Laura continued to cover her ears, but I knew from the way her face was twisting that she heard me.
‘The neighbours called 999 and firefighters rescued Henry,’ I continued, ‘but by the time paramedics resuscitated him, he’d been starved of oxygen for too long and suffered massive brain damage. Your once happy, healthy kid suddenly had the mental age of a one-year-old and it’s all your fault.’
‘No, no, no, no!’ Laura said, and fell to her knees. I pointed at a still-shrieking Henry.
‘I know there was some humanity in you once, because what you did to him fucked you up. They carted you off in an ambulance and kept you in a psychiatric unit in St Andrews before you eventually discharged yourself. But while you were gone, Tony moved him here and the girls out. Even then, you lied to yourself about why you’d been hospitalised. Effie told me that you claimed your mum’s cancer as your own, didn’t you?’
Laura clambered to her feet and began to pace in a circular motion, like a dog trying to find a comfortable position to curl up and sleep.
‘No, that’s not what happened. You’re wrong,’ she muttered. Her fingers pinched at her thighs. She was falling apart before me.
‘Your daughters didn’t want their dad to tell the police you started the fire, so Tony promised them he wouldn’t give you up if they stayed away from you. You thought in time Tony would come round and return, but he didn’t, did he? Instead he changed Effie’s school to one nearer their new home and he kept the girls away from you. They were all enjoying their new life without you until my naive brother interfered and included you on the email for Effie’s school report.’
‘Please, be quiet,’ Laura begged, her spirit overwhelmed and tears streaming down her cheeks. ‘I need you to stop now.’
Then her expression blanked, as if she were reliving the moment she learned Tony had taken her family away from her. Her shoulders hunched like she wanted to fold into herself and vanish. Henry bounced back and forth in his chair and Laura reached towards him as if to offer him comfort. But once again, I took my hand off his chair until she retracted it.
‘You know what horrifies me the most about you?’ I asked. ‘It’s that after what you did to this kid, you didn’t learn your lesson, because you’re still putting yourself before anyone else. In trying to destroy Ryan, you threw Effie under the bus. Your own daughter. At least my brother regretted the part he had to play in all this.’
‘He only regretted it because he lost,’ she replied. Only there was no pride in her victory.
‘And what exactly have you won, Laura? Because it sure as hell isn’t your husband or your children. You have nothing. Ryan said you rattle around that house on your own. You spend hours locked inside waiting for someone to walk through the door, and I bet nobody ever does. And you know what? They never will. You’ve lost everyone, even Olly.’
‘Why are you bringing him into it?’ she sobbed.
‘Why not? You brought Charlotte into it when Olly wanted to kill himself.’
‘That didn’t happen, it was an accident. He slipped into the river and drowned.’
‘And you’re rewriting the truth again. Olly had tried to die several times over the years, according to the coroner’s report. He messed up an overdose and a hanging. I’m putting two and two together and assuming you, the expert in suicide, stepped in to help him get it right, didn’t you?’
‘I don’t know what you mean . . .’ She shook her head again, as if old memories she wanted to forget were coming back to life inside her.
‘You do, Laura – just tell me the truth.’
‘Olly wanted me to be with him when he died, but I couldn’t do it, because I couldn’t leave Henry,’ she wept. ‘So I found someone else.’
‘Charlotte?’
‘Yes.’
‘Because she was a vulnerable woman with prenatal depression, and you saw her as ripe for manipulation.’
‘Please, Johnny,’ Laura begged, clasping her hands together like she was praying. ‘Just leave now and I won’t tell anyone any of this happened.’
‘And then what? You’ll have a change of heart and come after me?’
‘No, I promise I won’t.’ She wiped snot from her nose with the back of her hand.
‘There’s just one thing I need you to do for me before I leave.’ I removed my phone from my pocket and switched it to video mode and began recording.
‘Because you are so keen on publicly shaming people, and because the Dictaphone my brother gave Janine has disappeared, you are going to look into the lens and admit that you encouraged Charlotte to die. Then you’ll confess to what you did to Janine and admit that Ryan was not a child molester and that he is dead because of you.’
Her eyes momentarily left mine and glanced to the distance.
‘Hey!’ I snapped, and she looked back at me. ‘I’m not giving you a choice here. This isn’t something you can mull over. Admit it, everything you’ve done, then I will leave.’
I watched her on the phone’s screen as she wiped her eyes and cleared her throat.
‘Never,’ she replied and, just for a second, she couldn’t stop her lips from curling upwards. Then she opened her mouth wide and let out a piercing scream.
I heard hurried footsteps pounding close behind me, and as I turned, something solid hit the side of my head so hard that it pushed me to the ground.
CHAPTER FOUR
LAURA
‘Tony, help us!’ I pleaded as my husband appeared behind Johnny. ‘It’s Ryan!’
I could tell from Tony’s expression that he thought he was seeing things – that the supposedly dead pervert teacher who’d tried to abuse his daughter was now tormenting his wife and their disabled son. So I didn’t give him time to think rationally, only to tap into the instinct he’d learned in the boxing ring – react to a threat by stamping it out quickly.
‘He’s hurting Henry!’
Tony charged towards us, and before Johnny could defend himself, Tony caught him on the side of the head with a hard punch. It knocked Johnny off balance, sending him sprawling face down onto the path.
Johnny lost grip of his mobile phone and it slid across the gravel, but his grasp also slipped from Henry’s wheelchair. I sprinted towards it, grabbing hold of the handles and digging my heels into the ground. Then, using all my strength, I leaned backwards to prevent it from slipping any further down the slope and into the lake. I pulled it towards me until Henry was safe and I could calm his hysteria.
Meanwhile, Tony squatted over Johnny and punched the back of his head and ribs with a ferocity I’d only seen on display in the boxing ring. Crack, crack, crack, knuckle against cheekbone, fist against skull . . . A composer couldn’t have come up with a musical arrangement that sounded any sweeter to my ears.
‘I will kill you for what you’ve done!’ Tony shouted, and I had no reason to doubt him. Johnny’s plan to confuse me by mimicking his brother’s appearance had backfired spectacularly. But I wasn’t going to admit to Tony he’d got the wrong man.