Forgive Me

  ‘No, I can’t. That’s the problem,’ Eva said. ‘But I do know she lost a baby before me, and that she was depressed because of it. And tell me, why did she stop painting? That’s another thing that doesn’t make sense to me.’

  ‘There’s no mystery about that, it was because she was lazy,’ he said. ‘Before I met her she had to paint to keep herself, it was the only thing she was good at. But once we bought this house all she wanted to do was be a mother, do some gardening, a bit of cooking and float around in her vintage clothes.’

  ‘I don’t call that being lazy,’ Eva said with some indignation. ‘Three children create a lot of hard work.’

  ‘Yes, maybe, but most women get at least a part-time job once their children are at school. But not Flora, she had enough difficulty getting the breakfast things washed up. A job was beyond her. Stop thinking of her as some kind of mystical heroine, Eva. She was idle, self-centred and perhaps mentally ill. Sadly, I didn’t realize the latter – but then, as you must have realized by now, she was very good at hiding things.’

  Eva looked at Phil to get his reaction to this.

  ‘What’s this got to do with him?’ Andrew snapped. ‘He didn’t know your mother.’

  ‘He knows a lot more now, thanks to the diaries she left. And a whole lot more about you too.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ Andrew’s eyes narrowed.

  ‘I think we ought to go.’ Phil got up, reached down for Eva’s hand and pulled her up. ‘I think Mr Patterson has said all he’s got to say.’

  Eva wasn’t satisfied with what she’d been told; she had hoped to hear Andrew say something tender about Flora. But Phil was right, she wasn’t going to get anything more from him. And she probably shouldn’t have goaded him by suggesting she had some information about him either.

  As she walked out into the hall with Phil right behind her, she saw the Cornish painting leaning against the wall.

  She turned back to Andrew. ‘What are you going to do with that picture?’ she asked.

  He shrugged. ‘Give it to a charity shop, I suppose,’ he said. ‘I don’t want it here any more.’

  ‘May I take it then?’ she asked. ‘Sophie or Ben might like it when they get a home of their own.’

  ‘I doubt that, but take it if you want it,’ he said brusquely. ‘I never liked it.’

  Eva thanked him and picked it up. Phil opened the front door and they both walked to the car outside. Andrew came out into the porch and watched them.

  ‘Well, that’s it then,’ Eva said, looking round at him as she put the picture on the back seat of the car. ‘I’ll check at the local clinics and hospitals to see if I can find any evidence of where my birth took place. But if I can’t find that, then I will have to go to the police.’

  Andrew stepped out of the porch towards them. ‘Have you for one moment thought of what this will do to Ben and Sophie?’ he asked, and there was a plea in his voice.

  ‘Have you thought what all this has done to Eva?’ Phil said, moving himself between the pair of them. ‘You rejected her at the time she needed a father most. That was shameful. She doesn’t want to find out that the woman in Carlisle is her mother, or that Ben and Sophie aren’t her true brother and sister. But she has the courage to face up to what Flora may have done, and to try to put it right. She should be admired for that. And if you had any guts, you’d help her.’

  Without waiting for a response he opened the car door for Eva so she could get in, then walked round the car and got in himself, started it up and pulled away. Eva looked back to see Andrew just standing there. She didn’t know if it was her imagination but he appeared to have shrunk, as if some of the stuffing had been knocked out of him.

  ‘What a bastard!’ Phil exclaimed as they pulled out on to the road. ‘No wonder you moved out right after the funeral. I felt like decking him for the way he spoke to you.’

  Eva didn’t respond. She hadn’t for one moment expected Andrew to be overjoyed to see her, but she had hoped that he would meet her halfway in resolving the bad feeling between them. He had, after all, known her since she was a tiny baby, and they had both loved Flora. But it was painfully clear he had no feelings for her whatsoever, and perhaps never had.

  She sat wrapped in thought all the way to the M5, till they were heading towards London. ‘What do you really think, Phil?’ she blurted out. ‘I’m too close to get any kind of perspective. Does Andrew know something he wasn’t telling us?’

  ‘If you mean, does he know Flora snatched you and has concealed it all these years? I doubt it,’ Phil sighed. ‘Why would anyone do that? But I don’t think he married Flora for love. Just the way he talked about moving in with her makes me suspect he had his eye on the main chance.’

  ‘But she was a single mother, all she had was the studio. I bet she was living on benefits.’

  ‘Was she? Gregor said she’d had money coming in from rent, and she sold paintings in Scotland. We don’t know if she blew all the inheritance from her parents on the studio either. Andrew had been paying rent, so he wasn’t loaded. Yet somehow they managed to buy that big house. Where did the money come from, if not from Flora?’

  Eva thought about that for a minute. Then suddenly she remembered something.

  ‘I think you might be right there. They once had a huge row about Mum decorating their bedroom. Andrew hated what she’d done. I heard her screaming at him. She said something to the effect that if it wasn’t for her, they wouldn’t even have the house. At the time I wondered what she meant by that. But then Andrew was always claiming she talked nonsense, so I forgot about it.’

  ‘Well, there you go!’

  Eva turned in her seat to look at Phil. ‘You know, it must’ve been a huge gamble buying it. I was only small when we moved there, so I don’t actually remember much. But we kind of camped out in what’s now the sitting room. We had a sort of before-and-after photograph album of it – Ben and I were always looking at it. One of the pictures was of daylight coming through holes in the roof. Mum said they used to put saucepans, bowls and buckets down when it rained. Anyway, they sold off the land at the back to a company that built a small estate of houses, and then all at once there were builders crawling all over our house, doing it up.’

  ‘I wonder if there’s a way we could find out how much they paid for it, and how much they got for selling the land? It’s not exactly relevant, I know, but it would be good to have the complete picture,’ Phil said.

  ‘Someone at school told me they sold the land for a quarter of a million,’ Eva said. ‘Of course that was just another teenager repeating something she’d heard her parents say, so it might not be true. The same girl said Andrew bribed someone on the Council to make sure planning permission went through. I asked Mum about it, and she just laughed and said, “They say the love of money is the root of all evil, but I think it’s jealousy.” But with hindsight, it probably was true.’

  ‘I didn’t like the defensive way Andrew said that Flora was lazy, as if she was an albatross around his neck,’ Phil said. ‘She must have been pretty smart to buy the studio in the first place, then rent it out when they moved, plus making sure it remained in her hands. Anyway, what sort of man would expect a mother of three children to go out to work when they lived in a big house like The Beeches?’

  ‘I always thought they were really happy together,’ Eva said sadly. ‘But with everything that’s happened since Mum’s death, I can see she can’t have trusted him to do the right thing by Sophie and Ben, or she wouldn’t have changed her will.’

  ‘The thing we have to ask ourselves,’ Phil said, slowly and deliberately, as if still thinking it through, ‘is if Flora did snatch you – and I still can’t believe she did – would she have admitted it to Andrew? The story would’ve been in all the nationals and on TV, people would talk about it. And if she did tell him, or he just had suspicions about her, what would make him keep quiet?’

  ‘Well, I’m assuming the answer to that is because he lo
ved her and didn’t want to see her go to prison.’

  ‘OK, that’s what I would assume too. But now I’ve met him, and heard his snide comments about her being lazy, I’d be inclined to think it was so that he could control her. An ace card up his sleeve.’

  ‘We’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves,’ Eva said. ‘I agree he’s a bastard, and possibly a control freak too. But we’ve still got no proof Flora didn’t give birth to me. And given that she was so secretive, why would she admit to anyone that she’d stolen me? Perhaps the real truth of the matter is more mundane in that Flora married Andrew for security, and he married her because she had the studio. When she killed herself she robbed him of an insurance payout, plus she prevented him having all the assets. And that’s why he’s so nasty to me.’

  ‘That’s a far more pleasing scenario than baby-snatching.’ Phil reached out and stroked her thigh affectionately. ‘And can I tell you again that I love you? Even if that would make your stepfather think I need my head examining too.’

  ‘It feels good to be home,’ Eva said as she and Phil had a glass of wine before going to bed. The studio had felt chilly when they got in, and she’d put the heating on for the first time and drawn the curtains. It felt very cosy and snug now. ‘I thought I’d feel dejected and sad that the holiday is over, but I don’t – well, except for us not being together all the time, because you’ve got to go back to work.’

  ‘We’ve still got tonight,’ he said and did a comic thing with one eyebrow, making it go up and down.

  Eva giggled and turned towards him on the sofa to hug him. ‘We get to christen the bed. We could have a bath together. We could make so much noise that we annoy Nasty Mr Francis next door.’

  ‘It’s nice that you are thinking of things like that.’

  She knew he meant ‘instead of thinking of stolen babies’ and she realized that she had mentally put that to one side for now.

  ‘We need to get some advice about that,’ she said, snuggling up to him. ‘I think I’ll talk to Patrick and Gregor and see what they recommend. On top of that, I need to find a job. But meanwhile, Proud and Powerful Prince Phillip, I want your body.’

  ‘Well, extraordinary, elegant, exciting Eva, I am at your disposal.’

  He got up from the sofa, reached down to pick her up in his arms and carried her up the stairs.

  She squealed as he dropped her on to the bed and then dived on top of her. When she had put the new white-painted iron bed together and made it up with new bed linen, she had wondered if she and Phil would be in it together one day.

  ‘Hmmm,’ he sighed as he pulled her T-shirt over her head. ‘Should it be a bath first, or later?’

  ‘Later,’ she said, unzipping his jeans. ‘Much later.’

  Phil had to leave early the next morning to go home and get his work clothes and car. Eva didn’t wake up when he got out of bed; the first thing she knew was Phil holding out a cup of tea to her.

  ‘I’ve got to go now,’ he said, bending to kiss her. ‘I hope I can be back here by six. Have a good time today.’

  But just after nine the phone rang, and it was Phil saying he’d got to go to Birmingham at once for a rush job that was likely to last for at least two weeks.

  ‘Sorry, babe, I tried to wriggle out of it, but I couldn’t.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ she said. She was very disappointed; she’d already mentally planned a special dinner at the weekend, but it seemed he’d got to work all the way through the weekend too. But there would be other weekends, and lots of nights when he was working locally. She wasn’t going to make him feel bad by sounding miserable. ‘Just phone me when you can – and remember, I love you.’

  She poured herself a bowl of cereal after she’d put the phone down and began writing a ‘to do’ list. The puzzle of her birth would have to wait to be solved; she didn’t know how to go about checking on hospital and home births. And anyway, she wanted to speak to Patrick about it all first. She decided getting a job had to be her priority for now.

  Patrick wasn’t at home when she called him. But she did phone Gregor, because she badly needed another perspective on the potential baby-snatching before she did anything else.

  ‘Don’t be daft, Eva,’ he said when she’d explained everything they had discovered. ‘Flora would never have done that.’

  ‘I really hope so,’ Eva replied. ‘Give me a good reason why she wouldn’t do it?’

  ‘Well, surely women desperate for a baby give the game away by hanging over prams and asking to hold babies? Flora was never like that. I don’t remember her even talking about babies.’

  ‘Perhaps that was the problem – the fact that she never talked about it?’ Eva suggested. ‘Or else it’s all a wild coincidence. Anyway, I’ve put it on the back burner for now. I need to get some advice before I take it any further.’

  She rang Olive too just for a chat. The last time she’d spoken to her was to say she was going to Scotland for a holiday and that Phil might be joining her there.

  Olive was delighted to hear from her, and her first question was about Phil. ‘So did he join you? And if so, how did it go?’

  ‘Yes, Phil came. And it was amazing, delicious and I’m so happy,’ Eva told her. She didn’t want to get into telling her anything about the diaries or Carlisle, as she knew Olive would be too busy for a long phone call. Instead she just told her about the places they’d been and how much fun they’d had. ‘But I’ve got to get a job now I’m back,’ she ended up. ‘My plan for the day is to start looking.’

  ‘I’m really glad it’s working out with Phil,’ Olive said. ‘I’ve got to come down to London on business in a couple of weeks’ time. Let’s meet up and have a real catch-up? Meanwhile, I’ll put on my thinking cap about who I know in London that might need someone like you.’

  Two days later Eva got back from job hunting to receive a visit from the police. They wanted to clarify a few points in her statement about Myles. It was clear he would be pleading not guilty. And even though the broken wine bottle had his prints all over it, and they had photographic proof of the fingermarks on her neck, they wanted to warn her that his defence would put up a fight.

  They didn’t really need to draw a picture for her to describe what they meant by that. Eva realized that Myles’s looks and bearing would influence the jury, and they were likely to believe she’d led him on or acted provocatively.

  As soon as the police had left she started to ask herself if it was really worth going through something that would be so unpleasant, especially if Myles only ended up with a rap over the knuckles.

  She knew Phil and Patrick would be horrified if she withdrew her statement. But then they weren’t going to be put through the ordeal of being cross-examined.

  Eva was still mulling it over in her mind when Serendipity – a shop she loved in Notting Hill that sold all kinds of china, glass and kitchen equipment – rang her and asked if she would like to start working for them immediately. Before she’d left for Scotland she had gone into the shop and said how much she’d like to work there. They didn’t have any vacancies then, but they’d taken her telephone number just in case there was one at a later date. A vacancy had occurred now, and it seemed her enthusiasm for the shop had impressed the manager, so he’d rung to offer her a month’s trial.

  The phone call couldn’t have come at a better time. At a stroke it took her mind off Myles, the stolen-baby issue and feeling lonely without Phil.

  The manager wanted her to start on the Saturday, just six days after returning from Scotland, and she accepted eagerly.

  Right from the first day she took to it like a duck to water. The shop was busy, because they stocked great things at bargain prices. The other staff were fun and friendly, and the customers were all people she could relate to. Unlike the bistro, where she’d had people treat her like an inferior being, at Serendipity the customers were eager to be liked so she would show them the best bargains.

  Thursday was her day off. As it was a
lovely day, she rushed off to the supermarket first thing to buy food for the weekend. Phil was coming home, and she hurried back to do some cleaning before sitting out in the garden with a book.

  Phil didn’t ring her as usual in the early evening. Since he’d gone to Birmingham he always rang on his way out from his digs to get an evening meal. But she thought he’d probably had to work late, so he could leave to come home earlier tomorrow. And anyway, she was so busy making a Victoria sponge that it didn’t matter to her.

  She was in bed by eleven, sitting up painting her fingernails and thinking about what she would cook for dinner the next day and what she would wear to greet Phil. She smiled to herself; she would need to cook something that wouldn’t spoil, and wear something that would be easy to take off. She wondered if he would like it if she opened the door to him wearing nothing more than an apron?

  Turning out the light, she snuggled down and lay there listening to the sounds of people leaving the pub, calling to one another, and car doors banging. One of her neighbours had stopped her earlier in the week and asked if she didn’t think they ought to complain about the noise from the pub. She’d said it didn’t bother her. But the truth was, she quite liked that burst of noise which gradually faded away to complete silence. It rounded off the day, just as the sound of the milk float rattling down the road started the new day. She wondered why it was that some people complained about everything.

  A noise woke her. She groggily reached out in the dark for the alarm clock, but on seeing it was only three in the morning, she thought it was just a drunk going past the house. But then she heard a sound she didn’t recognize – a whooshing noise. And she could smell something too.

  Puzzled, she sat upright. It was a few moments before she registered that it was a smell of burning, and that the sound was the crackling of fire.