Forgive Me (46 page)

‘Oh God, how could that have gone on
and I never knew?’ Eva sobbed.

‘She made sure you didn’t know,
because she loved you all so much,’ Patrick said. ‘I don’t think she
was even afraid of prison, really – only of losing you three. She says in one part that
she sometimes felt it was payback time, for being horrible to both me and Gregor. So she
tried so much harder to be a good wife to Andrew.’

‘Does she say if she loved him?’
Phil asked. ‘I mean, in the beginning?’

‘She said: “It is true I never
felt the same way about him as I did about those two other good men. But I thought that
love like that comes to most people only once, and I’d been lucky enough to have
it twice already. But I gave Andrew everything I was capable of giving.” You can
make what you like of that, Phil!’

‘I know she hints that Andrew would
like her to kill herself, but is there any suggestion that’s what she planned to
do?’ Eva asked in a small voice. ‘I was such a pain to her at the time she
wrote that. I can’t bear to think I added to her misery.’

‘No, she doesn’t, Eva. She said
how glad she was that she had the foresight to put the studio in trust for you, that at
least Andrew would never get that. So I think you can put it out of your mind that you
were in any way responsible. She was wild herself at the same age, and she understood
the need teenagers have to rebel. I think at the time she wrote this she must’ve
had the idea of waiting until all three of you came of age, and then making the break –
whatever that cost her.’

There was more – so many unpleasant
incidents with Andrew that Flora had described in detail – but Patrick felt Eva had
heard more than enough for one night.

Phil had his arm around Eva, because she was
distressed and crying. It was an awful lot to take in as it stood, but no
doubt Eva would wonder what worse things occurred after Flora had
hidden this away. Only a fool would think the abuse and bullying had stopped at that
point.

‘You must read the rest for
yourselves,’ Patrick said. ‘She could see no way out when she wrote it, you
can hear her despair in every word. It was her love for the three of you alone that kept
her going, and I feel ashamed that I ever called her selfish.’

‘Do we take this to the police?’
Phil asked.

‘I think you must,’ Patrick
said, ‘because it makes it absolutely clear what kind of man Andrew was. When you
read on from the part where I stopped, she goes on to say about him belittling Eva –
another new way of hurting Flora. And he was hitting her more and more often for the
most trivial of things. She also says she knew he had other women.’

He paused, sighing deeply at the profound
sadness of it all. ‘I spent all day yesterday reading this over and over again. A
part of me didn’t want to hand it over to you, because I knew how distressing you
would find it. But of course I had to. You needed to know.’

‘To think if Eva hadn’t asked
Andrew for the painting, the statement might never have come to light,’ Phil said.
‘Why did she put it in there? Why not send it to someone to be opened after her
death?’

Patrick rubbed his face with his hands; he
felt exhausted now, but he felt a duty to make both these two young people understand
Flora’s motive. ‘I think it was symbolic. He’d taken so much from her
– her personality, her self-esteem and also her art. Writing it all down was probably
cathartic; she might never have intended it to be found. Yet when I looked at that
ghastly frame, which would never in a million years have been her choice, perhaps she
smiled to herself knowing that if Andrew ever sold or gave away the
painting to spite her, the frame would be ripped off immediately.

‘I doubt he had any idea at all what a
great artist she was – or he wouldn’t have let you have it, Eva. If it went to
auction, an art collector would have paid a lot of money for it. There is also a bitter
irony in that if he’d let Flora paint, she would’ve made far more money than
he ever did as a salesman.’

He got up then. ‘But I must go now and
leave you two to discuss this. If you need me, just ring.’ He held out his arms,
and Eva rushed to them. Patrick held her tightly and stroked her hair with tenderness.
‘Look after yourself, little one. I wish I could’ve brought you something
more uplifting that would make you happy. But they do say “the truth shall set you
free”.’

The next morning Phil got up when his alarm
went off and went into the kitchen to make some tea, leaving Eva still sleeping.

After Patrick’s visit they had both
read the whole statement right through. Eva had been very upset, and she’d woken
during the night with a bad dream. Phil didn’t really want to leave her today, but
he had to. He made two cups and took them back into the bedroom. As he put Eva’s
down on the bedside table she opened her eyes.

‘Morning, handsome,’ she said
with a forced smile.

Her pluckiness touched him. He knew that
this wasn’t something she could just brush away and forget about. He bent over to
kiss her. ‘I don’t want to leave you alone today, but I’ve got
to,’ he said.

‘Stop worrying about me, I’m not
that fragile,’ she said and sat up to drink her tea.

Phil sat down beside her. ‘I’ll
be home by six,’ he said. ‘Shall we go out for something to eat?’

‘No, I’ll cook something
nice,’ she said. ‘I really am alright this morning. I woke up during the
night and thought about it all. I feel more clear-headed about it now. I’ve
accepted that I’m a Carling, not a Foyle. I shudder to think who my real father is
– I suppose some casual pick-up in the pub or the bookies, as there was no mention of
him in the newspaper cuttings we got.’

‘He can’t have been a bad man to
have produced you,’ Phil said. ‘But all your influences were from Flora. And
the way I see it, she made a pretty good job of bringing you up. Until I read that
statement I’d imagined her as some self-centred cow, but I was wrong.’

‘Why didn’t I realize that
Andrew was hurting her?’ she asked plaintively. ‘The policewoman who took my
statement after Mum died asked me if they’d had a happy marriage, and I said they
had. Did I say that because I believed it? Or just because I chose to forget how sad Mum
seemed sometimes? Since then, I’ve remembered lots of things that were pointers to
them being far from OK. At my age surely I should’ve suspected Andrew was violent.
I was a bit afraid of him myself.’

‘Does any kid really question whether
their parents are happy together?’ Phil shrugged. ‘I mean, we all grow up
thinking whatever our parents do or say is normal. We have no other yardstick to measure
it by. Your dad might be grumpy, or your mum a battleaxe, but you just accept that. I
had a mate at school whose parents had blazing rows, his mum would throw his dad’s
clothes out of the window. But they are still together. Flora said how careful she was
to keep it from you all. She was afraid of what Andrew might do if she let it slip.
Anyway, children – even ones in their twenties – don’t examine their
parents’ behaviour very closely.’

‘Do you think that Mum never told us
kids anything about
her past, because she was afraid she’d let
slip how unhappy she was?’

‘Possibly, or she was afraid that if
you repeated anything she’d said in Andrew’s hearing, she’d get into
more bother. But I think it was admirable that she kept quiet about everything that was
going on between her and Andrew, so that you three kids would remain secure and happy.
That was very noble and loving. If you keep that in mind, perhaps it won’t hurt so
much.’

‘You are loving and noble too,’
Eva said, leaning towards him to kiss his cheek.

‘And I’ll be late for work if I
sit here any longer.’ He smiled. ‘Now go back to sleep. But if you go out
later, get that statement photocopied before we show it to the police. We can’t
risk losing the original.’

He paused as he went to go out of the
bedroom door, and looked back at her. ‘I love you, Eva. However bad this seems
now, together we’ll get through it.’

Eva lay in bed for some time after Phil had
left, forcing herself to look back with adult eyes at incidents she remembered from her
childhood. One which stood out was being dropped home one afternoon by a friend’s
mother after a sleepover in the summer holidays. She was eleven then, and Sophie and Ben
were spending a few days with Granny and Grandpa, Andrew’s parents.

She walked in the back door and Flora called
out to her from the sitting room. ‘I’m in here,’ she said.
‘I’ve had a bit of an accident.’

Flora was sitting on the sofa with her legs
propped up on a stool. There was a large lint dressing on one of them, but both her legs
were covered in what looked like bad grazes. Eva remembered that she was dressed, but
that her hair was
very tangled, as if she hadn’t brushed it that
morning. She also looked like she’d been crying.

Eva had been horrified, and asked how it had
happened.

‘I was really silly,’ Flora
said. ‘I was having a bit of a clear-out in the attic rooms this morning and I
tried to carry a heavy box of old tools and things downstairs to put them in the garage.
I tripped and fell, and I landed on some of the tools.’

Eva hadn’t for one moment thought that
it wasn’t the truth. Her anxiety was only about how much pain Flora was in and if
she should call the doctor, because Andrew was going to be away overnight.

But Flora said it wasn’t serious
enough to trouble the doctor, and she felt better already now Eva was home.

She quite enjoyed playing nurse that
evening, as it wasn’t often she got her mum all to herself. She made them both
some tea and sandwiches and she supported Flora when she wanted to hobble to the loo
and, later in the evening, up to bed.

But looking back at that incident now, where
were these tools Flora was supposed to have fallen on? Anyone taking a tumble like that,
and finding they could barely walk, would have left them where they’d fallen; they
certainly wouldn’t have packed them back into the box and got them to the garage!
Besides, why would there be tools stored in an attic room anyway?

Clearly the truth of the matter was that
there had been a row that morning, and because there were no children in the house
Andrew had attacked Flora. Thinking about her injuries now, Eva thought he must have
knocked her down and then kicked her hard, again and again. Then he’d calmly gone
off to work after warning her she was to tell no one.

Eva’s stomach contracted painfully at
the thought of Flora being alone and hurt, forcing herself to struggle to dress the
worst wound, then inventing a story to cover her injuries.

‘You evil bastard,’ Eva muttered
to herself. ‘I’m going to make sure you pay for everything you did to
her.’

‘Hello, Eva! How are you feeling
now?’ DI Turner asked as she opened the door to him. He had a WPC with him who she
hadn’t met before.

‘Oh! I’m much better, thank
you,’ she replied. She was somewhat startled to see Turner, because she’d
just been mulling over what she ought to do about Flora’s statement.

It was Wednesday morning, pouring with rain.
Phil had left for work at seven and would be away for two days. Everything had seemed so
clear and straightforward yesterday. She’d gone out and had five photocopies made
of the statement. She intended to send one to Gregor – she thought that he deserved an
explanation of why Flora had acted as she did towards him – and two would go to Sophie
and Ben. But after Phil left this morning she wasn’t so sure about anything. Phil
didn’t think she ought to send copies to Sophie and Ben, at least not yet. He said
she mustn’t do anything until he got back, when they could discuss it
properly.

‘May we come in?’ Turner asked.
He half turned towards the tall and rather severe-looking WPC. ‘This is WPC Rose,
and we’ve come to tell you about some new developments.’

‘Yes, of course,’ Eva said,
opening the door wider. ‘Do come in. You just took me by surprise.’

She led them into the lounge, picked up a
jacket of Phil’s from the sofa and quickly removed a plate and mug from the coffee
table. ‘Let me make you a drink. Tea or coffee?’

Turner and Rose looked at one another as Eva
darted into
the kitchen to get them coffee. They could see she was
rattled about something and wondered if she was alright.

She returned a few minutes later with coffee
and biscuits on a tray.

‘You’ve come to say you
can’t find any record of my birth here in London?’ she said as she put the
tray down on the coffee table.

‘That’s right,’ Turner
said. ‘Not at a hospital, or as a home birth. The first record of you apart from
your birth registration is at about three months old when Flora registered you with her
doctor in Holland Park for immunization. But you sound as if you already knew
that.’

‘I did know I wasn’t born in
London,’ she said, handing them their coffee and then sitting down. ‘Not
about the immunization.’

Turner was confused about how she could know
that. ‘We’ve also got the blood test results from Carlisle,’ he
said.

‘And that proves I’m Sue
Carling’s child?’

Turner glanced at the WPC; neither of them
had expected such calm acceptance. The girl seemed almost dazed.

‘Well, Eva, I’m afraid I
can’t give you utter certainty, but it’s about 85 per cent probable that she
is your mother,’ Turner said. ‘I did explain to you before that all blood
tests tell us is who couldn’t be a child’s parent. They are not so good at
proving parentage. And the Carlisle police were unable to trace Sue Carling –’

‘So how did they test her blood
then?’ Eva interrupted.

‘They couldn’t. But they were
able to test her daughter’s. That result, and a close physical resemblance to
yourself, does suggest she is your full sister.’

Eva’s eyes widened at that. ‘I
read in the press cuttings that she had two other children before me, but weren’t
they taken into care?’