the world to be just a concerned and doting husband? They would think I was mad, that the drugs had done some kind of long-lasting damage to my brain, and I couldn’t go back to the psychiatric ward. I just couldn’t. I’d never get out the next time; Liam would make sure of it.

Liam tumbles off me and lies down at my side on the floor. He slips his arm around my shoulder, crushing me towards him so my head presses on his chest. His heartbeat vibrates against my cheek.

I can’t stop the tears falling now. I thought I’d given up. Thought I wanted it to all be over, but I don’t. I want to live. To survive. But it’s impossible.

He’ll never let me go, and I can’t escape.

‘Don’t cry, Chloe.’ His voice quivers.

I think he’s crying, too. But I don’t want to look in his eyes. I don’t want his face to be the last thing I see.

Instead, I picture Sara and Jordan. Two people who mean a lot to me. Two people who believed me. I wonder what they’ll do when I’m gone. Of course, everyone will believe I was kidnapped then. Dr Traynor, Dr Drew, even Summers and Flynn. But they’ll all think it was the nameless, faceless man who can’t be identified because I couldn’t remember anything. They won’t suspect a thing. And Liam will get away with it.

Again.

He gently pushes my hair back from my sweaty, tear-stained face. His hand runs down my swollen cheek, my neck, touching me tenderly.

‘How could you kill your child?’ My voice has almost gone now, my throat closed with the fear of waiting to die.

‘I couldn’t let it change things between us. It was supposed to be just you and me. I knew you wouldn’t get rid of it, so I did it for you. It was a blessing, you must see that now.’ He wipes away my tears with his thumb. ‘I love you more than anything, darling. I wouldn’t do all this if I didn’t.’ His voice is insanely calm.

And then it happens.

Someone bangs hard on the front door. Liam jerks up into a sitting position, wide-eyed and alert.

‘Chloe! Are you in there?’ Jordan’s voice from outside. More banging.

Liam rushes out of the room. From where I’m lying on the bedroom floor, I see him through the doorway, standing at the top of the stairs, his left hand gripping the knife, right hand balling into a fist.

‘Help me!’ I yell. ‘Jordan!’

‘Chloe!’ Jordan bangs again on the door.

Liam’s shoulders rise and fall with anger and adrenaline.

There’s a loud bang and crash from downstairs as Jordan kicks the door in.

Liam’s back tenses, and he holds the knife in front of him. ‘Come to see your bitch before I kill her, have you, Jordan?’ he snarls.

I hear heavy footsteps on the stairs, then Jordan’s head and shoulders come into view. Liam waves the knife at Jordan, slashing it through air. Jordan swerves back, narrowly missing the blade. Liam lashes out with his right foot, trying to kick Jordan in the face. Jordan ducks sideways. In one swift move, he grabs underneath Liam’s ankle with one hand and twists the top of his foot round with the other. Unbalanced, Liam topples sideways and falls to the floor against the hallway wall, lands on his left arm. Jordan throws himself on top of Liam, wrestling to try to get the knife away from him. Liam throws punches at Jordan’s face and head with his free hand.

Breathing hard, I shuffle towards them on my backside, arms tied behind me, ankles still restrained.

Jordan grips Liam’s left wrist with both hands, trying to gain control of the knife. The blade slices through Jordan’s forearm, and he cries out in pain. Heavy blows rain onto Jordan’s face as Liam pummels him with his right fist.

I shuffle closer.

All of Jordan’s weight presses on top of Liam now, struggling to get the knife away from him. Blood pours from Jordan’s wound.

Fighting for his grip on the knife, Liam clutches the handle with both hands now, jerking it towards Jordan’s throat. With shaking arms and gargled grunts, Jordan manages to turn the direction of the knife so it’s now pointing at Liam’s chest.

As I reach them, I lie on my back, ignoring the screaming pain in my arms squashed underneath me. I bring my knees to my chest and kick out at Liam’s head as hard as I can with both feet.

Everything happens in a split second.

Liam’s head cracks into the landing wall and bounces back. His eyes roll up into his head. His body slumps lifelessly back and to the side.

With no resistance from Liam now, all the momentum of Jordan’s weight on top of him forces the knife straight through Liam’s heart.

38

I sit in the interview room at the police station with a blanket wrapped round me. The room is hot, but I can’t stop shivering. I clench my jaw tight to stop my teeth chattering.

It didn’t really hit me straight away. Too much was going on.

Summers and an armed response team running up the stairs. Jordan being dragged off Liam. Somewhere in the midst of it, me screaming. Cold hands on my shoulder. Voices. Summers untying my wrists and ankles. Jordan pale, breathless, and bleeding. Paramedics and an ambulance. A ride to Accident and Emergency. Jordan’s arm being cleaned and stitched. Doctors questioning me. An examination. My superficial knife wounds cleaned and covered with plasters. Ice on my swollen cheek. Painkillers for the pounding headache. Bruised heels where I kicked Liam’s head so hard.

A small price to pay under the circumstances. But I feel guilty that Jordan has suffered injuries just for trying save me.

Summers sits opposite me, Jordan by my side. Just having Jordan here gives me strength and courage.

‘Are you sure you’re up to making a statement now?’ Summers asks me gravely.

Jordan’s already made his, not that it was very long. He didn’t have much to say, except for how he came back from the hospital after seeing his mum and realized I wasn’t back yet. How he thought I must have been packing a lot of my things, because I’d been away for so long, so he drove the Camper to my house to see if he could help me transport everything. How when he arrived, he saw Liam’s car parked in the drive. He was about to knock on the door to make sure I was OK, when he heard me crying out to Liam not to hurt me. How he phoned Summers then kicked in the door before the police arrived, and, well, you know the rest, don’t you?