The Open Marriage by Victoria Jenkins

Author:Victoria Jenkins [Jenkins, Victoria]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-06-21T00:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

I wake from a dream where I’m running from someone, the kind of dream where you can’t gain any ground no matter how fast you move or how hard your heart hammers in your chest. I tripped and stumbled; I was just about to fall, but as with every fall in every dream, I never hit the ground. My heart still pounds. I can still hear my own breathing, ragged and uneven as though I’m still running.

‘Louise.’

In the darkness, Marcus’s hand finds mine. He’s being too nice to me, more attentive than he’s been in ages. It feels ill-timed and undeserved.

‘It’s just a dream. It’s okay.’

His thumb rubs my knuckles. I feel my skin grow colder at the thought that I must have said something in my sleep, because how else would he know that I was dreaming?

I turn and reach for my phone on the bedside table, bringing the screen to life to see the time: 04.15. Shit. I always wake early, but never this early, and I know I’ll pay for it by this afternoon when I’m made impatient by exhaustion.

‘What were you dreaming about?’ Marcus asks.

‘I don’t remember.’

‘You mumbled something about a video.’

‘Did I? God knows.’

Shit, shit, shit. I can’t even trust myself when I’m asleep. I might have said anything, but I wouldn’t remember it. I get out of bed, grateful that it’s still too dark for Marcus to see me. He asks what the time is. He’s never usually awake this early, and when he rolls back over, I take it as a sign that he’s already forgotten about the video comment. I know him well enough to know he doesn’t overanalyse things in the way I’m prone to.

I walk into the en suite, wondering how I’m going to manage to push through the day ahead. Whenever there have been things going on in my private life, school has always provided a welcome distraction. I’ve immersed myself in my work to avoid drowning myself in thought. Now, I’m not sure it’s going to offer the same escape. I’ve never had personal problems that have reached this scale before. It feels as though I barely slept, my mind too active to seek any proper rest. Erin is missing. Kieran is responsible. That camera was set up in his bedroom. And now he’s trying to blackmail me with footage that could end my marriage and my career.

I’ve no idea how Kieran would know about the inheritance money I’ve got stashed away, though I suppose it wouldn’t be too difficult for him to have found out. My family’s history is all over the internet, available to anyone who might choose to search our name. The fact that a substantial amount of the money my father stole was never given back is also common knowledge, and it’s logical that it would have been passed down after my parents’ deaths.

I step into the shower with a thumping headache, the kind I used to wake with regularly in my early twenties, morning after morning.

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