‘Hello,’ I began as she opened the door to her SUV. She turned sharply and gave me a cursory glance up and down. ‘I’m Laura. My daughter’s in the same class as your son.’ I lied about the last part.
‘Oh, of course,’ she replied, but her fake smile couldn’t disguise her lack of interest.
‘I saw you at St Giles Upper School last night. I didn’t realise you had a child there too.’
‘That’s nice,’ she replied, but offered nothing by way of conversation. I was a dark cloud in her blue sky and she couldn’t wait for the wind to blow me away. By the unnatural smoothness of her skin, I guessed she’d had more fillers injected into her than cream in a choux pastry.
‘How’s your daughter getting on in Year Ten?’
‘Very well, thank you. She’s going to be taking some of her GCSEs early. How about your . . .’ She couldn’t finish her sentence so I did it for her.
‘My Effie? She’s getting along well. She transferred there coming up for two years ago now.’
‘It’s a good school with amazing OFSTED reports,’ Beth replied. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be rude but I’ve really got to dash . . .’
She tried to climb into her car but I ignored how desperate she was to nip our communication in the bud.
‘We’ve been lucky that Effie’s teacher Mr Smith has taken such a shine to her,’ I said. ‘I met him recently for the first time. Is he new to the school? I don’t recall seeing him before.’
‘He’s been there about a year and a half now, if memory serves, and he recently became acting head of Year Ten. But before that, he took some personal time off after that whole sorry business with his wife.’
‘His wife?’
This is why I’d chosen to speak to Beth. I’d recognised her type immediately. I’d seen it so many times before in mothers who became overly involved in their children’s school lives. They have their fingers in many pies to make up for the fact they have little else going on in their own world. And the one thing they love more than listening to gossip is being the first to spread it to others.
‘Did you not read about it?’ Beth continued. ‘It was quite horrible. Suicide. She jumped off a cliff. Can you believe it? What an awful way to go.’
I dug my fingernails into my palms.
No, it can’t be her. Not Charlotte. Not David’s Charlotte.
‘How sad,’ I replied.
‘That’s not the worst of it. She was two months away from having a baby, and she killed herself with a man she was having an affair with. From what everyone’s been saying, it was some kind of Romeo and Juliet suicide pact.’
I shook my head sympathetically and stopped myself from setting the record straight. There was no affair with David. Charlotte was simply someone I’d shaped to help David finish what he’d started. I’d barely given Charlotte a second thought since it happened – maybe I was even a little envious of her, playing such an intimate role in David’s final moments. I hadn’t even bothered attending her funeral. Clearly, I’d underestimated the impact of her death.
So that’s what Ryan had meant when he told me in the cottage I’d taken everything away from him already. Now that I knew what was motivating him, I could use it to my advantage.
‘Well, I won’t hold you up,’ I added, smiling. I began to walk away.
‘It’s nice to meet you,’ Beth called out, but I knew that if she saw me tomorrow, she wouldn’t have the first clue who I was.
CHAPTER TEN
RYAN
‘Thank you for agreeing to meet with me,’ I began. I slipped off my blazer and folded it across the arm of the sofa.
‘Can I get you a tea, coffee or a glass of water?’ she asked as she opened a window to let the stuffiness out. I assumed the room wasn’t used very often.
‘Water would be great, thanks.’
It was the first appointment before the new year I could get with End of the Line’s manager Janine Thomson. When she left the room on the ground floor of their building, I glanced around at the sparsely decorated walls and noted two security cameras attached to ceiling corners. Tiny green lights flashed intermittently and I assumed we were being watched. The woodchip wallpaper could do with a fresh lick of white paint, and the two past-their-prime sofas opposite each other needed replacing. A box of tissues had been left on a coffee table. I wondered what was behind the padlocked door.
Janine returned and placed my drink on the coffee table.
‘You mentioned in our telephone conversation you wanted to talk about one of our volunteers, Laura?’ she asked. She took out a notebook and pen from a bright orange handbag. Her voice didn’t have the same soothing quality as Laura’s. It was more efficient.
‘She’s definitely not volunteering today?’ I asked.
‘No, she’s not due in until Friday.’
‘Okay, I think – well, I know – that Laura is encouraging some of your callers to end their lives.’
The look Janine gave me was precisely why I hadn’t been to see her earlier and had taken matters into my own hands instead. My throat felt dry, so I reached for my glass and took a big gulp, then perched on the edge of the sofa and began to recount everything that had happened, from Charlotte’s suicide right up to the moment when Laura turned up at the cottage. It had been much easier spilling my guts to my brother than a stranger. Plus now I was forced to self-edit, or risk incriminating myself. I admitted to following Laura, but not her family, and I kept quiet about her stabbing me and how I’d used Effie for my own means. Janine took notes up until I finished talking.
‘Right,’ she said. ‘That’s quite an accusation, Mr Smith.’
‘I know how it must sound – how I must sound – but Laura needs to be stopped.’
‘Do you mind me asking – after your wife passed away, did you undergo any grief counselling?’
‘No. Why?’
‘It’s just that sometimes grief can manifest itself in many different ways, and especially when someone we love has chosen to end their life. We start blaming ourselves or start misdirecting our anger towards others—’
‘I’m going to stop you right there,’ I said firmly. ‘I know exactly what grief has done. It’s torn me apart, but I haven’t lost my sanity. I spent weeks talking with this woman and I heard how persuasive she was when she thought I was at my lowest ebb. So I know for a fact that she’s a danger to vulnerable people calling you.’
‘Do you have any evidence of what you’ve told me?’
I removed my Dictaphone and was about to press play when she stopped me.
I followed her eyes as she looked at me then at one of the security cameras. She removed a pair of in-ear headphones from her bag, plugged them into the recorder and played excerpts from some of our many phone conversations.
I watched her face as she listened, stony-faced but absorbing every one of Laura’s manipulative words. After five minutes, she pressed stop and removed her headphones.