‘I can’t believe I’ve been so stupid,’ Laurel whispered into her hands. ‘So stupid.’
‘Let me get this straight,’ Rebecca said, pacing by the long side of the table. The kids were watching the TV in the front room. ‘Nate Daley, the archaeologist, and Alex Woollard, the British Archaeological Society liaison for said Nate Daley, stole your essay when you were in university, published it and became famous as a result?’
‘That’s right,’ she said bitterly. Her head was starting to hurt.
‘And what happened then?’ Rebecca said, more gently this time.
‘What do you mean? I didn’t know that they’d stolen it, I thought Nate had just chucked it or something, after…’ she trailed off. ‘Then I came home from uni and that was the end of it. I put archaeology behind me, remember? I didn’t think of it again until I saw their paper today. Well, the first page of my paper.’ She rubbed shaky hands over her face. ‘I’m so stupid.’
‘You’re not stupid, not at all,’ Rebecca said, sitting next to her. ‘Tell me, what did you mean when you said “or something, after…”?’
Sometimes it sucked having a solicitor as a best friend, because she was intent on dragging every little detail out.
‘Alex humiliated me because Nate told him to.’
It was a whisper because she couldn’t seem to make her voice any louder.
‘What?’ Rebecca said coldly. ‘Alex Woollard did what?’
Laurel looked at Rebecca with wet eyes and told her everything. Told her how she had left the essay in Nate’s pigeonhole, how she had left a note on it asking him for a drink to discuss it. She talked about Alex and Nate arriving, laughing with Lucia and others at the bar. Laurel repeated every word that Alex had said to her, burned into her memory forever.
Some wounds, no matter how old, are still raw when you pick at them, and this was like taking a sledgehammer to her rebuilt confidence.
‘And then Nate turned up here,’ Rebecca was saying.
‘He turned up here and he was so charming, and he didn’t say anything about it, he just wanted to put it behind us, he wanted us to beus, and I…’ She stifled a sob. ‘I fell for it all.’
‘Oh Laurel.’
‘I wanted to,’ she carried on, throat burning. ‘I wanted to believe him, but he lied. He stole my work and passed it off as his own. Can you imagine what my life would have been like if he hadn’t betrayed me?’
‘Laurel, you can’t think like that,’ Rebecca said gently. ‘You would have still come back here, you would have, because this is your home, this is your life.’
‘But it didn’t have to be,’ Laurel said forcefully. ‘Can you imagine if my paper had been published by me, the person who actually wrote it? As anundergraduate? It would have changed everything.’
‘You would have still wanted to come home and help the farm. You can tell yourself that you wouldn’t, but I know you, Laurel Fletcher, and you would.’ Rebecca took a breath. ‘But that’s not the real issue here, is it?’
As much as she hated to admit it, Rebecca was right. Laurel could never have let her family farm go under, not her mother’s home, their family home, her home. Regardless of how many opportunities could have presented themselves, how many doors may have opened, she would never have walked through them. Laurel had been needed here, and she would never have turned her back on her family.
Laurel shook her head. No, it wasn’t the real issue at all.
‘I trusted him. He made me fall in love with him, and look, he’s just like everyone else,’ Laurel said bitterly, tears flowing freely down her blotchy face. ‘He’s a liar, a betrayer, a selfish manipulator. Everything he said about wanting a future with me, introducing me to his friends.’ Laurel shook her head again. ‘I believed him.’
‘Laurel,’ Rebecca said, as fresh sobs wrenched from Laurel’s chest. ‘Shh, shh, come here.’
Laurel lay her head on Rebecca’s shoulder. Something inside her was breaking, cracking, wilting and dying.
Rebecca shifted and picked up her phone that was vibrating on the table. Laurel didn’t let go of her.
‘Jack? Are you with him?’ she asked. ‘No. Absolutely not.’
There was a pause.
‘I’ll stop you there, Jack,’ Rebecca said, using her curt solicitor voice. ‘I don’t give a flying fuck whether Nate Daley has grown chicken feet and a teat that produces orange juice. There is no way he is coming in this house.’
God, she loved Rebecca.
‘Tell him to go to his own house, the pub, his precious hole in the ground, drown in the lake. I. Don’t. Give. A. Shit.’ There was a pause where Jack obviously debated whether to relay that to Nate or not. ‘Mmm hmm, when are you coming home? I need to take Laurel back to hers. I’ll be there a while.’
