Laurie feels the sharp stab of betrayal once more. That hopeless, all-encompassing feeling that renders everything she has ever experienced and felt in her entire life defunct and meaningless. How could it all have been so meaningless? Every word, every action, every deed and touch… it all meant nothing. Nothing at all. She’d explained to her therapist that it was impossible for her to accept this.
* * *
‘It did mean something to him, Laurie. Just not the same as it meant to you. He cannot feel the same as you feel, as normal people do. He has a personality disorder. He’s not hardwired in the same ways as you… or I. The things you feel… you’ve felt, they were real – all of them. But he’s unable to feel those things, not in the same way. He only pretends he can. He knows he has to pretend to be part of society, to fly under the radar undetected, to have a wife, a life… He mimics emotions. He was, is, your mirror. He mirrors you back to yourself. All that love, all that devotion, all the care and forgiveness and generosity… it’s not his, Laurie, it’s yours. He’s showing you who you are. But really he’s empty, like a shell, a bucket with holes in it, nothing but a reflection. No matter how much you try to fill that bucket, it will keep leaking and leaking, and you’ll keep giving and giving, until there’s no more Laurie left. And he walks away with your skin, your essence, your soul, to fool yet another giving person, another empath or co-dependent. He sniffs them out, like a predator, like a shark smelling blood. And it will be the same story, Laurie, every single time. The pattern will repeat itself, like a cycle, just as the sun rises and sets. It’s not you, Laurie. Do you understand this? It is not you. It’s his condition and there is nothing you can do to change it.’
Death by a thousand cuts.
* * *
Laurie knows now of course that the memory she has, that precious, intimate and beautiful memory she has of telling Robert that they were expecting twins, is worth nothing now. Zilch. Nada. Zero. She knows now that he had been seeing her at the time she had imparted their happy news. His lips were kissing another woman’s, his mouth and tongue and body inside another woman’s, telling her he loved her and wanted her, claiming that Laurie was a ‘psycho’, someone he couldn’t leave, who wouldn’t let him leave her, and that she was to blame.
She had later discovered that only a few hours after telling Robert that she was carrying both his babies and they had celebrated together by making love, he had gone to Claire and spent the night with her. Still, to this day, she cannot understand how her husband, the man she had loved her entire adult life, could be so heartless. How could he somehow compartmentalise parts of his life so seamlessly and without conscience?
Monica re-enters the bedroom some moments later carrying a tray with purpose. She has the overly jovial demeanour of someone who is trying hard to make light of what they know is a dire situation. She places the tray on the bed next to Laurie and nods at the plate of food. ‘You really must eat, Lolly. I insist. You’ll be good for nothing, good to no one if you don’t.’
Good to no one. Laurie stares at the plate of scrambled eggs and wonders if she can muster up a forkful just to appease her friend. She can manage a coffee at least.
‘The police are going to want to speak to you again,’ Monica says, buttering herself some toast from a side plate. Laurie watches as she slathers on some strawberry jam; she feels sick. ‘But the good news is that I’ve been onto Marcus Wainwright, my solicitor, and he’s agreed to represent you, if needs be. He’s good – very good. He’ll give you the best advice on how to proceed with the police.’ Her voice is efficient, reassuring.
‘Thanks, Mon,’ Laurie says, although it’s an effort to speak. ‘What do you think is going to happen? Do you think they’ll charge me?’
Monica sighs, takes a large bite of her toast and jam. ‘Well, I guess it all depends on what evidence they have. But I can’t see how they can now. Not now I’ve given you an alibi.’ She smiles triumphantly, tucking strands of her platinum hair behind her ears.
‘Drink some coffee, darling,’ Monica instructs her. ‘It’ll wake you up.’ She pours Laurie a cup. ‘If you do exactly as I say then things will be okay.’ She pours the milk efficiently. ‘You need to get the story straight.’
‘Story? What story?’
Monica waves a dismissive hand and gestures to the plate of food in front of Laurie. ‘Eat,’ she says. ‘You’re going to need your strength to get you through this. You’re going to need your wits about you.’
The coffee tastes burnt in Laurie’s throat as she swallows it.
‘With my alibi and a decent lawyer, it should be enough for them to back off, for now anyway,’ Monica says, like she deals with this kind of thing as a matter of course.
‘What did you tell them? The police.’ Reluctantly, Laurie cuts into the egg under her friend’s watchful eye. ‘What did you say to them, Mon?’
Monica pauses, putting the remainder of her toast down purposefully and looks straight at her. ‘I lied to them,’ she replies.
Laurie attempts to swallow some scrambled egg but it gets lodged somewhere between her tongue and oesophagus. ‘You lied? To the police? What about? Why?’ Her mind is coming back into focus now. But it’s a struggle and she vows never to take another Valium in her life. She can’t think straight. It’s like her brain hasn’t booted up properly and keeps misfiring and restarting itself.
‘I had to.’ Monica seizes Laurie’s hand suddenly, catches her off guard and she drops her fork. ‘You’d still bloody well be there in that cell if I hadn’t. And you don’t want to be back there, do you?’
She shakes her head. Hot fear.
Monica pushes the tray aside. Slides closer to her on the bed. She’s holding Laurie’s hand tightly and it’s making her feel nervous. ‘I lied and said that you’d come over to my place around 8 p.m. That you were in a state, upset, a little… drunk. I had to make it sound convincing,’ she says apologetically. ‘You were upset that Robert hadn’t turned up for dinner, that he’d been up to his usual tricks.’ Her voice sounds sour and she scowls. ‘I said we chatted and we’d had a few glasses of wine, put the world to rights, and then I’d seen you off home. Watched you walk into your house.’
Laurie stares at her friend, her heart knocking violently against her ribs. ‘But… but which part is the lie?’ she manages to ask. Suddenly she wishes that her mother were here. That stupid, selfish mother of hers who’d all but abandoned her her entire life but who would tell her – force her – to snap out of it and get a grip.
‘All of it,’ Monica says. ‘None of it bloody well happened. You didn’t come to the house. We didn’t chat. Or drink together. Or put the world to rights. None of it.’
Laurie feels an icy chill run through her body. She needs explanations but things are becoming more and more confusing, and the fug in her brain won’t clear for long enough to allow her to get a grasp on what her friend is saying, something, she suspects, which shows on her face because Monica is pleading with her now. ‘I had to lie, Laurie. I had to.’
Twenty-Six
Laurie feels like someone has dredged her empty stomach. ‘Why did you have to lie to the police, Mon?’ She knows she must ask the question but she’s fearful of the answer.
Monica looks at her intensely with steely eyes. ‘Listen to me, Laurie.’ Her voice is authoritative but still genial as she tucks a piece of hair behind her ear, habitually. ‘We need to get every single moment of this story correct. Those coppers, that bloke, Dan whatshisname, he’s nobody’s fool. If we haven’t got our story straight, they’ll annihilate you and you’ll see yourself through the menopause in prison.’
Laurie feels paralysed as she watches her friend speaking in slow, measured words. ‘They’ll question you, grill you on every little detail and I mean, everything, about that night. The timings, the clothes you were wearing, what we drank, what we talked about, if there was TV on in the background, if you had your fucking period, everything. And then they’re going to look into your life
. Leave no stone unturned. They’ll dig up dirt, invade your privacy, uncover any secrets, any skeletons… They’ll want to know everything about you and Robert, your marriage, the accident…’
Laurie swallows back the bile that has risen into her throat. Just thinking about it makes her feel sick and exhausted. The image of Robert lying on the bathroom floor flashes up in her mind yet again like a still frame. The look on his face, one of shock and surprise, she thought, like he couldn’t quite believe what had happened. It gives her chills. She needs a stiff drink and thinks of asking Monica if she has anything in. If she’s not sober then none of this is really happening.
‘Why did you have to lie?’ Laurie’s voice is shaky and tight in her throat as she repeats the question.
‘Look, Laurie. There’s something I need to tell you.’
Monica’s grave tone and expression is really scaring Laurie now and a fresh release of cortisol ignites the familiar sensation of fight or flight in her.
‘I don’t want you to panic, okay?’
‘Tell me what?’ Laurie’s voice sounds squeaky and laboured. ‘Please, Mon. Just tell me. No secrets, remember?’ Sisters don’t have secrets: that’s what Monica had always said since they’d met in their late teens at a mutual university friend’s party. They had always told each other everything. She could rely on Monica to tell her the truth.
Like most young women, they had shared their innermost thoughts as they navigated their way through adulthood together: the failed relationships and career struggles; and, in Laurie’s case, the tempestuous relationship with her mother that had plagued her childhood and young-adult life until she’d moved away to California. It had been Monica who’d told her straight that the dress she’d chosen for her and Robert’s wedding day made her look a little ‘frou-frou’ and helped her pick something much more chic. There was nothing they couldn’t tell each other, no lip service, just the truth.
‘Sisters…’ Laurie says, feeling sleepy again. The drugs she’s been taking are zombifying her, making her feel spaced out. She would stop taking them; go to her GP and get an alternative. She couldn’t function on these bastard things.
‘Oh God, Lolls.’
Monica’s pained expression is freaking her out and she squeezes her friend’s hand tightly as though to brace herself for what she’s about to say.
‘That night… the night Robert was… well, I came by to check on you… I’d been worried about you all day, you know, what with seeing him for the first time since the barbecue, with him coming to the house and everything… I just had this bad feeling about it, you know, some weird kind of sixth sense. So, I thought I would drop in on you, make sure it was all going okay. I think I rang the doorbell, but there was no answer, so I looked through the window, through the shutters and…’ Monica looks away, unable to finish the sentence.
Laurie’s heart is smashing against her ribs as she hangs on to every word. She has to consciously remind herself to breathe. ‘And what? What did you see? Mon… tell me! What did you see?’
‘I saw you both in the kitchen. You and Robert. You were arguing. I couldn’t hear your voices clearly, or what you were saying, but you were shouting in Robert’s face, waving your arms about manically. And he looked pretty angry too. I think he was trying to calm you down. He had hold of your shoulders at one point… and that’s when I saw you pick up the knife—’
‘The knife,’ Laurie repeats the word. ‘The knife?’
‘Yes.’ Monica blinks at her almost nervously, chewing her bottom lip.
‘I had a knife?’
Monica nods slowly. ‘You started wrestling with each other and that’s when I banged on the window. But you didn’t hear me. Neither of you did. I panicked, thought of calling the police. But… but I knew… well, I figured, being as Robert is – was – three times the size of you that he’d have disarmed you. I mean, I know you two had your fair share of fights. I know they sometimes got out of hand, but I never thought… never believed in a million years—’
‘What? You never thought what?’ Laurie can’t believe what Monica is saying. So Robert had come to the house. She had seen him. And they had fought. Dread claws its way through her body, tugging at her vital organs as it rages through her. Perhaps it has happened again. Perhaps she’d had one of her blackouts. She’d suffered a couple of similar episodes following the accident where she had acted out and had no recollection of it the following day. She had always put them down to too much alcohol, but what if it was something else? Robert had liked to describe these forgotten moments to her in graphic detail the following day. He’d enjoyed watching her squirm as he recounted what he called her psychotic episodes, how she had screamed and wailed like a banshee, throwing herself on the floor, pounding him with her fists, and the time he claimed she had gone for him with a pair of sewing scissors. He’d dined out on that one for weeks, the eternal victim of her ‘abuse’. You could’ve killed me, Laurie. I had to restrain you, prise them from your grip before you did me, or yourself, any harm. You’re insane, do you know that, Laurie? In-fucking-sane. You need to be locked up in a secure hospital. His words still sting her now as she thinks of them. The burn of humiliation, the look of contempt on his face and the subsequent shame she had felt.
‘Robert… he was there, in the house? Are you sure? Are you sure it was him, Mon? I… I don’t remember. Not a thing. I don’t remember seeing him, or speaking to him or—’
‘You’re going to need to tell them, the police I mean, that your memory is returning and that you recall coming over to my house, wearing that dress you had on.’ Monica’s voice has resumed some authority. ‘We talked about Robert not showing up and you were upset and drunk. I comforted you. Advised you not to call him because I felt it was another of his sick little mind games and that he’d stood you up in a bid to deliberately hurt you, because that’s just the sort of thing Robert does… or did. Laurie, are you listening to me? You need to listen to me. You need to repeat it all back to me like a mantra, okay? This is important, Laurie. Your liberty is at stake here – we’re talking about the rest of your life…’
Fear and exhaustion have consumed her. She’s not sure she has the emotional or physical strength to fight anymore, to deal with an intrusive police investigation, with the past being dredged up, her life dissected and discussed, painful memories she has worked so hard to push to the bottom resurfacing like rubber balls in water. It has taken everything she’d had left, these past few months, to regain some semblance of a normal life. A normal life. That’s all she’d ever wanted. Not this. None of this.
Laurie is shaking uncontrollably. She’s a murderer.
‘Marcus will prepare the best defence for you. You’re the victim of domestic violence, of psychological abuse, years of deception, infidelity and cruelty, the mental torture and the effects of the accident, of losing Milo and Nancy.’ Monica devours the remainder of her toast and butters another piece animatedly. Laurie can’t understand how she can eat anything, or why she is so calm, so together. Monica was always the together one.
‘The accident, that’ll be your coup de grâce. How you discovered he was still with that fat bitch and that they’d had a baby together while you had lost both of yours in the worst way possible. How it sent you spiralling into a deep, dark, debilitating depression. You weren’t in your right mind. The alcohol… the pills… the eating disorder and psychotic episodes… and then, the final nail in the coffin, Robert coming over to serve you with divorce papers after promising you a fresh new start together, his final act of betrayal. I mean, really, when you say it all out loud it’s little wonder you—’
Laurie stares at the congealing plate of food beside her. ‘Little wonder I what?’
‘That you killed him,’ Monica whispers. ‘And then tried to kill yourself. With Marcus working his magic you may well get a reduced sentence, or even let off on the grounds of diminished responsibility. I see it all the time on TV. It’s the best we can hope for.’
&n
bsp; Laurie is in a place past horrified. Reduced sentence. ‘But I… I don’t think… I didn’t kill him… No! I don’t remember him even being there, at the house. I was waiting for him… he didn’t show up. God, no… Tell me you’re wrong! I couldn’t have done that. I wouldn’t. Surely I’d remember if I killed my own husband and then tried to kill myself? Surely something would’ve come back to me, a flashback, anything.’ Laurie thinks about coming clean about the arsenic, how she had thought about poisoning Robert, but she decides against it. She would never have gone through with it.
Monica takes her hand again. ‘You’ve suffered a dreadful shock. And it’s not like this hasn’t happened before, is it – you blacking out and not being able to remember anything? It’s the mind’s way of protecting itself from deep trauma. And you’ve certainly suffered your fair share of that. A jury will see that. They will, I promise you.’
Laurie can’t focus, can’t think. All she feels is sheer naked, hot fear searing through her body. ‘Do you think I killed Robert? Is that what you’re saying?’ She knows how it looks, how it seems. Despite her fragile emotional state, she is not missing her faculties. She is not mad like Robert used to tell her she was, almost convincing her sometimes. She is sure she did not kill her husband, or cut her own wrists, though how either of these things has happened she can’t explain. She doesn’t understand it, any of it.
Monica is still holding her hand tightly. And she doesn’t like the way her oldest friend is looking at her.
‘I don’t think you killed Robert, my darling,’ Monica says gently. ‘I know you did.’
The Couple on Cedar Close Page 14