‘I didn’t kill him. I didn’t kill anyone. You have me confused with someone else.’
‘Is that how you want to play it, Laura?’ I asked. ‘Because I have all night.’
Ryan had told me so much in detail about Laura that it felt like I knew her, especially after reading the lengthy email he’d sent me shortly before he died. In it, he’d described what her ex-husband had told him about her and the false accusations Laura and Effie had made against him. Everything that had gone wrong in his life stemmed from something Laura had started. And while Ryan had paid the ultimate price, she’d got away scot-free. But that was about to change.
Henry was becoming restless and squirmed in his chair, perhaps sensing the animosity surrounding him. I hated scaring the boy, but from what I’d learned about Laura he was her Achilles heel and I needed him as leverage for her to take me seriously. I patted his arm gently to calm him, but it had no effect.
‘Don’t you touch him!’ Laura barked, then swiftly changed her tone so it became less aggressive. ‘Please, you’re scaring him.’
‘Why shouldn’t I hurt your kid? You didn’t give a shit about hurting my family or taking Ryan’s son away from him. Charlotte was expecting a boy – did you know that?’
She shook her head, then held her hand up as if she were trying to nip in the bud whatever I was going to say next.
‘I don’t know what Ryan told you,’ she began, ‘but he was a very confused man who needed help. Both Janine and I tried, but he was too far gone. Did you know he tried to break into my house and kill me?’
‘We all know what he did, because you spread it across social media. He broke in because you pushed him to it. For God’s sake, you poured blood on his wife’s wedding dress and put a dead pig next to it! What did you expect him to do? Laugh about it? You knew exactly how he would react. You provoked him and he played right into your hands.’
She shook her head. ‘No, whatever he said about me isn’t true. Look at me. I’m a mum of three young children and I volunteer for a charity that has people’s welfare at its heart. How am I a threat to anyone? If you just give me my son back, maybe I can help you to understand your brother.’
I let out an exaggerated laugh. ‘Come on, Laura, you can do better than this.’
‘The police must have told you they have proof he killed Janine.’
‘Yes, and I don’t believe it.’
‘They found his hammer at the scene.’
‘The hammer that was in his flat when you came to look around it. Coincidence, right?’
‘Are you accusing me of killing Janine now?’
‘Did you? Wasn’t Janine in a relationship with your husband?’
She tried to mask a flicker of surprise at my knowledge, before play-acting an eye-roll.
‘I know you’re only trying to protect Ryan’s name,’ she said, ‘and if I was in your shoes, I wouldn’t want to believe the facts either. You grew up with him, you loved him, you don’t want to think about the bad things he did. But can’t you see? You’re making the same terrible decisions he made. Please, I beg of you, for Henry’s sake and for your own, don’t let Ryan’s mistakes ruin your life too.’
If I hadn’t known better, I might have thought there was a grain of truth in Laura’s words. She made a convincing case and a compelling victim. But I knew my brother.
‘Tell me about your son, Laura. Tell me how Henry came to be like this.’ My change of tack threw her and she paused for a moment.
‘The umbilical cord became caught around his neck during labour and it starved him of oxygen,’ she explained.
‘Only that didn’t happen, did it? That’s just a lie you’ve told yourself because it’s easier than admitting the truth. I know exactly what happened to Henry.’
‘It was a complicated labour,’ she replied firmly.
‘Your husband told Ryan that you lie to yourself about your past and re-edit things you’ve done to paint yourself in a more sympathetic light.’
She tried to mask her surprise. ‘I don’t know why Tony would’ve said such a thing but—’
‘And I know that Henry’s complicated birth is just another one of those lies, isn’t it? He was born perfectly healthy.’
‘Tony said that?’
‘No, Effie did.’
Her eyes narrowed slightly, unable to hide her betrayal.
‘When Ryan died and his name was in every newspaper, Effie felt so guilty about the part she played that she came to find me after the funeral,’ I continued.
‘You can’t believe what she says. Effie is a complicated girl.’
‘She seemed perfectly okay to me. She told me how you and she made sure her recording of the conversation with my brother was taken completely out of context.’
‘But I bet you believed every word of it when you first heard it, didn’t you? I’ll wager you turned your back on him like everyone else did and that’s why he killed himself. That’s why you’re here tormenting my son and me, because you feel guilty.’
Her words cut deep, but I couldn’t show her that.
‘Effie told me how Henry was a perfectly normal little boy for the first four and a half years of his life. Then you did this to him.’
‘No!’ she bellowed, her eyes piercing. ‘That’s not true! Ryan and Effie have filled your head with lies. I would never hurt my baby.’
I pulled out a photograph that Effie had given me from the back pocket of my jeans and held it up. The wheelchair tugged in my other hand.
‘Isn’t this him blowing the candles out at his third birthday party? He looks fine to me.’
She stared at the picture of a perfectly normal-looking little Henry surrounded by his friends and his sisters. She closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip.
‘Henry was at his friend Megan’s house when the girl fell ill,’ I continued. ‘So her dad dropped him off early while Megan’s mum looked after her. But you and Tony were too busy arguing to hear Henry let himself in, and because he got scared by your shouting, he hid himself in his room.’
‘That didn’t happen.’ Her voice sounded small, like that of a child.
‘What were you rowing over? That Tony had read the social services report about you and realised he’d married a sociopath? Or was it that Olly – or David, to use his proper name – killed his own mother for you?’
‘Shut up! Just shut up!’ Laura roared suddenly, and held her hands over her ears. Henry began to shriek with the high-pitched wail of an animal in distress. But I couldn’t stop now, so I raised my voice above them both.
‘When Tony stormed out, you blamed your new house for your marriage falling apart and not your own actions. Then you poured anything flammable the decorators had left and set fire to it. While you were outside trying to find your husband, your terrified little boy was trapped in his bedroom. Do you ever think about that, Laura? How scared he must have been when the thick black smoke started billowing under his door? Do you think he remembers it? Do you think every night he dreams about choking on those fumes?’