‘Go as fast as you can,’ she demanded the driver, rolling down the window and letting her hair dance in the breeze.
Back in the flat, Georgia lay on her back looking at the crack of light poking through the heavy damask curtains that never quite shut properly. Her eyes were closing. Why was her bedroom suddenly so big and so small at the same time? Where was Lauren? She wanted Marcus. Who she loved waking up next to. A man who spoke only when he had something important to say, unlike her, who rabbited away non-stop, unable to stand any silences. If Marcus were here, he could nuzzle into her neck and hold her tight, make the nausea and spinning stop. Georgia vomited. Thick white clumps of bread from dinner earlier that night reappeared. Some of it caught in her throat. Why couldn’t she move it? She tried to cough. Her mouth was coated with chemicals. The room was being played around her through an old projector. She vomited again. Then stillness.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
‘I took her home and left her,’ Lauren managed to whisper. ‘I left her alone to die and fucked off back to a party to chase a man who never really gave a toss about me.’
Her waxen face was starting to scare Jessie, as was the way she kept licking her chapped lips and flashing her sharp teeth. Lauren clawed at the table, frantic with her own stupidity. In the early days after Georgia’s death, she would sit at the table for what felt like hours on end, clutching at the blanket Georgia had been wrapped in as a baby, unable to face going anywhere near the bedroom where she’d found her sister lying stiff and cold that sunny afternoon. Marcus and Beth would pass through the kitchen too, sometimes silently, sometimes not, equally as fragmented.
‘When Beth and I came home the next day, we thought she was covered in porridge or something at first,’ Lauren said flatly. ‘She was already cold. It was so sunny that day and the flat was boiling, but Georgia felt like a block of ice.’
Jessie hardly dared to breathe as she listened. The thought of having to live with that guilt, getting up and putting it on each morning along with your socks and underwear. Carrying it with you to the bathroom, to clean your teeth and shower, yet never feeling clean …
‘My parents and Marcus think she got too drunk and choked to death and I don’t want to tarnish their memory of her by telling them that she regularly took drugs at parties too. But everyone did, it was so normal in that scene. Marcus never liked the drugs side of things, he wouldn’t touch them. Ever. If he’d have been there that night everything could have been different. It’s my fault she’s gone.’
Jessie was stunned; she couldn’t imagine Marcus with a partner. He always seemed so vacant, so glassy-eyed. But this would explain it. She should have been kinder to him.
‘Marcus was Georgia’s boyfriend?’
Lauren nodded, her face still contorting with anguish.
‘I couldn’t look in the mirror for months afterwards, all I could see was her. That’s why Beth left, it tipped her over the edge because she loved Georgia too. It’s why Marcus never sleeps …’ Lauren paused to draw breath, looking as though each inhale was taking extreme effort.
That’s why she had heard those strange noises in the middle of the night – Marcus’s insomnia had left him wide awake, pacing around his room, Jessie realised. She watched as Lauren tore off strips from the kitchen roll sheet and let them flutter to the floor, feeling an instant urge to want to tidy them up. To try and brush them clean away along with all the horrible things she now knew. A woman had died in her bedroom. How laughable that she’d been fearful of an old locket without even knowing the half of it.
‘I knew it’d be difficult having somebody else move in, but Magda and I clicked really well and, for a while, things felt like they might actually be getting better. She was so understanding and patient with me, and made me feel good about myself when I thought I never could again. I even bleached my hair to try and look more like her after she said it would suit me. I was so alone. I wanted to look like – to be like – anyone but me,’ Lauren continued, her voice cracking.
She was shivering inside the oversized hoody.
‘Why would Marcus want to stay in the flat?’ said Jessie, finally, needing to fill the heavy silence. ‘After all that?’
A tear dashed down Lauren’s cheek and clung to her chin, wobbling precariously.
‘He says he owes it to Georgia to keep an eye on me. He doesn’t know that I was the one to give her the drugs. That I didn’t stay with her.’
Jessie pictured her bedroom back in Chesterbury and wished she’d never left. Why had she bothered coming back here to collect her clothes? They were just clothes. She desperately wanted to get back in her car and drive far away from this stifling kitchen.
‘We’ve become so close, you and I. Haven’t we?’ Lauren started again, rocking back and forth in her chair. ‘I’d do anything not to lose you, I can’t afford that, Jessie … Do you understand? My parents were so worried about me after Georgia died, they had me admitted to hospital. They locked me up and made me take pills off a tray morning, noon and night. But you keep me steady, that’s why I had to keep you safe.’
Jessie’s heart was beating so hard that her T-shirt moved in time with it.
‘Keep me safe?’ she asked, her tongue feeling far too big for her mouth.
Upstairs, months’ worth of Lauren’s medication lay untouched in her bedroom. Ditching her mood stabilisers had made it even easier to do what she needed to do in order to keep Jessie close.
‘I protected you from Ian – he’s not as nice as he’d have everyone think, you know,’ Lauren growled, stopping swaying and immediately looking angry. ‘He was obsessed with you and I stopped it, I saved you from him.’
‘What do you mean, you saved me?’ Jessie asked worriedly.
‘I made sure he never came back’ Lauren replied, sounding proud.
She explained to Jessie how she’d spotted the pair of black lace knickers dangling out of Ian’s pocket and what she had done the next time he had come over, with yet another flimsy excuse of needing to check the shower for leaks – that one had made her laugh at least.
‘Coffee, Ian?’ Lauren had asked, peering up through her long lashes.
‘Love one, thanks.’
She could feel him ogling the shadow of her cleavage through her thin vest top.
‘Did you want to sort the bathroom now while I make it?’
Once Ian had gone upstairs, she’d cracked open one of the spare cartridges for her electronic cigarette with a penknife. It contained a mix of toxic chemicals, including pure nicotine. Lauren knew this was unlikely to kill him – she wouldn’t want that on her conscience, after all – but it would definitely leave Ian unwell enough so that the message would sink in. That he was sick. Being bedbound also ought to afford him plenty of time to think about his actions. Lauren handed over the coffee with a smile, then watched him drink, merrily stirring her own.
‘I think, now that you’ve nearly finished, you should leave,’ she had said, as soon as Ian could see his bulging eyes staring back at him from the bottom of the mug.
Her voice was level, eerily calm, confusing. Something wasn’t right.
‘Yes? Of course, lots to do back in the office.’
‘I don’t think you should come back, either.’ Lauren had waited a few beats, until she could practically hear the cogs in Ian’s head grinding. ‘Because I know what you’ve been doing and I’m sure your boss would like to know all about it too. About all these unauthorised and unnecessary visits, the goodies you’ve picked up along the way.’
It was then that she’d sipped her own poison-free coffee serenely, enjoying watching him squirm and stammer. Ian tried to deny that he’d done anything below board, but they both knew there was no point. She had him nailed.
‘Don’t think I’m not serious, ‘Lauren had said, swallowing down the last dregs, still smiling. ‘You’ll soon learn that I’m not the type of woman who does things by halves.’
Ian had pushed his chair back in a hurry and tr
ied to exit with his dignity still intact. She was bluffing, he figured. Until he got back to the Happy Homes offices, when he started being violently sick in the staff toilet.
Jessie’s face looked aghast as she listened in horror at what Lauren had done. None of what she was hearing felt real.
‘I rescued you from Rob too,’ Lauren boasted, smiling and covering one of Jessie’s clenched fists with her icy fingers. ‘It’s so important that we don’t ever let any men come between us. You know, it’s like everyone says, mates before dates.’
Jessie snatched her fist back, eyes widening, but couldn’t speak. All sense of time had disappeared. She was utterly paralysed with fear, unable to decide if she should run or carry on listening to Lauren. Her friend, her flatmate, the person she’d been living with for all these months. She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
‘Hey, don’t be like that.’ Lauren looked cross, reaching out to grab her hand again. ‘He obviously didn’t care about you. All I had to do was intercept him on his way to the bathroom and tell him you have a boyfriend, then he was off.’
Jessie spotted a glint of gold on Lauren’s wrist. Her old charm bracelet, the one she’d thought had been lost during her move and which Lauren had so kindly and thoughtfully replaced. This couldn’t be happening.
The night that Rob had come back to Maver Place, Lauren had lain awake listening to his piglike grunting and Jessie’s disingenuous moans, feeling more threatened by the second. It was exactly like being a teenager again and waiting for Georgia to sneak back into the house after her secret trysts with the football captain. The rhythmic banging of the bed against the wall felt like a personal attack on Lauren’s senses. She had turned her headphones up and screamed into a pillow, but still they continued. She couldn’t stand that somebody else should come between her and Jessie, the way stupid Henry had with her and Sofie. Her friendship with Jessie was something Lauren knew she had to protect at any cost. This Rob, a complete nobody, had made himself right at home, in her flat. He was clearly just another conceited imbecile of a man, like Henry. Nowhere near good enough for Jessie. They didn’t need men or relationships, when they had each other. Luckily, Jessie had left her phone in her coat pocket that night too – and it hadn’t been hard to guess the passcode for it. A few quick touches and Priya’s number was blocked. Another rope tying Jessie to other people had been easily snipped. Off they went, snip, snip, snip, one by one.
‘No, Lauren, no!’ Jessie shook her head in disbelief.
She bent forward and began to search quietly through her handbag on the floor. Where were the car keys? Lauren lowered herself down too, to meet Jessie’s eye line and give a disbelieving laugh, snorting like a wild horse.
‘Yes, Jessie, yes. You have to remember that I’m half-dead myself now,’ she said, a manic light dancing in her eyes. ‘But I’m the most loyal friend you’ll ever have.’
Little specks of spit escaped from either side of Lauren’s mouth. Jessie’s chest heaved. She had to get out. Why weren’t her feet unsticking? The colours of the kitchen were all wrong.
‘It was me who attacked you, to teach you what real pain feels like. I needed somebody I could bond with over that, someone who’d get what it feels like to be rejected and ground down by the world. I had to do it, so you’d need me more than ever and to bring us even closer.’
Jessie heard her heart beating relentlessly in her ears like a military drum, all senses heightened. It was Lauren who had hurt her. Matthew hadn’t been involved, it wasn’t a stranger taking their chances after seeing her drunk. She had been broken by one of her best friends, turned into a quivering wreck who couldn’t sleep without pills or wine. Who was too afraid to leave her room. It made sense now, of course, that Lauren would want her trapped inside. Right where she could see her, where she could never escape, the way Georgia had tried to. The way Magda almost did.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Jessie opened her mouth to answer, then closed it. She stared hard at Lauren, and couldn’t believe that she had once looked up to her – she’d seemed so confident and self-assured when they had first met. So many questions swam through her mind, she didn’t know where to begin. The betrayal was crushing. How had it come to this? When she left Matthew, she swore to herself, to Priya and the universe, that she’d never succumb to another’s control again. Yet she’d walked right into the arms of her next predator, paying £600 a month for the privilege. Her head was spinning, the scar on the back of her skull burned.
‘It really wasn’t easy hurting you,’ Lauren said, unblinking. ‘But I had to protect you from yourself, to show you that bad things will happen when you go off alone. That we have to stick together.’
She was speaking at a thousand miles an hour, her words rattling off like bullets and spraying all around the room, catching Jessie in the head and heart.
‘I only wanted to scare you, but once I’d started I found I couldn’t stop. I thought you’d seen me so I had to keep going, until I knew you’d blacked out and … wouldn’t remember.’
Hearing that, Jessie felt hot bile rise up in her throat. She thought of her limp body lying trampled on in the Pavilion Gardens, the way she’d looked up at the sky and cried out, covered in the freezing rain. All because of Lauren. Who’d then stroked her brow, made her tea, kept her locked in the house.
‘It was nothing like hurting Magda – I’d do that again for you in a heartbeat. She’s not the sort of person you should have been getting involved with, she’s dishonest and selfish.’
After reading Jessie’s Facebook messages on her phone, while she was bedbound following the attack, Lauren had contacted Magda and convinced her that they ought to meet. She claimed the locket had been passed on to her to return.
Jessie said it’s best that I give it to you, it would be good to clear the air too.
Magda, kind-hearted and gullible, had eventually agreed.
Perhaps we could meet along the seafront? Somewhere public and on neutral ground, she’d said. Lauren had agreed.
Once Lauren had wrapped up a long day of shooting at work, she waited under the glow of a street lamp for Magda to arrive, watching the sea roll around in the darkness. It was a quiet night. They’d planned to head down to the promenade to where a few bars would still be open, to talk. But as soon as Lauren saw Magda walking towards her, with a wary look in her eyes, a match was lit inside. This was the woman who’d once rented Georgia’s, her dead sister’s, bedroom, who’d promised to be there for her, but who had then abandoned her. Magda, the woman she hadn’t seen or heard from in months, was now right there in front of her. In touching distance.
Lauren remembered how much she’d looked up to Magda, admired her, and thought she’d finally found someone who could help her out of the all-consuming grief she was so deeply entrenched in. She’d thought Magda so inspiring for studying midwifery. For wanting to bring new life into the world, the total opposite of loss. Lauren had even cut and dyed her hair to look more like Magda’s too, which she’d seemed to approve of initially. But then, when Lauren had started speaking about going back to university to train as a midwife too, and told her the truth about how Georgia had died, and where, Magda had upped and left in the middle of the night. Claiming in a note that Lauren was too ‘intense’, ‘unstable’ and needed ‘more professional help’. The blaze in Lauren’s chest grew. She didn’t want to talk and clear the air after all. How dare Magda now try and warn Jessie away? When she knew how much hurt Lauren had already had to claw her way tooth and nail through. She’d been different this time, so careful, with Jessie too, deliberately fighting back the urge to copy her style in case it scared her off. That lesson had been learnt; and besides, she’d seen the way Jessie reacted when Sofie had tried to. She’d done everything ‘right’ and yet it was still at risk of going wrong. Lauren had shoved Magda towards the concrete block of stairs that connected the street to the beachfront below. She’d stumbled.
‘What the… Lauren? What are you do
ing?’
Magda had shaken her head and gripped at the rail.
‘You betrayed me, Magda, in the worst way, when I was at rock bottom. You left me. How could you do that?’
Flecks of spittle formed in the corner of Lauren’s mouth.
‘Stop it. Just give me the necklace,’ Magda had pleaded. ‘I’ve kept all your secrets, I swear. I just want my jewellery back, it’s really important to me.’
It had felt good seeing her be the weaker of the two for a change, the one who didn’t have a choice in what happened next. So Lauren had pushed her again. Harder. Magda had fallen backwards, lost her grip, her hands grabbing helplessly at the air looking for something to hold on to but finding nothing. She hit each solid block on the way down the steps with a loud thwacking sound, then fell silent. Lauren had laughed. A bit of power went a long way, that adrenaline rush was an easy addiction to succumb to. It was a new and welcome feeling.
‘Get up Magda, stop being stupid,’ she had shouted, running down to where Magda lay, nudging at her with her foot.
Magda didn’t respond. She’d remained in a limp heap at the bottom of the steps. Lauren panicked, her cold breath spiralling into the air. Magda’s eyes were open but unfocused, her head at an odd angle. God, no. It had been an accident. Lauren had never meant for it to go this far. She’d just wanted to scare Magda, to show her how it felt to be walked all over by a person she’d once loved. There was nobody around to ask for help and no way Lauren could call an ambulance. The wind howled in her ears, screaming that she had to keep quiet. She’d been covering up her other mistake for so long – this couldn’t be the reason everything else unravelled. Magda had to stay quiet too. Lauren bent down and checked her pulse. It was there, in her wrist, but incredibly faint.
The Wrong Move Page 26
