Forgive Me (37 page)

‘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 loved 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.

In panic she jumped out of bed and ran to
the door. As she opened it she recoiled in horror when she saw a wall of thick smoke. It
was so dense she couldn’t even see the banisters of the staircase less than four
feet away. But even through the smoke she could see an orangey-red glow coming from down
by the front door, and it was making its way towards the stairs.

The house was on fire, and she was
trapped.