Page 66 of My Husband's Wife
What had Nicole been thinking? She hadn’t intended to drink but as soon as she arrived at the Clifton House Hotel earlier, she’d downed a few gulps of vodka from her travel mug while contemplating what to do from the safety of her van. She’d needed it to be able to face Theo and stop the wedding, but being tipsy and angry had made her look unhinged. And now she is tied up in a weird room full of computer things and he has taken Eva. If she gets out of this nightmare, she’s never going to drink again. She hasn’t quite come around yet. Her mind drifts and she can’t fight the dreamworld that keeps drawing her back in.
The argument she’d had with her dad still rings through her head. She’d only asked if he could look after Aaron for a while, but he said no. He’d called her a fantasist and blamed her for ruining her marriage to Will. Yes, she had made a mistake. A big mistake but it was one she had come to not regret, regardless of how shit her dad made her feel about herself. At least Susan had been accommodating, which meant Aaron was safe.
She prises her eyes open again. A tear drizzles down her cheek as she sees the fear and worry on Madison’s face. She has to properly think about what to say to her, and how to say it, and she has to stop herself from drifting off again. Theo could come back to kill them both at any moment.
The banging has stopped but the thumps in Nicole’s head continue. ‘Has he gone?’ she manages to ask Madison with a slur. She knows she sounds drunk; Hugo forced vodka down her neck until she’d passed out.
‘I think so. I can’t hear him. Have you taken any of those tablets?’
Nicole shakes her head. She’d fought him off, despite being so sleepy. He’d forced a few into her mouth but she spat them in his face. Eva had been banging as she came out of the box which then distracted him.
Madison’s dog barks from outside the door. ‘I’ll just be a minute. We need to find a phone. I’ll call the police.’
‘No.’ Nicole doesn’t want to be left alone. He took Eva away when she escaped from the box, and now Nicole is alone again because Madison has left to chase that yapping rat. She understands though. If that rat were hers, she’d love it enough to risk life and limb. She thinks of Aaron and all she wants to do is cuddle up to him and tell him how sorry she is because his whole life is a lie.
‘Madison.’ Nicole tries to stand but her legs are like jelly and she’s seeing double. She grips onto the doorframe to steady herself. Her legs work, that’s a start. The kitchen is lit up. Madison is throwing everything out of the drawers looking for what Nicole presumes is a phone. Whatever she does, she can’t let go of the doorframe yet, or she’ll fall.
Madison runs back to her with her dog in a harness. ‘Do you know where he took Eva? We have to find her.’
‘No.’ The fresh air and rain are helping to sober Nicole up a little.
‘I can’t find a phone and he’s hidden my car keys. We’re going to have to walk to the road. I saw a van parked up. Maybe there is someone close by who can help.’
Nicole shakes her head and laughs manically. ‘There’s no one else. That’s my van,’ she replies, struggling to get her words out clearly.
‘Is that how you got here?’
‘Yes. I was just about to warn Eva that he was there, in the hotel car park, but he pushed her into a rock. He forced me into my van with her and drove us here. He drugged me and made me drink vodka. He was going to force me to take those tablets…’ She begins to sob as she realises how close she’d come to dying and never seeing her son again. ‘He was going to make my death look like suicide because he said no one would miss an unhinged drunk.’ She forces a laugh through her tears.
Madison places her arms around her and it feels nice to be cared for, especially because it must be a shock for Madison too. ‘We’re going to get help, okay? Can you lean on me and walk with me to the main road?’
Nicole nods. She doesn’t know if she can but she has to try. She wants to get past all this. She wants to tell Eva everything including how she and Zach really met. She also needs to prove herself to her dad and get her act together. Her dad hates her for the big lie she told, and he hates the fact that she can’t get her life together and she keeps losing houses and ending up with him. When she gets out of this mess, there will be no more drinking. No more secrets, no more lies and no more self-sabotage. She’s made some massive mistakes and she needs to own them. She’s going to make things up to her dad, Will and Aaron, and most of all she hopes that Eva will forgive her for what she doesn’t yet know.
As they limp down the road, the mud path underneath gets more and more slippy with the falling rain but Madison keeps encouraging her to keep going.
‘Why did you come to our house with Eva’s husband all those months ago? You came with your little boy. I have to know so please don’t lie.’
‘We needed to know if Theo was Hugo.’ There, she had said it. It was time to let go of the secrets. Everything was coming out after tonight. ‘One of them died. Theo and Hugo were twins.’
‘Twins? Theo had a twin sister.’
‘There’s no sister. It was Theo and Hugo. They killed Zach’s brother, Justin. When he was a little boy, Zach saw them with a knife. He hid and watched his brother get killed.’ Nicole swallows down the acid at the back of her throat. The truth is hard to share but Madison needs to know what kind of a man she nearly married. ‘The twins’ mother, Erica, claimed they were both at home at the time Justin was murdered, giving them an alibi. The murder weapon was never found.’ She pauses to gather her confused thoughts. ‘Zach had been looking for the twins for years and he finally found Hugo.’ Nicole shakes her head and lets out a puff of air. ‘He spotted his photo in the obituary section of a newspaper in Worcestershire.’
Madison’s brows crease. ‘There was a boy in a newspaper clipping and I recognised him. Theo kept it in his shed. The boy looked just like Zach. He must have been Zach’s brother.’ Rain runs down her face but she keeps helping Nicole and holding her dog with the other hand. ‘And Eva married Hugo, knowing what he was capable of?’
‘From what Zach told me, Eva doesn’t know about any of this. She thinks that Hugo’s mother is Cynthia, the woman who adopted him in his teens. I wanted to tell her everything, but Zach said he needed to be the one to tell her.’ Nicole lets out a little sob, knowing that her lies will make it difficult for Eva to forgive her.
Nicole can see what Madison is thinking. Is Theo Hugo?
Madison presses her lips together in thought before speaking again. ‘But I thought Eva’s husband was dead.’
As they head around a bend, they stop. Nicole can’t help but stare at the car in the middle of the road, obviously left there to block them from leaving in Madison’s car, had she managed to find her keys.
‘Bastard,’ Madison screams into the night air. They glance through the window as they pass. It was too much to expect that Theo had accidentally left the keys in the ignition. ‘We’re nearly there. Do you have your van keys?’
After reaching into her pocket, she pulls out the spares. When she drinks, she loses keys so she has spares of them all. ‘Yep.’
They reach the end of the road, soaked through to the skin. Nicole’s teeth start to chatter. A breeze picks up and she wishes she had a coat, but it’s okay, they’ll soon be in the van and they can turn the heating up on their way to the police station; that’s until they both stop and stare. ‘Where did he leave the van?’ Nicole asks.
