Six weeks after the funeral, Phil arrived home early from work one day. He was holding in his hand the details of a house that was for sale. ‘I’ve found this dream house in Chiswick,’ he said, grinning like a Cheshire Cat. ‘It’s everything we want. I looked at it this morning and knew it was the right one. I said I’d bring you round at five. I’ll just have a shower and change. After we’ve seen it I thought we could go to the Italian place we like.’
He disappeared into the bathroom, seemingly unaware that she hadn’t grabbed the details with any enthusiasm. She glanced at the leaflet, and then tossed it aside. She couldn’t cope with viewing a house right now, and she felt angry that he expected her to.
He was back in ten minutes, buttoning up a clean blue shirt. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t it great? Those photos show how it really is too – high ceilings, all the original cornices, fireplaces and doors. It needs a new kitchen, but that’s no problem. You are going to love the garden.’
‘I don’t want to see it,’ she said quietly. ‘I’ve had enough stress and upheaval to last me a lifetime. I’ve got nothing left in me to cope with moving.’
‘You what?’ he exclaimed. ‘Oh come on, Eva. You can’t carry on sitting in here day after day doing nothing. You’ll love this place, I know you will. And if we don’t act quickly, we’ll lose it.’
‘You call all I’ve been doing nothing?’ she said, her voice rising. ‘I’ve hardly had a minute to myself since Sophie died. Aren’t I entitled to sit about for a while?’
Since the funeral she’d had so much to do that she hadn’t even been able to consider going back to her old job. But keeping busy hadn’t made the desire to be alone go away. In truth, the only times she’d felt anywhere near being happy again was when she had been alone, giving the house at Pottery Lane a final clean and sprucing up the garden before putting it on the market, and sorting out things at The Beeches.
She hadn’t expected to feel so sad about Pottery Lane being sold. Once she’d cleaned it all and polished the windows till they gleamed, she had sunk down on to the floor and cried. It wasn’t just because it was so beautiful now, but because it was her legacy from Flora. On some deep level she could understand how Flora must have felt arriving back there with a tiny baby. And whether it was right or wrong to take another woman’s baby, Flora had loved her, and to Eva she would always be her dearly beloved mother, whatever the rights or wrongs were.
The terror of the night of the fire wasn’t something she wanted to be reminded of, but she did want to hold on to the memory of Phil taking her back to the studio after the handbag snatching, all those lovely moments with him when they were just friends, and the bliss of their lovemaking after they came back from Scotland.
She’d become a grown-up there, met Patrick for the first time, learned so many practical skills from Brian. Flora had always claimed the dead looked down from heaven and watched over those they loved. She hoped that was true, and that Flora would understand why she was selling it now.
Phil’s words interrupted her thoughts and brought her rudely back to the present. ‘I was only trying to help you to move forward,’ he said. ‘This place is dreary and shabby, and a few pots on a patio don’t make a garden. You’d be much happier with a project. Interior design is your thing, isn’t it?’
‘I thought it was, until my house was set on fire,’ she snapped at him. ‘All that effort, planning and hard work went up in smoke. I can’t think about doing another house yet.’
‘What can you think about then?’ he asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘You certainly aren’t thinking about us any more. Since you wound up things in Cheltenham I’ve hardly had a word out of you. You’re either sitting there staring into space, or you’ve got your nose stuck in a book. You show no enthusiasm for anything – not food, lovemaking, going to the pictures, or even your appearance. I get the impression that you’d rather be anywhere but here with me.’
‘For God’s sake!’ she yelled at him. ‘Just because you saw a house today that you like, it doesn’t mean I’ve got to jump up and down with joy. Just leave me alone, can’t you!’
His face darkened. ‘Did you want me to leave you alone after that guy assaulted you, or after the fire? Did I leave you alone when all the stuff happened with Andrew and poor Sophie? I’ve bent over backwards to help, I’ve felt for you every step of the way. But it’s all over now. And now you say you want me to leave you alone? How could you?’
‘You don’t understand. I’m sick of being talked at, of being expected to snap out of it. I don’t want people asking me how I am, what I’m going to do next. I can’t answer those questions, because I never get the peace and silence I need to find the answers,’ she snarled at him.
‘Fuck off! I was only trying to help,’ he roared back at her. ‘If you bloody well thought of someone else but yourself for five minutes, maybe you’d see that.’
He turned and stomped off into the bedroom, leaving Eva shocked that he’d sworn and shouted at her. But she felt unable to go after him to apologize, so she just stayed on the sofa, rigid with tension.
He came back a few minutes later. He’d taken off the smart shirt and trousers and had changed into jeans and a T-shirt.
‘We can’t go on like this, Eva,’ he said. His voice was so sad, it made her feel even worse than when he shouted at her. ‘You won’t let me in. It’s like living with a domesticated robot. I’ve done everything I can to try to help. But the Eva I fell in love with has gone, and somehow I don’t think she’s ever going to come back.’
‘I want that Eva to come back,’ she said wearily. ‘But it’s like I’m dead inside. The kindest thing I could do for you would be to clear off, and leave you to find happiness with someone else.’
‘I don’t want anyone else,’ he said firmly. ‘But I can’t live like this either. The sale of the studio will be completed next week. You’ve dealt with everything you can at The Beeches, Ben’s got the Power of Attorney now, and he’s off the hook with the police. It’s time you decided what it is you want for yourself. I had hoped that it would be a house for us to share, and to get married. But I know that isn’t what you want, and so I’m waiting to hear an alternative.’
He picked up the keys to his van.
‘Where are you going?’ she asked.
‘To see a man about a plastering job,’ he said. ‘Think on what I’ve said while I’m gone. I want an answer when I get back.’
He left then. No door slamming, that wasn’t his way.
Eva sat there on the sofa, not even able to cry.
Andrew hadn’t made a complete recovery. But he was considered well enough to stand trial, which was set for September. Meanwhile, he was being held on remand in Gloucester Prison. When Ben went to see him there, he likened his condition to that of a stroke victim. His speech was slurred, his memory was affected, and he had lost some of the movement in his right arm and leg.
Ben said it was difficult to know whether it was the shock of Sophie’s suicide or his injuries that had changed Andrew, but he had broken down and made a complete confession to the police. He was intending to plead guilty, and he insisted that all charges were to be dropped against Ben. He also agreed to give him the Power of Attorney.
‘He’s like a pathetic little old man,’ Ben had said after the visit. ‘He’s shrunk in every possible way. I wanted to hate him, but the dad I knew isn’t there any more to hate. Maybe it’s just as well his mind isn’t as sharp as it used to be – the way he is now, he can deal with the boredom and the lack of freedom in prison.’
Ben didn’t intend to see his father again once he was sentenced. ‘There’s no point, Eva. I can’t forgive him, so I’m going to airbrush him out of my life. I’ll take the money due to me from The Beeches when it’s sold, for Mum’s sake, but only my share. I’m going to instruct the solicitor to give Dad’s share to Portwall, to try to make restitution for what he took from them.’
Eva could hardly believe that h
er little brother could be so grown-up and honourable.
She had stayed in a bed and breakfast near The Beeches while she sorted everything out and organized an auction room to take all the furniture and household goods.
It was so strange going through drawers and cupboards, finding things – such as the board games she, Sophie and Ben had played with. She found an emerald-green scarf of Flora’s in Sophie’s room, and guessed her sister had been taking it to bed with her. She found herself rubbing it against her cheek and sobbing for both of them. Reminders were everywhere: old dressing-up clothes in the attic rooms, dolls and teddy bears packed away in an old suitcase, Ben’s collection of Matchbox cars, and a bracelet of Flora’s tucked down the side of a chair.
It was easy to stuff Andrew’s clothes into bin bags for the charity shop; nothing of his brought on pangs of sorrow. Yet the pastry cutters in the kitchen, the secateurs in the potting shed, and a half-used pot of face cream of Flora’s made her dissolve into tears.
Olive came round to give her a hand on two consecutive days, and it was good to have her there. She was practical – not given to analysing, or offering advice unasked. What she brought to the table was common sense, a listening ear, and a knowledge of which items were valuable enough to sell in an auction and which would only be fit for a charity shop. Anyone else would have picked over things and asked about them. But Olive didn’t; she just packed them into the appropriate boxes and didn’t allow Eva to get sentimental about anything.
‘Take a few things of Sophie’s and Flora’s, if you like,’ she said casually. ‘But let everything else go. Possessions can become like chains – especially ones that act as unwelcome reminders.’
When Olive left on the last day, she hugged Eva. ‘I know you think you’ll never get over all this. But you will. Write down how you feel each day. In a little while you’ll have a day when you feel happy, and you’ll suddenly realize you haven’t thought about Sophie or your mum for a few hours. That will be the start of better times. And believe me, it will come sooner than you think.’
Once everything had been taken away by the auctioneers, and the clothes and oddments had gone to a charity shop, Eva had cleaned the house from top to bottom. Then she locked the doors and took the keys to the estate agent who would be handling the sale for Ben.
Eva had hired a car for the week she was at The Beeches. As she drove out for the last time, she stopped at the gates, got out and took one last look back at the house. It was beautiful, and even though the flower beds around the lawn were now choked with weeds, she could still imagine Flora kneeling on the grass, at her happiest with dirty hands, tending her flowers. Eva hoped whoever bought it would be happy. She certainly wouldn’t want to buy a place where so much tragedy had taken place.
Later she drove round to Crail Road. The house looked just the same, though the tenant in her old room had stuck plastic sunflowers on the window. She wondered if Tod still lived there, and if he ever did enrol on his counselling course. He was bound to have read about what happened to her family in the papers; she wondered how he had reacted to the story.
Now as she sat in the flat, Phil’s last words ringing in her ears, she remembered that Tod had said she was needy. She had been then, but she wasn’t now. Needy people didn’t want to be alone.
It crossed her mind that her real sister, Freya, could be feeling the same as her, and maybe that was why she’d never got in touch again. It was just as well she hadn’t – Eva knew she hadn’t got anything left inside her for anyone else.
So what was she to do? Patrick had said shortly after Sophie’s funeral that she ought to get away, right out of England and far away from all the bad memories. He’d meant with Phil of course – but even if Phil was free to go, that wouldn’t work. They’d just be taking the same problem with them.
But what if she was to go alone – go to Paris, to Rome and Florence? See all those works of art Patrick often talked about, and find out if being completely cut off from everything and everyone was what she really wanted?
She considered that for a few minutes, but just the thought of having to get tickets, then pack and get on the right plane all seemed far too hard. Yet imagining herself walking around Florence, seeing the wonders of the Uffizi Gallery or the Pitti Palace, was a lovely daydream. Patrick had once said that he’d like to take her there and show her all his favourite paintings and sculptures, but that wasn’t likely to happen, he was always too busy.
Would it really be that hard to pack and get tickets? Why was she being so pathetic?
Just thinking of doing it gave her a twinge of hope.
But would Phil go along with it? If she went, would he say that was the end?
Did she want it to be the end?
She put her head in her hands. She felt like that famous and hideous picture called ‘The Scream’. Was she speeding towards a mental breakdown? How did she think she was going to cope in Europe with just schoolgirl French and a smattering of Italian, if she couldn’t cope here?
Yet that in itself was an attraction – if she didn’t know the language, she couldn’t be drawn into conversations. Without talking, perhaps she could nurse her inner self back to what it once was?
One thing was very clear to her. If she stayed here, she was never going to recover. She would carry on doing what she’d done for months now – pretending she was fine, and dying a little more inside every day. Sooner or later, Phil would lose patience and ask her to go. He was getting nothing out of this relationship now, other than having his clothes washed and his meals cooked. A few months down the line she might be too apathetic to even do that.
He deserved better.
Phil came back soon after eleven, and she knew he’d been in a pub by the smell of cigarettes clinging to him. He went to the fridge and got himself a can of beer.
‘Well,’ he said as he sat down opposite her, ‘your time is up. What are you going to do?’
His directness was one of the things she loved about him. He said he liked it in other people, now she was going to test him.
‘I’m going to Europe,’ she said.
‘For ever?’
‘No, just for as long as it takes to find myself again. Sorry, that sounds like one of those dippy-hippy sayings.’
‘And am I supposed to sit and wait for you?’
‘I wouldn’t have the cheek to ask that of you,’ she said, hanging her head. ‘But you’re right, we can’t go on like this. I’ve leaned on you long enough, Phil. It’s time I learned to stand alone.’
He leaned back on the sofa and put his hands on his head. The gesture was one of bewilderment.
‘I love you,’ he said, his voice cracking. ‘Right now I wish I didn’t, because then I could show you the door, and I could pick up the life I had before I met you. We’ve been through so much together, Eva. This isn’t how it should end.’
‘I don’t want it to be the end. But until I’m mended inside I’m no good to you.’
‘And how will going off to Europe “mend you”?’ he said with more than a touch of sarcasm.
‘I don’t know if it will. But I know if I stay here, feeling the way I do now, I’ll end up in a loony bin.’
‘Then go. I don’t want that for you,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘But do it quickly. Send me a postcard from Paris.’ He walked off to the bedroom and shut the door.
An hour later, Eva was still sitting in the same place and crying. She knew she’d hurt Phil really badly, and her whole being wanted to go and cuddle him and say she wasn’t going anywhere. But she couldn’t do that. All she could guarantee was that she would wear him down with her silences, her distance, and it would poison his life. He really did deserve better.
She slept in his brother’s old room, and she woke in the morning to hear the familiar sound of Phil making tea and his sandwiches for the day. He didn’t bring her tea as he usually did. She was glad, because she didn’t think she could bear to go if she saw his face one more time.
br /> Lying there, she waited for him to open the front door and then close it behind him. She half expected him to shout out something nasty, or at least bang the door shut. But, considerate as always, he did it quietly with no last bitter remark or an order to leave her key behind when she left.
She heard the van starting up and then pulling away. Tears rolled down her cheeks, because she knew he was hurting. It was tempting to pull the duvet over her again and cry into the pillow. But having told him she was leaving, she had to.
It was after twelve when she left, with a medium-sized wheeled suitcase. She’d packed the rest of her more wintry clothes into a bin liner and tucked it tidily under the spare bed. She would go directly to the airport and buy a ticket to Paris there. She’d telephoned her solicitor and her bank to tell them she was going away and would be in touch with a forwarding address.
Her bank and solicitor had Phil’s bank details, and she’d asked them to pay £10,000 into his account when the funds from the sale of Pottery Lane were cleared. She knew he would have refused it if she’d given him the money, but she owed it to him for all the work he’d done on the house. She intended to write to Ben, Patrick, Olive and Gregor later today and explain.
Finally she cleaned the flat, and last of all wrote Phil a letter. She had so much she wanted and needed to say, but couldn’t put it into words. So in the end all she wrote was a simple note.
Phil,
I loved you, I still love you and I always will. But I can’t make you happy until I’ve learned how be happy again. I wish more than anything that all this awful stuff hadn’t happened, because it’s made me someone I don’t want to be.
You have been the very best person in my whole life. I’ll never forget how you loved and supported me through everything.
My love always,
Eva
PS: I’ve left some clothes under your brother’s bed. I’ll understand if you throw them out.