Cupid's Way (12 page)

Cissy said, ‘Pip is really struggling with the thought that we might have to move on again. But I’m positive it won’t come to that. I keep telling him not to be so negative – negative energy can really infect a place, you know? But he’s never had my ability to stare adversity in the face. Pip’s strengths lie in other areas.’

Evidently not in the moving of heavy bags of soil, Evie thought.

‘I wish I had your faith,’ she said, sitting back on her heels. ‘Do you know if your landlords will sell?’

Cissy and Pip both answered at once.

‘They won’t sell,’ Cissy said.

‘We’ve no idea,’ said Pip. He tugged at the corner of the bag, but his hand slipped and the whole thing fell backwards onto his foot.

‘Sweetie, remember your blood pressure.’ Cissy had to speak loudly to be heard over the top of Pip swearing. He clamped his mouth closed and did a mock salute, then flopped down onto a rusty garden chair.

Privately, Evie thought the only blood pressure Pip had to worry about was whether any blood pumped around his veins at all. He was so pale and thin, and clearly worn out by the morning’s activities. She suggested they stop for a cup of tea, and Cissy jumped up, full of beans.

‘Great idea! I’ll put the kettle on.’

Evie carried on turning over the earth, enjoying the silence and the feeling of sun on her face. It had been raining all week, and the trips she’d managed to drag Mavis and Frank on had been disappointing. No one could summon up the energy to inject some enthusiasm into a visit to Bath, a shopping expedition to the local outlet village, a trip to the seaside. And was there anything more depressing than a seaside town in the rain in February? Not in Evie’s opinion.

Pip had his eyes closed, and Evie felt a sudden sympathy for him. He was so “other”, such a different type of man to any she’d ever met, and she knew she would never understand what made him attractive to someone like vivacious, bubbly Cissy. But she had a sense that if she could understand it – if she could just open her eyes and see what the rest of the world apparently saw in all those normal, unexciting, caring-sharing sort of men – she might actually be able to have a decent relationship herself.

As an act of kindness, she grabbed the bag of compost, dragged it back to the patch of earth she and Cissy had been working on and laid it in position. It wasn’t actually all that heavy. But then, Evie had always been strong for her size. She smoothed her filthy hands down the legs of her jeans, smiling to herself. She looked up and saw Pip staring at her.

‘Oh. You’re awake. Sorry, I just … Well.’ Evie’s cheeks reddened and she dropped back down to her knees and picked up the fork. She glanced back at him out of the corner of her eye. He was gazing at the bag of compost resignedly.

He said, ‘Thanks. I guess.’

Evie waved her hands, scattering soil all over the cobbled path. ‘I only moved it an inch or so. It was almost there already.’

‘It’s okay. I’m not into all that macho, men must be the stronger sex stuff.’

Except you are, thought Evie. You are really. I saw it in your eyes. But it wasn’t anything to do with her, and all at once she felt tired at the thought of all the complicated layers in a relationship, how people pretend to be what they’re not to keep other people happy, how people get fixed in their roles and won’t – or can’t – move on. She was no different. She was certainly no better.

‘Pip,’ she said, remembering why she’d bothered to get out of bed and come out here in the first place, ‘who do you rent your house from?’

‘A company called MA Holdings in Bristol,’ he said, sitting up and stretching.

‘Could you give me their number?’

‘Sure. Well, actually we don’t have a phone number. We do everything by email or post.’

‘Where are their offices?’

‘Bristol,’ he repeated. ‘But we’ve only got a P.O. number.’

Evie considered this. ‘So you’ve never been into their office?’ This was annoying – she had been thinking she might go into town this afternoon and visit the landlord herself. It had been five days since she’d phoned Harry and he hadn’t got back to her yet. Doing nothing was driving her crazy.

Pip shook his head. ‘We met a woman at the house here when we came to view. She was called Valerie, I think. Cissy will remember. Our money goes out of the bank every month, and if we have any problems we just email them. We’ve never actually had any problems, though.’

Lucky you, thought Evie. She said, ‘Okay. The email address would be great, thanks.’

‘You’re not after renting the house yourself, are you?’ Pip’s face had taken on a panicked expression. ‘I mean, I know your folks live across the way but we’re really happy here.’

‘I’m not trying to get you out of your house, Pip. Far from it. I’m trying to make sure none of the houses in Cupid’s Way get sold to Dynamite Construction. Ever.’

‘Phew. Well, if there’s anything I can do, you just ask. We might not be proper residents, like we don’t own our house and that, but Cissy and I are just as devoted to living here as anyone.’

‘I can see that,’ Evie told him. ‘And you are proper residents. You mustn’t think any different.’

But she knew as she walked away that everyone else in the street would still be calling them “the renters” for at least another five years.

*

On her way back to number eleven her mobile phone rang and buzzed in her pocket. Evie swore and pulled it out, annoyed that her hands were still disgustingly dirty. She looked at the screen, willing it to be Harry.

It wasn’t Harry. It was Michael.

‘Evie,’ he said. His voice was deep and authoritative. Evie closed her eyes briefly, then did an about-turn and headed towards the south end of the row. She couldn’t go back inside the house with the enemy on the other end of the phone.

‘Evie, I miss you. Meet up with me this morning.’

She moved from deliciously happy – he misses me! He wants to meet up with me! – to furious within the space of a few seconds.

‘Do you have amnesia? Don’t you remember what I said to you?’

‘I remember that you’ve got the most beautiful eyes and that they are very green when you’re angry. Green eyes, green suit, green issues. That’s what I thought the first time I met you. My green goddess.’

Oh, for goodness sake. Evie segued from annoyed to nauseated without a backwards glance.

‘Give me a break. Your silver tongue won’t work with me, remember? I know what you’re really like.’

‘Let me guess – a cut-throat developer, right?’

‘If the cap fits.’

‘Except I’m not. Am I? I told you stuff I shouldn’t have told you – I could get the sack, in fact.’

‘I hope you do,’ she countered.

‘No, you don’t. If the board got rid of me, my replacement would be even worse, believe me. Properly cut-throat. Not a sentimental bone in his body.’

‘Do you have a sentimental bone in your body, Michael?’ Evie loved saying his name. Even now, leaning against the frost-blown wall, looking back along the row of houses this man was trying to buy so he could do nothing better than knock them all down, she loved saying his name. It did not bode well.

‘Not really,’ he admitted. She could hear the laughter in his voice. ‘But I do have a very strong attraction to a woman I feel is going to be causing me a lot of trouble in the coming months.’

‘You’re right about that,’ she told him.

‘Evie, can’t we just put it aside? You have your agenda, I have mine, but we’re good together. Aren’t we? We could have so much fun.’

‘Michael. How much fun do you honestly think I could have with you? I’d be thinking about my grandparents and how I was betraying them every minute.’

He started to answer but she cut across him. ‘And I don’t have an agenda. I just want to stop this travesty taking place. And I won’t rest until I do.’

‘I don’t doubt it,’ he said. He sounded tired now. For just a moment she wanted to wind back to the moment when he’d told her he missed her, when his voice was silky like chocolate.

‘Evie, I’ve got to fly back to Edinburgh tomorrow and I don’t know when I’ll be home again. Please come into town and meet me. Or I could come there.’

‘Are you crazy? You’d be beaten with sticks.’ She turned around and faced out towards the playground. The McAllister building cast its shadow over the playing field to her left. A thought struck her. ‘Michael, Cupid’s Way isn’t that big really, is it? Why is the land worth so much to you?’

‘I can’t tell you that, Evie. You know I can’t.’

‘Will you be building on the playing field as well?’

He was quiet for a moment. ‘I think it might be included with the plot of land, yes.’

‘And the playground?’

‘Evie, I don’t really–’

‘I used to play there as a child. I used to fall over and scrape my knee there, and then I’d come over to my gran’s for a plaster and a biscuit.’

If there was impatience in his voice it was only the slightest trace. ‘Evie, the playground I used to go to is a Tesco now. It’s just the way things are.’

‘I have to go,’ Evie said. She could see her granddad coming down the path towards her. He would wonder why she was out here in the cold shivering when there was a perfectly good telephone in the house. She scooted off to her right and began to circumvent the row of terraces, keeping her head low. It wasn’t hard – she barely reached the top of the back yard walls anyway.

‘I wanted to take you to Horizon House,’ Michael was saying. She realised suddenly that this was the first time she’d spoken to him on the phone and that it felt as natural as walking.

‘I don’t know what that is but I’m not coming.’ She passed the empty house, the one that Dynamite owned – that Michael owned – and glared at it. The house stared back with blank windows for eyes. The guttering curved alarmingly in the middle, like a single frowning eyebrow.

‘It’s the headquarters of the Environment Agency. I’m on my way there now. You’d love it, Evie. The architecture is brilliant. It’s one of the UK’s greenest buildings.’

This time he left off with the green goddess nonsense, but Evie knew he was thinking it.

‘It sounds great, Michael, and I’m touched you want to take me there. But I’m not coming. And now I really have to go.’ She reached her grandparents’ back yard and lowered her voice. ‘Well,’ she said. She dug at the gravel with the toe of her wellington.

‘Evie, I don’t want to leave things badly between us. If only you could–’

‘And if only you could,’ she interrupted. ‘If only you could find somewhere else to build your medical centre and leave my family alone.’

He rang off then, with the briefest of goodbyes. Apparently she did know how to end the call after all.

She slipped through the back gate and crossed the tiny yard that usually contained the cobwebby table that now sat in Mavis and Frank’s living room. She reached for the door handle and tried the back door, hoping it was unlocked. When she was a child it had always been open, even when they were out. The handle turned and she smiled.

Her gran was in the kitchen, but she didn’t notice Evie at the door. She was talking to someone, animated, waving her hands in the air. Evie stopped, unsure whether she was interrupting an argument or a private discussion. But hadn’t she just seen her granddad leaving Cupid’s Way via the south gate? Maybe he’d doubled back and beat her to it, but he’d have had to be quick to get in the front door and start a row already.

She listened for an answering voice but heard nothing. Mavis was talking again, holding out her arms as if in supplication. She said, ‘I will never leave you. You know that. You’re safe here, and I’ll always be here for you. There is nowhere else in the world for me. You are my home, Tommy. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you.’

Evie stepped backwards and closed the door softly. She looked through the window and watched her grandma. There was no one else there, of that she was certain. Mavis was talking to herself. Correction: she was talking to someone called Tommy. But there was no one called Tommy in the house.

She slipped out of the yard and leaned against the wall, pressing her fingers against the rough brick and looking up at the McAllister monstrosity. She could smell the earth on her clothes still and she really needed to get inside and have a shower. It would probably be best if she went around to the front and came in calling a noisy hello. It was probably crazy, but Evie didn’t want her gran to know what she’d overheard.

She also didn’t want to think about who Tommy might be. There was a pressing feeling on her chest, as though some invisible person was pushing her with both palms. She thought about her mother in Canada and imagined her sitting by a lake drinking out of a metal flask, smiling. Would her mother know who this Tommy was?

Evie turned right and came back into Cupid’s Way by the allotments. Pip and Cissy waved to her. They didn’t seem to have made much progress.

‘I gave that email address to your granddad,’ Pip called out. Evie waved back, then reached into her pocket. Her phone was ringing. She hoped it wasn’t Michael again.

‘Harry,’ she said, feeling both relieved and a little disappointed. ‘What have you got for me?’

‘That’s our Evie,’ he said. ‘Get straight to the point, no messing around.’

‘Sorry. I’m just a bit tense. How are you? How are things in the mad house?’

He laughed. ‘It’s just as you say – a mad house. Actually, I’d better not stay on too long. Julia’s on the warpath.’

‘Oh, lord. Am I glad I’m on holiday.’

‘I’m afraid I might be about to turn your holiday into a bit of a nightmare.’

She turned away from Pip and Cissy and hunkered down on a wooden bench that someone had painted bright purple. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It’s worse than we thought, Evie. Or should I say, it’s exactly as bad as we thought. The medical centre? That’s just the half of it. Wait till you hear what else they’re building.’

Chapter 12

Evie watched the screen of her phone until it went black. Harry had rung off at least three minutes ago but still she hadn’t moved. She pocketed the phone and looked up. Frank was walking back along the cobbled path, a pint of milk from the Happy Shopper in his hand. He’d have had to walk right past the new supermarket to reach the Happy Shopper, and she knew he didn’t do that because he needed the exercise. She noted the spring in his step, the calmness of his face. She was about to change all that.