Prime Deception by Carys Jones Page A

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