Chapter 44
FORTY-FOUR
Victoria
The metal from the gun is freezing against my forehead. He’s not going to hurt me. This is a bluff from a man who has never known what it’s like to not get what he wants. At least that’s who he used to be. It’s not necessarily who he is now.
And does the truth really matter now? I did what I did for a reason.
‘Talk,’ says Lawrence, digging the barrel of the gun into my skin.
‘Camilla called me the day after you saw her at the bar,’ I say.
‘Okay,’ says Reese, like she doesn’t understand.
‘It was the night you saw her alone and you got drunk, two weeks before the wedding. You said some… stuff about Lawrence.’
‘But...’ Reese begins to say and then she stops and waits for me to finish.
‘I thought she was just calling to ask how my mum was but she didn’t even say anything about that. She told me all the stuff you’d said and we kind of got into a conversation about how Lawrence wasn’t really—’
‘Really what? Really what?’ yells Lawrence, stepping back and throwing his hands up. There’s a desperate look on his face. He looks like he might cry. Why?
‘You weren’t nice to her,’ I yell back. He doesn’t know what he’s doing with that gun. It may not even be real. It felt real. I’m sure he has no idea how to use it.
‘It was none of your business,’ growls Lawrence, blinking rapidly. ‘We were happy.’
‘Look,’ says Reese, raising her voice. ‘What exactly do you want here, Lawrence? I haven’t seen you for sixteen years. I have a husband and children. We weren’t meant to be together, and you proved that by sleeping with Camilla.’
‘I screwed up,’ says Lawrence, sniffing, as he leans against a wall, the gun still pointed at me. ‘But you never would have known,’ he says to Reese.
I’m really tired of this conversation already and I know that Reese and I just need to find a way to get out of here.
‘Talk, just fucking talk, Vicky. You tell her,’ he spits out, marching right up to me and pushing the gun against my chest. This is a real gun. I think it’s a real gun. Oh God, oh God, oh God.
‘When I was talking to Camilla she brought up the fact that she took us to Lawrence’s Halloween party.
She told me that he should have been with her…
and something in the way she said it made me suspicious of what she might do.
I told her that I was going to try and talk to you, Reese, and get you to call off the wedding but she told me not to.
And I…’ I shrug my shoulders. ‘I never trusted her. So once I knew my mum was okay on her own, I went over to Camilla’s house to tell her to leave this situation alone.
I saw her coming out of the house and I just… followed her.’
I stop speaking, realising how strange that sounds but I knew Camilla wasn’t going to leave things to me.
From the moment I met Camilla, I understood who she was.
I read her jealousy of Reese, of me, in her face every time we saw her.
I was glad when Reese kicked her out of her apartment because I thought the friendship was finally over.
But then Reese invited her back into our lives and I could see that Camilla was still angry about her life, angry about everything.
When she told me everything Reese had said about being unhappy with Lawrence, I knew not to trust her. I followed her to the bar where she met Lawrence. And then I parked and went in, grateful that it was really full so that I could watch the two of them.
When they left, I was ready to go home. I thought that she had spoken to Lawrence and that he would confront Reese about what she’d been saying about him to her friend and, maybe, Reese would call off the wedding.
I thought that was a good thing and I was relieved.
I thought they would part outside the bar but they didn’t.
Instead, they walked back to Camilla’s share house together.
It was a warm night, so I left my car and followed them.
And then I spent close to two hours outside the house, waiting for Lawrence to come out. When he did, his shoulders were hunched and he looked around him, his movements furtive.
I waited until he was gone and then I knocked on the door. It was after midnight but one of Camilla’s room-mates let me in and I went up to her bedroom. It smelled of alcohol and sex, the bed rumpled. Camilla was dressed in a short black robe and it was obvious she was naked underneath.
‘What are you doing here?’ she asked.
‘What are you doing?’ I replied. ‘What are you doing with Lawrence? What the hell have you done, Camilla?’
I will never forget that smug little smile and the way she said, ‘Reese doesn’t appreciate him and what she doesn’t know, won’t hurt her.’
I explain all this to Reese and then I say, ‘I told Camilla not to tell you she slept with him, that’s what I told her. I didn’t want her to ruin your wedding.’
‘Liar,’ says Lawrence, pushing the gun harder against my chest, making me feel like I can’t breathe properly. ‘Camilla said you told her she had to tell.’
‘That’s bullshit, Lawrence. I didn’t want Reese to get hurt. I wanted her to end it without knowing you cheated.’
He doesn’t move the gun away from me. Across the room there is the wall filled with pictures of my children, of Dylan and Cash. I have to get back to them.
‘You’re hurting me,’ I hear myself whimper.