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 just couldn’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