Prime Deception (22 page)

As she lay on the cusp of sleep, Laurie was certain that she felt a weight fall against her, like that of an arm. But by this point, she was too tired to be troubled by it. A sense of calm washed over her as the city around her faded away.

The sun was struggling to penetrate through the grey clouds which promised rain later that day as Laurie walked along the bustling pavement towards work. People shoved against her in their haste to reach their destination and didn’t even turn back to offer an apologetic glance. The air tasted of car fumes and decay with an undercurrent of takeaway food which always made Laurie want to heave. She missed the clean air of home, the scent of fresh woodland flowers which would be carried along on the breeze. She knew in her heart that her time in London would soon draw to a close, regardless of what she uncovered about Lorna. She simply could not take anymore. Lorna had loved the city of London dearly but Laurie was identical to her twin in looks alone.

‘Good morning,’ Laurie offered Faye her warmest smile as she came in and began unbuttoning her coat. The Deputy Prime Minister’s assistant was already sat at her computer working diligently and looked like she had been there for some time.

‘Morning,’ Faye said dryly, not turning away from her monitor, her fingers still weaving across the keyboard, compiling an email.

‘Nice to see you too,’ Laurie said, her mood further soured by the less than warm reception Faye had given her.

‘He told me to send you in when you arrived; I’ve only just taken his papers and coffee in so give it a minute.’

Both women knew who the ‘he’ to whom Faye referred was. So disillusioned was she by her employer that she struggled to even speak his name now.

Laurie spent ten minutes glancing at her emails with no desire to respond to or action any of them. She felt detached from her current situation to the point where it no longer mattered if her façade of interest fell away. She would soon be home, away from all of this, locked in the security of the familiar.

‘He doesn’t like to be kept waiting,’ Faye said sharply after a further few minutes had elapsed, more for her sake than Laurie’s. She knew it would fall on her unfavourably if Charles came out of his office and saw Laurie there after expressly requesting her immediate presence in his office pending her arrival.

Reluctantly Laurie raised herself out of her chair and headed towards the Deputy Prime Minister’s office.

It pleased Charles to see Laurie despite her rebuff the last time they met. He loved the way she moved her slight frame; so graceful were her steps she almost danced across the floor. Without the towering heels which Lorna adored, Laurie looked even more small and delicate. She was like a rare, wild flower – beautiful and exotic yet frail and vulnerable; the slightest breeze could uproot her.

‘Good morning,’ Charles smiled fondly. ‘How are you?’

Laurie scowled angrily. She didn’t like this pretence of care which Charles seemed intent on keeping up. They were investigating Lorna’s death, nothing more; her wellbeing should be of no concern to him. If anything, his concern was merely masking his guilt over Lorna’s death.

‘I’m okay but I shan’t be staying here much longer,’ Laurie’s words were barbed and hostile.

‘Oh?’ Charles queried, taken aback by her anger. It was as if she was once more the young woman who had originally entered his office as a ghost and asked for his help. The time they had spent together, the moments they had shared, seemed to have evaporated away, leaving them as strangers once more.

‘I plan on returning home indefinitely as soon as possible,’ Laurie explained. ‘I hate it here.’

Then, as she sat there the anger faded away slightly to reveal the frightened, lonely girl hiding behind it.

‘Hopefully we will have some answers soon,’ Charles said gently, trying to placate her.

‘Even if we don’t, I want to go home.’

‘I know it must be hard for you to be here, but if you can just be a little more patient we will get answers. We will find out what happened to Lorna.’

Laurie’s shoulders trembled slightly as she suppressed a sob. Charles immediately dashed from behind his desk and came and knelt beside her. Raising one hand, he gently stroked her cheek and this time she did not knock him away.

‘It won’t change anything,’ Laurie’s voice was small as she spoke. ‘The truth won’t bring Lorna back.’

‘I know it won’t,’ Charles cupped her face with his hands, her skin cool to the touch. ‘But if we can prove that Lorna did not kill herself, won’t that help you and your family find closure and then you can start living your own life?’

‘I don’t think it will change anything for my parents. Besides, if Lorna didn’t kill herself, someone else did. Closing one door will just open another and my parents will hate me for that.’ Laurie turned away, releasing herself from Charles’ grip, but she did not recoil, instead remaining within his grasp. ‘They hate me so much, I can tell. Nothing will change that.’

‘They don’t hate you Laurie, they are just hurting.’

‘Why don’t you hate me?’ Charles frowned at the absurdity of the question. ‘I mean, you loved Lorna,’ Laurie explained. ‘And yet you don’t see her when you look at me, you see me. And when you do look at me, you don’t look like you’ve just had your heart ripped out and then smashed on the floor, you look pleased.’

‘That’s because I am pleased,’ Charles was so close to Laurie, knelt beside her still, that he could smell the gentle citrus fragrance of her perfume which floated on the air between them and intoxicated his senses.

‘You are very kind. I can see why Lorna was so fond of you,’ Laurie smiled whilst the voice at the back of her mind screamed in protest, reminding her how he may well have been responsible for her sister’s death. But for the moment Laurie chose to ignore her internal warnings. Charles was her only ally in London, and if she had to remain there for a few more days, she didn’t want to have completely alienated everyone. ‘But what does it all mean?’ Why would someone take evidence from Lorna’s case file?’

‘That’s what I’m trying to find out.’ Charles rose to his feet, his knees creaking angrily at the unfamiliar movement of kneeling, and returned to behind his desk. Being in such close proximity to Laurie was clouding his thoughts and the temptation to reach out and kiss her had been almost too much to bear. He needed some physical distance to regain some clarity.

‘Have you contacted the police? Asked them where the missing file is?’ Laurie asked demandingly.

‘I’m doing everything I can,’ Charles sighed. ‘But I can’t exactly call up the station personally, and nor can you. We need to be more subtle in our movements. If someone is hiding something then we don’t want them to realise that we are looking.’

‘But I don’t understand who would do that!’

‘Well, that’s what we are hoping to figure out.’

Laurie shook her golden hair in frustration and crossed her arms across her chest in a stubborn gesture.

‘I hate all this waiting around,’ she protested.

‘I know,’ Charles agreed, and then, lowering his tone he asked, ‘Do you know anyone who would want to harm your sister?’

‘Only you!’ Laurie wanted to blurt out, but instead she looked at him incredulously.

‘No, no-one. Everyone loved Lorna; she was like this ray of sunshine that everyone wanted to bask in.’

‘Yes,’ Charles mused in agreement. It occurred to him again how very different the Thomas twins were. Lorna was self-assured and vibrant, whilst Laurie appeared wracked with insecurities and inner turmoil. One twin could be a pop star, the other the troubled lead singer for an indie band. They were the antithesis of one another yet Charles had felt equally drawn to both twins.

‘Sometimes I feel guilty that I’m here and she’s not,’ Laurie confided.

‘Well, you shouldn’t.’

‘Lorna’s the one everyone loved; I was just the sidekick.’

Charles tried to think of the right words to console Laurie as she glanced sadly around the room, her arms still wrapped around her, now offering comfort rather than forming a barrier.

‘If things were the other way around,’ Charles queried. ‘Do you think she would come here and investigate things as you have?’

‘I have no doubt,’ Laurie answered without hesitation.

‘I think that going back home right now is a bad idea.’ Charles said the words even though he didn’t truly believe them. It was obvious how unhappy being in the capital made Laurie, she would undoubtedly benefit from returning to familiar surroundings. But Charles didn’t want her to leave again. He was willing to say or do anything to keep her close to him.

‘I don’t know,’ Laurie shook her head uncertainly. ‘I just don’t think that I’m strong enough to see any of this through.’

‘But you are!’ Charles encouraged. ‘Look how far you have come, all the progress you have made. Once we know where the missing file went, we will all but have our answer.’

‘That’s exactly the point,’ Laurie enthused. ‘What if the file was merely misplaced as an admin error, and it transpires that yes, Lorna did take her own life. I don’t know how I’d take that. I’ve tried to prepare myself for it, but in all honesty, if that is the truth, I’d rather spend the rest of my life being ignorant to it and pretending that she didn’t willingly leave me, that she was taken.’

Charles understood Laurie’s perspective on the situation. Both of them were clinging to the notion that Lorna had been killed, because if it weren’t true, if it had been suicide, then it tainted that love which had ever existed between them either as her sister or her lover.

‘But we need to see this through,’ Charles urged, but Laurie just looked at him with weary eyes.

‘When do we stop torturing ourselves for her death?’ she queried.

‘You tell me.’

‘And what if we find out who was behind her death, what then?’

‘I don’t know yet,’ Charles said quietly. It was a notion he had briefly entertained but he was wary to get his hopes up too much.

‘What would you want to happen?’ he turned the question back around onto Laurie.

‘No idea,’ Laurie shrugged flippantly. ‘Six months ago, I’d have gladly killed whoever had taken my sister’s life because I was so … angry back then. But now, I realise that revenge wouldn’t change anything. But still, I’d want them brought to justice, Lorna deserves that much. Not that I trust in our current justice system all that much; it’s like a revolving door policy, no offence.’

‘None taken.’

‘I’ll stay in London until the end of the month,’ Laurie stated after a brief silence had settled between them. ‘That gives us two weeks which I think is adequate. But I will be going home this weekend regardless.’

‘Oh?’

‘It’s my birthday, which means it would have been Lorna’s too,’ Laurie explained quietly.

Charles felt as though his chest was collapsing in on itself but he tried to retain a calm composure. How could he not have been aware of something so pivotal? His cheeks flushed red with shame and a sob began to claw its way up along the back of his throat.

‘You’d better get back to work.’ He managed to dismiss Laurie and wait for the door to click shut behind her before he let the tears of shock and anguish fall. It had been one year, how could he not have known?

As Laurie walked home, slowly becoming accustomed to being jolted by eager passers-by on the pavement, she felt her phone whir to life in her coat pocket. Instinctively she ignored it. She was still cautious about city life and felt that wandering around with a phone stuck to her ear would make her a target for potential muggers. When she was within the relative safety of Lorna’s modest apartment she removed the phone from her pocket and noticed that she had seven missed calls from Arthur. Sighing, Laurie flung the mobile device onto her bed.

When she returned from showering, the number of missed calls had risen to twelve. Whatever Arthur wanted, it was important enough to warrant persistence and so Laurie felt compelled to return the call. She dialled his number and he answered after just one ring.

‘Where the hell have you been?’ he greeted her angrily.

‘At work,’ Laurie answered flatly, in no mood for an argument.

‘Well, I’ve been worried about you,’ Arthur continued, his voice softening.

‘Why?’

‘You’ve not been in touch since you went back to London.’’ There was an element of hurt within Arthur’s voice which made Laurie feel guilty. She kept vowing to stop neglecting the man she had once loved so dearly and yet she seemed fated to remain on her current path of self-sabotage.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve just been so busy.’ It was a poor excuse but it was all Laurie could muster under pressure.

‘Right, okay.’

‘So is everything alright … back home?’ Laurie crossed her legs beneath her as she sat on her bed.

‘Same as ever,’ Arthur replied sadly. ‘You’ll be home this weekend, won’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘Apparently there is going to be a memorial service at the town hall to commemorate her birthday which everyone is going to.’

‘What bullshit,’ Laurie said nastily.

‘How is it?’ Arthur asked defensively.

‘We’ve had the memorial service, at the funeral. Why do people insist of reliving truly terrible things? It’s ridiculous!’ Laurie fumed.

‘Yeah, I guess it is,’ Arthur reluctantly agreed. ‘I guess that means you won’t be going to it?’

‘No, Art, I won’t. Seems people forget it’s my birthday too.’

‘People are just trying to come together and make sense of it all. Not everyone is as strong as you are, Laurie.’

‘I’m not strong,’ Laurie protested.

‘It shook the whole community up, a beautiful young girl taking her own life like that.’

‘Lorna did not kill herself!’ Laurie screamed the words so loud that she feared the entire apartment block would have heard her.

‘Yeah, of course,’ Arthur answered but it was obvious from his tone that he was not convinced.

‘Why have you even called me?’ Laurie asked angrily, her mood now well and truly soured.

‘Because, I think that when you come home this weekend you should stay. No more running off to London and no more running away from me. Laurie, it’s been months. I’m tired of waiting around for you to love me again.’