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‘But how – I mean, Jeff
was
hassling me, wasn’t he? So I don’t understand – ‘

‘Oh, make no mistake, your husband was a violent, nasty thug,’ Kerry said, finishing her own juice. ‘At first, I was really worried about him, but I soon realised that Jeff was the icing on the cake – I loathed him, but he served my purpose admirably.’ She smirked at Laura’s incredulous expression.

Laura’s voice was barely a whisper. ‘What do you mean? I thought you were my best friend! I don’t see why you’d want to –’

Kerry didn’t answer, and Laura longed to hit her. Instead, she lashed out with her hand and sent all the books and documents on the desk flying.

‘Answer me!’ she screamed, as both women surveyed the mess of papers now spread all over the floor. Simultaneously, their eyes were drawn to a pile of photos lying among the debris, but neither of them seemed able to move or speak.

At last, Laura found her voice, although it only came out as a squeak. ‘So
you
were the one who stole my family photos!’

She bent down and picked up a photo of her father, which had now been put into a frame. In it, he was smiling at the camera, looking carefree and happy. Laura stared at it, mystified. ‘Why did you put the picture of my father into a frame?’

‘Because he’s
my
father as well!’

‘W-what?’

Kerry sneered. ‘Poor Laura – you thought you had the perfect family, didn’t you? But all the time, your dad was doing it with my mum – and I was the result!’

‘I don’t believe you!’

Kerry shrugged her shoulders. ‘It doesn’t matter what you believe. How do you think I could go to the same posh school as you? Because your father –
our
father – paid all my school fees. And he was planning on leaving you all, to come to live with Mum and me!’

‘My father would never have left my mother!’ Laura said
angrily. She was finding it difficult to reconcile all this new information with what she remembered of her parents’ lives. They had always seemed happy but, back then, at not quite twelve years of age, what child could understand the nuances of adult conversation, gestures and glances, the heartbreak that could lie behind smiling faces?

Kerry sighed. ‘You may well be right. But I actually heard him tell Mum he was coming to live with us.’ She looked triumphantly at Laura. ‘Do you remember Mum’s ring?’

Laura nodded. She’d often admired the beautiful diamond and gold ring that Ellie always wore on the third finger of her left hand.

‘When Mum died suddenly, the undertakers returned it to me – and do you know what? Inside was an inscription that said: “Alan and Ellie forever”. That confirmed for me what I’d always known anyway.’ Kerry’s face suddenly crumpled, and Laura thought she detected the glint of tears in her eyes as she continued. ‘You had a father every day of your life – I didn’t! Why should you have had everything? He was my father too, but I was never recognised. I was just his dirty little secret!’

Laura was experiencing a complex range of emotions. On the one hand, she hated what Kerry was saying about her parents, but she was desperate to understand, even if it meant learning unpalatable truths.

‘H-how did you find out about this supposed affair?’

‘It was easy enough. One day when I was about nine, I came home early – tennis lessons had been cancelled – and I discovered your father’s car parked behind the house.’ Kerry looked steadily at Laura. ‘I could hear my mother and your father in her bedroom, so I crept up into the loft above her room, and was able to peep down through a crack in the ceiling – and I saw what they were doing.’

‘B-but what made you think you were his child?’

‘I heard them talking about it,’ Kerry said triumphantly. ‘When they were lying in bed, Mum said that it was time I was told who my real father was. But he begged her to wait – he said the time wasn’t right yet, and that they’d tell everyone I was his daughter once he’d left your mother. He promised Mum he’d do it very soon.’ Her voice trembled. ‘I crept back outside, and watched from the outhouse as he drove off afterwards. Then I pretended to come home at the usual time, and Mum never suspected a thing.’ Her voice rose. ‘I waited day after day, week after week, for him to make a public announcement about it. But when nothing happened, I figured it was time to help things along myself.’

‘W-what do you mean?’

Kerry’s face contorted in anger. ‘You were always impulsive and emotional, weren’t you, Laura? That’s why you weren’t in the damned car when you should have been! You went off to save that injured bird – so you escaped the death I’d planned for you, and I lost my father instead!’

Laura was bewildered. ‘What are you talking about?’ She suddenly felt as though the ground was giving way beneath her feet. No, it couldn’t be true – no, no no!

Kerry grimaced. ‘I thought I could create the perfect family. I figured that if you all died, my father would come to live with Mum and me, and we’d be a real family at last.’

The colour had drained from Laura’s face. ‘But I remember you crying your heart out when you heard about the crash!’ she said, bewildered. ‘We cried together – were you acting then, too?’

Kerry gave a thin-lipped smile. ‘I didn’t need to pretend – I
was
devastated! Your father – my father – wasn’t supposed to be in the car that day!’ Kerry glared at her. ‘So you see, I was genuinely crying because I’d lost my dream of a real family – yet somehow
you
managed to survive!’

A tidal wave of rage welled up inside Laura. She longed to
use her fist to wipe the smirk off Kerry’s face, but there was more she needed to uncover first.

‘What did you do to the car?’

‘I tampered with the steering the night before.’ Kerry smiled triumphantly. ‘Remember that afternoon when we all went to collect your father’s new car from the showroom? Well, I learnt everything I needed to know from one of the mechanics in the workshop there!’ She grinned. ‘He thought I was just a nosy kid, but I got him to answer some very pertinent questions! That’s why you couldn’t find me to fix your skateboard – I was in your garage, underneath your mother’s car!’

‘You merciless bitch – how could you!’

‘Do you think I cared about you? I wanted a family of my own!’

Laura stared at her incredulously. ‘All the times that you were crying, I thought it was out of concern for me! And your poor mother – she must have been heartbroken, too!’

Kerry’s eyes narrowed. ‘That day when we got news of the crash – my mother ran off to Greygates to comfort
you
! Even though my heart was breaking, there was no one there to comfort
me
!’

Laura said nothing, thinking how devastated Ellie would have been if she’d known the lengths to which her own daughter had gone in pursuit of her dream family.

Kerry’s voice rose in anger. ‘We were left penniless after my father died – despite all his protestations of love for my mother, he made no financial provision for us! So I’ve had years of poverty to keep my hatred on the boil. While you went swanning off to live in luxury with your grandfather, Mum and I were left with nothing! I ended up attending a comprehensive, and we had to sell the house I loved because we couldn’t survive any other way!’

‘Well, my father wasn’t exactly expecting to die, was he?’
Laura retorted. ‘We’ll never know what he intended to do, because you killed him! And you destroyed your own mother’s life, too.’

Kerry suddenly laughed. ‘Remember that hideous plastic Eiffel Tower you brought back for me from Paris? Well, I hated it, and I hated you, with all your expensive family holidays! But I kept it to remind me every day of how unfairly I’d been treated – and to make sure I never forgot that you’d inherited the Thornton millions, whereas I’d got nothing! Since then I’ve just been biding my time, and waiting for the day when all that wealth would finally be mine.’

Laura’s mind was reeling. It was all too much to take in. And she was beginning to feel very weak …

‘Then, of course, you had to meet Jeff.’

Laura stared at her uncomprehendingly.

Kerry cocked her head to one side. ‘By the way, how did your ex-husband die?’

Laura’s lip quivered. ‘The prison accidentally served peanuts in his food, and they couldn’t locate his adrenaline pen in time to save him.’

Kerry grinned. ‘Aha! So his allergy finally caught up with him! It seems a fitting end to a thoroughly nasty person. I just wish
I’d
been that lucky when I tried to bump him off …’

‘Y-you tried to get rid of Jeff, too?’

Kerry laughed. ‘Oh, Laura, you’re such an innocent! I needed to get him out of your life – otherwise you’d probably have changed your will in his favour! How do you think the peanuts got into his food at the restaurant? And did you really think that his missing adrenaline pen was an accident?’ Kerry grimaced. ‘After that damned do-gooder saved Jeff’s bacon that night, I had to hope that you’d eventually divorce him. But I was terrified that you’d tell him about the money before then, or that he knew already, and had latched on to you in that pub,
knowing you’d inherited a fortune.’ She grinned triumphantly. ‘But now that he’s dead, I don’t need to worry any more.’

In the silence that filled the room, Laura felt as though her heart would break. Everything she’d believed had suddenly been taken away from her, and she felt as though a giant rug had been pulled from beneath her feet. A wave of nausea swept over her, and she leaned against the desk to steady herself. She was suddenly feeling very woozy. ‘But all those years we were friends, all those times you were so kind to me – were you really pretending?’ she asked at last.

Kerry shrugged her shoulders. ‘You really
were
my best friend, up until the day I found out I was his daughter. Then everything changed.’ Tears formed in Kerry’s eyes, but she wiped them away angrily. ‘There were lots of times when I actually forgot how much I hated you, and I genuinely found myself caring about you. But, at the end of the day, it’s hard to forget how unfair it was that I was never recognised as Alan Thornton’s first-born daughter.’

Thoughts were tumbling through Laura’s brain, in no particular order. Her head was spinning, and she was feeling increasingly dizzy. There were so many things she wanted to find out. Surely this was all just a terrible mistake?

‘You still haven’t answered me about Jeff – it
was
him stalking me, wasn’t it?’ Laura pleaded. ‘I know he made all those phone calls, and I had to change my number …’

Kerry looked exasperated, as though she was dealing with a particularly stupid child. ‘Oh, Laura – you really are a dolt, aren’t you? If you’d looked properly, instead of reacting so emotionally, you’d have seen that it wasn’t actually Jeff’s number. I got a pay-as-you-go sim card, and entered it into your phone under Jeff’s name. So every time I phoned, using that number, Jeff’s name appeared on your screen.’

Laura felt winded, as though Kerry had punched her in the
gut. She felt as though she’d stepped into some strange world where nothing was as it seemed.

‘What about the “
Good Luck in Your New Home
” card? Surely that was Jeff?’

Kerry laughed. ‘No, it wasn’t. I paid an out-of-work actor friend who looked reasonably like Jeff. I knew that the concierge would describe him to you as tall and blond, and you’d jump to the conclusion I wanted you to.’

‘And the TV repair man?’

‘Same guy.’

‘But Jeff
did
phone the estate agent –’

Kerry chuckled. ‘What a fool you are, Laura – you almost deserve to be deceived! No, my actor friend made the call and gave Jeff’s name.’

Laura was shocked, and another wave of nausea swept over her. ‘So Jeff never wanted to live in the same apartment block?’ Kerry sniggered. ‘No, he didn’t. I think Jeff actually got over you quite quickly. You’ve always had a tendency to overestimate your pulling-power.’

Laura gave a jolt as another thought entered her mind. ‘The listening device under the coffee table – who put it there?’

Kerry smiled, pleased at her own ingenuity. ‘I did, of course! I bought it and installed it under the table – I just pretended to find it there, to scare you.’

Laura’s mind was still doing somersaults. ‘But the fire in my apartment – Jeff started that, didn’t he?’

‘Wrong again. It was clever old me! I used my out-of-work actor friend to set the scene. With his hair darkened and dressed as a barista, he arrived at the concierge’s desk, offering Jim a free coffee of his choice, courtesy of a new, fictitious café opening shortly. Needless to say, I’d made it my business to find out Jim’s favourite coffee in advance.’ She grinned. ‘I crushed one of those strong sedatives you got into the coffee – remember
those sedatives you got from the doctor, but never took?–so Jim was soon fast asleep. I was able to sneak past him, enter your apartment with the spare key I’d borrowed, turn on the cooker and place the pot of cooking oil on it. Then I sneaked past poor comatose Jim again, and the rest is history.’

‘So I need never have gone to Dorrington.’

Kerry nodded angrily. ‘You caused me a lot of hassle by your impulsive decision to move so far away. I had to take time off work to go after you –’

‘So that was you in the car that tried to run me down?’

Kerry smirked at her. ‘I scared you, didn’t I?’

‘Oh God. Why would you do all that?’

‘Why?’ Kerry’s lip curled. ‘Are you a total fool? Because you’ve always got everything you wanted –’

‘Like my parents and brother dying?’ Laura retorted. ‘You destroyed my life all those years ago! What can you possibly want from me now?’

Kerry grinned. ‘Your money, of course. When you’re dead, it’ll all be mine!’

‘If you felt so strongly about the situation, and for so many years, why didn’t you try to kill me before now?’ Laura asked, bewildered. ‘Why wait?’

Kerry gave a harsh laugh. ‘Since the money was frozen in a trust fund until you reached twenty-five, there was no point in killing you before you’d actually
inherited
it!’ Kerry’s face now wore a sneer. ‘Do you remember the scuba diving holiday two years ago? You thought I was saving your life, but I’d dissolved a sedative into your juice that morning, and I intended letting you drown. Unfortunately another diver came along, so I had to pretend I was saving you instead!’ She suddenly grinned. ‘Anyway, if I’d got rid of you earlier, I’d have missed all the fun of taking revenge. Everything’s actually worked out for the best. Back then, all I wanted was a father. Now, all
I want is the money that’s rightfully mine.’ She gave a twisted smile. ‘It’s ironic, isn’t it? Because of me, you inherited the entire proceeds of the sale of the factory and your magnificent family home – you didn’t have to share it with anyone!’