Silent Child(81)

“Please, Jake. If you love me even a little, call an ambulance for Rob. Let Josie and Aiden go so we can talk on our own.”

Jake laughed. “Don’t you think I know you’re trying to manipulate me? Do you think I’m stupid? Do you?”

“N-no,” I stuttered. Though the adrenaline still pumped through my veins, I was twice as frightened as I was angry. I’d never seen this side to Jake and it was terrifying. He was dangerous. All this time I had been sharing my bed with a dangerous man and I never knew it. My eyes roamed around the room searching out potential weapons. There was nothing within reach.

He sighed. “I really thought you were everything I ever wanted and ever needed, but now I look at you and I see very little at all, Emma.”

“I’m carrying your child.” My throat rasped as I tried to speak without letting myself cry. “Our baby girl.”

“Yes, I know,” he snapped. “But do you even care? All you do is whinge and whine about Aiden, who, by the way, is nothing but pathetic and messed up in the head, until you put our baby at risk. You prioritise everything else apart from me and our baby. I thought once we were married you’d finally put all that behind you. The drowned son. The lover who abandoned you. The parents who died. I thought you’d actually moved on and would finally, finally notice me. But you could never leave it alone, could you? It was always about them and never about me, even though I’m the best thing that’s ever happened to you. Just look at what I’ve given you—a job with people you like, a home that you love, a lifestyle most women would kill for, and still you can’t find it in yourself to be grateful.”

I opened my mouth to speak. I wanted to yell at him, to show him there was more to me that he could possibly understand, that he could never break me down in the way he thought he could, but all that came out of my mouth was a whimper. I crumpled forward, clutching my abdomen. Another cramp seized my uterus. My body grew hot from the pain and I felt sweat forming along my hairline. It started from my back and radiated around me, turning my bump hard as a rock.

“Jake,” I said. “You need to call an ambulance. I think I’m in labour.”

For the first time, there was a slight twitch of doubt in Jake’s expression as his jaw clenched and his eyes narrowed. “It’s still a few days until your due date.”

“What do babies care about a due date? Call an ambulance!”

He shook his head. “Your waters haven’t broken yet. Besides, we haven’t finished talking.”

I rubbed my stomach and tried not to think about what would happen if I went into labour here in this room with my ex-boyfriend dying in the corridor and my husband emotionally torturing me, with my son sat still and traumatised to my right and my best friend tied up in one of the rooms upstairs. What had I done to arrive at this lowest point in my life? What mistake had I made to not see this coming?

“What is it you want to say to me?” I said bitterly. “Are you going to tell me about how you took my son and abused him for a decade? Is that what you want to say? Why did you do it, Jake? Was it some sort of sick, controlling fantasy where you took everything away from me to see what would happen? Am I just a doll to you? A plaything you can experiment with? Or did you want to turn Aiden into some robotic slave to do your bidding for this precise moment, so you could reveal to me what an evil fucking man you are? And what about my parents? What did they ever do to you?”

“You were alone after they died,” he said with a smirk. “That was useful.”

My blood was hot with rage. “I hate you. You stalked me. You murdered my parents.” I refused to cry. I would not give him the satisfaction of seeing me cry. “That day, when I tried to kill myself, where were you? How did you know?”

“Recording device,” he said, the smile spreading across his face. He relished the fact that he had fooled me.

“You’re evil,” I repeated.

“I’m not evil, Emma. I’m just free. I do what I want.”

“And what you want is to be an art teacher in a comprehensive school? What the hell are you? You’re just pathetic.”

“I don’t really care about being a teacher. That’s just an easy way to get people to like me. Teachers are warm and cuddly. Art teachers who wear tweed are even cuddlier.”

“You messed up with that girl in Bournemouth though, didn’t you? You might have manipulated her into not talking about your little affair, but that photo on Facebook was a slip up.”

“Katie was young and made mistakes. She was almost as broken as you. She loved to be led. She liked to be controlled. Most women like it.”

“What have you done with Josie, Jake? Have you hurt her?” My bottom lip trembled. Why didn’t I see his disregard for other people? Why had I never noticed how much he hated the world? This was all so hidden from me. He kept it in that garage along with his true face. That was where he hid his obsession.

Slowly, he walked across the room towards the fireplace and retrieved a shining object from the mantel. I gasped. It was a long, sharp knife, wider than a chef’s knife, with a smooth handle made from some sort of ivory-coloured material. My stomach twisted into a knot when I realised it was bone.

“Hugh gave me this as a present,” he said. “It’s a hunting knife. He told me you probably wouldn’t approve, so I decided to keep it hidden. It seems appropriate to use it now, in his home.”