Chapter 45
FORTY-FIVE
Reese
I don’t even register that he pulls the gun away and swings his other hand, slapping Victoria hard.
‘I don’t care,’ he rages. ‘You need to be hurt.’
Her head whips sideways as her body falls backwards.
‘Lawrence,’ I scream.
‘She’s lying,’ he yells, moving away, back against the wall. ‘She’s lying about… everything.’
‘Lawrence, please, please. You have to stop this.’ I lay my hand on Victoria’s arm, trying to get her to stay quiet so that I can talk to Lawrence.
Did she tell Camilla to tell me? Did she allow her to ambush me a week before my wedding?
It doesn’t matter now. The only thing that matters is getting out of here.
From where I am sitting I can see the pictures of our children. We need to get home to them. Lawrence doesn’t want to hurt us, at least I don’t think he does. He’s angry but if I can convince him that I’m sorry about everything, maybe I can get us home.
‘I know that me cancelling our wedding hurt you, Lawrence. I regret it, I really do. I think of you often and I always feel bad about ending things like that. I’m sorry, Lawrence.
I did a terrible thing by cancelling so close and I hope you can forgive me and that you can forgive Victoria for trying to protect me. ’
Everything I have just said is a lie but he doesn’t have to know that.
He used to laugh at me when we were going out and I told a little white lie.
‘It’s so obvious from your face, Reese,’ he would say.
It was cute at first but then it became something I was conscious of.
I practised telling lies in the mirror, watching the way my eyebrows went up, hearing the slight squeak in my voice.
I did it until I could lie without him knowing.
‘Do you know how many times I’ve been married, Reese?’ he says, sliding down the wall and bending his knees, his brow furrowed.
‘No,’ I say softly. I can feel Victoria start to move but I squeeze her arm, wishing she would just let me handle this. I’m not as weak as she thinks I am. ‘Tell me,’ I say.
‘Three times,’ he says and then he shakes his head. He looks bereft, all the anger gone and despair in its place.
‘And each time I have married someone who looks just a little like you but isn’t like you.
’ He uses the gun as a pointer, directing it at me.
‘Instead, they were all bitches, all three of them. I never had kids. I never had any peace and now I have no money either. My parents have poured millions into fighting my divorces and trying to keep their fortune safe and after this time, my dad just told me he can’t do it anymore.
He cut me off. Everything I have, I’ve given away.
I’ve been left with nothing and all because I kept chasing you.
None of them were good like you, Reese.’
There is no point in me trying to make him understand the irony of his situation.
He will never see himself as the problem.
He’s simply not capable of doing it. In me he had a co-conspirator, someone who would also never see Lawrence as the problem.
That’s what he’s been looking for all these years.
‘If you had forgiven me, I would have everything now, everything. Instead, I have nothing.’
‘I’m sorry, Lawrence,’ I say. You deserved everything. Every bad thing that has happened to you, you have brought on yourself.
‘You’re not sorry enough,’ he murmurs, but it sounds like he’s saying it to himself. ‘I lost my house, I lost my job, I lost my fortune. I lost everything,’ he mutters. ‘How did I lose everything?’
I look over at Victoria who is, thankfully, staying quiet.
‘I knew you were meant to be my wife, Reesy; you were my soulmate.’ He runs a hand through his hair and then swipes it across his nose. I realise that he’s actually crying. But then, clearing his throat, I can see he’s changed again. Now he’s angry.
‘And I’ve been watching you, following you on social media for years.
You didn’t even care about me at all. You never looked me up and then you got married and had kids.
’ He stops speaking and looks around the room and then he stands and walks over to the pictures of Kayla and Max.
‘We would have made beautiful kids, Reesy,’ he murmurs.
‘Lawrence, you can still have kids with someone else,’ I say.
‘No,’ he shouts, whirling around and waving the gun at me, fury on his face. ‘I want you. I’ve always wanted you but you were so… happy.’ He shakes his head, disappointed that this is the case. ‘If I’d had a wife like you, my whole world would have been different.’
I know better than to say anything to him now.
He’s wound up and irrational and I need to let him say his piece.
Then I need to figure out how to get him to drop the gun, or at least calm down.
My phone is in my pocket and if I can dial triple zero, I may be able to summon the police if they can hear what’s going on.
But he hasn’t really looked away from me for long enough.
Next to me on the bed, Victoria moves.
‘Lawrence, you need to let us go now. Our families will miss us soon. Our husbands have probably already called the police,’ I say, hoping that she understands what I’m trying to say. He’s not watching her as closely as he’s watching me.
I don’t think he’s listening. He runs his hand over the pictures of our children.
‘It was so easy to get to your kids, Reesy, so easy. One skill I have picked up over the years is hacking. I’m really good at it.
I should never have trained to be a lawyer but that’s what my dad wanted.
I love computers, you know, they just do whatever you tell them.
You give them the right instruction and they just do it.
Everything is a computer now. Even your phones were easy to track.
’ He laughs, a low chuckle that sounds more sad than real.
‘I thought there was no way they would just hand the kids over to the woman I hired. I told her it was a surprise for my sisters, that I’d been living overseas and had planned a party, I mean can you imagine anyone believing anything so stupid? ’
Next to me, I can feel Victoria digging in her pocket. He needs to stay turned around, looking at the pictures so she can get this done.
‘So you didn’t know the woman at all?’
‘Nah,’ he says. ‘People will do anything for money.’ He swings around to look at me.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ he yells and he darts forward as I shift back away from him on the bed.
He grabs Victoria’s phone out of her hand and flings it against the wall, the cracking sound of the screen shattering making us both jump.
‘I will kill you,’ he shouts, pushing the gun against Victoria’s skull.
I cannot breathe. My best friend has a gun to her head.
‘Please, Lawrence, please,’ she whimpers, holding up her hands.
Lawrence steps back and shakes his head like we’ve disappointed him.
‘Vicky is not a good friend, Reesy, you think she is but she’s not.
’ He sighs and I can see that he’s tired, but is he tired enough for us to be able to overpower him?
We are two small women and he is a large man with a gun.
One of us will surely get hurt, maybe even die.
My only option is to talk to him, to keep talking to him.
‘I started following you after my third marriage ended, like really following you and that bitch.’ He gestures at Victoria.
‘And then I saw her with your husband and I thought maybe… maybe I would get a second chance. That’s why I wanted to see you, to talk to you so that you know that you can trust me, Reesy.
She’s the bad one, she’s the one who wants to hurt you. She’s fucking your husband.’
Lawrence is unhinged, mad in a way that I know I can’t counter with the truth but even as I remind myself of this I wonder if what he’s saying is true. Is Victoria sleeping with Nick?
‘But you don’t have to be sad about that,’ he says, getting on his knees in front of me, the gun clutched in his hand resting on my leg, ‘because it means that you can leave him and be with me and I’ll take care of your kids and we can be a happy family.’
‘Lawrence,’ I begin to say, unsure what words to use, hating that he’s so close to me. He’s still using the same aftershave he used when we were dating and the smell is making me sick.
‘You love me, Reesy, you know you do. I was your first love, your best love, and we can be together again and Victoria can be with Nick and everyone will be happy.’ He looks up at me, imploring me to agree with him, to join him in his madness.
Do I agree with him just to get out of here? That’s the only choice I have.
‘Okay,’ I say. ‘That sounds good, Lawrence. If he’s cheating on me, I shouldn’t be with him.’
‘Really?’ He looks up at me; such hope on his face that I feel awful. I know what he’s done but he is such a sad and desperate man. He stands and takes two steps back.
‘Yes, but you have to drop the gun, you have to.’
Lawrence nods his head. ‘You’re doing the right thing, Reesy, you’ll see, we’ll be so happy. But you can’t see her again, you can never see her again because she’s a bad person,’ he says, pointing with the gun.
I nod as I stand and move over to him, reaching out my hand for the gun. ‘I won’t speak to her ever again,’ I say softly. ‘We’ll be together. But I need the gun now because it’s scaring me. I want you to give it to me so that I can put it down. I’ll go home and pack a bag and meet you.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ he says eagerly.
‘No, I need to talk to Nick alone, to explain it to him, and then we can be together, just the two of us.’ I keep my tone soothing, soft and I make sure my face is controlled. He needs to believe me.
‘Just the two of us,’ he agrees, nodding his head, his eyes shining with tears again. He extends the gun and I prise it gently from his hand, moving it behind my back.
‘Victoria and I are going to go now but I’ll call you tomorrow,’ I say softly and he nods his head.
I feel suspended in time as I move away from him slowly, taking one silent step backwards at a time as we are all frozen in this moment.
But then I feel the gun being pulled out of my hand.
‘Lawrence, no,’ I hear Victoria yelling and I turn to look at her as the gun goes off, a loud cracking pop that rings in my ears and fills the air with the smell of burnt metal.