Chapter 42
FORTY-TWO
NOW
Victoria
‘Lawrence,’ I say. ‘Lawrence?’ I question but it’s obviously him, standing in the doorway in Camilla’s childhood home.
He looks really good. Unfairly good. Reese and I have both aged and what beauty we have held on to we have fought for, but here is Lawrence, his hazel eyes still bright and his chestnut-brown hair still thick although threaded with a few artful greys.
And he somehow looks better than he did sixteen years ago. Dick.
‘Vicky,’ he sneers.
‘Lawrence?’ asks Reese as though she’s not sure she’s actually seeing him.
‘The one and only.’ He smiles and he inclines his head. I can see that he’s kept in shape because his shoulders are wide and the bulge of his bicep is obvious on the arm holding the gun. He is holding a gun. An actual gun.
But I can’t fathom why he is here or why he has done this. He was the one who cheated. He got what he deserved, back then.
After I was done ruining Camilla’s life, I moved on and so did Reese. The death of her father catapulted us both out of the states we were in. Suddenly, Lawrence’s cheating and Camilla’s betrayal weren’t that important.
There was a night, a week after her father’s funeral when her sister had returned home and we were both sitting in the living room at her parents’ house, speaking in hushed tones because her mother had already gone to bed despite it only being 8 p.m.
We were drinking wine and snacking on nuts and I was watching Reese carefully, continually encouraging her to eat more because she’d lost enough weight to look gaunt.
‘I think,’ she said, ‘that I don’t want to talk about Lawrence and Camilla ever again. I know you put up that post about her and I know why you did it. But I don’t want to discuss them again. I don’t want to give them any airtime at all.’
‘Okay,’ I agreed, although I thought she needed to talk to a therapist. ‘We’ll never mention or think of them again.’
‘I’m going to block her number and his number. He keeps sending me messages and I don’t want to hear from either of them ever again.’
‘I’ll do the same,’ I said.
We clinked glasses and I tried to forget them, to forget what I had done, what they had done.
I tried to move on for Reese’s sake. I don’t know if she managed to actually put that plan into place or if her mind drifted back to the two of them over the years, but I know that when we were together, we pretended they had never existed.
Now one of them is dead and the other is pointing a gun at us. I should have kept tabs on him, should have made sure I knew what he was doing with his life.
‘Move over to the bed, both of you,’ he instructs us. I turn to look at Reese. Her mouth is hanging slightly open, as though she is trying to say something. She seems frozen in time, her body stiff.
I pull her to the bed, force her to sit down.
Lawrence waves the gun around. ‘Good girls,’ he says as he throws his shoulders back and I remember this about him. He likes to be in control.
He would have been a terrible husband for Reese. I knew that all along. He would have bullied and harangued her into being a shadow of herself. I watched him do it when we were together. He was only twenty-five but he was already a manipulative narcissist.
I tried to tell Reese, without actually saying the words.
I dropped hints, asked questions, checked that she was sure the decision was hers instead of his.
But I never actually said, ‘This guy is an arsehole.’ She was so in love, so wrapped up in him and his plans for their life that she couldn’t see straight.
And perhaps I didn’t push her as hard as I should have because there was some leftover guilt about Ben.
I wanted her to be in another relationship so that the whole Ben saga could just become a memory.
But Lawrence was a terrible choice and I was not unhappy when it was suddenly all over. The only anger I felt was on Reese’s behalf. I hated that she had been let down and hurt.
‘Where’s Camilla?’ Reese asks, finally finding her voice. Camilla is dead according to her sister. Unless that was a lie, unless they are in this together.
‘You look good, Reesey,’ says Lawrence. ‘I know you’ve had kids but look at how well you’ve maintained that body.’ He nods his head as his eyes focus on her chest and legs and I see her flush.
‘I was worried that you would run to fat. You always did like your food.’
I want to claw his eyes out. Reese has always been careful about what she eats.
Even at special occasions I can see her holding back on one more glass of wine or another piece of cake.
After each child she worked hard to quickly snap back into shape, even though Nick never seemed to care, finding her beautiful no matter how she looked.
But obviously she never let go of Lawrence’s voice in her head, not completely. I hate him anew for all the ways he hurt her.
‘Camilla is dead. Didn’t you know? She got very depressed. She died in a motel room, took enough pills to kill herself and went to sleep forever.’
I wonder how he knows this. He never met any of her family.
How did he find out about them? How does he know how she died if we couldn’t find anything about Camilla at all?
Does he know about any of the things I did to her?
Perhaps he saw the Facebook post. But how does he know Camilla was depressed?
‘You never even thought to look for her or worry about her. Not until she messaged you. Well, until I messaged you,’ he says, breaking into my thoughts.
‘But why?’ asks Reese, her gaze on the gun that Lawrence keeps waving around.
‘Why would you do this to us?’ She cannot understand this, cannot comprehend this cruelty.
She’s always been like this. Some people are just good and sweet and kind.
There’s no rhyme or reason why they are.
Perhaps it was that her parents had a happy marriage despite her father’s depression, and she gets on well with her sister, but I think it’s more than that.
Reese is just good and because she is good, there are people who tried to hurt her.
For the whole time we’ve been friends, I’ve been trying to get her to be stronger, to push back.
I’m grateful she married Nick because I could see, from the first time she introduced us, that he understood her goodness and that he would protect her, rather than try to destroy her like Lawrence would have done.
He’s a good man, a strong man, the kind of man every woman would want to be married to.
‘Vicky,’ says Lawrence and it’s impossible to miss how much he enjoys using the diminutive that I hate. ‘Why don’t you explain to Reesy why this has all happened?’ He smiles. ‘After all, you’re the one responsible.’