by Carys Jones
‘Just juice please,’ Charles said as he sat down and continued to fiddle with his cufflinks.
‘But I’ve made you breakfast!’ Elaine said indignantly, the façade of the perfect wife beginning to fall away.
‘Thank you but I’m not hungry.’
Charles was in no mood to deal with his wife. He wished she had just remained in her bed and he could have slipped away without a further altercation between them. Today Laurie would be stepping into Lorna’s shoes and he needed to remain focused. The thought of seeing Laurie filled him with both excitement and dread which left him feeling an overwhelming sense of nausea.
‘I go up early especially to make you breakfast!’ Elaine felt the blood rush to her cheeks as her anger began to take hold.
‘And I’m grateful, but you shouldn’t have bothered. I always eat at the office,’ Charles explained calmly.
Elaine stood over the now-cooked omelette and raised a hand to her temple. Her temper, she knew, was not the only fly in the ointment of her marriage but it was still an issue. If she flew into a rage now, she risked pushing Charles even further away.
‘You must sit on your feelings and concentrate on addressing his,’ her mother had advised her many years ago when she was a blushing bride. ‘His burdens become yours; it is the price we must pay for marrying men destined for greatness.’
‘Yes, mother.’ As a young woman, Elaine had been naïve as to how costly that price would be. Whatever dreams she had harboured as a girl had dissolved away until she was left an aging woman, lonely in a house too grand for its two occupants, estranged even from the man whom she had devoted her life to.
‘I’m sorry darling, I should have thought.’ Elaine smiled at her husband but her eyes remained sorrowful. ‘What juice would you like, orange or grapefruit?’
‘Orange please.’
Charles watched his wife reach into the refrigerator and retrieve the carton of juice. Her movements appeared sluggish and heavy, weighed down by her own sadness. There was a time when he would try to sympathise and understand what was wrong, but despite his efforts he had never been able to traverse the dark depths of Elaine’s mind. He had found that it was best to let her remove herself from her own melancholy than to intervene. Usually, when she appeared disillusioned, he would arrange for the delivery of flowers, and her fog of sadness would immediately lift as she was so easily appeased by the gesture of foliage.
‘I’m lucky to have such a wonderful wife.’ He paid Elaine the compliment as she laid down his glass of juice even though he didn’t truly mean it. Just like Simon in his office, she immediately brightened and mentally clung to the little nugget of praise.
‘It is I who is the lucky one.’ Elaine’s smile was now genuine as she leant and laid a kiss upon her husband’s forehead, slightly staining his skin to the colour of her lips.
‘Work is, as ever, horrifically busy, so I apologise if I can appear distracted at times.’
‘You don’t need to make excuses to me.’ Elaine smiled at her husband as he drained his glass of juice and then rose to his feet.
‘I’d best be off,’ Charles declared, still feeling awkward in this foreign morning routine.
‘Of course, you have a country to run,’ Elaine beamed proudly.
The Bentley entered the street with the finesse and stealth of a prowling feline. Charles was soon within it, being escorted into the capital city. Elaine watched the vehicle leave from behind her handmade silk curtains. She knew that, as perfect as her home was, it may as well have been made of cards because it could all so easily come tumbling to the ground all around her.
Chapter Six
Not all questions have answers
Simon Pruit placed down the documents which he had been cradling in his arms like a baby and beamed with pride. Less than a week had expired since the Deputy Prime Minister personally assigned him the task, and here he was, days before the deadline, delivering the results. Simon felt exhilarated by his own success.
He regarded the neat pile of papers, now sat upon the desk which belonged to Charles Lloyd, and allowed his mind to briefly fantasise about how his hard work could ultimately benefit him. Simon scanned the dated office, mentally noting the changes he would make if his dreams managed to somehow come true and one day he was settling himself into the seat of power.
Time was not on Simon Pruit’s side. He was already on the wrong side of thirty and far from settling down in either his private or professional life. In the mornings, he would notice how his hairline had begun to recede, and the hair that remained was thinning rapidly. Lines had appeared beneath his eyes which deepened day by day. Simon did not embrace these signs of aging, going to great lengths to hide them. His ritual every Saturday morning was to browse the local supermarket and surreptitiously purchase male hair dye in order to disguise the shades of grey which had started to flash beneath his naturally dark hair colour.
To Simon, the whole world felt youth obsessed and it was a race in which he was no longer eligible to enter. His job was good, but not great. At his age, social expectations meant that he should either be married with children in tow, or at least divorced, or almost at the pinnacle of his career. Simon Pruit was none of these. His infrequent rendezvous with rent boys dismissed the notion of a family, and his professional life seemed to have stalled.
But Simon trusted Charles Lloyd. He found the current Deputy Prime Minister to be enigmatic and sincere. It was these qualities which drew people to him and helped him retain his position amongst the party. Simon knew that if he aligned himself to Charles, he was protecting his own future. Behind his back, people mocked his loyalty, cruelly labelling him as ‘Charles’ spaniel.’ Simon was aware of the malicious comments but ignored them for they did not matter. He respected Charles and enjoyed working for him. His loyalty would not waver.
Simon cast one last cursory eye over the documents he had just bought in. The continuing focus on youth seemed to taunt him, yet Simon was certain of the Deputy Prime Minister’s true intentions for the investigation. Simon Pruit was many things, but he was no idiot. His power of perception only sharpened with age, and whilst Lorna Thomas had not been to his personal taste, there was no denying her beauty. The colour had flushed to Charles’ cheeks ever so slightly when Simon had mentioned her name, confirming what the loyal aide had long suspected. Simon recognised the shame of sexual deviancy when he saw it, as it was a look he had been forced to wear for many years.
Satisfied that his documents were in decent order, Simon left the office, giving a polite nod to Faye as he left, not noticing the petite blonde who was typing away on the computer beside her.
When Charles returned to his office later that day he was careful not to make eye contact with Laurie. He could make her out, just at the edge of his peripheral vision, working diligently, but he chose not to address her for fear of drawing unwanted attention to her. He had strictly instructed Laurie to talk to as few people as possible; ideally she would liaise only with himself and Faye.
‘Oh sir, Mr. Pruit left some documents in your office for you,’ Faye called after Charles. His quickened step past her work station had almost completely removed her opportunity to relay messages to him.
‘Right, great.’ Charles did not turn as he responded but was surprised by Simon’s efficiency. He had clearly underestimated just how determined the man could be.
The pile of documents loomed large on his desk, cutting a foreboding shadow across his floor. Charles sat down behind them and lifted the first half of the pile towards him. The papers were heavy with their morbid knowledge. Simon was renowned for being meticulously organised and he had not disappointed; the police reports were arranged alphabetically, making it easy for Charles to locate the file for Lorna.
As his fingers picked through the pile of paper, Charles felt his heart become weighted. There were so many names, so many methods of self-elimination:
John Callows, 22, overdose
Sarah Danbridge, 24, sla
shing of the radial and ulnar arteries
Dan Eastham, 23, asphyxiation
When did the youth of his nation become so disenchanted? Charles couldn’t help but feel as though he had failed the people whose final moments his eyes now scanned over. To feel so utterly desperate that the only release was to take your own life, the thought made Charles sick to his stomach. And to attach that mentality to Lorna was even worse. Lorna – who entered a room and bought the sunlight with her. To imagine such a self-destructive darkness within her was unbearable.
Towards the bottom of the pile, Charles found Lorna’s file.
Lorna Celia Thomas, 22
An officer with the Kent Police Constabulary had filed the report. When the emergency services arrived on the scene, Lorna was already dead, having crashed her car straight into a tree. She was declared dead on the scene and a preliminary examination of her car ruled out a malfunction of the vehicle, yet the full report from this was missing.
Charles read and re-read the report until his eyes stung, each time failing to absorb the facts. The coroner predicated that from the extent of the damage, Lorna had been travelling at least 60 miles per hour when her car collided head on with the great oak tree. Her small body had smashed against the steering wheel with such force that it had entered and punctured both her lungs instantly, as her head smacked against the dashboard and then ricocheted back, snapping her neck and disabling all her motor skills. Her death had been instant, and by all accounts, deliberate.
The words were there but Charles did not want to believe them. Lorna was his angel. Why would someone so wonderful and so precious want to cease to exist? And the thought which furthered his despair was that, possibly, his own actions had caused her to turn to such desperate measures. Had the pain of their affair ending made her want to end her life?
The report sat on Charles’ desk, refusing to change. It pained Charles how the description of events was so clinical. Lorna had been a person, yet here she was referred to as a thing, in the same way a child would recall the internal organs of a frog they had just dissected in a science lab. Charles was far too close to the case to be able to decipher the report clearly; his last ounce of common sense told him that. He needed someone else to review the report, someone more knowledgeable than him about the police and the systems they used.
He had a contact – most politicians did – who ran on the other side of the law. Charles’ man was an ex-policeman who had been stricken off for nearly beating to death a man accused of raping a ten-year-old girl. Charles could still remember the case and sympathised with the man in question, for he was only doing what felt natural. It was everyone else who suppressed their urges and somehow treated a monster civilly. It was out of this empathy that a clandestine friendship was born. The contact now lived his life beyond the law; having turned his back on a system which he felt had failed. But occasionally he assisted in certain matters, for a fee.
Charles placed the document in his fax machine and typed in the familiar number. No cover note was required; the recipient would immediately know what was asked of him. All Charles would receive in response would be a coded response and an invoice. The only time the two men met socially was when Charles visited Switzerland, where his contact now resided. His life and his money were untouched by the government he felt had left him down. Since becoming Deputy Prime Minister, Charles rarely found the time to make the visit, but their contact remained.
As he pressed send, Charles tried to suppress the niggling feeling of doubt which clung to the nape of his neck. He needed answers and there was no other way of getting them. It felt almost dirty to use this route for Lorna, who was so pure. But Charles was determined to uncover the truth, even if he had to use the back door to get there.
Removing the file from the fax machine, Charles knew he had to share its content with one last person.
‘Faye,’ he picked up his internal telephone and addressed his assistant. ‘Can you please send Miss Thomas in?’
Faye rolled her eyes at the instruction and shook her head. Even though she knew she should be obedient and follow orders, she couldn’t fight the urge to intervene.
‘What do you need her for?’ she asked the Deputy Prime Minister through the receiver, blatantly challenging his motives, aware that this subtle act of deviance could easily cost her her career but unwillingly to stand idly by whilst the man conducted yet another affair.
‘I need some help on the project Simon was working on, just basic filing. I’d ask you to do it, Faye, but I’m sure you have more pressing tasks to deal with.’ The response came automatically to Charles. He reconciled himself with the fact that it was only a half-lie. If he was annoyed by Faye’s behaviour, it wasn’t evident in his tone.
‘Right, I’ll send her in then,’ Faye scowled in annoyance as she hung up the receiver.
‘He wants to see you,’ she informed Laurie who was still typing at the other computer.
‘Oh, okay.’ Laurie stood up and smoothed down the pencil skirt she was wearing which felt tight and obstructed her movement in a way she wasn’t accustomed to. She missed the freedom her favourite pair of jeans gave her. The concept of dressing up for work bemused Laurie as it was hardly a cause for any sort of celebration. In her mind, comfort mattered more than aesthetics. But Lorna adored fashion and tolerated all the discomfort that came with it and so Laurie felt obliged to currently abide by her dead twin’s rules.
Of the entire outfit, Laurie’s least favourite article was the black stiletto shoes which had almost landed her a ride in an ambulance that morning. She precariously placed one foot in front of the other, trying to not let the veil of gracefulness she had so carefully applied slip.
Faye pitied Laurie. Not only had she lost her sister but now she was voluntarily walking straight into the lion’s den.
‘Do yourself a favour,’ Faye called to Laurie as she about to enter the Deputy Prime Minister’s office, ‘and don’t be as stupid as your sister.’
Whilst Faye’s words were unnecessarily harsh the meaning was not lost on Laurie. She nodded solemnly in acknowledgment and opened the door.
For a moment, Charles had to remind himself the Lorna was dead and buried, for had he not known this, he would have believed that she was now standing in his office. Laurie had completely morphed into her deceased twin. From the smart shoes, to the tailored clothes and the blonde hair neatly stacked in to a tight bun on the back of her head, Laurie was every inch Lorna. Even her mannerisms now mimicked her sister more, like the way her head titled to the side in awkward embarrassment as Charles looked her over.
‘I’m sorry,’ Charles tried to gather his senses, remembering that he should be behaving with more decorum. ‘It’s just, you look so much like her, even more than normal!’
‘Yeah, I know. It’s freaking me out too.’ Laurie shifted uncomfortably in her heels. She didn’t like how all her life she had tried to create an identity of her own, and yet here she was in this costume, becoming Lorna. It all felt so false and wrong.
‘Please, sit down.’ Charles sensed Laurie’s unease and pulled out a chair for her.
‘You don’t have to dress up every day if it makes you uncomfortable,’ he suggested as Laurie settled herself, instantly kicking off the shoes which were already turning her delicate feet red and sore.
‘But then I’ll stick out more. Everyone here dresses like they are attending a wedding, it’s so creepy. This morning, a girl asked me who my shoes were. She’s like, “who are your shoes?” What is that? My shoes are shoes, inanimate objects which protect my feet as I walk!’ As Laurie spoke she became impassioned and flung her hands around, just as Lorna had.
‘She’d have been enquiring after the designer. Some women are really in to that sort of thing. My wife, for example, won’t wear anything that isn’t couture.’
An odd hush fell over the room at the mention of Elaine. Charles had spoken of the elephant which sat between them, making him and Laurie instantly feel awkward i
n one another’s company.
‘I’m just saying relax, dress how you like,’ Charles backpedalled, hoping they could bypass the mention of his wife without encroaching upon the topic of his marriage. Laurie already resented him, he sensed that, and he did not intend on giving her further reason to hate him.
‘I feel like a monkey in a goddamn suit.’ Laurie tugged at the bun on her head and an instant later her blonde hair fell down her back and shoulders, perfectly framing her beautiful face.
‘Don’t worry; I’ll tie it back up before I leave. Don’t want your assistant getting ideas.’ Charles looked at Laurie in surprise, the thought not having crossed his mind that the removal of her shoes and hair now loose would imply that they’d had relations in his office. For a moment, the image of Lorna sprawled naked upon his desk flashed through his mind. Would Laurie be identical to her twin in the flesh? Charles physically shook the thought from his mind.
‘She knows about Lorna, doesn’t she?’
‘Yes, she does.’
‘Do you think she’ll go to the papers?’ Laurie frowned, scrutinizing Charles’ face.
‘No.’
‘How do you know?’
‘Because I trust her.’
‘Like your wife trusts you?’ Laurie said bitterly, her words penetrating Charles like tiny darts.
‘I’ve got Lorna’s police report.’ He slid the file across to Laurie, still reeling from her cruel jibe. Clearly, she held him responsible for Lorna’s death which was why she was so hostile towards him. In helping her see the files, perhaps she would warm to him more. But then that could be dangerous. Even now, Charles could barely take his eyes off her as she picked up the file and began to read through its contents.
As Laurie read through the report her face began to contort from confusion into anger.
‘This is bullshit!’ she declared vehemently on completion, smacking the report down on to the table in protest.
‘I know it isn’t what you were hoping for,’ Charles said gently.
