Liz Nugent - Lying in Wait

‘But I wasn’t, I swear. We didn’t get together until much later. I never wanted to hurt you, I know it seems wrong, but—’

She slammed the phone down. The trust between us was broken and could never be repaired. I felt guilty because, whatever way you look at it, I had betrayed a friend. But she took her revenge out on Laurence in a really cruel way, and I didn’t feel sorry for her after that. Laurence didn’t tell me about it at first. His friend Jane told me in the pub. Bridget had posted photographs of Laurence to his friends in the office. Photos that had been taken when he was at his heaviest, photos taken while he was naked and asleep. He played it down in the pub, but I could see he was mortified. He told me about it later when we were alone.

‘She took photos all the time, but I never knew she was taking photos of me when I was asleep. Some of the junior ones in the office were laughing at me behind my back and passing comments. I didn’t know what it was all about until Sally told me.’

Evelyn had gathered up all the photos and binned them. She had also rung Bridget in Mullingar and torn strips off her.

Laurence tried to make a joke out of it all, and I could tell that his co-workers liked him. He was a good boss and very fair. Privately, he was upset about it, but we got on with things and moved on as a team. He wrote Bridget a cross letter, letting her know that all of her friends had been disgusted by what she’d done. We didn’t hear from her again after that.

Da was really surprised that I was going out with Laurence. He didn’t know that Lar had split up with Bridget. ‘It makes sense now,’ he said. ‘He was always asking about you in a roundabout way.’ Da had always liked him, and he’d started his new hospital porter job in the Mater, so he wasn’t signing on at Laurence’s office any more. ‘No conflict of interest,’ he said, chuckling. I didn’t dare tell my parents that Laurence had written the Annie letters. I don’t think they would have understood that he did it for me. He had done more work to find her killer than anyone. He knew he was hitting a blank wall, and he just wanted the heartache to stop for us. It was the most considerate, generous thing anyone has ever done for me. Da was prepared to let it go now that he’d been let off the hook in the second letter.

‘Didn’t she say she’ll get in touch one day? I hope it’s soon,’ he said, and I knew that the forgiveness and hope were enough to keep him going, even though Annie was never going to walk in the door.

Ma had already accepted everything when she got the first letter. She had agreed with Dessie that we shouldn’t look for Annie. She agreed with Dessie about everything. She was very upset that I was seeing Laurence. ‘It’s cheating,’ she said. ‘In the eyes of God, you are still married and always will be. That man was nothing but good to you. Look at me and your father, back together again. Why don’t you give him another chance, love? This Laurence fella, you’ll end up hurt, I know you will, there’s something about him I don’t trust. Why would the likes of him, from a big mansion so you tell me, be interested in the likes of you? He’s only after a bit of fun. It’s only because you’re a model now. He wouldn’t have bothered with you if you were still in the dry-cleaner’s.’

‘Hush now, Pauline, leave her be. He’s a nice fella, that Laurence. Very good to me so he was, before he even met Karen.’

My mother’s words were hurtful and I did wonder if they might be partly true, but Laurence was proud to have me on his arm and introduced me everywhere as his girlfriend. He never treated me like I was his bit of fluff.

Except for when it came to his mother. I knew Bridget had never met her, and I knew that Laurence and me were in the early days of our relationship, but even though it was unspoken, I felt there was a commitment between us. I was still married to Dessie, and the divorce referendum had just been beaten earlier that year, so marriage wasn’t even an option, but the way he talked about the cottage, it was as if he meant it to be our home, and he mentioned us travelling in the future. He found out about fine-art courses I could enrol in. This was definitely not going to be a fly-by-night romance, and yet he never suggested I meet his mother. He had talked about her various phobias and her difficulty with strangers, but I figured that if she was well enough to go to the supermarket, she might be able for me. I wanted to ask him if he had told her about me, but I was afraid I’d be disappointed by the answer. If Bridget got the impression that her family wasn’t good enough for Laurence’s mother, then I was in the same boat. Socially, Bridget and me were on the same rung of the ladder. If anything, I was lower because I had left my husband, and that made me a loose woman.

Work was going well. I travelled a bit, and without Dessie watching my every move and checking up on me, Yvonne was freer to accept the jobs he would not have approved of. I still didn’t want to do sexy lingerie shoots, but there was a swimwear shoot at Cap d’Antibes for British Vogue . I was so nervous about that one because the other girls were English, Sri Lankan and Ethiopian. My skin was pale blue compared with their peachy, coffee and ebony tones, but the director of the shoot insisted that was what he wanted. It was all done very tastefully, and an army of stylists made me look good and with the help of some careful padding increased the size of my bust. Laurence thought that was funny. Dessie would have been apoplectic.

Every time I went home to Ma and Da’s, there’d be a letter from Dessie waiting for me. In the beginning, they were full of apologies and begging me to give the marriage another go. Then, after a while, they were more about practical matters, like how the bill had come in for getting the boiler fixed, and as I’d lived there at the time he felt it only fair that I contribute. Even though he still had total control of the house fund that I’d paid into every week, I sent him a postal order to keep the peace, and to keep him off my back. Then the letters became abusive. I had made a fool out of him. He was going to get his revenge. Everyone at the dry-cleaner’s was laughing at me when they saw me in magazines, and thought I had notions about myself. He was my husband and I had no right to walk away from him. And then they got nastier. I was a stupid slut like my sister, and I’d end up a prostitute just like her. He wouldn’t be surprised if I got murdered one day for flashing myself in public. He threatened to sell a story on me to the tabloids about my junkie whore sister, and I began to get genuinely scared of what he could do to my career. I knew he’d been talking to my ma, so I showed her the letters and I warned her again not to give him any details about me or where I was living. She was shocked then and felt guilty about taking his side. Then later, she met Laurence and was charmed by his good looks and fine manners. She put on her telephone voice when she was speaking to him until Da and I ribbed her about it.

My relationship with Laurence was easy from the start. There was no need to make a big effort with him, to dress to please him or to talk a certain way to impress him. He told me I was beautiful many times, but he also told me that I was clever and interesting and funny, and I felt the same way about him. Our dates were pretty ordinary, I guess. The cinema, music gigs in pubs, dinner out occasionally, but we never ran out of things to say to each other, and I knew I would never get tired of his handsome face.

Everything was going pretty well for us, and then Laurence rang me one night out of the blue to say he had moved into the cottage that night. He seemed upset but didn’t want to discuss it. I was surprised because it was barely furnished at the time. He said he’d see me during the week, but when I called his office to leave a message they said he was sick, so I took the train out to Killiney and walked up the hill to the cottage that weekend. Laurence had been full of plans about how he was going to do it up. It was a pretty place. The windows were diamond-paned, ivy grew up the walls, and rose bushes stood on either side of the front door. I rapped the brass knocker. There was no reply. I knocked again and eventually heard a shuffling behind the door and it opened a crack.