I was pleased to hear Tony kept secrets from Janine, and I knew just why he hadn’t told her about my personal business. Four years earlier, he’d coerced me into ‘borrowing’ ￡25,000 of End of the Line’s charitable donations to help him when he set up his insurance business. I still had the bank account numbers of where the payments had really gone. They were so cleverly squirrelled away that even the charity’s auditors had no clue that money meant for them had been directed elsewhere.
Even if it meant dropping myself in it, I’d have gone to the police with them had Tony not allowed me to see Effie the day we met with the head teacher. And, as you don’t keep secrets from the one you love, clearly Tony didn’t love Janine.
‘Did he tell you we spent the night together recently?’ I said. ‘Several nights, actually.’
‘When?’
‘After I was attacked.’
‘That’s right, your “attack”.’ She used her fingers to mime speech marks. ‘Did they ever catch the person responsible?’
I didn’t reply.
‘I thought not,’ she said. ‘Funny, that. And Tony was at great pains to point out that he spent the first night on the armchair in your room and the next couple in the spare bedroom.’
‘Is that what he told you?’
‘It’s what I saw. I came to your house when you were asleep to drop a change of clothes off to him the night of your “attack”. I love how you’ve kept the smoke-damaged walls. It’s very shabby-chic.’ She let out a yawn that seemed to take her by surprise.
She had violated my space. She had been in my house.
I swallowed hard to keep my anger at arm’s length.
‘No one here likes you,’ I said, ‘so when I tell them what you’ve accused me of, they’ll all be on my side. And then I’ll go to head office and tell them their biggest fundraiser and treasurer is being bullied out of her job by her husband-stealing manager.’
‘Go ahead, Laura, be my guest,’ she replied, and reached into her ugly orange handbag to remove Ryan’s Dictaphone. ‘I’d love to know what they’ll say when I play this to them.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
RYAN
There was no reply when I knocked on Laura’s front door.
The last time I’d been here, I’d not been in control of myself. Her leaving a dead piglet by Charlotte’s wedding dress had pushed me over the edge, which is exactly what she’d wanted. Even after all Tony had told me about her, my only hope was that somewhere inside Laura was a scrap of decency I could appeal to.
I knew that by turning up at her home I was breaking my restraining order and risked being arrested again, but that’s how desperate I was. She’d left me with no other choice.
I crouched to talk through the letterbox.
‘Laura, please answer the door,’ I begged. ‘I’m not here to cause trouble. I just need to speak to you.’ But there was no response. I surveyed each window, but no shadows moved behind them. ‘I’ll do anything,’ I continued. ‘Just please withdraw those allegations against me. You’ve won. I don’t have any fight left in me.’
I sank to my knees, then curled up in a ball on the doormat and wept.
Eventually, I clambered back inside the car, found the business card Janine had given me as I’d left our meeting and dialled her direct line again. I was sick of waiting for her to act; I needed her to do something now. I reached her answerphone.
‘I’m coming to see you,’ I began. I heard my words slur, but couldn’t stop them. ‘I gave you what you needed and you did nothing. You fucking owe me.’
As I drove in the direction of End of the Line, I still didn’t know how to react to my parents’ response to the accusations being hurled at me. I wanted to scream, yell, cry, defend myself and hurt them as much as they were hurting me, all at the same time.
Knowing they didn’t have faith in their own son wounded me badly. Johnny had already washed his hands of me and now they were doing the same. It was all so unfair.
As I pulled up at a red traffic light, I took a swig from the bottle of vodka I’d left in the glovebox. I didn’t care if I was pulled over and breathalysed by the police. Let them arrest me. I was no stranger to it and it’d be the least of my worries. Maybe I should be behind bars anyway? Perhaps I was a danger to myself because I couldn’t make rational decisions. If I could, I wouldn’t have been caught up in this shitstorm. I’d lost everyone I’d ever loved or relied on, and I had no one to turn to.
I drove through the housing estate where Granddad Pete had once lived, and passed the park where, as a boy, I’d cycled for hours at a time with my mates. I passed the supermarket where we’d hang out, trying to blag cigarettes from the older lads. I saw the bus stop where I’d shared my first kiss with Lucy Jones. My heart ached for the innocent days I’d never get back.
As my past caught up with my present, I realised I had no future. Even if by some miracle this was all cleared up, I’d be forever ruined by the accusations. Laura and Effie’s lies were spreading across social media with the speed of a contagious disease and, by now, everyone I worked with and beyond would be aware of what had been written about me. The story would only grow bigger and bigger as each student and parent shared it. My life as I’d known it was over. Mud sticks and I was covered in it.
For the first time since she took her life, I understood how Charlotte had felt when she reached the depths of her despair.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
LAURA
I’d never seen Janine look so self-congratulatory as when she brandished Ryan’s Dictaphone in her hand. Her face was so contorted by smugness, it threatened to fold in on itself.
‘Do you know what this is?’ she asked. ‘It’s a recording Ryan made of every conversation you and him had. Hour after hour of you going against everything End of the Line believes in, by encouraging him to end his life.’
I let her talk.
‘You were supposed to be offering an impartial ear to those people,’ she continued. ‘No matter what they told you about their intentions, it was your job to listen, not to talk them into dying. You need to be stopped.’
‘And I suppose you’re the one to do it?’
Janine smiled and then blinked hard.
‘Why haven’t you done anything with it yet?’ I asked. ‘I thought you’d have been straight to head office with this little bit of gossip.’
‘Let’s not underplay this, Laura. It’s hardly a “little bit of gossip”, is it? It’s proof that one of my volunteers has been encouraging and assisting suicide, which, as we both know, is against the law. But after much umming and ahhing, I’ve decided to give you a choice. I can either pass this to management and report you to the police, or I can give it back to you and you can destroy the evidence.’
‘In return for what?’
‘That you leave my branch, right now, and never set foot in it again.’
‘Is that it? That’s all you want from me?’
‘Not quite. You’ve also got to agree not to see your family again. You stay away from Effie, Alice, Henry and Tony.’
‘What?’ My blood ran cold.
‘Tony will be applying to the family court to file for divorce for your unreasonable behaviour. Our bargain is that you don’t defend yourself and that you give Tony full custody rights. Once you get your decree nisi, then you can have this Dictaphone and your children can start their new life without you.’