Prime Deception Read online

  ‘Right, okay,’ Charles said cautiously, not wanting to antagonise Laurie further. She was clearly in a very volatile frame of mind.

  ‘Your sister and I …’

  ‘I care not for the details of your affair,’ Laurie interrupted him again. She delivered her words to him with such bitter resentment that it saddened Charles. Lorna was always so warm and affectionate. Her words came to him like the sweetest melody. Now, hearing that voice twisted with anger and despair sickened Charles. Seeing those sweet, angelic features all twisted and pensive seemed unnatural. He wondered if Hollywood had been right when they would label one twin as ‘good’ and the other as ‘bad.’ In this case, Laurie was evidently the evil twin and in no small measure. But then Charles wondered if she had once been just like Lorna, but the death of her twin had changed her and twisted her in to a darker version of herself. He would never know.

  ‘I cared for your sister,’ Charles admitted simply.

  ‘Really? I didn’t see you at the funeral.’ The darkness behind Laurie’s eyes intensified, threatening to spill out into the room.

  ‘I … I wanted to come, but it wouldn’t have been appropriate.’

  ‘What? You had to come as her seedy older lover? You couldn’t have just come as her employer? Jesus Christ are you that short-sighted?’

  Since assuming the role of Deputy Prime Minister, people rarely spoke to Charles in a rude manner. Occasionally members of the public lashed out at events, angered over certain policies, but his security quickly intervened. Yet here Laurie was, being rude to him and not caring who he was, or what he did. To her, he was a man who had wronged her sister and he respected her ability to focus on that. He realised that there was something they shared; they had both loved Lorna dearly.

  ‘I know that I should have been there. I just didn’t want to turn Lorna’s funeral into a media circus,’ Charles admitted sadly.

  Laurie was quiet, appearing to contemplate what he had said whilst interlocking her hands over and over as they sat in her lap.

  ‘I miss her,’ the young girl said and suddenly her hardened exterior melted away and she was vulnerable and soft. She was Lorna.

  ‘As do I.’

  ‘My Mom can’t even look at me anymore, and my Dad tries to hide it but I see it in his eyes as I see it in yours. She and I were one and the same and now she’s gone but I’m still here.’

  ‘I can’t imagine what that must be like.’

  ‘Yes you can. People look at you and see the man you are on television, but underneath you are just a normal guy. On the outside I’m Lorna, but inside I’m Laurie.’

  Laurie had no idea why she was suddenly opening up to Charles. Perhaps it was the fatigue, as she was weary from travelling down to the capital city the previous day. Or maybe it was because she knew that she needed him to be on her side if she was ever to accomplish what she had come there to do.

  ‘Were you and Lorna very alike?’

  ‘No,’ Laurie scoffed. ‘Growing up, Lorna played with dolls whilst I’d spend days up in our treehouse, reading. We each lost ourselves in different dreams and fantasies. She wanted to be you –powerful and leading a nation. I wanted to be the ghost writer who would bring people like you down.’

  ‘I see.’ Charles felt himself warming to Laurie despite her hostile reception. He found her honesty, whilst cutting, refreshing.

  ‘I hate the city; all the fumes and people and pollution. But Lorna loved it. She would call me up raving about this show or that restaurant. Whereas I love to be in the country, enjoying as much solitude as possible.’ Laurie was rambling now but it was a long time since anyone had allowed her to speak openly about her twin. Most people in her life found the subject too painful to broach, which meant that she had been forced to keep the majority of her feelings locked deep inside her.

  ‘So, why are you here?’ Charles broached the question which had been on his mind since Laurie had first introduced herself.

  ‘Basically,’ Laurie inhaled, ‘I need your help.’

  ‘My help?’ Charles echoed, confused.

  ‘Yes … I,’ Laurie tried to find the words but couldn’t and dropped her head into her hands in frustration.

  ‘It’s okay.’ Charles leant forward to comfort her but then held back. Aesthetically she was still Lorna, and to touch her and feel her warmth would awaken too many conflicting feelings within him – feelings he was already struggling to deal with without adding a catalyst to the situation.

  ‘I need you to help me find out what happened to Lorna.’ Laurie managed to deliver her request, looking up with tears forming behind her eyes, the tough exterior well and truly melted away to reveal a vulnerable, grieving young woman.

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Charles frowned in bewilderment. ‘Lorna … she took her own life. I can’t help you.’

  ‘No,’ Laurie muttered despairingly.

  ‘Look, I wish I could help you, really I do. But the verdict was suicide which means that what happened to her was by her own hand. I know it’s hard to understand …’

  ‘No!’ Laurie’s protest was louder now, more impassioned. ‘Lorna did not kill herself!’

  ‘I know it’s so horrid to think about …’

  ‘Please, Lorna would not have done that. She wasn’t … like that. You knew her! She loved life – there was a light within her, and she would not have willingly put that out.’

  ‘People can be very good at hiding inner pain,’ Charles reasoned.

  ‘Lorna had no inner pain. I am her twin goddamnit! We were like two bodies with one mind. When Lorna cried, I’d cry without knowing why. And we shared everything, and I mean everything. I knew all about your affair.’

  ‘Perhaps when our relationship ended it hit her harder than I’d envisioned it would,’ Charles said gently, feeling sick to his stomach to be theorizing why the woman he had loved would kill herself.

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself!’ Laurie spat angrily. ‘Lorna knew what she was getting into from the start; it was always going to end. You were just a fling to her, she had many of them.’

  ‘I see.’ Charles tried to keep his composure but Laurie’s words hurt.

  ‘My sister would not kill herself.’ Tears began to fall down the young woman’s porcelain cheeks. ‘I would have known if things were that bad. You have to believe me.’

  Despite himself, Charles reached forward and cupped one of Laurie’s tiny hands. Her skin was cool yet soft, just as her sister’s had been, and the sensation of touching her made his spine momentarily tingle with delight. Yet the sombre mood of the meeting kept his mind sharp.

  ‘I shouldn’t be telling you this really, but the night before Lorna … died,’ Laurie wiped at her wet eyes with the back of her free hand, ‘she told me she was due to meet with a reporter from The Shadow newspaper. The interview would have been on the day they found her. She was going to sell her story on you.’

  Charles’ eyes widened in shock. He had no idea his own life had been so close to being destroyed.

  ‘Don’t look surprised,’ Laurie scoffed accusingly. A part of her prickled at the theory that she may well be looking at the man responsible for her sister’s death.

  ‘Why would she … why would she do that?’ He refused to believe that what he’d had with Lorna hadn’t been special – that he was just the latest in a long line of lovers.

  ‘Money,’ Laurie said simply. ‘A guy from the paper somehow heard about the affair and had been hassling her for weeks. They offered her twenty thousand and she couldn’t afford to turn it down. If it helps, I know it was tearing her up thinking about doing the interview, but then, you’d dumped her so …’

  ‘I thought she didn’t care that much about me,’ Charles challenged.

  ‘She didn’t,’ Laurie said quickly. ‘But still, the interview would change everything; everyone would know what she’d done.’

  ‘Perhaps then, she felt she only had one way out.’ Guilt began to set in once more as Charles spoke. Lorna’s death
, he felt, would continually be interlinked with himself.

  ‘No, no! That’s not Lorna’s style. She was fine in the end to do the interview. She said she’d move back to Kent with the money and we’d buy a flat together like we’d always dreamt we’d do. Someone wanted her to silence her, permanently.’ Laurie released another tear for the dream that would never be. She felt so very alone without her twin. The world had become such a cold and brutal place and she no longer had her other half to share her journey with.

  ‘What exactly do you want me to do?’ Charles asked, his own mind weighted by the saturation of new information.

  ‘Help me decipher the truth. Find the police reports from her death; surely you have access to those things? And the guy from The Shadow, we could do with talking to him.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘Mr. Lloyd, I need your help, please. Alone, I’m just a girl with a vendetta. But you are the Deputy Prime Minister. People will listen to you – you can make things happen.’

  ‘I will only rouse suspicion if I begin investigating Lorna’s case,’ Charles argued.

  ‘You are a politician – I’d have thought the act of deception came naturally to you!’ Laurie’s fragility had faded away and been masked once more by her tough demeanour.

  The desk which made a barrier between them had been where Charles had first made love to Lorna. Laurie was here in everything but spirit and whilst Charles wanted to dismiss the girl to save his own reputation, he knew he could not. More than anything, he felt that he owed Laurie his allegiance. He had loved Lorna more than he thought was possible, so the least he could do was aide her surviving twin, who was the last trace of her upon the earth.

  ‘I’ll help you as much as I can,’ Charles agreed, shaking the hand he had been holding to seal the promise.

  ‘Thank you.’ Laurie broke into a smile, the anger and pain momentarily thawing away from her beautiful features and suddenly she morphed in to Lorna.

  ‘Until next time.’ The gravel of despair was gone from Laurie’s voice, replaced by the singsong melody which danced through Charles’ mind on a nightly basis. He watched Laurie leave, still wary that he may be in the presence of a ghost.

  Chapter Five

  Every step I take leads me back to you …

  ‘I need this person to work beside you on the intern programme.’ Charles handed Faye a slip of paper with a name neatly written on it. Faye took the paper, read the name and scowled.

  ‘I don’t need your judgment, just your co-operation,’ he said tersely, angered by his assistant’s blatant disapproval.

  ‘Yes, sir, of course,’ Faye replied with all the sweetness she could muster.

  When Charles returned to his office she begrudgingly began to carry out the task he had just assigned her. Sat at her computer, Faye uploaded the list of current interns and the departments they were to be assigned to. She scrawled down until she found the correct name and clicked on it, being given the option to allocate the intern to her own department.

  Faye sighed as every instinct in her body told her that she was about to make a mistake, even though she were merely following orders. But what chance did she have? She could not risk further antagonising the Deputy Prime Minister by questioning his motives. The name glowed at her from the screen, taunting her.

  ‘This is dangerous,’ Faye muttered to herself, before taking the plunge and allocating the candidate to herself. On the main list, the name automatically updated. Laurie Thomas would now be working with the Deputy Prime Minister’s assistant. Faye felt a sickening sense of déjà vu.

  ‘So what do I do?’ Laurie asked into Charles’ mobile. He’d called her from his own personal handset for fear of the main system being monitored. He was outside, leant against his Bentley, with a faint breeze rustling through his hair. He’d feigned sickness to his driver so that they could pull over and he could get some fresh air and make a stealthy phone call. They were out on a deserted country lane, away from prying eyes.

  Henry had used the impromptu stop to have a cigarette and he had wandered away from the vehicle. Charles’ security team would have lost their minds had they seen them both behaving in such a nonchalant manner.

  ‘You’ll be reporting to Faye, my assistant, and working for her,’ Charles explained, his voice low even though Henry was some distance away, preoccupied.

  ‘Working?’ Laurie repeated nervously.

  ‘Yes, as an intern, as we agreed. It’s the only way we can be close to one another without raising suspicion.’

  ‘Won’t people … recognise me though? Surely that will make them suspicious?’

  ‘Just give them some spiel about how you wanted to follow in your sister’s footsteps and that I was sympathetic to your cause.’ The answer came so quickly to Charles that it almost scared him. Perhaps Laurie was right, perhaps deceit did come naturally to him. He had conducted an affair for a number of months without anyone knowing, he could easily lead a covert investigation with an intern.

  ‘I guess.’ Laurie didn’t sound convinced.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘It’s just … working for you … for the system as it were. It goes against all my beliefs, kind of makes me feel dirty.’

  ‘Perhaps I should be offended, I’m offering you a very coveted position,’ Charles smiled as he spoke, Laurie’s attitude humoured him.

  ‘It’s not me, though. It’s Lorna. I guess I need to be her for a bit to help get to the bottom of what really happened to her.’

  ‘I suppose.’ The last thing Charles wanted was for Laurie to begin behaving like Lorna. Currently, the two twins had very different traits which helped Charles keep some clarity on the situation. If Laurie acted as Lorna, the lines would become blurred and he didn’t want that.

  ‘Where are you?’ Charles asked suddenly, wanting to deflect the conversation away from Lorna.

  ‘At the Tate Britain.’

  ‘Where?’ Charles asked again, a rogue flurry of wind momentarily obscuring Laurie’s voice.

  ‘At the Tate Britain,’ Laurie almost hissed the answer. ‘I can’t exactly shout in here!’ she joked.

  ‘Oh right, okay. So you like art?’

  ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Sometimes?’ Charles smiled in bemusement at her odd response.

  ‘I prefer classic art, like Hogarth and Caravaggio.’

  ‘Not modern art?’

  ‘No,’ Laurie answered flatly. ‘There’s a Hogarth in here somewhere, I’ve just not found it yet,’ she mused as she wandered the gallery.

  ‘I like Hogarth.’

  ‘You do?’ Laurie suddenly brightened.

  ‘Yes, I admired his Dickensian sympathies for the poor and needy. Do you know that he helped establish London’s Foundling Hospital? There are examples of his art there.’

  ‘Really? Cool.’

  ‘I could always take you there some time,’ as Charles said the words it felt natural to extend the invitation to Laurie, but then he realised that he wasn’t, he was asking to take Lorna out. Laurie was a stranger to him. If their union to play detective over Lorna’s case was ever going to work, he knew he would have to keep the girl at arm’s length for fear of his emotions getting the better of him.

  ‘It’s alright, I’d prefer a more low-key visit,’ Laurie replied. ‘Directions would be appreciated though.’

  ‘I’m sure Faye can help with that,’ Charles suddenly tried to detach himself from the conversation.

  ‘Right, okay,’ Laurie sounded unfazed by the change in Charles’ tone. ‘So what happens now, with Lorna, I mean? What are you going to do?’

  Charles glanced over at Henry to ensure he was still a considerable distance away, which thankfully he was; still enjoying a cigarette whilst checking messages on his own mobile phone.

  ‘I need to start calling in some favours to gain access to the complete police reports.’

  ‘How are you going to do that?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet, I need to figure out a
believable angle.’

  ‘Okay, well I need to go now,’ Laurie informed the Deputy Prime Minister. ‘Nature is calling I’m afraid. I’ll see you at work tomorrow, joy,’ she said sarcastically. ‘Until next time.’

  The call disconnected. Hearing Lorna’s sign off stung Charles, the pain emanating out from his chest. He took a moment to right himself before calling over to Henry.

  ‘I’m feeling much better now, Henry, we’d better carry on.’

  ‘Right, yes, certainly.’ The elder man quickly extinguished the remains of his cigarette and returned to the luxury of the Bentley.

  ‘Are you sure you are feeling better, sir?’ he asked, glancing at Charles in the rear view mirror.

  ‘Yes, thank you.’

  ‘You just look a little pale still, that’s all. Like you’ve seen a ghost.’

  Laurie wandered through the halls of the Tate Britain in quiet awe. On occasion, art could really speak to her, and since losing Lorna she had been more introspective than usual. Her hair was tied up in a ponytail and she wore her usual uniform of jeans, hooded top and jacket. Her eyes darted over each piece of art, quick and inquisitive, like a small meerkat. Even though she was a twin, Laurie was used to solitude and her own company. Lorna had always been the outgoing one, off at parties and barely in touch when she went to university as she was so busy socialising. Laurie had remained at home whilst her sister went off to London to pursue her dreams with a fervent desire which the other twin never understood.

  But despite their differences, the twin girls were the best of friends. They grew up, each forming their own path, but these would intertwine regularly, allowing them to reconnect with one another. Laurie always assumed that was how her life would play out; that Lorna would float in and out of her life, informing her of all the wonderful things she was doing, whilst Laurie wrote and stayed safe in her bubble of a quiet life. Knowing that Lorna would never call or text again, never pay an impromptu visit simply to have Laurie try on all these wonderful designer clothes she’d bought in a sale, was heart wrenching. Lorna and Laurie had been one another’s constant. However crazy their lives became, they had each other, and that knowledge kept them grounded.