As we walked a short distance, another open door caught my attention. The coat I’d bought Tony the last birthday we’d spent together lay across his bed next to a gaudy, orange cushion. But as I got closer, I realised it wasn’t a cushion, it was a handbag.
An orange handbag.
Janine’s orange handbag.
Janine’s orange handbag with its Chinese dragon design was on my husband’s bed.
CHAPTER EIGHT
RYAN
I clenched my fists. A soft glow of light came from a crack under the front door to my flat.
When I’d pulled up in the car park moments earlier, I was still on a high from coming face to face with Laura again. But I had a feeling that whatever lay beyond the threshold was about to bring me back down to earth with a bang. I hesitated, then slowly turned the handle. It was unlocked. I’d not had a fight since my schooldays and I couldn’t imagine a punch from me would do much damage to whoever was inside.
I moved silently into the hallway and grabbed the heavy glass orb that was on the table. Then I inched my way towards the living room, where I could hear a rustling sound and drawers being opened and closed. I edged closer until I could get a better view of what I was up against.
‘Jesus!’ I yelled.
Johnny spun around, every bit as surprised as me.
‘You scared the shit out of me,’ I said. ‘What are you doing here? How did you get in?’
‘I still have my key.’ His voice was deadpan.
It was only then that I noticed the doors to the sideboard were open, along with the bureau where I kept my bills and paperwork. Scattered across the top were photographs of Laura’s family that I’d taped to the walls of the cottage and the rope I’d fashioned into a noose.
Days after my first confrontation with Laura in the cottage and with my stab wound still aching, I’d been back to rid the place of any traces of that night, including wiping the floorboards clean of my blood. I’d dumped everything in a black recycling bin. Only now, four months later, did I remember that I hadn’t put the bin out to be collected; I’d left it in the back garden where it had remained ever since.
‘Are you going through my stuff ?’ I asked. He ignored my question.
‘Whose house were you parked outside for hours on Wednesday night?’
‘What, are you following me now?’
‘That’s neither here nor there. It’s what you were doing outside that house that matters to me.’
My first reaction was to feel shame at being caught. Every so often, I’d drive slowly past Laura’s home, occasionally parking by the side of the road, wondering what she was doing inside. Sometimes I’d stay for five minutes; other times, hours passed before I’d noticed. But it wasn’t as if I had anywhere else to be.
My second reaction was to fly off the handle.
‘You’re snooping around my home?’ I asked in a raised voice.
‘Damn right I am. Who’s this woman and why are there literally hundreds of photographs of her? And what about the rope? That night you stabbed yourself, you were planning to kill yourself, weren’t you? What was the noose for? A back-up plan in case the knife failed?’
My rage threatened to boil over. ‘Get out, Johnny, or you and I are going to really fall out.’
‘Not until you tell me the truth.’
‘Johnny, I said get out!’
‘And I said no. I’m not leaving until you tell me what this is all about.’
His stubbornness left me incensed. I went to grab his arm, but he moved it away quickly and shoved me hard in the chest. His swiftness took me by surprise and I lost my balance and sprawled across the armchair, making my healing wound ache. I rose to my feet and launched myself at him a second time, only he was more solid than I remembered. He grabbed my collar and pushed me backwards until I was pinned to the wall and his face was inches from mine, his forearm under my chin.
‘Get this though your thick fucking head!’ he shouted. ‘I am your brother, but I am not leaving this flat until you tell me what you’ve done.’
I breathed hard and fast, trying to conjure up alternative reasons to explain my behaviour, but I couldn’t think of anything fast enough. Then as quick as a heartbeat, everything came to a head – losing Charlotte, discovering what Laura had done, tracking her down, the stabbing, what I’d done to Effie and our face-to-face confrontation earlier in the day. Every emotion under the sun came to a head and there was nothing I could do to stop them from gushing out of me. My body grew heavy and Johnny’s arms weren’t strong enough to stop me from collapsing to my knees. He joined me there and didn’t say a word as I cried like a baby.
Later that night, we sat at opposite ends of the dining-room table, four empty bottles of beer between us. I was unable to look him in the eye while he digested everything I told him, from the moments I was proud of to those I felt a secret shame for. I was honest with him about everything. Johnny didn’t interrupt me; his face didn’t move. Only when he was sure I’d finished did he reply.
‘What’s your endgame, Ry?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What’s the point to all of this? Where’s it going to lead? What do you want to get out of it?’
‘I want to make Laura understand what she’s done – that she can’t play God with people’s lives.’
‘And you think scaring her and screwing with her daughter’s head is going to achieve that?’
‘Yes . . . no . . . I’m not sure. I don’t know. But what else am I supposed to do? Do nothing and let the same thing happen to the next Charlotte?’
‘Do you understand what you did to that teenage girl – your pupil – is just as bad as what her mother did to Charlotte?’
‘It’s not the same thing because I’ve not tried to talk anyone into killing themselves.’
‘How do you know that when Laura and her husband got home they didn’t find their daughter had hurt herself ?’
‘Because I know the kind of girl Effie is. A few hurt feelings, a bruised ego, that’s all. She’ll get over it.’
‘Listen to yourself, bro. If you’re being really honest with yourself, you have no idea of the lasting damage you’ve done to her. You chose to bring her into this. She’s just a pawn in the game you’re playing with her mum. And the worst thing is, you don’t care.’
I shook my head. ‘You haven’t met Effie. You don’t know what she was like before I started this.’
‘And you know what? I don’t care. Because she is a teenage girl. This is what teenage girls are like. What you did to her is so, so wrong, and on so many levels. You should feel ashamed of yourself.’
I felt my face turn red. I rubbed my scratchy eyes with the palms of my hands. When I stared at Johnny, for a moment I recognised the man I could have been had I never found Charlotte’s hidden files and read about the Helpline Heroine. Once, my younger brother and I had looked so much alike. Now when I looked at him, a much older, darker version of me was reflected in his eyes. I knew that everything he was saying to me was true, but I didn’t want to admit it.
‘So if you have all the answers, you tell me what I should’ve done, then,’ I said.
‘I’d have gone to the police with the recordings of your phone conversations and told them what I think Laura did.’