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The day I lost Aiden was the day I realised what it meant to lose control. People talk about losing control of themselves all the time, whether it’s from drink, drugs, passion, or anger. But they don’t know what it’s truly like to lose control, and I’m not talking about my emotions, but about my life. I lost control of my life. Everything around me fell apart while I remained the impotent bystander.
I’ve heard it said that you can only control yourself and how you behave in any given setting. You can never control the circumstances around you. You can’t control how other people react, only how you, yourself, act. That’s the great tragedy of life.
I met Jake when I was one of those kids. He was my teacher. It sounds creepy. It isn’t.
……kinda is….
He said he used to coach me with praise and slight nudges in the right direction. If I’d been good he’d take me out for dinner. For the first six months, I hardly noticed at all.
i’m not sure if i like him….
Then, when things became serious with Jake, I sold my parents’ cottage and moved into Jake’s luxurious three-bedroom property on Fox Lane, a stone’s throw from the school.
Where had he been? A decade. Ten years. Wars were fought and lost in a decade. Prime Ministers and Presidents came and went. Important scientific discoveries were made. And all that time, my boy… my child… had been missing from the world. Missing from my world, at least.
“Good lad. Now, why don’t you go upstairs for a little bit? I left you some books on your bedside table so you can read.” Jake smiled at Aiden as he gave him instructions. He was in teacher mode and something in Aiden was responding to it. Aiden followed his directions almost robotically.
please don’t tell me he was the one who took him…..
When I got back into the living room, Jake was on his knees talking to Aiden. “What’s going on?” “We’re just having a chinwag.” Jake grinned and patted Aiden on the shoulder. “I was telling him it might be a good idea for him to spend some time with his dad and grandparents.”
what the fuck….i really don’t like him
I was vaguely aware of him saying ‘no, no, no, this wasn’t supposed to happen’ and then I woke up in a hospital bed.
so odd…..
If you get to live your life without ever experiencing hatred, then count yourself lucky. Count your blessings. Hate isn’t something to crave or wish for. Never say you hate someone or something unless you really mean it, because hate is not finding a presenter on the telly annoying, or losing your temper with a sibling—it’s an all-consuming living thing that starts in your bowels and infects your blood until it blackens your heart.
Which is why I allowed myself to become swept up into his life so suddenly. It’s why I failed to see what he really was.
People are multi-layered. Anyone can have a private side that verges on the dark and dangerous. Your doctor could be a sadist. Your primary school teacher could be a paedophile. Your beauty therapist could be a murderer. It could be anything.
“Aiden and Jake have lived in the house for days now. He’s never shown any fear towards Jake. The first night here they set the table together. In fact, Aiden seems to really like Jake. He’ll follow him around doing everything he says.” “Emma, don’t you see how that’s strange? If Aiden has more of an attachment to Jake than anyone else then that’s fucking weird on its own. Look, this is really hard to say but I’m just going to say it.”
finally someone said it!!!!!
“There’s a chance that Aiden hasn’t seen anyone apart from the person who took him. Like that girl in Germany or wherever. There’s a chance that the only person Aiden remembers from his childhood is the monster who took him, and there’s a chance that Aiden has developed a fondness for his attacker.”
I fell pregnant with Bump a few months after that, despite taking my birth control pills daily.
did he replace her pills so she would get pregnant……also IF he did take aiden….did he let him escape because he isn’t happy that he’s back so it doesn’t make sense……i just don’t trust him
Women can never be shrill. It does something to a man. It hits them square in the testicles and shrivels them right up.
“I tried to get hold of him to tell him about Aiden, but I couldn’t. He was supposed to be working with his brother in London for at least four weeks, which is normal for him. He used to come back and see me once a week but that fizzled out long ago. Nowadays, he doesn’t even call, and he’s a nightmare to get hold of. So I called his brother, and Steven told me that Hugh hadn’t even been at the office for a week.”
okay so emma ran into josie the day she was rushing to pick aiden up from school, which would of been in the time frame that he went missing. they have been trying to years to have kids, now she doesn’t know where her husband is. they also live near where aiden was found……
Monsters are men and women just like us, and they have the ability to hide their true face.
Women are supposed to control men, isn’t that how it goes? What’s that saying again: ‘Behind every great man is a great woman’. We’re supposed to be the ones holding them up, or holding them back.
The more I thought about it, the more I realised that we are all monsters. Yes. Us. We’re monsters. We enjoy reading about these stories. We’re the voyeurs of human suffering.
No one wants to believe they are weak, but we all have weakness inside us. We have strength, too, but there are times when the circumstances in our lives are so overwhelming that we easily succumb to that weakness.
“You’re wearing the school tie. That was before sixth form. We didn’t have a uniform in sixth form.” And then it hit me. Partway through our argument the night before, Jake had admitted that he had fallen in love with me the first time he had seen me. I was in school the first time he’d seen me. He was a teacher.
jesus
I was beginning to understand Jake’s true addiction. It wasn’t sex, it was fantasy. It was ownership. What was better than putting a child inside me? I thought back to the day I’d found out I was pregnant. I’d blamed it on a cold making my birth control pill less effective, but what if… what if Jake had tampered with it?
“Emma.” There was a warning in Rob’s voice that tickled at my stomach and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. “There are newspaper clippings in here… about your parents.”
HE CUT THEIR BRAKES. THATS WHY THEY HAD A FUCKIN ACCIDENT. HE HAD TO GET THEM OUTOF THE WAY……
did he do the same to aiden??
“Emma, he was obsessed with you. Don’t you think he would have wanted your parents out of his way? Aiden was gone, I was gone—that left just two people in your life.”
“No. I have a key for Josie’s. We’ll go pick up Aiden, and then I’ll call Josie when I get there. I’ve left a voicemail for now.”
i’ve got a bad feeling about this…..
“That’s because you’re stupid. You’ve accused me of kidnapping your son, but why would I do that? I never wanted him, I wanted you. Aiden just gets in the way. With him around you have no time for me, or the baby growing inside you. He’s an obstacle to me.”
There’s a kind of strength in weakness that comes from hitting the absolute lowest you can go.
To my surprise, after the pain had faded, I looked up to see Aiden had stopped. He was facing me. When I was recovered, he started moving again. He wanted me to follow him.
he’s going to show her where he was kept…….i feel sick
“This is where I sleep,” Aiden said, pointing to the bed.
fuck i’m crying
Every part of my body felt heavy with the knowledge that I knew who it was, and I should have guessed earlier. I’d been so stupid. Why hadn’t I figured it out?
it’s hugh isn’t it
“Tell me,” I said. “Tell me you didn’t know.” “I thought it was affairs,” she said. “That’s what everyone told me. They saw him with women. I just…”
but what about the facebook posts??? he was already dead
