Faith - Lesley Pearse [74]
Stuart frowned, remembering that when Laura walked out on him, he had become convinced that he and Greg had a great deal in common, for they’d both been kicked in the teeth by her.
He’d asked Jackie about him once, but she’d just passed him off as a ‘perve’. As that could have meant anything from a man touching up other women at parties to liking to dress up in Laura’s clothes, he let the subject drop. But he had been shocked when years later, just after Barney’s death, Jackie told him in a letter how she’d telephoned Greg’s parents to tell them what had happened, and to get an address or telephone number for their son. She said they’d almost bitten her head off, asking why she saw fit to tell them, as Barney was nothing to them, or Greg.
Stuart had known Gregory had never paid maintenance for his son and had never attempted to contact Laura so he could see him, but he found it unbelievable that anyone could be so callous about the death of a child.
‘What sort of hell did he put her through, Lena?’ Stuart asked.
She grimaced. ‘It’s not for me to say and anyway I only know the edited version. Ask her. If she could write all that about her childhood, I’m sure it would do her good to get him off her chest too.’
‘I want to try and find grounds for an appeal against her conviction,’ Stuart admitted. ‘You’d better keep that to yourself for now, until I’m sure I’ve got something to base it on. I’m meeting an old friend tonight for dinner, he’s a lawyer and I hope he’ll help me. Can you think of anyone else who might give me a different slant on what I already know?’
‘What about her sister?’ Lena suggested. ‘One of the nurses here showed me a newspaper cutting once. It was already well out of date, for I hadn’t been up to reading it at the time, but it was the story Laura’s mother had sold to the press. Talk about Judas and the thirty pieces of silver! She really sold her daughter down the river! But there was a small piece added on, a brief interview with Laura’s sister, it would be the older one, Meggie. She didn’t actually deny what her mother had said, but she said something about there being two sides to every story. Obviously the paper didn’t enlarge on it as they wanted Laura to look as evil as possible. Maybe if you got in touch with the paper you could find out where she lives. I think it was the News of the World.’
‘I’ll try that,’ Stuart said. ‘There’s one thing more, Lena. Did you see anything of Laura after Barney died?’
‘Of course.’ Lena looked almost indignant at the implication that she might not have done. ‘She came to Duke’s Avenue and stayed for a while with Frank and me when she was going through the worst of it. It was me who arranged for her to go to my friends in Italy to work after that. You surely didn’t think we had abandoned her then?’
‘No, Lena.’ Stuart reached out and patted her hand. ‘It was just because of the circumstances of Barney’s death, I thought Laura might have distanced herself from you.’
‘She never did blame Jackie. In fact Laura said it was her fault because she had never got Barney into the habit of putting his seat belt on. They were united in grief over him. Frank and I were too – when he was born we were almost like grandparents to him. We didn’t see him very often once she moved to Scotland, but she always brought him to visit us whenever she came back to London.’
‘Did his death change Laura’s personality?’
‘She always had more sides than a fifty-pence piece,’ Lena retorted. ‘You of all people know that! The side uppermost at that time was what you’d expect, a woman racked with guilt. It looked for a time as if she’d lost her mind.’
‘There was a great deal in the press cuttings about her being a neglectful mother,’ Stuart said gently. ‘Was that true, Lena?’
Lena