Don't Tell Meg Trilogy Box Set Read online

  The Don’t Tell Meg Trilogy

  Paul J. Teague

  Contents

  Also by Paul J. Teague

  Don’t Tell Meg

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  The Murder Place

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  The Forgotten Children

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Dead of Night preview

  Also by Paul J. Teague

  About the Author

  Also by Paul J. Teague

  Don’t Tell Meg Trilogy

  Book 1 - Don’t Tell Meg

  Book 2 - The Murder Place

  Book 3 - The Forgotten Children

  Standalone Thrillers

  Dead of Night

  Burden of Guilt

  One Fatal Error

  Who To Trust

  Writing Science Fiction as Paul Teague

  Sci-Fi Starter Book - Phase 6

  The Secret Bunker Trilogy

  Book 1 - Darkness Falls

  Books 2 - The Four Quadrants

  Books 3 - Regeneration

  The Grid Trilogy

  Book 1 - Fall of Justice

  Book 2 - Quest for Vengeance

  Book 3 - Catharsis

  Don’t Tell Meg

  Don’t Tell Meg Trilogy Book 1

  Chapter One

  I waited until my fortieth birthday before I betrayed my wife. If I hadn’t spent that night with Ellie, who knows how things might have turned out. As it was, five people lost their lives before the truth was finally forced out of us all.

  I’d been sent on a weekend training course with work. Perfect timing. I was celebrating my special birthday on the Saturday. I tried my luck at wriggling out of it, but my boss Diane wouldn’t budge. She’d been promoted to managing editor less than a year ago, and she had a new boss of her own to impress. Perhaps I should have tried for the senior position when it came up, but I had other things on my mind. I was more interested in Meg.

  Meg and I had been married for seven years. We met when I was thirty-one and Meg twenty-nine. She was sexy, gorgeous, great fun and an addiction for me. However long we spent together, I always wanted more. It was only a matter of time until we got married. We lasted two years, then got hitched. It was the natural conclusion to the most intense, passionate and exciting time of my life. We were crazy in love. We didn’t bother living together for years and years, there was no dithering about commitment, we both dived straight in, not even bothering to look for rocks.

  But the hazards are always there, in any marriage. I gleaned that little nugget from Martin, our marriage counsellor.

  The marriage was good for the first six years. It was better than good, it was great. Work was going well, Meg and I were happy, life was sweet. Then Meg decided she wanted a baby. It’s not that I didn’t want kids. I was neither here nor there with it. If we’d had a happy accident, I’d have been fine with that. But even though we’d taken risks in the past, Meg had never got pregnant. We’d never had any near misses or scares. That should have alerted both of us that there was trouble ahead. Meg started to actively seek that happy accident, but it didn’t come. We moved from wonderful unrestrained hot sex to trying to make a baby. Some big ugly black boulders had just appeared right in front of us.

  It was no surprise to me when Meg didn’t get pregnant, I’d heard the story a hundred times before. As a radio journalist I talked to people who had encountered every human trial that you could imagine. Ordinary people with exceptional tales to tell, that’s how we like it on the radio. I’d listened to the accounts of IVF treatments and fertility tests which seemed to go on for years. I knew about the poking, the prodding, the plastic containers and the indignity of it all. Sometimes it had a happy ending, many times it didn’t.

  I’d wound up in the middle of one of my own radio reports. Pete Bailey, age 40, firing blanks. Or perhaps it was Meg who had the problem. It didn’t matter. It had driven a huge wedge through our relationship.

  She seemed completely fixated on getting pregnant. I wasn’t so bothered. I can’t say it mattered much to me if I was sending out lazy ones. All the important bits were working just fine.

  I’d had mixed reactions when I told people this. Some thought I was heartless and callous, that I’d get to old age and regret not having a family, but friends with children assured me that if they had their time again they’d think very hard about having kids. We were a hot couple, and they warned me that it would all be over once the babies came along.

  It was Meg I worried about. I loved her, I could see what she was going through, I didn’t want to hurt her.

  Meg and I had discussed doing something special for my birthday, but we’d had to put it on hold. In truth, I wasn’t too disappointed about being away that weekend. People who work in broadcasting are great fun. They’re on TV and radio for a living, they’re used to being larger than life. Get a few beers in them, and it doesn’t take too long before you’re in the middle of a party.

  I knew that if Meg and I went out, however much we tried, eventually it would come back to the IVF. And the counselling. And that little shit Martin.

  I wasn’t plotting anything then. I didn’t know how it was all going to turn out. If I had, I’d have settled for a quiet pizza at Alfonso’s in town. I’d have been grateful for a bag of chips and a dodgy burger from a mobile van if I could have steered clear of everything that happened afterwards.

  I did a good job of looking disappointed when I broke the news to Meg. She was lovely actually, it made me feel like a right piece of shit. ‘We’ll do something special when you get back,’ she said. ‘Maybe we can have a night in, get a takeaway ... watch a film in bed?’

  I hesitated. Was Meg reaching out here? Did she sense how I was feeling? It had always been a bit of a joke before the IVF thing had started and made life such hard work. We’d never made it to the end of a film while we were watching in bed. She was doing exactly what I’d been craving for months. She was being sexy, planning a rendezvous between lovers, a good old-fashioned romantic evening and a night of hot, IVF-free sex.

  But when I told her that I’d be away on the Friday and Saturday nights, I reckon that’s when she started hatching her plan. If she’d left me to it, let me go away for a weekend of strategic boredom, punctuated by two evenings of laughs and booze, everything would have been okay.

  I would have still messed up. But nobody
would have got killed.

  All I craved was a night in with Meg, like the old days. I couldn’t wait to ditch all the other crap that had ripped apart the lovely marital bubble that we’d created for ourselves.

  Part of that baggage was our counsellor, Martin Travis. It had been a long time since I’d taken such an immediate adverse reaction to someone. He annoyed me the minute I saw his stupid face grinning out of the leaflet that Meg was clutching in her hand.

  ‘I really think that we should give it a try, Pete. We both know things have been hard work recently.’

  She could say that again. Resentful IVF sex is what I called it. It was the least exciting form of interaction a man could possibly have with his wife. It’s where thrills and arousal go to die. But I’d settle for that now, I’d do anything for more time with Meg. That’s not going to happen, though, not after what happened.

  ‘Can’t we figure it out ourselves, Meggy? Why don’t we try a date night or something like that? We don’t need some kid telling us how to run our marriage. How old is he anyway?’

  ‘He’s twenty-nine, but he comes very highly recommended, he was a superstar in his counselling course.’

  ‘Is he even married?’

  ‘Pete, it doesn’t matter, he knows what he’s doing.’

  Her hand scrunched the leaflet and I could see it was time to cool things down. She’d done her research, she wanted this hobbit boy to be our counsellor. He had that tousled hair that made it look as if he’d just got out of bed, but Martin’s locks were artfully untidy. His beard probably took him hours to trim to perfection.

  ‘Okay, he looks like he knows his stuff, I trust your judgment.’ Meg smiled and squeezed my arm. The first physical contact we’d had that day. I felt the thrill of her touch shoot through my body. God, I loved that woman. Why couldn’t things just go back to how they were?

  She put the kettle on, and I sat at the table, flattening the creased leaflet so I could do my best to give it some serious attention. It had been printed on green paper and, to cut Martin some slack, the picture quality was so poor it had been a bit unfair of me to make such a hasty judgment. It was the idea of having to endure any counselling at all that riled me, and my irritation was focused on Martin and everything he represented.

  As far as it went, the counselling looked fine, there were all sorts of reassurances about confidentiality and discretion. I have to think about these things. I’m on the radio. That makes me gossip-worthy, a person of interest. I didn’t want some marriage counsellor getting all excited about having a minor celebrity in his office and telling his dinner party pals how bad things had been in the bedroom – even in veiled terms.

  Meg never thought of potential hazards like that. She worked in the probation service, she just had to worry about getting killed by clients— I can’t believe I said that. Jeez, what a stupid thing to say. But it was true, Meg’s biggest concern was some junkie taking a fancy to her, or running into one of her more unsavoury clients on a night out in town.

  It was the slogan on the leaflet that finally made me buck up and do it for Meg’s sake. Cracks in your relationship? it asked. Don’t paper over them, let’s fix them together! There were very definitely cracks in our relationship. We were barely speaking, hardly touching or kissing, and the conversation between us was tense and functional. Just like the sex, the schedule for which was largely determined by Dr Richard Kirk, IVF specialist. The irony of his first name wasn’t wasted on me, but Meg didn’t find it amusing. Doctor Dick. Dick doctor. We’d have laughed out loud at that in less troubled times.

  Martin Travis had all the relevant qualifications, and a quick search on my phone informed me that it’s quite usual for relationship counsellors not to be married themselves. It’s the counselling they’re qualified for, not the marriage bit.

  I wanted it to succeed, I really did. I didn’t want to have to endure the process but I desperately wanted me and Meg back on course. Essentially, I think, and I really believe this is true, we loved each other, in spite of everything. Meggy wanted things back as they were, she must have done. But we’d turned off along a particular road and there were no exits on the horizon. We were stuck on that course. There was no way off until the baby thing got resolved. We had to hope that we could keep everything going for a bit longer, until things changed for the better.

  As things turned out, it didn’t work out that way. I was to head for Newcastle to spend a weekend locked in a conference room in a bland budget hotel. The days would be spent in a creative explosion of blue-sky thinking, or whatever it was we were supposed to be doing. The evenings would be good – at the very least it was a chance to get away from home and think things through. A bit of space.

  Of course, at that time I hadn’t met Ellie. Meeting Ellie would change everything. For everybody.

  We’d already seen Martin for four of our six sessions, and we had to squeeze in another visit before I headed off to Newcastle. I think it was that session with Martin which began the downwards spiral for me. It was what made Ellie such a deadly person to meet at that particular time.

  It didn’t start well. I was supposed to be there for midday but the news editor had made a mess of the schedule, and there was nobody to read the bulletin. So I texted Meg, grabbed the pile of scripts and did my duty with the 12 o’clock news.

  I was only two minutes in when I began to curse my luck. I hadn’t scanned the scripts, I’d grabbed them from the producer’s desk, run into the studio, opened up the microphone and begun speaking.

  ‘The midday news, I’m Peter Bailey.’

  It was Peter on air, Pete to my friends and family. Peter was a hangover from the old days of broadcasting. I can still remember being admonished as a cub reporter for using Pete.

  The Middle East always got me. While political leaders were more concerned with world peace and harmony, newsreaders have to panic about the next deadly foreign name that’s lying in wait ready to trip us up in a news script.

  I got caught good and proper: Abd al-Qadir Amirmoez … I didn’t stand a chance without some warning. I messed it up completely, got a round of applause from the bastards in the office when I left the news cubicle, and arrived at the marriage guidance offices twenty minutes late, bad-tempered and sweating profusely.

  I could almost hear what Martin Travis was thinking as I walked into his office: a beautiful woman like you really wants to have a baby with this man?

  He stroked his daft tuft of a beard as he stood up to welcome me a little too effusively. I think he hated me as much as I hated him. He and Meg had been laughing at a shared joke when I was shown into the room by the receptionist. Another reason to dislike him.

  The mood changed as I sat down next to Meg. As an afterthought I leant over to kiss her. It was proprietorial more than anything, what an imbecile I was, but I didn’t want that young git to think he was better than me. What did he know? These youngsters think they deserve a celebratory cake if they’re still together at the end of a month, they don’t know anything about the ebb and flow of a long-term relationship.

  You could tell he wasn’t married, any wife worth her salt would demand he shave off that beard for starters. He had a know-it-all demeanour, almost a sneer, whenever he spoke to me. When it came to Meg, his face lit up. They clearly liked each other and got on well.

  I resented it. Martin seemed to offer her everything I couldn’t. He comforted her, he made her laugh, helped her forget. He was young and good looking. He was so damn skinny too – how do these youngsters do it? My stomach had begun the inevitable process of rounding when I was about 35. He was personable, funny and charming. And I was none of those things. Certainly not at that time. Not to Meg anyway. And I was sharing the most intimate details of my relationship with him. I was giving him every scrap of information that he needed to woo my wife.

  ‘When was the last time you and Meg made love?’ he asked.

  None of your business! is what I wanted to say. Instead, I gave Martin ch
apter and verse on how making love had been replaced by filling plastic cups for Dr Dick and specially scheduled sessions which were akin to intensive factory farming.

  I saw the twinkle in his eye when I told him that. I knew what he was thinking, the little shit. Write what you want on your leaflet about impartial advice and non-judgmental listening, Martin Travis wanted to sleep with my wife and, in my eyes, he was probably about 70 percent on his way to doing so.

  He knew what our problems were, and he knew precisely what to do to give Meg exactly what she wanted.

  ‘I want Pete to make me laugh like he used to,’ she would say. ‘I want to feel his hunger and passion for me. I don’t see it anymore.’

  I knew what she meant, I desperately wanted it too. As I watched Martin’s eyes dance around Meg’s face, I doubted myself for a moment. Would things ever be the way they’d been before? It all seemed to be slipping away from us. I loved Meg so much, I wanted her so badly, but there seemed to be a gulf between us now and no way of bridging it.

  Damn Martin Travis! He turned a bad mood – which would have passed soon enough – into a stewing, smouldering mash-up.