Lying in Wait(76)

‘You just said that it was the most suitable place you could think of.’ Laurence leaped out of his chair. ‘You knew about it. Oh God!’

‘Laurence, you mustn’t …’

‘Did you kill her?’

‘No!’

‘You killed her and Dad covered it up? Is that what happened?’

‘Laurence, please calm down, you are being so melodramatic! I was talking about Diana and you confused me …’

He roared at me then: ‘Stop lying to me! Oh God, I can’t look at you.’

‘She deserved it! She was a thief and a liar. She betrayed us!’

He flew out of the room.

Daddy hadn’t been able to look at me after Mummy left, and after Diana died. I looked in the mirror above the kitchen table. I was still beautiful, I knew it, and yet nobody wanted to look at me. I heard Laurence throwing things around upstairs and then he ran downstairs with a suitcase in his hand and I met him in the hall.

‘Don’t go,’ I pleaded with him, ‘I’ll die.’

He stopped for a moment and I thought I had him, but his eyes filled with tears. He turned away and slammed the front door. I heard the car engine screeching into reverse. He drove away from me as if his life depended on it.





21


Karen


Being with Laurence was different to being with Dessie. Laurence made me feel like I was a person of my own, rather than Annie’s sister or someone’s property or baby maker. He didn’t expect me to be available when it suited him. He borrowed art books he thought that I might be interested in from the library. He drove me to the airport and wished me well when I went off on jobs, and greeted me with flowers on my return. I realized quickly that he was not as well off as I had supposed, but it had never been his wealth or class that I was interested in. He introduced me to his workmates, most of whom I’d met on those Friday pub nights when he was with Bridget. Some were OK with me and others were distinctly rude. ‘Some friend you turned out to be,’ said Evelyn on one of my first nights out with them as Laurence’s girlfriend, but I swore to her that I hadn’t ever wanted to hurt Bridget and that we hadn’t cheated on her.

Laurence defended me. ‘It’s nothing to do with Karen,’ he insisted. ‘I split up with Bridget for lots of reasons.’

The older guy, Dominic, said, ‘Jayzis, Lar, you’re punching above your weight there, you know what I mean? Weight, get it?’ and proceeded to tell me that Laurence used to be obese. I remembered Bridget saying the same thing. It didn’t matter to me. I had changed too. I used to be eaten up by thoughts of justice and revenge, but love had fixed me. I wouldn’t have thought it possible.

Laurence stayed over in my apartment some nights and was about to move into a cottage he inherited, but he told me about his mother’s fragile mental health and how attached to him she was. I insisted he should take his time moving out, and make sure that she was OK first. He was trying to ensure that his mother’s boyfriend Malcolm would be there for her when he left. And there was some legal wrangling over the cottage to do with his uncle, but Laurence insisted he was keeping it. We went to see it a few times. It was a beautiful whitewashed fairy-tale house, although the roof was slated rather than thatched. I looked forward to visiting him there, walking on the beach, cosying up by the fire and watching the sunset over the bay.

As I might have guessed, somebody in Laurence’s office told Bridget about us. I should have had the courage to tell her myself, but in the last conversation we had, she was sure that he was trying to get back with her, and I just took the coward’s way out and didn’t contact her. When she discovered the truth about us, she rang me and screamed and cried down the phone.

‘You were supposed to be my friend! I told you everything. I can’t believe you would do this to me!’

‘Bridget, I’m really sorry, we never planned it –’

‘Was this going on behind my back? You’re some bitch, after everything I did for you. You even came to my parents’ house, and all the time you were seeing him behind my –’

‘But I wasn’t, I swear. We didn’t get together until much later. I never wanted to hurt you, I know it seems wrong, but –’

She slammed the phone down. The trust between us was broken and could never be repaired. I felt guilty because, whatever way you look at it, I had betrayed a friend. But she took her revenge out on Laurence in a really cruel way, and I didn’t feel sorry for her after that. Laurence didn’t tell me about it at first. His friend Jane told me in the pub. Bridget had posted photographs of Laurence to his friends in the office. Photos that had been taken when he was at his heaviest, photos taken while he was naked and asleep. He played it down in the pub, but I could see he was mortified. He told me about it later when we were alone.

‘She took photos all the time, but I never knew she was taking photos of me when I was asleep. Some of the junior ones in the office were laughing at me behind my back and passing comments. I didn’t know what it was all about until Sally told me.’

Evelyn had gathered up all the photos and binned them. She had also rung Bridget in Mullingar and torn strips off her.

Laurence tried to make a joke out of it all, and I could tell that his co-workers liked him. He was a good boss and very fair. Privately, he was upset about it, but we got on with things and moved on as a team. He wrote Bridget a cross letter, letting her know that all of her friends had been disgusted by what she’d done. We didn’t hear from her again after that.