‘Do call me Sherry, darling,’ her mother interrupted. ‘You know you struggle with the word Mum.’
Laura’s chest constricted with anger. She did struggle to address her mum. Not because of her difficulties enunciating the ‘m’, but because the woman didn’t have a maternal bone in her body. After the unbearable tragedy that had ripped Laura’s damaged heart from her chest, she’d begun to address her as Sherry, the name her mother had adopted, deeming Sharon too ordinary for a fashion columnist who travelled in the social circles she did. She was a fake. Everything about her mother was false.
Turning from the work surface, Sherry frowned as she surveyed Laura critically. ‘Really, Laura … grey?’ Taking in her M&S cashmere sweater and tracksuit bottoms, she shook her head disparagingly. ‘You know neutral colours don’t flatter your pale skin tone, darling. If you wore that outfit to the hospice, you’d probably be mistaken for a corpse. And thathair…’
Leaving that one hanging, and Laura tugging on a lock of hair she’d refused to cut, no matter how many times her mother, out of jealousy and insecurity, had suggested she should, Sherry strode past her, her heels clicking on the ceramic kitchen tiles as she headed to the hall.
‘Despite my busy schedule, I managed to squeeze in a bit of retail therapy, you’ll be pleased to hear,’ she called enthusiastically back from where she was retrieving the bags she’d dropped beside the front door.
Laura’s irritation escalated. Her mother would have been shopping for her – again – selecting clothes that were horrendously expensive and tasteless. She just wanted to be seen to be doing the things normal mothers might. Laura had no doubt this was all for Steve’s benefit, and that whilst appearing to be concerned for her, Sherry would slowly but surely turn him against her. If she were to forge a relationship with someone she could trust implicitly, long-held secrets might surface, after all, and her mother couldn’t possibly have that, could she?
How dearly Laura wished Steve hadn’t answered her phone that fateful day her mother had called from the spring fashion show in Milan – which was what had prompted her to immediately change her number. Once her mother realised she was in a new relationship, Laura had known she would materialise, embroiling herself in her life, making it impossible for her to have the only thing she craved: a normal family, the child she desperately wanted. Now it was within her grasp, and here was Sherry like a bad omen about to spoil it.
‘How did you know my address?’ she asked, following her mother to the hall.
Straightening up with her bags, Sherry blinked at her in surprise. ‘Your young man told me, darling,’ she said, as if wondering why on earth she would ask.
Laura guessed that he would have. Steve was far too easily taken in, and she hadn’t asked him not to. She’d only ever given him scant detail about her past, as much as she thought it was necessary for him to know.
‘I’ll just take these straight up, shall I?’ Sherry asked, her Dior-painted mouth curving into that brittle sweet smile Laura had seen so many times. It was as fake as the rest of her. Behind the facade, she was scared, living in fear that her world would come tumbling down. ‘You do have a spare room, don’t you, darling? You did say it was a little three-bedroomed house you’d rented?’
Laura picked up on the word ‘little’. It stung, reminding her of everything her mother had ever valued above her: the grand Georgian farmhouse set in two acres of rolling Warwickshire countryside, with its paddocks, tennis courts and gym. And its pool, of course. They loved that pool. Laura couldn’t stand the sight of it.
Sherry was in her element there. She would never give it up, or the prestige she imagined it afforded her in the tiny village of Stepton, where she was ‘respected by the community’. She even helped out in the parish church nowadays, laughably; trying to assuage her conscience, Laura would bet. The house was a living, breathing part of her, she often said. She’d refurbished it with sweat and blood, making it the desirable residence it was. Or rather, with Grant’s money, once she’d got her fingernails firmly dug into him.
Sherry – or Sharon as she still was then – had been a stable hand there originally, Laura had learned from local gossip when she’d emerged from her bedroom – her self-made tomb – determined to breathe again. She’d lost her job at the local biscuit factory and had apparently been working at the house, grandly renamed ‘Stepton Manor’, when she’d met Grant, the son of the wealthy owners. The place had been neglected, but Sherry had loved it; convinced Grant they should stay there and restore it to its former glory. She’d had a plan, a plan that had included making sure Grant’s mother went to a nice rest home shortly after his father had died. She’d entrenched herself in his life, become part of his world. He’d been her passport to a better future, her way to extract herself from her roots, which were firmly embedded in the council estate she’d been brought up in. She had been determined to marry him: she would never go back to a life of poverty. Her grim determination now was to hold on to it all by whatever emotionally manipulative means she had to employ, caring nothing for the impact on her own daughter.
She knew Laura suffered because of it. Unbelievably, she made light of it. Told her that events in the past were nothing but the imaginings of her subconscious. ‘The things you see when you sleepwalk aren’t real, darling,’ she would say to placate her. How could she have remembered things she saw while she’d been sleepwalking, though? Laura had asked her. Amnesia was part of the condition – her mother knew that. If she’d been asleep, she wouldn’t have been able to recall anything.
‘It’s not a bad little property, is it?’ Sherry observed now, slightly breathless as she heaved her bags up the stairs.
God.Laura’s stomach churned. She couldn’t do this. She justcouldn’t. ‘There is no spare room!’ she shouted.
Sherry stopped, blinking down at her in surprise from where she was balanced precariously near the top of the stairs. Of course she would be surprised. Laura almost laughed. Her timid little daughter had never stood up to her. She’d always accommodated her, because she’d had to, trying to forestall the inevitable tales Sherry would tell. Not this time. This was her chance at a future. She’d worked so hard to make it happen, to be with Steve. She wouldn’t let her mother scare him off. ‘The spare room has no furniture in it and the small room is Ollie’s,’ she said, holding her gaze defiantly.
‘Ollie’s?’ Sherry’s eyes widened, a flicker of apprehension visible. ‘And who is Ollie, sweetheart?’ she asked, manufacturing a smile.
‘Steve’s little boy. He stays here at weekends,’ Laura informed her firmly.
Sherry’s face blanched. ‘Oh, I see,’ she said, glancing down and back. ‘How lovely. And he’s how old?’ she enquired sweetly.
‘Almost four,’ Laura said. ‘I won’t let you spoil this for me,’ she warned her.
Sherry looked shocked. ‘Spoil it? Why on earth would you imagine I would do that? Honestly, Laura, you have to stop this, darling, blaming other people for things that go wrong in your life. I’m only here to help, as I always am. To make sure everything is all right with you. You know how you’re prone to restlessness at night when you’re—’
‘Everything isfinewith me.’ Laura’s voice rose. ‘Or at least itwas. So you can just go on back to your bloody mansion now, can’t you?’
‘Don’t be like that, Laura,’ Sherry said, her eyes filling up. ‘I’m here now.’ She smiled again, tremulously. ‘I might as well stay overnight. I’m quite happy with the sofa. Grant will be back from London tomorrow and he can—’
‘No! I don’t wanthim coming here.’ Laura felt her blood boil. ‘I don’t want either of you here,ever.’ Did she honestly think she would want to spend time with Grant, smiling charmingly in that unbelievable way he did, defending her bloody mother, as he was bound to?
Sherry’s expression changed to one of alarm. ‘Laura, please, don’t do this,’ she beseeched, a hand fluttering to her chest, as if she might have a heart attack. As if. The woman had a heart of stone. ‘Grant only wants to help you, as I do. He loves you as if you were his own. You’re confused about what happened, my lovely. I suspect you might always be. I know it’s difficult to accept, but you really were very muddled then, prone to all sorts of imaginings. Weren’t you?’
Now her look was one of sympathy. False sympathy. False. False.False!
Twelve
Sarah
