Prime Deception (13 page)

Hindsight is a dangerous thing. Laurie saw now how she liked to live vicariously through her sister. Lorna was the more glamorous, more daring twin. Laurie would hover around her, like a hummingbird over nectar, waiting for the sweet details of gossip beyond the world of their home town.

It was the clothes which Laurie noticed originally. Lorna was busy unpacking, carelessly flinging the contents of her suitcase out onto her bright pink bedspread when Laurie noticed the designer label and squinted in bemusement.

‘Since when can you afford couture stuff?’ Laurie had the garment in her hands and was examining it before Lorna had the chance to retrieve it.

‘It’s a fake,’ Lorna lied, sneakily shoving the few other designer clothes she had with her under the bed.

‘No, it’s not,’ Laurie said after closer inspection. ‘I’m no fashionista but this is real. I’m sure of it.’

‘Honestly, it’s not.’

‘Maybe I’ll go check with mum; she loves labels, she will know.’ Laurie threatened parental intervention, knowing that it would make Lorna confess the origin of the blouse. The twins existed in their own world, without their parents. They once even had their own language. Any arguments they had, they settled themselves. They were a partnership, it was the way it had always been and their mother and father admired and respected the closeness between their two girls and as such always kept their distance.

‘Fine. It was a gift,’ Lorna conceded, the colour already rising to her cheeks.

‘A gift? From who?’

‘A guy.’

‘A guy? Ha! I knew it! I knew you were seeing someone!’ Laurie revelled in her victory, still eyeing the blouse with interest.

‘He must be bloody loaded! How much would something like this cost? Over three hundred pounds I bet!’

‘He’s got money,’ Lorna admitted.

‘Good for you! Who is he?’ Laurie was smiling, enjoying teasing her sister but her face fell when she looked over at Lorna who was staring at her hands, her beautiful features suddenly soiled by sadness.

‘What’s wrong?’ The designer blouse was now discarded as Laurie leapt across the bed and cupped her sister’s hands in hers.

‘I can’t tell you.’ Lorna bit her lip in an attempt to hold back the flood of tears threatening to wash down her face.

‘You can tell me anything.’

‘I know but … this is bad. I don’t want you to judge me.’

‘Lorna I’m your twin sister. I would never, ever judge you. I love you, remember?’

‘I love you too. But please, look, I never meant it to happen. But it did. And I wanted to tell you, more than anything, but I didn’t want you to hate me.’

‘Hate you? Don’t be ridiculous! I could never hate you!’ Laurie wrapped a reassuring arm around her sister, their blonde hair falling together to create one golden mass.

‘I’m sleeping with the Deputy Prime Minister,’ Lorna blurted out, before she lost her nerve.

The silence hung heavy between the two sisters as Laurie absorbed the shocking revelation. She kept her arm around Lorna, not wanting to break their embrace.

‘You know he’s married, right?’ she asked quietly after a few moments had passed.

‘Of course,’ Lorna answered, her cheeks now wet from tears which had stealthily fallen.

‘I hate myself, so much. But I care about him, I really do. If I didn’t, I would never have let things go this far.’

‘Okay, don’t cry,’ Laurie let her sister cry into her shoulder, absorbing her hurt and pain and making it her own. Her love for Lorna was as strong as it ever had been. Whatever mistakes they each made, they had each other to support them through it.

Laurie looked at Charles sat behind his desk and pondered on what Lorna had said that day. Perhaps she really had been devastated when he called off their affair. Maybe there was a possibility that she had been so lost over it all that she had taken her life. No. Laurie would not think like that. She couldn’t. Lorna would never leave her like that; someone must have taken her from her.

‘Did you love my sister?’

The question shot through the air between them, piercing Charles’ skin and stabbing him in the heart. He sat frozen in a shocked silence, unsure how to respond.

‘Lorna – did you love her?’ Laurie asked again, more insistently.

Charles sighed as he attempted to assemble his thoughts. Of course he had loved Lorna, and still continued to, there was no denying that. But he had never declared his love to her, leaving him with no idea how deep her feelings had once run. So now, to admit to her twin the words which he had failed to say to Lorna when she was alive, it felt wrong, like a betrayal. But a part of him resented himself for having never had the courage to tell Lorna how he truly felt. Perhaps now, if he admitted the truth to Laurie, he could start to make peace with that.

‘Yes,’ Charles said quietly. ‘I did love Lorna but …’ his jaw clenched, trying to contain the emotion which was threatening to blurt out all over Laurie. ‘But I never told her that.’

He watched Laurie digest the information, her eyes flitting all over the room, her hands still interlocking with one another.

‘I guessed as much,’ Laurie said at last. ‘To be helping me like you are, you must have really cared for her.’

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Why did you never tell her?’ Laurie had an innate ability to be incredibly direct with people, not caring for social etiquette or personal boundaries. It was a quality which made some people uncomfortable. As a child, her parents had attributed her constant, often inappropriate, questioning to a mild form of Asperger’s, rather than recognising that their child was just extremely inquisitive.

‘I guess, I guess that the time never felt right. I didn’t want it to be tainted when I told her,’ Charles was voicing feelings he had never even fully addressed with himself and it felt good, cathartic even.

‘So you were planning on leaving your wife for her?’

Charles looked up in surprise at the blunt delivery of such a heavily-loaded question. Laurie was still a stranger to him, despite appearances. But he did trust her; perhaps he was blinded by her resemblance to Lorna, or perhaps he was just in dire need of someone to talk with openly.

Laurie’s eyes were wide and expectant as she patiently awaited a response.

‘I never, I never really thought too much about it,’ Charles stumbled through his answer, the silver-tongued politician replaced by the shy and awkward boy he had been during his school days. ‘But I guess, had I not ended things, that potentially maybe. But I’d have left Elaine naturally, not because of Lorna.’

‘Even though Lorna is gone, are you still going to leave your wife?’

‘Yes, I plan on doing so.’

Charles was shocked by his own honesty. For a long time the thought of leaving Elaine had lurked at the back of his mind but he suppressed it for so many reasons; morality, public image. But within Laurie’s presence he felt freed from those restraints. His marriage was not a happy one and in his heart, he knew that it had to end. Elaine would not take the news well but she would be more than taken care of financially. They both deserved the opportunity to find happiness before it was too late. Charles only wished he’d had the courage to divorce her earlier in his life; it pained him to imagine how different his life might have been, the happiness he might have had.

‘Did your wife know about Lorna?’ Laurie continued to interrogate Charles.

‘No, she did not.’

‘I’m glad that you loved my sister. It means that we both want the same thing.’

‘Indeed.’

‘Thank you for helping me,’ Laurie smiled nervously at the Deputy Prime Minister. She did not enjoy being vulnerable or revealing too much of her own emotions.

‘Everyone else just believes that Lorna killed herself. It’s as if they never knew her at all.’

‘We will get to the bottom of it all, I promise.’ Then, despite the voices in his head screaming at him not to, Charles reached across his desk and grabbed Lorna’s hands. They were cold to the touch yet smooth and soft. The moment their bodies connected he felt his senses once more ignite. But when he looked in Laurie’s eyes, there was not the lust and the longing as there had once been in Lorna’s. Instead, Laurie looked fearful, and Charles realised that a part of him was also afraid, as they each considered just how far they were willing to go to uncover the truth.

Chapter Seven

Have you seen my ghost?

Laurie Thomas was not happy in London. The city moved at a pace which she was unaccustomed to. On the street, people pushed past her without so much as a backward glance of regret, lost in their haste to get to wherever they were heading. In the shops, assistants would serve her without even making eye contact. No one wished her a nice day, or enquired after her family as they would have back home. In London she was invisible, a ghost. A tiny part of her revelled in the anonymity of it all, of people not greeting her as though she had the face of a dead girl. But a larger part of her felt lost to the loneliness. Charles Lloyd was her only ally, and he was hardly someone she would call a friend.

Each day, Laurie left the modest hotel she was currently calling home and left for work, adorned in her Lorna costume. Within the office, Faye was always civil but Laurie sensed the woman’s unease. Not that she blamed her. It was a surreal situation for them all to be dealing with. The sooner she unearthed the truth about her twin’s death, the sooner she could return to her family, to some semblance of normality. Not that home was normal since Lorna’s death. Laurie clung to the hope that if she could prove that her twin did not commit suicide that her parents might finally thaw towards her and remember that they still had one daughter who was alive and needed them.

As Laurie sat and typed at the computer, completing yet another menial task Faye had set for her, questions would burn at the back of her mind to the point where her forehead throbbed with the heat. She needed answers. Sitting and waiting for Charles’ ambiguous contact to get back to them felt ridiculous. Each day that passed, Laurie grew more and more inpatient to the point where she decided to take matters into her own hands.

Laurie decided to approach those who would have worked with Lorna whilst she was on her internship first – most notably, Kaiden Collins. Lorna had regularly mentioned him; apparently they got along and she found his sense of humour appealing. They would go on nights out together and he even sent her a birthday card. Being such an unusual name, it wasn’t difficult to track him down from the roster of staff within the building. Kaiden worked in the Human Resources department which was useful. All Laurie had to do was make up some phantom mistake in her application papers and it would give her an excuse to seek him out.

Before speaking with Kaiden, Laurie gave Charles one last opportunity to have made some progress. She text him from her desk, careful to conceal her phone from Faye who disapproved of any activity of a personal nature whilst at work. Her message was simple:

Anything yet?

Only moments later, the handset shook as it received the Prime Minister’s response:

No, nothing yet, sorry. We need to be patient x

Laurie’s delicate fingers gripped her mobile phone with tense frustration. She had run out of patience.

‘Faye, I’m just heading over to the HR department.’

‘Oh?’ Faye looked up with mild interest, only ever interrogating Laurie when she was headed for Charles’ office.

‘Yeah, just need to iron out a few issues with my application papers.’

‘Right, okay.’

Kaiden Collins had done well for himself. At only twenty-four he had secured a full-time position within Downing Street. Even though he was tucked away in the Human Resources office at the back of the building, it was still an impressive achievement. Kaiden was popular amongst the staff who found him to be charismatic and hardworking. The only thing he pursued with the same intensity as his career was women, and the one came in handy for securing the other. His insatiable appetite for the fairer sex was notorious but a taboo subject around the office. As long as it didn’t interfere with his work, it wasn’t a problem. But the office still had a reputation to maintain, so those around Kaiden hoped he would soon tire of his cad routine. It looked better for all employees to be married; locked in marital bliss. Whether or not these marriages were happy didn’t matter – it was all about the appearance.

‘Hi, um … Kaiden?’ Laurie entered the office wearing the sweetest smile she could, hoping to adopt the ‘little girl lost’ routine which Lorna had so often used to her advantage.

‘I’m Kaiden, how can I help?’ The handsome young man to the left of the office door hurriedly got to his feet to greet the beautiful girl who had come enquiring after him, but the moment he saw Laurie’s face the colour drained from his face and his fake smile immediately fell.

‘Hi, I need help with the … copier.’ Laurie struggled to conjure a reason off the top of her head for him to leave the office so that they could talk privately.

‘The copier, okay right, yes. I’ll be right there.’ Kaiden’s eyes were fearful as he spoke to her. Laurie had forgotten how uncomfortable it made her feel when people looked at her like that.

Once they were alone in the copying room Kaiden noticeably relaxed, as though he had quickly put the pieces together and was satisfied with the conclusion he had reached.

‘So you are Lorna’s twin?’ he asked.

‘Your powers of deduction are mind-blowing,’ Laurie said flatly, still smarting from how he had first regarded her.

‘I’m sorry if I got a little freaked out back there. You just took me by surprise, that’s all. You look exactly like Lorna. It’s a little unsettling.’

‘Yeah, for you and me both.’

‘I was sorry about Lorna … passing,’ Kaiden tried awkwardly to convey his sympathies. He was hardly a man who was in touch with his emotions. ‘She was nice girl.’

‘Thank you.’

‘So … why are you here exactly?’

‘I wanted to follow in Lorna’s footsteps, carve out a career in politics which had been her dream,’ Laurie gave him the spiel which she had now perfected, completing the charade with a sincere nod and a slight smile.