Eden (19 page)

I turn it upside down, tip out a tumble of paperbacks and socks and other jetsam: a pine cone, a stone with a hole, a piece of snakeskin from the woods. And money. The muddle of banknotes inside that Jiffy bag I saw that first day. Is this the clue? But Penn is well-off. Having cash doesn’t make him not Penn. But then, why so much? Why all in used notes? Why not a platinum credit card on Daddy’s account?

But it’s not enough evidence. I need something more. I root through the pile of stuff again, looking for rubies, for jewels, all the while hoping to get nothing but soil. And there it is – a gleaming Castafiore diamond, a Fabergé egg of a thing: a letter.

I turn it over in my hands, feel the crackle of it. The handwriting is cramped, contained, not the extravagant hand of the letter on Bea’s dresser. And I feel the first blow, shattering the skimmed surface of our existence. Then another: the address on the front is for a town in the North, a place I recognize from jokes about flat caps and whippets and the grimness of it all. But the name I don’t know: “Brigid Sturridge”. Who is she? Is she his girlfriend? Is that why he and Bea argued? Maybe there are more girls. Maybe there are hundreds of me in houses just like this.

But there is no other house like this, I think, and I tear open the letter. I am the only me. And he is Penn. He will be Penn.

But he’s not. And the third blow strikes. Because the name at the bottom of the letter has no W or P. It begins instead with a J. Like the name he signed the day we bound our lives to each other. But it’s not Jimmy Dean, the name he claimed for himself.

It’s James Gillespie.

Oh God. I reel back, drop the letter as if it is searing the truth onto my skin. Because James Gillespie isn’t a stranger. He’s not just some chancer who happened to find the boathouse that day, who needed a bed, who wanted a girl, who went along with my story because it suited him.

No, I’ve heard of James Gillespie before. And I know where.

The letters are stuck between the pages of a book. The one with flying children and little lost boys. The one with Neverland. She sent them last year, before Christmas, before she swore never to come back and I swore never to speak to her again. I read them angrily then, hating her for this new life, wanting her to ask about mine, to come back to mine. But I was the bit part I’d always been, an afterthought. So I thrust them where they have sat ever since; a disappointment, saying nothing I needed to know or wanted to hear. But now, now they contain everything I need. Because in them are Penn, his wonder, his perfection, the conviction that he is the one who will end it all, all the flitting and flirting and never-quite-enough of the boys who have gone before. But there is someone else too: James. A boy she has met on her course, whom she thinks is odd, special. He’s from the North: Wigan. And he’s talented, a chameleon. “You should see him, Evie,” she says. “He can be anyone, anyone he wants.”

And I hear it now. The slips in his accent, the short vowel in “bath” sometimes. That time he said “aye” but meant “yes”.

Tom was right. He’s not who he says he is. And I should run. I should go now, flee into the woods and across the water to the village where I can sound the alarm.

But I need to know why. I need to ask him why he’s done this thing to me. This terrible thing. And so I do run. But not down. I run along the corridor, and to the steps that lead to the attic, and beyond that, the roof. And with each step I feel the walls around me shatter, great yawning chasms ripping through the paint and paper, feel the flags crumble beneath my feet into powder and dust.

For the world has shifted on its axis: summer has turned to darkest winter; heaven to a seething, searing hell; and Eden, Eden is falling.

JULY 1988

PENN SITS
in a chair next to the bed; the hard wooden back forcing him out of his slouch into an uncomfortable upright position, and uncomfortable thoughts. For, as his father lies sallow and breath-laboured before him, patiently awaiting the cloaked death, the winged angels, all he can think about is Bea. Now she’s gone he sees his life for what it is alone: shallow and colourless
.

He knows he’s made a mistake. That Bea hasn’t flown from him but that he pushed her, as he pushed the others. And he knows that he needs to get her back before it’s too late
.

That night he calls Hetty, who tells him Bea left three days ago. But when he phones the house on the hill, it’s not her voice that answers but Hunter’s
.

“No idea, mate,” he drawls when Penn demands to know where she is, where she’s gone. “Not seen her in ages. Maybe she went home? In fact you’re lucky you got me, going myself any minute.”

Yes, thinks Penn, when he’s hung up. She must have gone home. Gone back to Eden
.

He calls the number she gave him last Christmas, recalls their conversation, drunk on advocaat and desperate to see each other, remembers her promise to come back the next day – a promise kept. He hears the echo of the bell at the other end of the line, imagines it ringing in a hallway that mirrors the one he stands in, calling her down a tiled corridor to him
.

But this time she doesn’t come. The phone rings into nothingness and he eventually hangs up
.

She’s on her way, he thinks then, his belief still burning strong, lighting his thoughts, lightening them. She’s on a train, so he’ll write and it’ll get there tomorrow and she’ll open it and realize he loves her and only her
.

And then, when his father has gone, when he’s free of this tomb of a house, he’ll go to her, and begin life again
.

The blind has been raised now, and James sits at the window. It’s started to rain; fat drops falling fast from a black sky. He watches a drunk stagger under the streetlamps, a bus sending puddles sloshing from the gutter over his feet
.

He sees it all, all the dirt and the sadness and the sheer, relentless poverty. No gold glints on the streets outside, just wet pavement, and inside the mould-stained walls, the broken lampshade. Why would she stay here, anyway? She needs more, deserves more
.

So does he
.

And then he hears the scrape of starch and sulphur on sandpaper. It’s a tiny sound, but sharp, clear above the muffled hum of London. A match has been struck inside him. He feels the prick of heat from the burst of phosphorous, and then the answer to his problems is lit in front of him. White words hang in the air, burnt on his retina long after the letters have faded
.

He will bring her back. Back to him, and only to him. He’ll be Robin Hood; he will steal from the rich. He knows where to get money, and who to get it from. Then he can buy her a life fit for a princess; for his Maid Marian. A life so fabulous, and he so heroic, so special, that she will never want to leave again
.

AUGUST 1988

I AM
sick with dread, fear hardened into stone in my stomach as I climb out onto the bright, wide expanse of the roof. He’s there, king of the world, watching the woods, the river, the sea. But I can’t bear to look at it. Can hardly bear to look at him.

“Who are you?” I say.

“You know who I am.”

“I know you’re not Penn.”

He stiffens but says nothing.

“I know your name is James Gillespie. Bea knew you. But I don’t know who you were to her. Or who she was to you.”

But still he won’t answer me. And I’m angry now. I want to hurt him like he has hurt me. “Did she laugh at you like she laughed at the others? Did she kiss you then run away? Yes, that’s it. You wanted her, but you couldn’t have her. So you thought you’d have me. So tell me, who are you?”

He turns now, his face contorted, his eyes alight, burning into me. “I’m Icarus,” he booms, his voice deep, sonorous. “I’m Hamlet. I’m Superman. I’m Peter Fucking Pan. I’m untouchable. Can you feel it, Evie? Can you? Can you feel it in me?” He grabs one of my hands and presses it to his chest. I try to snatch it away but he grips harder, pulls me towards the edge. “Shall we fly, Evie? We could jump together. It would be perfect. The perfect end, do you see?”

“Don’t be stupid,” I manage to gasp.

“But I’m not. This is the most sensible thing we could do. The only thing we can do now. You and me against the world.” His hand is bruising me now, forming a welt across my wrist.

“Please,” I beg. “Let me go.”

He turns to me and smiles. “I’ll never let you go, Evie. Not you or Eden. You know that. You wanted this, remember. This was your idea.”

And he is not lying now. He will not let me go. Not unless—

“OK,” I say.

“Really?”

“Yes, I’ll do it.” I force a smile. Then I lift my head, lift my lips to his.

And it works. He drops my wrist to cup my face, to pull me closer, but in that split second I curl my hand into a fist, and punch him hard in the stomach the way Bea taught me. He doubles up, coughing. I think he’s going to vomit and for a second I worry that I’ve really hurt him. Then he looks up at me, eyes black with hate, and I run, faster than I have ever run before, my feet pounding the felting. I drop through the hatch, not caring that I’m going to fall to the floor. I stumble, and my knee scrapes the rough boards. It begins to bleed, but I don’t have time to staunch it now. I can hear him following me.

“Evie!” he screams. “Come here.”

But I’m gone, along the landing, into Aunt Julia’s room. There’s a phone in there. A spare one so she could have privacy to shout at Uncle John, to moan about the weather or the locals. I’ll call the police, I think. And they will come, sirens screaming, and arrest him.

But when I get there the phone has gone. He must have hidden it when I slept. I feel a pain in my bladder, threatening to give way, my stomach rise in a cloud of butterflies. Not now, I plead. I have to hide. I have to hide.

I’m hidden. Pushed to the back of the cupboard in the coats and the cloaks and the fur. I hear his footsteps creak along the boards, for he doesn’t know their secrets, not like Bea and I. “I know you’re in there,” he calls. “I’m coming to get you.” He’s angry now. Doors are flung open and then kicked shut again. Curtains are pulled from their poles, the rings clattering to the floor. Then there are more footsteps, and something moves on the other side of the door, blocking the light from the keyhole momentarily. He’s there. He has found me. I can hear his breath, heavy and fast. Just as he must be able to hear mine. I wait for the handle to turn. Wait for him to say “Got you.”

But instead I hear a retreat. His rasping breath fades with his footsteps down the corridor. It’s a trick, I think. He’s crept back silently and is waiting behind the door to pounce on me when I open it.

But then I hear the tread of feet on gravel outside, then the clank of a heavy iron latch being lifted and dropped. The outhouse. He thinks I am in the outhouse.

It’s my last chance. I have to get out of Eden and into the woods before he realizes his mistake. He won’t remember the way, I think; he only came here once and in the dim light of the storm. And so I run. No, I fly – fly between oaks and ashes, through deep puddles that shower my legs with filth. I am halfway there now, can see the tin roof of the boathouse through the trees – a beacon, a buoy.

But then I catch sight of something else. A flash of a figure in red to the side of me. What was he wearing? Oh shit, it’s him. It has to be him. I don’t have to time to get
Jorion
. Think. Think… I will swim across the creek. I’m faster and stronger than him in the water. I swerve to take the short cut around the boathouse. But as I reach the edge of the makeshift quay, my flip-flop catches on something, and I feel myself falling; can almost see myself fast and slow all at once, tumbling through air, as the viscous green of the water comes up to meet me. I hit my head on the hard, grey stone beside the creek.

Then all I see is black.

JULY 1988

BEA SITS
on the bed in the attic at Telegraph Hill, her arms gripped tightly around cold, bare legs, her world upended. She sees now what love can do, what havoc it can wreak, what lives it can destroy. But she’ll make it all right; with Evie and Tom, with her mother and father even. She’ll go back to Eden and open the house, decorate it, throw a welcome party like no other, have a last summer to end all summers before the house is sold and they must all move on to new lives.

She checks her watch and realizes she has been sat here too long. The vodka – her Dutch courage – has lengthened the seconds into minutes, minutes into hours. It’s ten now and she can’t reach Paddington in time to catch the train, not even in a taxi. But there’s no urgency, not really. She’ll just go in the morning. She’ll feel better then anyway, after she’s slept and taken a shower; washed the smell of him from her.

It’s one in the morning. The rain has stopped now and the air on Telegraph Hill is clearer, cooler than the exhaust-wrapped smog of the Old Kent Road. But James is hot. He is on fire.

The plan is simple. And he is a fucking genius. He is Superman; he is the Wonderful Wizard of Oz; he is Batman and the Joker, Sherlock and Moriarty all at once.

The windows of Penn’s house are black, dead eyes to the world. No one is home, just like she said. He slips his hand under the mat. WELCOME, it says, and he replies with a silent thank you as he feels the cold, hard outline of a single key.

He lets himself in, then listens. But the house says nothing, and he hears only the electric hum of the fridge. He’ll be quick anyway, just in case someone comes back.

Penn keeps it in a tin under his bed; Bea told him. Dirty money stashed away from the Coutts account – and the eyes of his father – to pay for the next eight-bar, the next ounce, the next obliterated night.

James sits down on the floor, legs crossed, the tin in his lap. Then he lifts the lid, opening it slowly, carefully, like it is a chest of buried treasure.

And it is treasure.

Ten, twenty, a hundred, a thousand. I’m Robin Hood, he repeats to himself as he sets the notes in piles. I’m stealing from the rich, and the lazy and the stupid, to give to the poor. I’m a hero, he thinks, and the thought is edifying.