Faith - Lesley Pearse [235]
‘No, you genuinely amused him,’ Meggie said. ‘But he was concerned that your cheerfulness might be just a front to cover up something which had really upset you. I said that someone trying to strangle you was fairly upsetting, but he seemed to think there was something more. Was he right?’
‘He was very perceptive for a copper,’ Laura admitted. ‘And he was right, there was something. Robbie told me Charles was the hit-and-run driver who killed Barney.’
‘Charles? Belle’s husband? No, it can’t have been,’ Meggie exclaimed.
‘I think he was telling the truth,’ Laura replied. ‘I never really liked Charles, you know. He was too puffed up with self-importance, liked to be seen in smart places, mixing with the right people. But whatever I felt about him, he and Belle were good with Barney – they behaved as if he was their real nephew. That makes it very hard to take.’
‘Robbie Fielding sounds like a really evil man, and desperate too. I’d say it was just one last-ditch attempt to hurt you in any way he could,’ Meggie said soothingly. ‘Maybe he thought it would throw you enough to let him go?’
‘It had the ring of truth to me,’ Laura insisted. ‘And it makes sense of everything. Why Belle kept me at arm’s length before Barney’s funeral, why Jackie put up with so much from me afterwards when I was going round the bend. And everything that happened later.’
‘But surely Jackie would have turned him in?’ Meggie said. ‘That’s what doesn’t make sense to me.’
‘It does to me,’ Laura sighed. ‘It was for Belle, and for Frank and Lena too. And she probably thought I could cope better if I thought it was a stranger. No wonder she drank too much, the pressure of it must have been awful.’
Meggie put her hand on Laura’s cheek and caressed it. ‘And how is it making you feel?’ she said softly.
‘Desolate,’ Laura murmured and she began to cry.
Laura woke in the morning to bright sunshine slanting through a gap in the curtains. Her face, neck and ribs throbbed and she reached out for a hand mirror by the bed.
She looked a mess. Her eye was turning black, her right cheek was red and swollen, and there were fingermarks on her neck which made her shudder.
‘So much for believing the new hair colour made you look ten years younger,’ she muttered to herself.
The phone rang downstairs, Lucy barked, and she heard Meggie come out of the kitchen to answer it.
They had both cried a great deal the previous night and Laura had ended up telling her sister the whole story about Robbie, including the pornography and the making of the blue films. Up till now she’d only revealed an edited version of it, but she found she wanted Meggie to see the complete picture.
‘I’ve always felt Barney’s death was my punishment,’ she admitted. ‘But punishment means that once it’s over, you should start again with a clean slate. It won’t ever be like that for me.’
‘Of course it will,’ Meggie said firmly. ‘And especially now that you’ve brought everything out in the open and looked at it closely.’
Laura shook her head. ‘No, Meggie. That’s why when you and Ivy go on about Stuart, I know it won’t work out. You see, in the last ten years I’ve been out with dozens of men. A few of them I even liked enough to want to go to bed with. But it was a mistake, it brought it all back. I felt cheap and dirty again. I know now that I’ll only ever feel okay about myself if I stay celibate.’
Meggie put her arms around her and hugged her to her chest. ‘It’s like that for me too,’ she said softly. ‘I know too much, I’m tainted. I can’t even respond to men flirting with me because I’m afraid of where it will lead. The last thing I want is to end up a crabby old maid, but that’s how it will be because I’m afraid of exposing myself in any way, mentally or physically.’
The last thing Laura remembered thinking before she finally dropped off to sleep was that she had been better off in prison. Everything was predictable there, from what you ate on