Faith - Lesley Pearse [233]
‘You’ll pay for this,’ he shouted out. ‘I’ll make you suffer, I’ve got friends who will send those pictures on to the press for me.’
‘Friends!’ she said contemptuously. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word. I thought I was your friend, I actually saw something nice in you for a while. More fool me!’
It was agonizing waiting. Her head was spinning, her ribs ached, she just wanted to lie down and she knew if he gathered himself to fight her, she wouldn’t be able to hold him. She focused on the kitchen clock. It was five to four when she first looked, but it seemed like an hour before the big hand even reached twelve.
Robbie’s breathing sounded wheezy and the back of his neck had gone an ominous purple colour. ‘Let me go, Laura,’ he pleaded, and his voice was squeaky. ‘I’m sorry I hurt you. I shouldn’t have come here, I know that now. I’ll go, and never come back. I won’t be able to take prison at my age.’
‘No, you won’t,’ she agreed, struggling against a wave of dizziness. ‘You’ll be stuck in there with hundreds of other weasels, just like you. Only they’ll be young and cocky, and they’ll push you around. I almost feel sorry for you. But tell me one thing, Robbie. Why didn’t Calder destroy Jackie’s will?’
She could barely hold the belt now and she couldn’t even see the clock hands clearly.
‘He told me he had,’ Robbie said, his voice growing fainter.
Laura pricked up her ears at a sound in the distance. It sounded like a police siren.
It was a police siren – she could hear it gradually coming closer. It wasn’t a minute too soon either, she felt decidedly faint.
‘Charles killed Barney,’ Robbie blurted out. ‘He was the hit-and-run driver. None of this would have happened but for that.’
Laura heard what he said, but the shock of it was too great to respond. There was a kind of roaring sound in her head, the room was spinning, she couldn’t focus any more. Yet she could picture Charles’s face at Barney’s funeral so clearly, just as if he was right in front of her.
Deeply tanned, his teeth dazzling white like the shirt under his dark handmade suit, and tears trickling down his handsome face as he took her hands in his. The vicar had completed the interment, soil and flowers had been dropped on to the coffin and she could hear both Belle and Jackie sobbing.
‘I am so very, very sorry, Laura,’ he said. ‘Belle and I will miss him so much. He was a fine boy.’
How could he have offered words of comfort when he was responsible for Barney’s death?
Meggie had had a good day with Ivy, despite the heavy rain. They’d been to see an old property in Bromley High Street. It was a large shop, with two floors above, and it was perfect for renovation into two smaller shops and three, maybe four flats. It was a bargain because it was so dilapidated, and they’d put an offer in for it and had it accepted immediately.
Over a cup of tea, she and Ivy decided they would ask Laura if she would like to join them in the project, and perhaps have one of the shops. They had become really excited about it, discussing what this would mean for all of them if Laura agreed. If Ivy hadn’t had a meeting at her son’s school that evening, she’d have been in the car now, all fired up to talk to her sister.
Even without Ivy, Meggie’s stomach was turning cartwheels as she drove home through the rain. She was convinced Laura would be as thrilled and enthusiastic as she and Ivy were. But as she turned into Bargery Road and saw two police cars and an ambulance right by her house, her blood froze.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked as she leapt out of her car and ran towards a policeman standing outside her gate. ‘This is my house. Has something happened to my sister?’
At that point the front door opened and two ambulance men brought out a stretcher with a man on it.
‘It appears he called earlier and attacked your sister,’ the policeman explained. ‘But your neighbour Mrs Hernan will explain to you. She called us and let us in with a key she holds.’
‘But Laura?