Page 59 of My Husband’s Wife

Fifty-Eight

Eva

He’s tied me to the passenger seat; and we haven’t come across a single car for ages.

These roads are quiet and I don’t know where he’s taking me, but I can tell we’re on the coastal path heading towards Combe Martin.

I’m shaking. He’s going to kill me. It’s the only way he gets to keep his secret. It’s obvious to me now. Theo is Hugo.

‘Caiden needs me,’ I blurt out in a teary mess. I think of Caiden and that day I left him in the car, and only now can I see what happened. As I reframe the events of my past, it’s like a light has been switched on. The window wipers swish back and forth as the rain buckets down.

‘And all you had to do was to be a fucking mother and forget about me,’ he yells.

My heart judders. I thought he was going to reach over and hit me.

His knuckles are white as they grip the wheel of Nicole’s van.

I try to focus on the raven toy that he’s stuck to the dashboard.

‘I have been a good mother. I love Caiden more than anything in the whole world, and he’ll be missing me.

He needs me. He’s already lost you.’ I have to play this well or he could drive us both off a cliff edge.

If anyone is unhinged right now, it’s him.

I pause and wonder if I should ask my next question, but I don’t think I have much to lose right now.

‘How did you do it, Hugo? The DNA of the body in the car matched yours.’

He swerves into a car park, making my stomach sink as he pulls right up to a cliff edge. ‘This time I’ll do a better job.’

I think of my son but I can’t beg this man for my life. I hate what he’s put me through. I don’t want to sit here and do nothing but cry. If we’re going to die, I want the truth. ‘How did you do it? I actually think I know but I want to hear it from you.’

‘You’re so stupid, Eva. You always were. You couldn’t possibly know anything.’

That hurts. Trusting maybe. Loving, definitely, but stupid – that was cruel.

Then again, anyone that could do what Hugo has done is cruel so why would I expect anything less?

I keep thinking over our years together and the night my psychosis came out to play, a totally unexpected event but it happened nonetheless.

Or did it? DNA is unique, the police kept telling me.

My mother said the same thing but I’ve been researching and my theory makes sense.

I had plenty of time to think things through in that box.

‘I broke into your office and found photos of Caiden and Emily. At least, I thought the babies in the photo were Caiden and Emily, but one of those babies was you, wasn’t it?

You had a twin brother, didn’t you, Hugo?

His name was Theo. That night I came downstairs and saw a body on our living room floor, it was him, not you. This is where I had to really think.’

‘You, think? Don’t make me laugh.’

I ignore his swipe at me. ‘He wasn’t dead, was he?

You kept him against his will…let me guess…

in our shed, and just before I came back with Mum after our theatre trip, you killed him, then you sent the car through that flimsy excuse of a wall and made it look like suicide before vanishing into your new life, the life you’d prepared with the savings I thought we had.

You couldn’t have killed him when he was unconscious on our living room floor because the police would have known by the state of his body that he hadn’t just died.

Anyway, if we’re going to die, I just wanted to tell you that I figured it out.

’ I pause. ‘And you were happy for me to think I was crazy.’

‘You think you know it all.’

I shake my head while trying to subtly untie my binds. I need to keep him talking but I’m fast giving up hope of getting any purchase in this knotted mess. ‘I spoke to your mum.’

He slams a fist into the steering wheel.

‘She told me how she and your dad adopted you, wanted to give you the best life ever and take you away from your violent past. Theo had kept running away from various homes to be with your real mother. I don’t know why you never told me you were adopted, but I guess you’d have to reveal the real you.

Cynthia told me how you startled her daughter’s horse and caused her accident.

She told me how you called her to tell her I was mad too.

You made me out to be crazy when you told her about me thinking you were dead one minute and alive the next.

Poor woman was scared of us all but most of all, she was scared of you, Hugo, and the threats to her life should she ever try to expose you.

She was mean to me because she thought it best that I drop it when I called her to tell her you were here.

You’d been out of her life for five whole years and she wanted to keep it that way but me, I needed the truth. I heard the fear in her voice, Hugo.’

‘That bitch doesn’t fear anyone.’

I inhale, wondering whether to continue but for the first time in my life, I feel my anxiety melting away.

I’ve never felt this sense of being unburdened and the consequences don’t even matter.

I just want the noise in my head to leave and talking to Hugo is helping.

I had a hard time at university. I struggled as a new mother but I am not as bad as he caused me to be.

It’s taken this situation to make me realise how strong I really am.

‘She told me everything. You said that if she kept going on saying that her daughter’s tragic accident was down to you, she’d have a tragic accident too.

You warned her to stay away from me and Caiden, and at the same time, you told me how cruel they were in not wanting to have anything to do with you or us.

You made me hate Cynthia because of what you said.

’ I pause, not knowing what to say next.

None of this was planned. ‘Madison told me she’d met your mother.

Did she even know if you were Theo or Hugo? I bet she didn’t.’

‘My mother doesn’t deserve to know. She chose a life of drugs and abusive men over me and Theo.’

There’s a sadness in his eyes and, for a moment, I see the Hugo I used to love.

He removes the glasses he doesn’t need. It’s my Hugo and my heart almost bursts on seeing him.

I still love the man he was but I hate the man he is now.

I spent all those years in counselling, missing him.

I moved on and managed to love again. Confusion fills my heart. ‘It really is you, Hugo.’

He doesn’t reply.

Something changes within me. I’m back in the understairs cupboard and Hugo is looking at me in that exact way.

It’s only now I see the extent of his lies.

He was the architect of my downfall because I’d shared the tiniest bit of my past with him.

Granted, he never got the details but he knew about my breakdown at uni.

‘I never left Caiden in that blistering hot car that day, did I? You told me I’d left him in the car and I believed you because I was ill.’ I’m shaking. All these years I’ve lived with that guilt and I hated myself so much.

‘That’s not true. I covered for you, Eva.

We both know I did. Come away with me. Let’s get Caiden and leave right now.

I didn’t abandon you but you have to understand, I had to leave.

Theo was threatening to expose me over something we did as kids.

It was an accident. I didn’t mean to hurt anyone but things went too far and there was no going back.

I couldn’t go to prison. Think of how much worse things would have been for you and Caiden if I had. ’

‘What was Theo threatening to expose?’

‘I can’t talk about it. I don’t ever want to talk about it.

It hurts too much. Please come away with me.

We don’t have to go over this cliff. This doesn’t have to be our end.

Let’s leave. We don’t ever have to come back.

I know how to get us new identities. I have money stashed away.

Please, Eva. I’m sorry I said all those things just now; I was angry, that’s all. I love you. It was always you.’

‘What about Madison?’

‘She’s nothing.’

‘Emily?’

‘I have choices to make and she’ll be better off with Madison.’

My thoughts move towards Emily, our twin girl that we lost. ‘You called her Emily because we lost our Emily, didn’t you?’

He shrugs. ‘My heart ached for her too.’

I pick up the raven toy. ‘Did you leave one of these in our new house in the hope that Caiden would find it and remember you?’

‘I’ve never been in your new house. It wasn’t me. I came over once and I swear, I only went in your garden to look through the windows. I just wanted to see Caiden, that’s all.’

‘Why do you have this then?’

‘I don’t know. It was left outside my shed. Someone came over and left your wedding ring in the fruit bowl.’ He points to the centre console and there it is, the wedding ring I buried beside our tree.

‘Do you know who?’

He nods. ‘Nicole.’

‘Nicole? Why would she do that?’

He turns to me. I stop fiddling with the rope and he grips my hands. ‘Forget about her and Madison. Please say we can go away together. We need to go to yours now, get Caiden and leave. Please, Eva. I’ve changed.’

I shake my head, and he lets go of my hands. Probing away, I push a finger through a loop and the binds get a little looser. For the first time in an hour, I feel as though I might have a chance.

‘You know Zach is a liar; you can’t trust him. If you’re sitting there thinking about how hurt Zach will be, don’t. His whole existence in your life is a lie.’

That has thrown me. It’s the last thing I’d have expected Hugo to say. ‘What…?I don’t believe you.’

‘He’s not who he says he is, and he and Nicole, you’ve suspected them for ages, haven’t you?’

Mum was right. I feel like such a fool. A part of me wonders if Hugo is saying this to manipulate me, but another part of me has suspected that Zach and Nicole are having an affair.

I think of Nicole and the state she was left in back in the store room.

She needs help. I wonder if I should even contemplate helping her if she’s trying to steal Zach off me, but then again, I’m not Hugo.

I don’t know what Hugo was trying to stop Theo from telling everyone.

My head is filling up with chaos again. I’m angry at Nicole and I’m livid with Zach, but I won’t leave her to die.

‘You shut me in a box and made me believe I was buried alive. I had to kick my way out.’ I wiggle my wounded ankle and it stings. ‘I don’t trust anything you say. I will never trust you again. I don’t trust Zach and I don’t trust anyone. Happy now? You have made me into this person.’

One of the knots has unravelled. I start on the next one.

‘I could never be with you again. You’re only saying all this to get yourself out of this mess.’

Another knot unravels.

He looks at what I’m doing. ‘Then you leave me with no choice.’

Sweat prickles across my forehead as he turns the engine on. He revs it up and releases the handbrake. I can’t undo the last knot.

‘Are you leaving with me?’

‘No,’ I yell.

‘Then it’s over.’