‘I’ll get a job. I’ll work day and night and enrol at college, study something so I can earn good money.’
‘Mum and Dad are paying the rent on this place, plus my college fees. If they find out you’re here they’ll stop.’
‘Like I said, I’ll get a job.’ She doesn’t like where the conversation seems to be going.
‘They said they’ll disinherit me if they discover you’re any part of my life.’
‘What?’ Kiki feels the sting of rage as it bubbles up inside her guts. Her parents are wealthy people – not that anyone would especially know it. They certainly weren’t flash, but she knew they owned multiple properties and had hundreds of thousands tied up in them.
‘I’m set to inherit a little over half a million when I turn twenty-one next year. They’ve told me I won’t see a penny of it if I so much as mention your name again.’
Kiki swallows hard. So they’ve had the last laugh. ‘We should murder them, then we’d get all their money,’ she says, only half joking.
He blows smoke heavily from his lips. ‘We’d never get away with it.’
‘Don’t be so sure,’ she says and he laughs.
‘My bad Kiki… I’ve missed you.’
She’s back in his arms again, their bodies touching.
‘You can stay here for a couple of nights, then you’ll have to find somewhere else. They’ll have tabs on me – you can’t be seen here. We’ll pretend to people that we’re childhood friends, that we went to school together, and we’ll meet in secret whenever we can.’
‘But—’
‘Don’t argue with me,’ he says, his voice taking a sharp edge, immediately silencing her. ‘It’s that or nothing.’
‘How long for? How long will we have to pretend for? What about marriage and moving to Cannes? What about our babies? They already made me kill our first.’ Kiki feels her anger rising again and steadies her breathing.
‘Not long,’ he says. ‘Just until I get my inheritance.’
She looks at him with wide eyes.
‘I promise.’
Forty-Four
Monica Lewis looks down at her hands as the manicurist goes to work on her short, neat nails. There’s a hushed silence in the salon and she thinks she notices the other women staring. She doesn’t mind the attention. They’re not pointing any fingers at her. No one knows anything. The police have been round to search her house this morning. She welcomed them, offered them tea and biscuits in fact. They’ll find nothing, nothing to link her to anything anyway. There are, however, Laurie’s dress and ballet slippers. They took them away, just as she had expected them to. But she had washed and dried them, just in case, before replacing them back in Laurie’s overnight bag. She had been careful. No blood. No fingerprints; she had disposed of the gloves down Claire’s toilet, flushing them away before shedding a few strands of hair from Laurie’s brush onto the couch, then replacing the brush back inside Laurie’s washbag where she’d found it upon her return home.
Laurie is going down for this. She will be held accountable for the deaths of Robert, Claire and that bastard child of theirs. With a bit of luck she’ll spend the rest of her life behind bars. Maybe she’ll even top herself. Monica supposed she had really believed, hoped even, that after everything, Laurie might have tried to take her own life before now, but she’d been genuinely surprised by her friend’s strength and determination, no more so than after the accident that had almost killed her and extinguished the lives of those unborn babies. Laurie had rallied far better than Monica had imagined she ever would’ve. She’d battled through the grief and depression and had eventually started to come through the other side, though certainly not unscathed. Perhaps, with hindsight, Monica had helped her too much and had subsequently helped her recovery. This idea irritates her. Monica had been the one to make sure that Laurie had discovered Robert’s affair with Claire in the first place. She had instigated the accident. Laurie, and those twins, were simply collateral damage. Only Laurie had survived.
When Monica thinks about it though, a life behind the door for crimes you didn’t commit would be a fate worse than death, wouldn’t it? The torment and sense of injustice would eat away at someone like cancer. And, as she languished in a cell, Laurie would feel just as Monica has felt for all these years: helpless, hopeless, bitter and resentful. She smiles softly at the thought of it. It would be the revenge that kept on giving, because out of all of them, even Robert, she hated Laurie the most, despised her in fact, because without Laurie, her life would’ve been very different indeed.
Everything has thus far worked out, perhaps even better than she had meticulously planned. Monica will, of course, visit her friend in prison, at least once before she takes off for France. She’ll do what she’s always done and reassure her, sympathise with her and tell her how she will do all she can to help her – how out of sight will never mean out of mind. She will remain her truest and most loyal friend, write to her, send her gifts and money to buy basics in prison. Sisters stick together, after all.
Monica looks up at the TV screen on the wall. The sound is muted but the image is a photograph of Claire smiling and holding the bastard. She looks chubby and happy in the photograph, no doubt one that Robert had taken, and she thinks how much the baby really did have his eyes. The ticker underneath reads:
‘Young mother murdered in her own home and her eight-month-old baby in a critical condition in hospital. Claire Wright, twenty-nine years old, was brutally murdered last night…’
She’s miffed by the use of the word brutal. The press always sensationalises everything. There was nothing brutal about it. In fact, she thought it had been quite a merciful killing all told. There had been no blood and gore. She hadn’t opened her up, butchered her like she had Robert. She’d spared her, and herself, that.
‘Terrible isn’t it,’ the manicurist tuts, nodding towards the screen. ‘Senseless. Absolutely senseless. I mean, who would try to kill an eight-month-old baby?’
‘There’s some sick people out there,’ Monica says, shaking her head. She notices the other women in the salon are silent, watching her, waiting for her reaction.
‘You know her, don’t you?’ one of them suddenly pipes up, the fat one sitting in the pedicure chair, her cankles just visible above the bubbly water. ‘You’re the friend, aren’t you, of that Laurie Mills woman, the suspect?’
The manicurist’s eyes widen although she duly continues filing Monica’s nails.
‘Yes. Yes, I am. I’ve known Laurie since we were teenagers.’
‘She did her husband in too, didn’t she? Cut his throat, I read.’ The woman lifts her feet out of the spa and wiggles her chubby toes. ‘I turned to the old man the other night and said, “See, this is what’ll happen to you, mate, if you ever do the dirty on me!”’ She throws her head back and omits a throaty, raucous laugh that makes Monica want to chop off her toes, one by one.
‘She’s suffered terribly,’ Monica murmurs, ‘Laurie.’ She’s not sure if fatso has heard her.
‘Fucking nutter, killing that girl and attacking her baby as well. Sick. She needs locking up and the key thrown away.’
The manicurist eyes Monica a little awkwardly as she finishes up.
‘Dunno how you can be friends with a loon like that,’ the uncouth fat woman remarks with contempt. ‘I’d be shit-scared I was next.’
Monica keeps a dignified silence as she pays for her manicure, leaving the therapist a generous tip, which she thanks her for in the form of a large, apologetic smile.
* * *
The sun is shining as she exits the salon. It’s a crisp autumnal day, superlative really, she observes. The kind she will miss when she moves to France and finally begins life again. Soon she will be reborn, free of the chains that have bound her for the past twenty-four years, free of Dougie, Robert and his mistress and child. Free of Laurie. Free of all of them, forever.
Monica feels good as she struts along the high street. She looks good too. The manicure was the
final touch to her fresh blow-dry and nourishing facial. She feels like a femme fatale in a movie – sexy and seductive, invincible, a woman to be reckoned with. She’s on the home run now. Laurie is languishing in a police cell, no doubt spiralling into a complete psychotic meltdown, one from which she will hopefully never fully recover.
It’s taken over two decades to arrive at this moment and she wants to savour every second. Twenty-four wasted, painful, pitiful years that she will never regain.
As she click-clacks along the pavement in her Louboutin shoes she thinks about what her life will be like once she’s on the Riviera. Perhaps she will meet a man? Perhaps she will get married and have a child? But she knows that will never happen now. She can’t have children – not anymore anyway. She thinks of her abortions: six in total, or was it seven? She can’t remember now. So many.
It’s wrong, Kiki. We can’t have a child… we mustn’t. She hears his voice resonating inside her mind. So they’d been torn from her womb each and every time. But the last one, the last time, there had been complications. An infection. Blood poisoning. It had almost cost her her life. And it had cost her her womb. No more babies for Robert and Kiki. No more babies for anyone.
The sun is harsh as she crosses the street and she places some newly purchased designer shades on her face to shield her eyes. Yes, Monica thinks, the future, finally, looks bright.
Forty-Five
Dr Wells is running late, as doctors are wont to do, and I’m struggling to contain my frustration as I sit in the reception area of this posh North London clinic where people pay a premium to get their heads fixed.
Nothing that a good woman and a holiday can’t sort, Danny. That’s what my old man would say to me whenever I got a touch of the blues, before I met Rachel that is. I had the good woman, but the holidays, not so much. Now I think about it, I wish we had taken more time off together. We thought we had all the time in the world and that holidays could wait. Now I know that time waits for no man. Or woman. I wish I’d been more spontaneous, whisked her off on a whim every once in a while. I wish…
I look around the waiting room of the therapist’s practice at the mandatory water cooler and glass table of glossy magazines. God, I hate these places.
‘Can you tell Dr Wells that this is important?’ I say irritably to the unsmiling receptionist behind the desk. She ignores me for a moment before taking the trouble to look up from her magazine and say, ‘She’ll be with you shortly.’
* * *
Dr Sarah Wells is a very smart, well-dressed, efficient-looking woman in her fifties. She’s unquestionably middle class and reeks of expensive perfume, no doubt thanks to the £120 per hour she charges for her services. At £120 an hour I’d need therapy to get over the bill alone.
‘Please take a seat, Detective Riley.’ She gestures to a comfy-looking, squishy brown-leather chair topped with a large turquoise cushion, as she sits in an identical chair opposite. It makes a satisfying whoosh sound as I sit down.
‘So, you want to talk about Laurie Mills, is that correct?’ She has an interesting, expressive face: a face that tells a thousand stories. Her bright-red lipstick makes her look cheery. Cheery. I really have become my father.
‘Yes it is,’ I begin. ‘And before you say it, Doctor, I appreciate your client-confidentiality agreement, but as I’m pretty sure you’re aware by now, this is a very serious murder investigation. Laurie Mills has been arrested on suspicion of the murder of Claire Wright and the attempted murder of Matilda Wright. As yet we cannot charge her for the murder of her husband, Robert Mills, but I would say that this is also imminent.’
She inhales deeply. Shakes her head.
‘So, I need to know all you can tell me about Laurie Mills, about her state of mind, if she was mentally stable, anything she may have said during your sessions together that would sound alarm bells… any talk of murder, of suicide, anything.’
Dr Wells nods her understanding, though I notice her dark blonde hair stays statue-still as she does. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw the news,’ she says, the incredulity evident in her clipped voice. ‘It’s knocked me for six, Detective, really it has.’
I can see she’s not lying. She glances at the clock. ‘I have another client in half an hour, so I’ll do my best to tell you as much as I can between then and now, to help in any way I possibly can. Where do you want me to start?’
I give her a cursory smile and open my notebook.
‘The only place anyone can,’ I reply. ‘At the beginning.’
Forty-Six
‘I specialise in a few things, Detective, grief counselling and PSTD being just two of them. I also focus on personality disorders, namely helping people who’ve been the victims of those involved with Cluster Bs.’
‘Cluster Bs?’
Dr Wells gives an enigmatic smile. ‘Bipolar, borderlines, sociopaths, narcissistic personality disorder… Laurie came to see me initially for grief counselling. She was suffering with acute PTSD. I’m taking it that you know about the accident?’
I nod.
‘Well, the PTSD was only partly as a result of it. She was experiencing severe symptoms: flashbacks, sweats, heart palpitations, guilt, fear, panic attacks, agoraphobia, shame – the whole works. It wasn’t going to be a one-session wonder, put it this way. She had severe depression on top of other symptoms and was on strong antidepressants. She was also developing an alcohol dependency, using it to self-medicate.’
‘Due to the accident?’
‘Like I said, partly. It was also due to the extremely toxic marriage she was in with Robert. Years of being with a disordered psychological abuser had taken its toll. As it would do.’
‘So it would be fair to say that her state of mind was pretty dire. Was she suicidal?’
‘Fair to say? Yes, certainly fair, but also certainly not uncommon for people who have suffered very tragic losses, such as the ones she did, plus being involved with a Cluster B.’
‘So you think Laurie Mills has a personality disorder?’ I begin taking notes and nod at Dr Wells to continue.
‘No. No. I don’t think that at all, Detective. I think Laurie Mills was married to someone who had one.’
I look up at her. She crosses her legs, offers me some water from a plastic jug on the table. I can’t help thinking how, for the prices she charges, it should be glass at the very least.
‘No. Thank you.’
‘I met them, both of them, on’ – she does that lip-tapping thing I hate – ‘well it was on more than one occasion.’
‘And?’
‘And, I’d say, from what I recall when speaking to them, that Mr Mills was a covert narcissist, quite far along the spectrum.’
‘Did you ever treat him one-to-one? Robert Mills?’
‘No. Never. He was a reluctant patient: that was very obvious. I could tell he didn’t want to be here, didn’t think he needed to be here. His demeanour was quite stand-offish, arrogant, even though he was exceptionally charming with it.’ She flashes me a knowing look. ‘That’s part of the disorder.’
‘Being charming?’ Delaney pops into my head and I think of him seducing Davis.
‘Yes. But also not thinking there’s anything wrong with your behaviour. It’s highly indicative in fact. People with NPD, well’ – she sighs again, more heavily this time – ‘it’s the kind of disorder where they go untreated while everyone else around them needs therapy.’
‘Well, I know that Robert Mills was a womaniser. He was indulging in an extra-marital affair with the victim, Claire Wright, and the baby was his. Another woman has also come forward and there were myriad online flirtations between himself and women he was grooming.’
‘Grooming,’ she says brightly. ‘That’s a very accurate word to use, Detective. This is exactly part of the NPD’s MO. He, or she, grooms their victims or “supply” as they’re referred to in the business. I would say it was highly likely that Robert Mills was involved in some way, shape or form with many other �
�supplies” on the side too. I knew about Claire – Laurie confided in me, as her therapist obviously.
‘Jesus, what’s he got that I haven’t?’
She laughs a little. ‘In a word, Detective, absolutely nothing, other than a personality disorder. You see, those with NPD suffer with something called object constancy.’
I blink at her, blankly I assume because she gives me that slightly pitiful smile again.
‘They don’t view people as human beings. They view them as objects, as a means to an end. They have impaired empathy. It’s what enables them to conduct multiple relationships simultaneously without conscience. To them you are merely a vehicle to extract supply from. Supply being whatever it is they seek from you at that time, namely attention, drama, sex, a place to stay, adoration, an ego boost, financial benefits, a job, kudos… you name it. They’re usually highly manipulative predators and users, and their lack of empathy and impaired conscience allows them to dupe and con at will. Those men you read about who pretend to fall in love with women and then scam them out of all their worldly goods? They’re narcissists: NPDs. And the women they con are usually highly intelligent, solvent, beautiful, independent, kind and empathetic women, who can’t believe they’ve been stung because these people are extremely good at what they do. They have to be. It’s literally their survival. Life and death.’
‘The latter in Robert Mills’ case,’ I remark dryly.
‘So it would seem, Detective.’
‘How did Laurie feel about Claire? Did she ever voice any feelings of hatred, talk of murder, or taking revenge?’
‘No. Never. Not once. Of course, she wanted her to stop having an affair with her husband, naturally. In fact, I think in a way Laurie had empathy for the mistress.’
‘Empathy?’
‘Oh yes. Laurie Mills is what we call a “super empath”, a fixer. She’s the perfect supply for the NPD, a reservoir that keeps giving and forgiving, one than never runs dry. She is co-dependent. It stems back to her own childhood, as these things often do. The super empath and the NPD are a match made in heaven, or hell depending on which way you look at it. Both need each other, for very different reasons. They’re at opposite ends of the spectrum. The NPD cannot put anyone above himself and his own needs and the co-dependent cannot stop putting others’ needs before themselves and their own. The NPD has a need to break others in a bid to feed his or her ego, and the co-dependent has a need to fix others to sustain their own self-worth. They’re both feeding off each other, albeit, like I’ve said, for opposing reasons.’
The Couple on Cedar Close Page 22