Authors: Carys Jones
‘John Quinn?’
‘Yeah … yes …’ The journalist was quickly trying to compose himself after initially having been taken aback by Laurie’s immaculate resemblance to Lorna.
‘I’m Laurie Thomas.’ The manners which had been bestowed in both Thomas girls from a young age surfaced and Laurie extended her right hand in greeting. John shook it, his eyes still transfixed by the doppelganger before him.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said at last, as Laurie settled herself in the chair opposite him. ‘You are the spitting image of your sister, it’s kind of surreal.’
‘Yeah, I get that a lot,’ Laurie muttered dismissively.
‘You look exactly like her,’ John continued, fear now falling away to awe.
‘That’s kind of how it goes when people are identical twins,’ Laurie replied bitterly. All of her life, she had worn a face that wasn’t exclusively her own, and now, even in the wake of her sister’s passing; she was still forced to share her appearance.
‘I came here to talk to you about my sister.’ It was direct and to the point. Laurie had no intention of idling around; she wanted to extract the necessary facts and leave as quickly as possible. Strangely, she couldn’t help but dwell on the fact that she was conducting the meeting without Charles’ knowledge or consent. It felt as though she were somehow deceiving him, which made her feel uncomfortable, primarily because she did not want to feel that she owed him anything. Yet here she was, fretting about the clandestine questioning of the journalist. She was allowing the Deputy Prime Minister to get too close to her.
‘Ten thousand.’ John said suddenly, as he switched on the Dictaphone which he had blatantly placed on the table between them.
‘I’m sorry?’ Laurie asked, confused.
‘Ten thousand, for your story. I assume that is why you are here. I can’t offer the full twenty that we were going to give your sister because the story isn’t straight from the horse’s mouth anymore. Unless you are fucking him?’ There was no judgement upon John’s face as he delivered the crass question. In fact, his features were devoid of emotion, as if years of capturing the illicit movements of others had numbed him.
‘What? No! Jesus Christ!’ Laurie replied incredulously as her cheeks flushed with both anger and embarrassment. ‘I’m not here to sell my story. I have no story to sell.’
‘Then what are you doing here?’
Laurie eyed the Dictaphone which was monitoring their every word with caution.
‘Can you turn that off?’
‘What, you want this off the record?’ It was now John’s turn to be enraged. He thought for a moment before obligingly switching off the device. As much as it pained him to do so, he hoped that in gaining Laurie’s trust, he might eventually get the story he so badly craved.
‘Thank you,’ Laurie said sincerely, and even though it was against her nature, she flashed the journalist a sweet yet seductive smile, a skill which was in every woman’s arsenal but only few employed.
‘So why are we here?’ Predictably, John had thawed, his words now delivered with a trace of tenderness.
‘I need to know things about my sister.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like, when you last saw her, how was she?’
John saw the desperate hope in Laurie’s eyes and sighed. He was accustomed to shattering people’s dreams and illusions, not granting them. Any news he ever had to report on was always bad. Around London he felt like a harbinger of doom. If someone’s name landed upon his desk it was never for a good reason.
‘Is this because she killed herself?’ Again, he delivered an emotionally-loaded question in an almost robotic way.
Laurie flinched at the question. This man, this stranger, believed that Lorna had committed suicide, and to hear someone state it as such made Laurie feel like a foolish little girl. For a brief moment, she wished that Charles was there to support her. He would silence her doubts and reinforce her conviction that Lorna would never, ever take her own life.
‘I don’t believe that she did.’ It felt like a sheepish admission in the harsh light of day, like a child defying reason and still clinging on the belief that Santa Claus existed.
Despite dealing in the pain of others, John Quinn knew little of suffering. He had closed himself off from a great number of emotions to help him deal with his line of work more efficiently. Mourning and grief were foreign concepts to him. To John, a death was nothing more than an obituary to write and potentially a story, depending on the circumstances. But he knew that it wasn’t healthy for this young, beautiful woman to be dwelling on the demise of her twin sister.
‘I’m afraid that I don’t have answers for you.’ He picked up his Dictaphone and went to return it to his bag when Laurie reached across and grabbed his wrist, her eyes pleading.
‘Please,’ she begged. ‘Please, tell me how she was when you met her, that night in the club.’
John sighed and dropped the Dictaphone and reluctantly allowed his mind to wander back to the night in question.
‘Honestly, she was a mess.’ He saw immediately that it wasn’t the answer which Laurie wanted but it was the one she needed to hear. ‘She was out with some other interns, blind drunk by the time we got talking. She was all over the place in more ways than one. Kept going on about some guy who had broken her heart.’ John hesitated before carrying on, unsure if Laurie wanted to hear more, but he took her silence as a signal to proceed.
‘I mean, being out, you get used to seeing girls who are a mess like that. I just assumed she was cut up about a boyfriend, and I won’t lie, I’m the sort of guy who would take advantage of that. So I talked with her for a bit, asked questions, and then she dropped the bombshell about who the guy was.’
Laurie’s composure was stoic at this.
‘Can you at least give me that? Can you confirm who the guy was?’ John asked, wanting to walk away with something, but Laurie merely shook her head in refusal.
‘You want answers, well so do I!’ he said angrily, his desire for the story getting the better of him.
‘No, you want to write a sordid story. I want to find out why my twin sister died when she was only twenty two!’ Laurie spat each word out with an angry venom which surprised John into submission.
‘Fine. Your sister suddenly became a potential story. I gave her my card, told her the paper would be willing to pay big, that sort of thing. She seemed so drunk I doubted that she’d taken any of it in. To her credit, she seemed pretty horrified when I told her I was a journalist, and swore she didn’t want to sell her story. Then a few months later, she called. They always do.’
It saddened Laurie to imagine her sister selling herself out like that.
‘How did she seem when she called?’
‘Down, really down. Most women, when they do a kiss and tell, have a lot of spite and resentment, but Lorna just seemed … sad.’
‘And that didn’t strike you as odd?’ Laurie challenged, anger rising in her voice once more.
‘Look, it’s not my job to be a counsellor,’ John reasoned to her. ‘I merely relay events which have already unfolded. Don’t shoot the messenger.’
Laurie was quiet for a moment, mulling things over. When she spoke, her voice trembled slightly, as though she were fearful of the truth she was uncovering.
‘Did you tell anyone else, about Lorna?’
‘And have someone try and steal the story?’ John scoffed. ‘No, I did not. Did she tell you?’
‘Yeah, we spoke about it. She said she didn’t want to do it, but that she couldn’t turn the money down.’
‘One thing I’ve learnt is that everyone has their price,’ John stated nonchalantly as though he were remarking on the state of the weather.‘So she didn’t want to do it, but she was going ahead with it anyway. A story which could potentially destroy a very powerful man and her own reputation?’
‘Yeah.’ Laurie shifted uncomfortably in her chair.
‘Either, you have all the answers you seek, and your sister did kill herself,’ John paused before delivering the second part of his conclusion, wanting to ensure that he had Laurie’s complete undivided attention. ‘Or, she was involved with a very
powerful
man who found out what she was going to do.’
‘No, I told him about it and he said he had no idea.’
‘He would say that, wouldn’t he?’
Laurie felt an icy blast whip around her frame and then sweep beneath her clothes, chilling her to the bone as she processed what the journalist was implying.
‘You seem like a smart girl,’ John continued. ‘I suggest you forget all about this little investigation you’ve been conducting and go back home. Losing your sister is an awful tragedy, don’t let things get any worse.’
It was strange to finally vocalise the dark thought which had been lurking at the back of his own mind for a considerable amount of time. Ever since he had received the call stating that Laurie had died, something felt odd. If the young girl was so against the interview, she was within her rights to just pull out – no-one was compelling her to speak. Which left the possibility that it was someone else who silenced her indefinitely, leaving Laurie and her probing questions potentially in grave danger, and John had no desire to write a twinned obituary.
‘Please, just forget about all of this,’ John pleaded.
‘I can’t,’ Laurie admitted sadly. ‘Lorna was my best friend; I owe it to her to find out the truth.’
‘Then just be careful, I implore you. If you find that you are in over your head, call me. You know my number.’
John Quinn made a hasty exit from The 10 Stop, fearing for his own safety as much as Laurie’s.
Alone in the café, Laurie felt as though she were in a daze. Her motor functions allowed her to order and consume a cup of tea before leaving to walk home. But as she did so, she turned and scrutinized those who walked behind, fearful that any of them could be someone who was sent to silence her. Of all her questions and all her theories, Laurie had never once considered the possibility that she had been looking across at her sister’s killer all along.
Like stars colliding we crash together
The conversation with John Quinn lingered in Laurie’s mind long after the weekend had concluded. His notion that she was in danger plagued her thoughts to the point where sleep was impossible. Instead she lay awake, pondering what she should do and whom she should trust. It was in these moments that she missed Lorna the most. Her twin sister had always been her confidante, the person she could always turn to for guidance.
Laurie curled herself up in the sheets of her bed, wrapping them around her to form a protective cocoon and wondered what Lorna would do if she were there. Would she shy away from the danger and the uncertainty, or would she confront it?
Tormented, Laurie sobbed and pleaded to the empty darkness, ‘Why did you have to leave me? I need you.’ Her tears soaked the bedding around her. Having spent all her life as a duo, this feeling of being alone, stranded amongst a sea of souls, felt new and cruel to her.
By Monday morning, Laurie had found some clarity through her despair. She needed to leave London and its bright lights and return to the greenery of home. Her soul was calling out to forge a connection with Lorna. Laurie needed to visit the place where her twin had taken her final breath.
First she needed to free herself from the restraints of her internship, if only temporarily. She knew better than to discuss her desire to go home with Faye, who would only dismiss the possibility and hide behind work protocol. Laurie needed to make her case to the Deputy Prime Minister himself, and she knew that the opportunity would soon present itself for her to do this.
As Laurie had predicted, it was still early Monday morning when Faye relayed the Deputy Prime Minister’s instructions for her to take some documents into his office. She knew the contents of the documents were irrelevant, it was just a rouse for them to be alone and discuss their clandestine investigation.
When she entered the office, documents in hand, Laurie suddenly felt a wave of nausea sweep over her, undoubtedly attributed to her new-found nerves. John Quinn’s warning continued to ring in her ears. She felt as though she were walking from the frying pain directly into the fire, and unlike her sister, Laurie vowed not to be quite such an easy lamb to slaughter.
‘Here are your papers,’ she said icily, placing the documents down on Charles’ desk.
‘Is everything alright?’ the Deputy Prime Minister enquired with genuine concern, noticing the lack of colour in her pallor.
‘Yes,’ Laurie answered with uncertainty. ‘Actually, no,’ she sighed, hastily recanting her first statement.
‘What is it?’ Charles asked, motioning for her to sit down across from him. Laurie obliged but she hugged her arms around herself, using her own limbs for protection as she felt vulnerable.
‘Something wrong?’ Charles queried when Laurie remained silent and failed to offer an explanation for her sour disposition.
‘I’m just…’ Laurie tried to find the words, tried to vocalise how she felt, whilst wanting to appear natural. The last thing she wanted was for Charles to sense that she now feared him.
‘I miss Lorna so, so much and I’m starting to wonder what I’m even doing here.’
‘You can’t give up now, not when we are so close.’
‘I’m not giving up, I’m just … struggling. I’m homesick and mourning Lorna. I think I need to return home, just for a few days.’
‘Oh.’
The Deputy Prime Minister’s eyes darkened with sadness and Laurie felt doubt creep into her mind and muffle John Quinn and his proclamations of danger. She watched as a flicker of despair crossed his features, but then he swiftly pushed it back down, deep within his soul. She realised that he too was dealing with the loss of Lorna, and that she had been providing some respite from that. But it was not her place to be the band aid he stuck over a gaping wound. She had her own demons to silence; she could not afford to be responsible for his too.
‘I’m going to visit the crash site, check for any potential clues.’ It was only a half-lie; Laurie had every intention of visiting the site where Lorna’s car had fatally collided with a great oak but she would not be scouring the area for clues, she would merely be seeking solace within herself. Linking her impromptu return home to their investigation seemed to please Charles, as the sadness lifted from his weary eyes and was quickly replaced by hope.