by Carys Jones
‘My sister would not kill herself! Jesus Christ!’ Laurie threw her arms up in despair, a mixture of rage and anguish coursing through her veins. ‘You know this is bullshit, right? I mean, who drives a car into a tree? It makes no sense. She was fine. Everything was fine. She’d come home for the weekend, we watched a movie that afternoon, she was good. If something was wrong, I’d have known!’ The anger gave way to sadness and Laurie felt the all-too-familiar sensation of tears falling down her cheeks.
A part of her was terrified that perhaps she was wrong, that Lorna had ended her own life and she had just been too stubborn to see it. But she refused to accept, couldn’t accept, that. There had to be another explanation and she was determined to find it.
‘There was no way you could have known,’ Charles said soothingly.
‘The car. Where is the report on the car?’ Laurie ignored the Deputy Prime Minister and began to eagerly leaf through the report once more.
‘There must have been something wrong with the car,’ she theorised aloud.
‘Potentially, I guess,’ Charles agreed, aware that he too was clinging on to that same glimmer of hope. ‘I admit it was odd that the information on the vehicle was missing.’
‘This isn’t Lorna.,’ Laurie smacked the document down and then wiped her hand across her damp eyes, blackening her porcelain cheeks with mascara in the process. ‘Lorna would not have done this. She loved life. She had a million dreams for the future. People who wish to die do not dream. You knew her; you can’t believe she’d do this.’
‘No, I don’t.’ Charles felt relieved to vocalise the admission.
‘The stigma of Lorna having committed suicide is tearing my family apart. My parents blame each other. My mum is a wreck; she can’t handle the thought that she let Lorna down, that she couldn’t take care of her own. I can’t let them go on suffering like this. They need to be at peace, we all do. And the only way we can find respite from all of this is with the truth.’
‘I’ve called a guy; he’s looking into it for me.’
‘A guy?’ Laurie uttered with contempt.
‘He… he’s not in politics, or even with the police force anymore. But he knows his stuff. I use him a lot. He’s got contacts.’ Charles knew that he didn’t need to explain himself but felt compelled to. He yearned for Laurie’s approval with the single-mindedness of a child seeking sweets. She was becoming the centre of his world; the position Lorna had once held.
‘So you believe me? You don’t think that Lorna killed herself?’
‘I don’t know if I don’t believe it or that I don’t want to believe it. Either way, I think it’s worth looking into,’ Charles said cautiously, aware how dangerous it would be to raise Laurie’s hopes only to crush them to dust.
‘Thank you. Knowing that you are on my side, it helps.’ Laurie smiled at him and it was genuine. She looked so hopeless with her makeup smeared and her hair loose and free. Charles felt something stir deep within him as though it were awakening after a period of lying dormant; it was desire.
‘I just … I feel so lost without her,’ Laurie confided, her eyes trained to the floor as she spoke. It was out of character for her to make such a vulnerable admission. Perhaps it was being in the office where Lorna would have been, wearing clothes which she would have chosen, that suddenly made Laurie aware of just how desperately she missed her sister. ‘Until this is resolved I can’t move on. I need to know what happened because a part of me died that day too.’
The compassion Charles felt towards Laurie as she opened up to him welled up inside of him to the point where it felt as though it would come bursting out of his chest.
‘I’m going to look into this as much as I can, I promise you that.’ Charles liked playing the role of the hero. The ability to potentially wade in and rid Laurie of her tears made him feel more powerful and important than his role as Deputy Prime Minister ever had. Her heart was breaking and he was determined to mend it; in his mind there was no greater call to arms.
‘I really do appreciate you helping me.’ Laurie looked up now, locking eyes with Charles, which made his flesh prickle with heat as though his entire body had just caught aflame. ‘I forget that this must be hard for you too.’
As much as Laurie had initially harboured negative feelings towards Charles, he was the only person who was willing to listen to her talk about Lorna. Everyone else, her family, her friends, found it difficult. The resemblance she bore to her deceased sister meant that many people now kept their distance from her, leaving Laurie feeling isolated in her grief. When Charles looked at her, she saw warmth in his eyes, not sadness and pity. Being in his presence was a pleasant respite from the carousel of grief Laurie felt she had been riding upon for the past six months.
‘You just need to be prepared that I might find nothing, that perhaps Lorna did kill herself.’ The words felt bitter, leaving a sour aftertaste in Charles’ mouth, but he felt that he had to say them. He needed to protect Laurie. He felt he had failed one twin, he wasn’t about to do the same thing again.
‘No, you’ll find something. You have to. There is no way Lorna would do something like that. Just no way.’ Even as she spoke, Laurie was aware that she was pinning all her hopes on what was possibly an admin error. Even so, it was hope. And hope was something that Laurie had feared had left her life for good.
Sat across from the Deputy Prime Minister, Laurie began to nervously knit her hands together over and over, the movement distracting her from her own sorrow and from the awkwardness of being in the same room as the man whom her dead sister had indulged in an affair with. Lorna’s weakness had always been men. She had been reluctant to confide in Laurie about the affair, avoiding her twin’s probing questions and lying about her whereabouts.
But Laurie had seen the signs. Lorna was even more cheerful than ever, and would go days without being in touch which was unusual. The only time Lorna was ever not in contact was when she was in the first flushes of love. The real indicator of a man in her life was the designer clothes. Laurie recalled how she had rushed to greet her sister when she had returned home for a weekend from London. She barged into Lorna’s bedroom; the girls had always employed a no-knocking policy, often weaving between one another’s rooms freely, even when the other was away.
Suspicious of a blossoming relationship, Laurie had already scoured Lorna’s room for potential clues but found nothing of note. She felt that she had no choice but to interrogate her sister on a one-to-one basis. There were never any secrets between them; she knew it was only a matter of time before Lorna divulged all the juicy details.
Hindsight is a dangerous thing. Laurie saw now how she liked to live vicariously through her sister. Lorna was the more glamorous, more daring twin. Laurie would hover around her, like a hummingbird over nectar, waiting for the sweet details of gossip beyond the world of their home town.
It was the clothes which Laurie noticed originally. Lorna was busy unpacking, carelessly flinging the contents of her suitcase out onto her bright pink bedspread when Laurie noticed the designer label and squinted in bemusement.
‘Since when can you afford couture stuff?’ Laurie had the garment in her hands and was examining it before Lorna had the chance to retrieve it.
‘It’s a fake,’ Lorna lied, sneakily shoving the few other designer clothes she had with her under the bed.
‘No, it’s not,’ Laurie said after closer inspection. ‘I’m no fashionista but this is real. I’m sure of it.’
‘Honestly, it’s not.’
‘Maybe I’ll go check with mum; she loves labels, she will know.’ Laurie threatened parental intervention, knowing that it would make Lorna confess the origin of the blouse. The twins existed in their own world, without their parents. They once even had their own language. Any arguments they had, they settled themselves. They were a partnership, it was the way it had always been and their mother and father admired and respected the closeness between their two girls and as such always kept their
distance.
‘Fine. It was a gift,’ Lorna conceded, the colour already rising to her cheeks.
‘A gift? From who?’
‘A guy.’
‘A guy? Ha! I knew it! I knew you were seeing someone!’ Laurie revelled in her victory, still eyeing the blouse with interest.
‘He must be bloody loaded! How much would something like this cost? Over three hundred pounds I bet!’
‘He’s got money,’ Lorna admitted.
‘Good for you! Who is he?’ Laurie was smiling, enjoying teasing her sister but her face fell when she looked over at Lorna who was staring at her hands, her beautiful features suddenly soiled by sadness.
‘What’s wrong?’ The designer blouse was now discarded as Laurie leapt across the bed and cupped her sister’s hands in hers.
‘I can’t tell you.’ Lorna bit her lip in an attempt to hold back the flood of tears threatening to wash down her face.
‘You can tell me anything.’
‘I know but … this is bad. I don’t want you to judge me.’
‘Lorna I’m your twin sister. I would never, ever judge you. I love you, remember?’
‘I love you too. But please, look, I never meant it to happen. But it did. And I wanted to tell you, more than anything, but I didn’t want you to hate me.’
‘Hate you? Don’t be ridiculous! I could never hate you!’ Laurie wrapped a reassuring arm around her sister, their blonde hair falling together to create one golden mass.
‘I’m sleeping with the Deputy Prime Minister,’ Lorna blurted out, before she lost her nerve.
The silence hung heavy between the two sisters as Laurie absorbed the shocking revelation. She kept her arm around Lorna, not wanting to break their embrace.
‘You know he’s married, right?’ she asked quietly after a few moments had passed.
‘Of course,’ Lorna answered, her cheeks now wet from tears which had stealthily fallen.
‘I hate myself, so much. But I care about him, I really do. If I didn’t, I would never have let things go this far.’
‘Okay, don’t cry,’ Laurie let her sister cry into her shoulder, absorbing her hurt and pain and making it her own. Her love for Lorna was as strong as it ever had been. Whatever mistakes they each made, they had each other to support them through it.
Laurie looked at Charles sat behind his desk and pondered on what Lorna had said that day. Perhaps she really had been devastated when he called off their affair. Maybe there was a possibility that she had been so lost over it all that she had taken her life. No. Laurie would not think like that. She couldn’t. Lorna would never leave her like that; someone must have taken her from her.
‘Did you love my sister?’
The question shot through the air between them, piercing Charles’ skin and stabbing him in the heart. He sat frozen in a shocked silence, unsure how to respond.
‘Lorna – did you love her?’ Laurie asked again, more insistently.
Charles sighed as he attempted to assemble his thoughts. Of course he had loved Lorna, and still continued to, there was no denying that. But he had never declared his love to her, leaving him with no idea how deep her feelings had once run. So now, to admit to her twin the words which he had failed to say to Lorna when she was alive, it felt wrong, like a betrayal. But a part of him resented himself for having never had the courage to tell Lorna how he truly felt. Perhaps now, if he admitted the truth to Laurie, he could start to make peace with that.
‘Yes,’ Charles said quietly. ‘I did love Lorna but …’ his jaw clenched, trying to contain the emotion which was threatening to blurt out all over Laurie. ‘But I never told her that.’
He watched Laurie digest the information, her eyes flitting all over the room, her hands still interlocking with one another.
‘I guessed as much,’ Laurie said at last. ‘To be helping me like you are, you must have really cared for her.’
‘Yes, I did.’
‘Why did you never tell her?’ Laurie had an innate ability to be incredibly direct with people, not caring for social etiquette or personal boundaries. It was a quality which made some people uncomfortable. As a child, her parents had attributed her constant, often inappropriate, questioning to a mild form of Asperger’s, rather than recognising that their child was just extremely inquisitive.
‘I guess, I guess that the time never felt right. I didn’t want it to be tainted when I told her,’ Charles was voicing feelings he had never even fully addressed with himself and it felt good, cathartic even.
‘So you were planning on leaving your wife for her?’
Charles looked up in surprise at the blunt delivery of such a heavily-loaded question. Laurie was still a stranger to him, despite appearances. But he did trust her; perhaps he was blinded by her resemblance to Lorna, or perhaps he was just in dire need of someone to talk with openly.
Laurie’s eyes were wide and expectant as she patiently awaited a response.
‘I never, I never really thought too much about it,’ Charles stumbled through his answer, the silver-tongued politician replaced by the shy and awkward boy he had been during his school days. ‘But I guess, had I not ended things, that potentially maybe. But I’d have left Elaine naturally, not because of Lorna.’
‘Even though Lorna is gone, are you still going to leave your wife?’
‘Yes, I plan on doing so.’
Charles was shocked by his own honesty. For a long time the thought of leaving Elaine had lurked at the back of his mind but he suppressed it for so many reasons; morality, public image. But within Laurie’s presence he felt freed from those restraints. His marriage was not a happy one and in his heart, he knew that it had to end. Elaine would not take the news well but she would be more than taken care of financially. They both deserved the opportunity to find happiness before it was too late. Charles only wished he’d had the courage to divorce her earlier in his life; it pained him to imagine how different his life might have been, the happiness he might have had.
‘Did your wife know about Lorna?’ Laurie continued to interrogate Charles.
‘No, she did not.’
‘I’m glad that you loved my sister. It means that we both want the same thing.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Thank you for helping me,’ Laurie smiled nervously at the Deputy Prime Minister. She did not enjoy being vulnerable or revealing too much of her own emotions.
‘Everyone else just believes that Lorna killed herself. It’s as if they never knew her at all.’
‘We will get to the bottom of it all, I promise.’ Then, despite the voices in his head screaming at him not to, Charles reached across his desk and grabbed Lorna’s hands. They were cold to the touch yet smooth and soft. The moment their bodies connected he felt his senses once more ignite. But when he looked in Laurie’s eyes, there was not the lust and the longing as there had once been in Lorna’s. Instead, Laurie looked fearful, and Charles realised that a part of him was also afraid, as they each considered just how far they were willing to go to uncover the truth.
Chapter Seven
Have you seen my ghost?
Laurie Thomas was not happy in London. The city moved at a pace which she was unaccustomed to. On the street, people pushed past her without so much as a backward glance of regret, lost in their haste to get to wherever they were heading. In the shops, assistants would serve her without even making eye contact. No one wished her a nice day, or enquired after her family as they would have back home. In London she was invisible, a ghost. A tiny part of her revelled in the anonymity of it all, of people not greeting her as though she had the face of a dead girl. But a larger part of her felt lost to the loneliness. Charles Lloyd was her only ally, and he was hardly someone she would call a friend.
Each day, Laurie left the modest hotel she was currently calling home and left for work, adorned in her Lorna costume. Within the office, Faye was always civil but Laurie sensed the woman’s unease. Not that she blamed her. It was a surreal s
ituation for them all to be dealing with. The sooner she unearthed the truth about her twin’s death, the sooner she could return to her family, to some semblance of normality. Not that home was normal since Lorna’s death. Laurie clung to the hope that if she could prove that her twin did not commit suicide that her parents might finally thaw towards her and remember that they still had one daughter who was alive and needed them.
As Laurie sat and typed at the computer, completing yet another menial task Faye had set for her, questions would burn at the back of her mind to the point where her forehead throbbed with the heat. She needed answers. Sitting and waiting for Charles’ ambiguous contact to get back to them felt ridiculous. Each day that passed, Laurie grew more and more inpatient to the point where she decided to take matters into her own hands.
Laurie decided to approach those who would have worked with Lorna whilst she was on her internship first – most notably, Kaiden Collins. Lorna had regularly mentioned him; apparently they got along and she found his sense of humour appealing. They would go on nights out together and he even sent her a birthday card. Being such an unusual name, it wasn’t difficult to track him down from the roster of staff within the building. Kaiden worked in the Human Resources department which was useful. All Laurie had to do was make up some phantom mistake in her application papers and it would give her an excuse to seek him out.
Before speaking with Kaiden, Laurie gave Charles one last opportunity to have made some progress. She text him from her desk, careful to conceal her phone from Faye who disapproved of any activity of a personal nature whilst at work. Her message was simple:
Anything yet?
Only moments later, the handset shook as it received the Prime Minister’s response:
No, nothing yet, sorry. We need to be patient x
Laurie’s delicate fingers gripped her mobile phone with tense frustration. She had run out of patience.
‘Faye, I’m just heading over to the HR department.’
‘Oh?’ Faye looked up with mild interest, only ever interrogating Laurie when she was headed for Charles’ office.
