Hollywood Sinners

42



Belleville, Ohio, 1999

Afterwards they went to the police, their story ironed dead straight. Laura didn’t need to fake her tears–they were real enough–and neither did Robbie his part as the concerned boyfriend.

They told their account of that night countless times over the next days, weeks … time soon lost its meaning. They’d been in the park, had seen smoke billowing into the sky and heard the shouts and cries for help. Running to its source they’d got closer, ever closer to her brother’s trailer until they were right on it. The scene had been worse than they could have imagined–the magnitude of the blast, the reach of the inferno and the panicked screams of the gathered crowd. Flames spat and hissed into the night, thrashing the trailer to pieces, scorching everything inside. Anyone unlucky enough to be in there wouldn’t have stood a chance.

As Laura had predicted, once the drama of the fire blew over nobody paid much attention to the loss of Lester Fallon. It was no great surprise that the loner drunk had finally been dumb enough to set fire to his own home–they just thanked God he hadn’t taken his little sister with him. As a result the inquiry was faint–hearted, it was as good as a closed case. The community was a better place without Fallon-the bum had got what was coming to him. It turned out the police had taken him in on several occasions previously, mostly on alcohol-related counts, and knew he was a vicious, unpleasant man.

A social worker came to visit the week after Lester died, and it was decided that Robbie and his family would look after Laura until she came of age. But they had to get out of Belleville. The compulsion to start afresh was greater than ever.

Two months later Laura and Robbie left for Columbus, where within weeks Robbie began working at an accountancy firm while studying for his business course in the evenings. They moved into a tiny one-room apartment and Laura took a job waiting tables in Harry’s Burger Bar. While it wasn’t the most glamorous of jobs, it was a start.

One busy afternoon a young man came into Harry’s, ordered a double cheeseburger, introduced himself as a talent scout and asked Laura if she’d ever considered acting. She wasn’t tall enough to model but she had a classic beauty that would look great on screen. It wasn’t the first time a customer had commented on her looks, so she didn’t think much of it. When she told Robbie that evening she expected him to find it funny, but instead he encouraged her.

‘Why not?’ he asked, glancing up from his papers. ‘You’ve got nothing to lose.’

‘An actress?’ She laughed. ‘Come on, Robbie, get real.’

He shrugged. ‘You can do anything you want. You’re certainly not flipping burgers the rest of your life.’

Laura had kept the man’s card, but didn’t feel ready to pursue it just yet. With the crime they had run from, it hadn’t occurred to her to dream of a future much beyond the next couple of weeks. The fear was still there that if she pushed her luck even a fraction too far, it would all come crashing down.

They never spoke about that night. She had sworn to Robbie that she wouldn’t let it affect them–no regrets–and that meant burying it deep. What she wanted to do was thank him for saving her life. She might not have died at Lester’s hands on the trailer floor, but he would have killed a part of her she could never get back.

For the first six months things were good. They were happy, in love and the future was there for the taking. Robbie was excelling in his course and was already in touch with his father about the move to Vegas.

But not long after, things started to change. The rot set in. For Laura, it began with the nightmares: her brother pinning her down, pushing his way inside, attacking her body. The look on his face when the deadly blow had struck; the gash on his skull that ran so deep. But worse, the way she had so ruthlessly destroyed the evidence, dousing the place in gasoline and lighting the match. It wasn’t what Robbie had wanted: he’d wanted to do the honest thing. She was the poison, damaging everything and everyone she touched, ruining it, killing it. It was only a matter of time before the same happened to him.

She found she was unable to explain these horrors to Robbie, the dark images that flashed across her mind in the dead of night in that lonely, terrible way. The only certainty was that if she stayed with Robbie, she would endanger him.

Robbie tried everything, desperate to find a way to reach across that space and comfort her. His worst fears had come true: guilt was a persistent beast, and it refused to relinquish the woman he loved. There was nothing he could do. When he reached for her body, she pulled away. When he told her he loved her, she pretended not to hear. There had always been fight in him, but he didn’t know if he could fight for both of them.

Close to a year after they had first arrived in Columbus, Robbie awoke on a grey, still morning to find she was gone.

There was a note. Some crap about sparing him; some meaningless martyr bullshit.

For weeks he was angry. He half expected her to come back, to say their love was worth more than this and that they’d try to make it work. When she didn’t he called her again and again, left countless messages, all saying things he didn’t really mean and not one that said what he really meant. No reply. He guessed she’d changed her number. He tried a couple of leads, sat in Harry’s for days on end, hoping for a clue–maybe she’d mentioned something to someone, anyone. Nothing. She had gone, vanished like a ghost into the night.

He drank for a while. Slept with women without knowing their names. Every morning he woke and looked in the mirror, hating what he saw.

Murderer.

Dark shadows round his eyes. Black stubble he couldn’t be bothered to shave. But most of all the intense sadness that clung to his shoulders like fog.

He scraped a pass on his course, though Christ knew how.

Then, in the New Year, he called his father.

‘I’m coming to town,’ he declared. ‘I need to start over. Vegas is it. ‘