A femme fatale stole my brother
Blue, in happier times
Thursday 8th January 2009
Juggling my keys, my handbag and a plate of sausage and mash, I let myself into my brother's flat. Blue, 20, was crashed out on the settee.
'Tuck in,' I said, passing him the plate.
'Thanks,' he grinned.
'You have got a kitchen in this flat, you know,' I teased.
Little brothers, eh?
I knew I spoiled him, but when he'd moved down to Newcastle from our mum Wendy's house in Dunfermline, Fife, a year earlier, I'd promised I'd take care of him. Which is why I was happy to stick my nose in.
'Are you sure it's such a good idea to have Laura come and visit?' I asked him for the hundredth time.
'I can look after myself, you know,' he grunted.
I didn't agree. Not when the only reason he'd moved down from Scotland was to get away from his ex, Laura King.
Blue, named after our dad Sandy's favourite footy team, Rangers, had been a different lad back then. Mum, 44, had never been off the phone to me, fretting.
'He's taking drugs,' she'd panicked. 'He's still spending all his time with that girl.'
Mum hated Laura. While I'd never met her, I could understand why.
'She's leading him astray,' Mum had told me. 'He's always covered in bruises and scratches.'
Mum had begged him to stay away, but he wouldn't listen.
'I can't, Mum,' he'd sighed. 'It's so passionate with her.'
Mum had filled me in on Laura's so-called 'charms'. Slim, curvy with bleached blonde hair, it wasn't hard to see why Blue was besotted. After all, when they'd met, Blue had only been
17, while Laura was 21. A woman of the world.
'I've banned her from the house,' Mum had said in one phonecall. 'But he can't stay away.'
Which is why he'd come down to Newcastle. And now, it seems his past was following him.
A week later, when Laura arrived, Blue phoned me in a state.
'She's kicking off,' he panicked. 'I'm locked in my bedroom.'
I could hear a woman screaming in the background.
Blimey. She'd barely had time to take her coat off and already, she was causing mayhem.
'I'm on my way,' I said.
I found Blue's front door open. Laura was outside the bedroom, ranting. So this was the femme fatale I'd heard so much about. She was pretty… if you liked that kind of thing.
Her hair was black at the back, with two brassy blonde streaks at the front, like a skunk.
Her make-up had been plastered on and she looked cheap and nasty. What's more, she was off her face, and the stream of foul language that was coming out of her mouth was shocking.
'Oi!' I yelled. 'What are you doing?'
I knew I'd get no sense from her, so I dragged her out to the car and drove her away.
'You can't just turn up and start rows,' I snapped.
I was furious, but tried to be rational as she shouted and swore. Eventually, she ran out of steam.
'Sorry, I lost it,' she said. 'Will you take me back to the flat?'
What else could I do?
'Good job you're going home tomorrow,' I muttered under my breath, as I drove her back.
But I'd underestimated the amount of trouble Laura could cause in a day.
Just a couple of hours later, Blue called again. From the police station!
'She started again and I called the police,' Blue said. 'We've been arrested.'
Arrested? Laura had been back in his life just 24 hours, and now he was locked up.
'Don't worry,' a police officer said, when he came on the line. 'Your brother won't be charged.'
I wouldn't have believed it, but things got worse still. Blue called again at 11am the next day, sobbing violently.
'I'm going to kill myself,' he wailed.
I shot round to his flat. I could smell the gas straight away, and rushed to turn off the hobs.
In the living room, where Blue was curled up on the settee, the gas fire was filling the room with fumes.
'What are you doing?' I screamed, flinging open the window.
Just three days earlier, my brother had been happy, with a job and a new flat he loved.
'It's Laura,' was all he could manage.
That woman was the devil in disguise. I called Mum and her husband, Alan, 34, who got straight in the car. Three hours on, we were all with Blue, trying to snap him out of it.
'She's no good for you,' I told him.
But despite the screaming rows, the arrest, and even the suicide attempt, I could tell Laura still had a hold over my brother.
'She's no good,' he admitted eventually. 'I'll stay away.'
I looked at Mum, not sure whether to believe him.
'I'll look after him,' I vowed.
With Laura gone, Blue got back to normal quickly, and two months on, as we drove back to Mum's for Christmas, you'd never have known anything was wrong.
'As long as he keeps away from Laura, he'll be OK,' I whispered to Mum, when we arrived.
On Christmas morning, we opened our presents in the living room, just like when we were kids. Mum had splashed out and bought us both designer clothes.
'You spoil us,' I said, kissing her.
'Got to keep my posers looking their best,' she smiled.
That afternoon, as we ate a turkey dinner and pulled our crackers, I looked across the table at Blue. The previous Christmas, he'd scoffed his food and raced off to see mates. This time, we sat round talking and laughing for hours. He'd grown up.
I headed home to Newcastle on New Year's Day. Blue said he'd join me in three weeks.
I spoke to him a few times, but when the phone rang on 14 January, it was Mum's voice I heard.
'Blue's dead!' she cried.
Shocked, I struggled to take in her words. I struggled to even breathe. Blue dead? How?
Then, one thought popped into my head, clear as day.
'Laura's got something to do with this,' I sobbed.
The three-hour journey back to Mum's passed in a blur, and the next thing I remember is collapsing into her arms.
The police couldn't tell us anything, but friends reported that Laura and her new boyfriend, Peter Tarwinski, had been accused of stabbing Blue.
'I knew it,' I said, bitterly.
At the morgue, Mum went in to identify Blue's body. She came out in a state.
'There are slashes all over his face,' she wept.
I couldn't bring myself to go in. Days and nights blurred into one, and all too soon,
we were on our way to Dunfermline Crematorium. Mum stood up to speak.
'Gone from our lives but always in our hearts,' she said, her voice faltering.
The police confirmed Laura and Peter were on remand for culpable homicide. But they were pleading not guilty, so six long months after Blue died, still raw with grief, Mum, Alan and I went to the High Court in Edinburgh.
'There she is,' I said, seeing Laura in the dock just feet away, dolled up to the nines.
The evidence was hard to hear. Blue had turned up at Laura's flat at 4am, to find her with her mates, Eve McBride and Peter Tarwinski. They'd all been drinking and taking cocaine, and an argument had broken out about who'd been sleeping with Laura. A fight started, and Eve told the court she saw Laura make a jabbing motion towards Blue with a piece of glass, until he groaned: 'I've had enough.' Then Laura had shouted: 'You've had enough when
I say you've had enough!'
Twisted. Laura hit Blue three times over the head with a broken wine bottle.
Worst of all, we were told that she told Eve not to use the 'good' towel to stem Blue's blood and complained that her blood-stained flat looked like a 'murder scene.' Her poxy towels and furniture were more important than Blue's life? After four days, Peter was found not guilty of culpable homicide, but all we cared about was Laura. Guilty. Relief soared through me. Justice had been done. But in the car on the way home, a reporter called Mum.
'She got what she deserved,' I heard Mum say.
Then her face fell. Hanging up the phone, she looked destroyed.
'Apparently, Laura was only found guilty of the reduced charge of assault,' she said. 'She was found not guilty of culpable homicide.'
She explained the pathologist had given evidence that because of the cocaine in Blue's system, he couldn't be sure that her attack caused his death. Ridiculous. If Blue had never met that girl, he'd still be with us now. Laura was later jailed for just three paltry years.
Mum and I are in the process of appealing the leniency of her sentence. At the sentencing, it was revealed that, in 2002, Laura had stabbed two sisters, Simone and Samantha Miller, with a corkscrew after they refused to let her into their party. She wasn't even jailed.
Whose life will she ruin next? I don't think we'll ever know what Blue's deadly fascination with Laura was, or why she wouldn't leave him be but nothing's been the same
since then. The only good news is that I'm expecting my first baby in March.
'You'll be brilliant,' Mum said. 'Just look at how well you cared for Blue.'
No one will ever replace Blue, but I know this little one will go some way to mending our broken hearts.