Forgive Me (15 page)

‘Snooping!’ she exclaimed.
‘I wasn’t. I took the wrong way back from the supermarket and just happened
to go down that road. I thought you were still in bed in your room.’

He leaned back against the door, folded his
arms and looked at her contemptuously. ‘I don’t believe you. Far more likely
you’ve been nosing around in my address book.’

‘I’ve never even seen your address
book, much less nosed into it,’ she retorted with indignation. ‘But if that
girl is in it, then you’ve been two-timing both of us.’

‘Don’t be so dramatic and
needy,’ he said irritably. ‘I’ve never made a secret of having lots of
friends. She just happens to be one of them.’

‘I’m not needy,’ she said,
her voice shaking. ‘Neither am I being dramatic. How would you have liked it if I
went out and slept with someone else?’

‘I wouldn’t have minded at
all,’ he said airily. ‘That would’ve been a whole lot better than
thinking I’d got to be with you seven days a week, just to shore you
up.’

‘Shore me up?’ she questioned,
not really understanding what he meant by that. ‘I never expected you to see me
every day. It was you who instigated that.’

‘Only because I felt sorry for
you.’

Eva felt as if he’d slapped her. She
stared at him in horror.

‘I asked you out to lunch that day
after your birthday because of what you told me,’ he went on, not even looking
directly at her, as if she was just some passing stranger. ‘It was just pity.
You’d had such a bad time and I thought I could help you get over it. But
you’re too buttoned up and prissy for me, you want someone to fill up all the
holes in your life, and I can’t do that. That’s why I said I didn’t
want to go to London. I hoped you’d become less clingy if you had something else
to focus on.’

She looked at his face, and all the warmth
and eagerness she loved him for was gone. This man had made passionate love to her again
and again; he’d talked about the future as if he intended them to share it. But
his eyes were cold now and he was wearing the same scornful expression Andrew had worn
when she left his house.

It was unbearable, yet in just the same way
that Andrew’s
nastiness had stirred up anger in her, so
Tod’s cruel rejection fired up the remnants of her spirit.

‘You flatter yourself, thinking I need
you to fill holes in my life,’ she retorted, willing herself not to cry again.
‘I came back from London really excited by all the new possibilities for me there.
In fact I was intending to tell you today that I’m going to move there. I had of
course hoped that you would want to share in my good fortune and come and visit now and
then. But, silly me, I hadn’t realized what an insincere arsehole you are. You
belong in provincial Cheltenham with all those sad people who think you care about them.
So bugger off and join them.’

There was a slight satisfaction in seeing
she’d surprised him. He scuttled out like the rat he was, and she slammed the door
behind him.

She leaned back on the door and cried,
wishing she could turn off her feelings for him as quickly as she’d made that
hasty declaration. She hurt so much inside that she felt she could die from it.

Putting some music on drowned out the sound
of her crying, but there was nothing she could do to fix her broken heart. His insulting
words kept milling around in her mind, ‘dramatic and needy’, and what did he
mean by her being ‘buttoned up and prissy’? Was it the way she looked, the
way she was in bed, or did he mean she was dull company?

But even worse was the thought that while
she’d been weaving rosy daydreams about them being together for ever, he’d
seen her as some fragile loony that had to be watched over. That was so insulting.

She saw him going out again at eight; he had
his suit on, and that meant he was going somewhere smart, perhaps with the girl
she’d seen earlier. That was the final blow.

It was a little later, almost nine
o’clock, when she began to
pack up her things. She had no choice
but to leave. To stay, seeing his face, hearing his voice, would just be too painful.
Besides, she wasn’t going to look even more pathetic by not sticking to what
she’d told Tod she was going to do.

Her belongings seemed to have multiplied in
her time here, and she had to take more care packing them into her car. She also had to
be quick – the last thing she wanted was to still be here when he returned.

Stripping the bedding was the worst part;
there was still a faint smell of him lingering on the duvet and pillows. But she bundled
them into a bin bag and pushed it down hard behind the driving seat.

By ten thirty the car was packed and she
returned once more to the room for one last check. As she looked around she saw
she’d made no lasting impression on it; the room was just as bleak and forlorn as
when she’d first arrived three weeks earlier. Even the love she thought
she’d found here was just a mirage.

As she drove away towards the M5 her eyes
kept welling up with tears, but she brushed them away angrily.

By the time she reached the M4 there was
little traffic on the motorway. She wondered if there was anyone else out there in the
darkness, fleeing to another town because of heartbreak. But even if there was, she
doubted they were going to such an unwelcoming destination as she was. No electricity or
hot water, and if she hadn’t bought the inflatable mattress she would be sleeping
on the floor. Would she even be able to find her way to the house? She hadn’t got
a map – all she knew for certain was that the M4 went through West London.

What was Olive going to think when she
didn’t turn up for work tomorrow? She supposed she’d have to phone her. But
what would she say? Somehow she knew her boss wasn’t
going to
think being dumped was a good enough excuse for running away without giving notice.

It was nearly midnight when she saw a sign
ahead which said the next junction was for Hammersmith and Shepherd’s Bush.
Knowing Shepherd’s Bush was very close to Holland Park, she turned off there and
followed the signs. She went the wrong way at Shepherd’s Bush Green and stopped at
a garage to ask directions, then turned round and got back to Holland Park Avenue. It
all looked so different by night, but after a couple of wrong turns she saw The Prince
of Wales and Pottery Lane.

By day Pottery Lane had looked inviting, but
now under yellowy street lighting it looked faintly menacing. Pulling up close to the
front door, she unloaded the car and then drove down the lane to find somewhere to park
without yellow lines.

By the time she got back to the house it was
after one, and on realizing that she hadn’t had the presence of mind to get
candles or a torch, she began to cry again. The house didn’t smell evil any
longer, but the image of maggots and filth was still in her head and she was scared.
Fumbling around in the dark, she eventually found the camping gas ring with the matches
beside it. She lit it, but as the blue flames lit up the graffiti-covered walls she felt
even more frightened.

Holding the gas ring in one hand, she
carried the bag of bedding upstairs to the little bedroom where she’d left the new
inflatable mattress, and set to work pumping it up. That made her cry even harder,
because when she’d bought it she’d imagined doing this with Tod, laughing at
the grimness of the house, and Tod throwing her down on the mattress to make love to
her.

She wanted a hot drink, and she realized she
hadn’t had anything to eat since first thing that morning when she’d had a
slice of toast. But unable to face going downstairs again
and
rummaging through bags of stuff to find biscuits, tea bags, milk and a mug, she made up
the bed as best she could, tried to ignore the smell of Tod on the duvet, stripped off
down to her underwear and crawled into it.

Tired as she was, sleep wouldn’t come.
The inflatable mattress felt very strange and smelled of rubber. Her mind flitted from
imagining all kinds of creepy-crawlies in the room, to Tod with that other girl. This
house might belong to her but it felt like a Dickensian prison, or one of those awful
places where glue sniffers gathered, and she felt so terribly alone and afraid.

She wished she’d thought to check into
a bed and breakfast in Cheltenham instead of rushing off here. Then she could have gone
into work in the morning and asked Olive’s advice about what to do. She
didn’t have the first idea how to get the electricity back on. Or how to go about
getting the boards off the windows and new glass put in. Misery overwhelmed her and she
sobbed into the darkness, asking why she had been singled out for so much
unhappiness.

Rain beating against the window woke her.
She looked at her watch and saw it was nearly eight o’clock. She got up and went
to the bathroom, but hurried back to bed afterwards as there was nothing to get up
for.

She wanted to sleep and sleep, because in
that way she could avoid thinking about anything. But a ball of misery was pumping away
inside her like a second heart, growing larger and stronger by the minute, and it
wasn’t going to let her sleep. It wanted to list and enlarge upon her problems,
starting with being unlovable.

She was jobless, in a place where she knew
no one. And there was a multitude of things to be done to make this place liveable, most
of which she had no idea how to do.

As if that wasn’t enough, another voice
was speaking loudly in her head, telling her she was worthless, stupid and plain.

Olive glanced at the clock on Monday
morning. She saw that it was now eleven o’clock and still Eva hadn’t rung in
with an explanation as to why she wasn’t coming to work. Normally when staff
failed to turn up she felt only irritation, but in this case she was worried. While she
knew there was no phone in the house at Crail Road, she felt certain Eva was the kind to
ask someone else to ring in if she wasn’t able to do it herself.

By the end of the day, with still no news,
Olive drove round to Crail Road on her way home. There was no answer to Eva’s bell
so she rang some of the others. After what seemed like an interminable time a
dark-haired girl wearing jeans and a sweatshirt opened the door. Olive asked if she knew
where Eva was.

‘She left here last night,’ the
girl said. ‘I’m in the room above hers, and I was looking out of the window
about ten and saw her packing stuff into her car.’

Olive was shocked. She explained she was
Eva’s employer, stressing that she was concerned for Eva.

‘She had a row with Tod,’ the
girl confided. ‘I heard their raised voices yesterday, early in the evening, and
he went out later on his own. Maybe she’s gone home to her parents?’

‘She hasn’t got any,’
Olive said. ‘When does Tod get in?’

The girl shrugged. ‘For the last
couple of weeks since he’s been with Eva, he’s been coming in at half five,
but if he dumped her I expect he’s gone straight to the pub.’

Olive’s heart sank. She had seen the
way Eva was about this young man, and if he’d let her down there was no knowing
what she’d do.

‘Was Eva’s room this one?’
Olive pointed to the window nearest the front door.

The girl nodded.

‘I’ll just get up on the window
sill and see if she has taken everything,’ Olive said.

The girl looked at Olive’s business
suit and high heels. ‘I think you’d better let me do it,’ she said,
and she nimbly jumped from the steps at the front door on to the wide window sill to
peer over the short net curtains. ‘Everything’s cleaned out,’ she
called back. ‘Her television, all her cushions and all the other bits and
pieces.’

‘Is there anyone in the house she
might have left a forwarding address with?’ Olive asked.

‘If she was going to leave one it
would’ve been with me,’ the girl said. ‘I used to talk to her more
than anyone else. I wish I’d come down last night when I saw her loading the car.
But, to be honest, I didn’t know what to say to her. I wanted to warn her when Tod
came on to her that he’s a womanizer and not to take him seriously, because
he’s never with anyone for long. But I didn’t – I suppose I thought she
might change him. I expect that was what the row was about. She must have found out
he’d got someone else.’

Olive was frightened for Eva now. She might
only have been seeing this young man for a couple of weeks but Olive had seen the
transformation in Eva since she met him. He’d given her hope for the future, taken
her mind off her mother’s death and her stepfather’s nastiness. It
wasn’t a casual fling to Eva; she’d pinned everything on him. And now that
her dreams were shattered, she would be in pieces.

‘Could you let me have the
landlord’s phone number then?’ Olive asked.

There was a faint chance Eva might have had
a personal
reference from someone she was close to when she took the
flat. If she told him why she was worried, he might pass on that person’s
address.

When Olive got home she rang the landlord.
He was pleasant, but said he’d taken only a bank reference and a deposit from Eva.
He said that he would relet the room when her advance rent ran out and that if Olive
should hear from her, she was to tell the girl to get in touch so he could return her
deposit.

Olive wondered what else she could do. She
didn’t know the exact address of the studio in London; she didn’t even know
which solicitor had acted for Eva, so she couldn’t ask him. Andrew Patterson would
know of course, but she was loath to inform him about this.

He was hardly likely to care anyway.

But she supposed it was a good sign that Eva
had had enough spirit to take off. A weaker person would have just taken to her bed and
stayed there. She had some money and a place to stay, after all.

Yet all the same, Olive couldn’t bear
the thought of her in a strange place, all alone and hurting.

Eva was hurting. She stayed in bed all day
Monday, listening to the rain beating down and wishing she could just die. The teddy
bears on the wall were no comfort now, they were just another reminder of betrayal.
Flora had ruined her life, and then foisted this hideous dump of a house on to her to
create more misery.