Let Me Lie(103)

Slowly, she lowers her arm. The gun hangs loosely by her side. This is it, I think. This is where it stops. Everyone’s said what they need to say, and now it ends. Without anyone getting hurt.

Mum takes a step towards her. ‘I loved her too.’

‘You killed her!’ Instantly, the gun is raised. Laura’s arm is ramrod straight, her elbow locked in place. The glimpse of vulnerability I saw has vanished. Her eyes are narrow and dark, every muscle rigid with rage. ‘You married money and you left her in that damp shit pit of a flat and she died!’

‘Alicia had asthma,’ I say. ‘She died from an asthma attack.’

Didn’t she?

I feel a flash of panic that this, too, is a lie, and I look to my mother for reassurance.

‘You didn’t even go and see her!’

‘I did.’ Mum’s close to tears again. ‘Maybe not as often as I should have done.’ She screws up her eyes. ‘We drifted apart. She was in London; I was in Eastbourne. I had Anna and—’

‘And you didn’t have time for a friend with no money. A friend who didn’t speak like your new friends did; who didn’t drink champagne and drive a posh car.’

‘It wasn’t like that.’ But her head drops and I feel a wave of sadness for Alicia, because I think it was. I think it was like that. And, just like the way she treated Dad, she’s seen it too late. I make a sound – not quite a cry, not quite a word. Mum looks at me, and everything I’m thinking must be written in my eyes because her face crumples and she’s begging silently for forgiveness. ‘Anna and Ella should go. They’ve got nothing to do with this.’

Laura gives a humourless laugh. ‘They’ve got everything to do with it!’ She folds her arms across her chest. ‘They’ve got the money.’

‘How much do you want?’ I don’t mess around. Whatever she wants, she can have.

‘No.’

I look at Mum.

‘That money’s for your future. Ella’s future. Why do you think I ran away? Laura would have taken it all. Maybe I deserved that, but you didn’t.’

‘I don’t care about the money. She can take it. I’ll transfer it all to whatever account she wants.’

‘It’s simpler than that.’ Laura’s smiling.

The hair on the back of my neck stands up, a prickling sensation creeping down my spine.

‘If you give me all your money, people will ask questions: Billy, Mark, the bloody tax man. I’d have to trust you to keep quiet, and if I’ve learned one thing from this,’ she glances at Mum, ‘it’s that you can’t trust anyone.’

‘Laura, no.’

I look at Mum. She’s shaking her head, one step ahead of me.

‘As far as anyone else is concerned, I came here to save you and Ella,’ Laura says. ‘Mark helpfully told me where you’d be when he cancelled the party, and my sixth sense told me you were in terrible danger.’ She widens her eyes as she acts out her pantomime, hands raised, fingers splayed on the hand not wrapped round the gun. ‘But when I arrived, I was too late. Caroline had already shot you both and killed herself.’ She pushes the corners of her mouth downwards in mock dismay, then turns to me. ‘You’ve seen Caroline’s will. You were there when it was read. To my daughter, Anna Johnson, I leave all financial and material assets, to include all property in my name at the time of my death.’ She quotes verbatim from Mum’s will, spitting out the words.

‘Mum left you money, too.’ Not a fortune, but a healthy inheritance that honoured Mum’s long-standing friendship with Alicia; her duty to Laura as godmother.

Laura continues as if I haven’t spoken. ‘In the event that Anna has passed away before the execution of this will, I leave all financial and material assets to my goddaughter, Laura Barnes.’

‘It’s too late,’ Mum says. ‘The will’s been read – Anna’s already inherited.’

‘Ah, but you’re not dead, are you?’ Laura smiles. ‘Not yet. The money still belongs to you.’ She raises the gun; points it at me.

My blood freezes.

‘If Anna and Ella die before you, I inherit the lot.’





SIXTY-SEVEN


MURRAY


Hard as Nails.

Sarah would have got it sooner. She’d have noticed the name in a way that Murray hadn’t; would have stopped to read it out. To talk about it.

What a terrible name for a salon.

He imagined her jabbing a finger at the pocket notebook entry that meticulously noted the names of those present when police broke the news that Caroline’s husband had killed himself.

Laura Barnes. Receptionist at Hard as Nails.

I hate it when businesses try to be funny … Murray could hear Sarah’s voice as clearly as if she were sitting in the car with him. You may as well call it No More Nails, just because it’s catchy, and it has ‘nails’ in it, and that would be a ridiculous name, too … Murray laughed out loud.

He caught himself. If talking to oneself was the first sign of madness, where did holding imaginary conversations rank?

Still, Sarah would have remembered the name. And if she had talked to Murray about it, he would have remembered it too. And then, when he’d left Diane Brent-Taylor’s house, wondering who had stolen her name, the flyer on her noticeboard would have leaped out at him, and he would immediately have made the association between Laura Barnes and her former place of work.