follow protocol and would be obliged to try to persuade her out of doing anything rash.
Sarah didn’t intend to do anything rash, although she just might if Steve refused to see what was abundantly clear to her. She felt a combination of nausea and nerves churn inside her. Laura had a fixation about water. Hadn’t she said that Ollie and she would learn to swim together? That she would buy him some water wings? Super-bloody-hero water wings? She’d filled his mind with tales of a superhero called Jacob who swam with the fucking fish, for God’s sake. Had she been tempting him to go into the water? Sarah couldn’t know what had gone on around her brother’s disappearance, nor would she ever, probably, but one thing she did know was that Laura Collins, Caldwell … whoever she was … did need therapy. Serious therapy.
Leaving the car on the pavement outside Laura’s house, she marched up the garden path, rang the doorbell and banged the knocker. She was angry. She needed to stay angry. She wouldn’t back down, not this time.
Forty-Nine
Laura
Hearing someone hammering on the front door, Laura almost shot off the sofa. ‘Who’s that?’ she whispered nervously to Steve. It wouldn’t be a sales person calling at this hour, and they weren’t expecting anybody. Her mother wouldn’t come here, not now. Steve would never allow her in and Sherry would know it.
‘No idea.’ Glancing at the wall clock, Steve heaved himself up from his armchair and headed curiously for the hall.
Her heart thumping, Laura went to the lounge door, listening as he pulled the front door open. ‘I need to talk to you.’ Sarah’s voice floated in, her tone brooking no argument.
‘What, at this time?’ Steve asked, clearly confounded. As he would be. Sarah hadn’t rung. She’d come unannounced, and plainly wasn’t going to go until she had spoken to Steve. About what? Laura worried.
‘Yes, at this time,’ Sarah insisted.
‘You’d better come through to the lounge,’ Steve suggested reluctantly.
‘No. We’ll talk outside,’ Sarah replied. ‘It’s you I want to talk to. Just you.’
It went quiet for a moment, and then Laura heard the click of the latch on the front door. He was going along with it. What would Sarah say to him? What did she have to tell him that had brought her charging around here at this time of night?
Stepping out of the lounge, she checked the hall was empty and then made her way carefully to the stairs and flew up them. Her mind ticking feverishly, trying to think back to the conversation they’d had in the car, anything Sarah could possibly want to discuss with Steve out of earshot of her, she went to the front-facing window of the main bedroom and eased it open.
Sarah was talking fast, her words coming out in a garbled rush. Laura strained to hear. She couldn’t make sense of what she was saying at first. And then her heart skipped a beat. She was talking about Christopher, the incident with Liam in the swimming pool, and the little boy at the school. Oh God, no. How much did she know? How had she found out? Joe. Of course. She would have spoken about her worries to him. He would have got hold of the information. Laura swallowed back a hard knot of fear in her throat.
‘Sarah …’ Steve stopped her with an exasperated sigh. ‘We’ve already talked about this. Laura has some issues to do with her past, you know she does. She’s trying to deal with them. Can you not just—’
‘But what about the garden party?’ She cut across him, talking animatedly. ‘Are you seriously telling me you don’t think Laura’s meltdown as soon as her mother mentioned the swimming pool is something to worry about? You ended up falling off the ladder. It was frightening, Steve. It’s bloody terrifying knowing what I do now.’
‘It was an accident,’ Steve retaliated. ‘I fell, Sarah. These things happen. As for the rest, it’s probably all just—’
‘What? Coincidence?’ Sarah laughed incredulously. ‘Poor Laura being blamed when she’s obviously so innocent and vulnerable? Being picked on by her mother? She’s filled Ollie’s head with stories about superheroes who rescue fish. Are you telling me you don’t think that’s odd? She was going to take him to the swimming pool. This is not all just—’
‘You’re getting things out of proportion, Sarah,’ Steve interrupted impatiently.
‘For God’s sake!’ Her voice rose. ‘Open your eyes! I don’t know what or how, but this obviously all has something