Forgive Me (25 page)

But as Phil drove back home she
couldn’t help but hope that he was. A man capable of such sensitive and beautiful
illustrations was going to be a lovely person. She just hoped he’d want to meet
her.

‘Are you sure you’re going to
be alright tonight on your own?’ Phil said as he got his things together ready to
leave, at about ten.

‘Yes, I’ll be fine,’ she
said. ‘I’m going to write a letter to Patrick and then I’m going to
delve into Mum’s diaries a bit more. Thank you so much for staying last night. And
for taking me to the bookshop. You are such a good friend.’

‘I only came for the shower and the
spag bol,’ he joked. ‘I
suppose you’ll be out
tomorrow, looking for stuff for the new bedroom?’

‘I will,’ she said. ‘I
want to find a Victorian or Edwardian dressing table.’

‘Well, don’t go looking in
Portobello Road, they are silly prices. There’s a shop near Shepherd’s Bush
market that has stuff like that at half the price.’

She gave him a goodbye hug, and kissed his
cheek.

‘Nigh night,’ he said at the
door. ‘I’ll ring you later in the week.’

An hour later, in bed, Eva looked at the Mr
Bear book again. She had written to Patrick at the publishers. Because she thought the
letter was likely to be read before being passed on to him, she kept it very brief: just
that she was Flora’s daughter, that her mother had died recently and she hoped he
would agree to meet her, as she knew they were old friends.

‘I hope you are my dad,’ she
said, turning the book’s pages and poring over the pictures. ‘I could really
use a dad now.’

At the knock on the door on Saturday
morning, Eva came running down the stairs. She paused only a second at the mirror to
check her appearance. She was pleased at how good her blue sundress looked against
tanned skin, and how flattering her scrunch-dried hair was.

It was mid-August now and London was in the
grip of a heatwave. She’d almost given up on Patrick O’Donnell responding to
her letter, but last night he had rung her and asked if he could call on her today. She
had been so excited after their very brief telephone conversation that she found it
impossible to sleep, so she’d got up at five to spring-clean the house. Now he was
here at last.

As she opened the door she was surprised to
find him looking older than she expected, with saggy bloodhound-type jowls. But though
he was portly and probably in his mid to late fifties, he was tall and held himself
straight-backed. His grey receding hair was long and tied in a ponytail, and his smile
was warm. He had the look of a man who normally wore very casual clothes; she felt that
his smart cream linen suit and pink shirt were for her benefit.

‘Patrick!’ she exclaimed.
‘I am so pleased to meet you. Do come in.’

‘Sorry I couldn’t give you more
warning but, as I said on the phone, I’ve been away and your letter had been lying
with other post, unopened,’ he said as he stepped in. ‘But I was very
saddened to hear of Flora’s death, and I felt I had to come and see you
immediately.’

‘I understand,’ she said. Their
phone call last night had been very brief, as he had said he was already late for an
engagement. She’d already told him in her letter that she’d come to live
here after her mother’s death, that she knew very little about her mother’s
youth, and that she hoped he’d feel able to tell her a little more, so she
didn’t add anything to this during the phone call.

She was just touched that her mother still
meant enough to him to call round for a chat. ‘Shall we sit in the garden?
It’s such a beautiful day.’

He stopped short in the living room, looking
around. ‘My word, this all looks so lovely and stylish,’ he said. ‘A
far cry from how it looked when I lived here.’

‘It was hideous and disgustingly dirty
when I first got here,’ she said. ‘I sometimes think I never want to look a
paint brush in the bristles again!’

Since leaving the bistro she’d been
very busy; the whole house was painted now, including the banisters, which had taken
many hours. The landing, stairs and living room had grey cord carpet, a bargain that had
been salvaged from Earl’s Court Exhibition Hall by someone Brian knew. Both the
bedrooms had new cream carpet, gas central heating had been put in, and there was a new
modern bathroom.

There was still very little furniture
downstairs – just a red sofa, her one extravagance, and a small table and chairs which
she’d found in a junk shop and painted pale grey.

Flora’s paintings, as well as the
curtains, which were a fabulous poppy print on a white background, added splashes of
colour, and Eva had put a huge vase of red silk flowers in one corner.

‘I can imagine how bad it was.’
Patrick winced. ‘I drove past here one night a few months ago, and it looked very
rough. You’ve even painted the front and garage doors, and
put in new windows.’

She was glad he commented on the doors
because she’d really laboured over them, rubbing them down for hours and then
painting them a glossy French navy. They made her feel happy each time she got home.
‘Let’s go outside. Would you like tea or coffee, or a cold drink?’

‘Something cold,’ he said with a
warm smile. ‘And if you don’t mind, I’ll take off my jacket. I’m
roasting.’

He paused to look at Flora’s paintings
before going outside and taking a seat in the shade. He didn’t comment on the
paintings but she sensed he was moved to see them.

She poured two glasses of orange juice and
carried them outside.

Patrick smiled at her. ‘You’ve
got your mother’s green fingers. It takes me right back, she was always out here,
deadheading and pottering.’

‘The framework was already
here,’ Eva said, pointing to the honeysuckle, climbing roses and clematis.
‘I just tidied it all up and added more flowers and the tubs. I used to buy
fashion magazines, now I get gardening ones. I practically live out here.’

‘Flora did too. She would paint out
here, even when it was quite chilly, she said it made her feel happy. The room upstairs
which was supposed to be the studio was freezing in winter and too hot in summer.
Ironic, really, as she bought the house because of that room.’

Eva nodded. ‘She was the same about
the garden at our old house, she would be out there in all weathers. I used to think
that was a little peculiar, but I’m getting just like it too. Unless it’s
raining I come out here the minute I wake up, I have a cup of tea, listen to the
birdsong and admire the flowers.’

He smiled, looking at her speculatively.
‘I imagined you
with red hair and pale skin like Flora, but you
are blonde and suntanned. You must take after your father.’

That remark was evidence that it had never
crossed his mind she could be his child, and she realized she must tackle the subject
carefully.

‘I’m not a natural
blonde.’ She blushed as she admitted it. ‘I had it lightened. And I
don’t actually know who my father is. That is one of the reasons I wanted to meet
you.’

Patrick folded his arms and raised one
eyebrow. His stance seemed to confirm she had shocked him.

‘You see, I believed Andrew Patterson
was my father. There had never been anything to make me doubt that,’ she
continued, ‘but soon after Mum died, he told me he wasn’t, and in a very
nasty way. It was a total shock. It seems I was already around when he met
Flora.’

Patrick’s pale blue eyes widened.
‘He was that callous? At such a time? That is appalling!’

‘It was. I felt as if my whole
childhood had been built on a lie. It was bad enough losing Mum, but then to be told I
was a kind of cuckoo in the nest, that floored me. I’ve tried to make excuses for
him – he was, after all, in shock at losing Mum. And he’d also just found out that
she’d left me this place and her half of the family home to my brother and sister.
But that doesn’t really excuse him, does it?’

‘It certainly doesn’t. It sounds
to me as if he was making you his scapegoat. Are you sure this is true?’

Eva nodded. ‘Oh yes. I found my full
birth certificate here, in a box with some of Mum’s things. There’s just a
dash where my father’s name should be.’

‘You didn’t say in your letter
what Flora died of,’ he said. ‘Would that have any bearing on it?’

‘Well, yes. It does explain his
bitterness. She committed suicide, Patrick.’

He gasped and covered his face with his
hands.

‘I’m so sorry. I should’ve
found a less blunt way to tell you,’ Eva said. ‘But it isn’t something
you can dress up to make it sound less shocking.’

He took his hands from his face and she saw
his eyes were swimming with tears. He reached across the table and caught hold of her
hand. ‘Don’t apologize to me, Eva. You are the one who deserves sympathy. I
can imagine how terrible it must have been for you!’

‘For all of us,’ she said.
‘We didn’t see it coming.’

He was silent for a while; he looked as if
he was struggling with the news and what he should say next.

‘As shocked and horrified as I
am,’ he said eventually, his blue eyes now fixed on her, ‘in a way it was
almost predictable. You see, Eva, the Flora I knew, for all her talent, was slightly off
balance. She was complex, at times gregarious, outrageous even, at other times behaving
like a hermit, hiding away here. She was also very impetuous and she often acted
irrationally.

‘I loved her unpredictability, because
it was exciting never knowing what was coming next. Yet she also scared me, because she
didn’t accept boundaries, and often she went too far, too fast and had scant
consideration for anyone caught in the fallout.’

‘People at her funeral hinted at that
too,’ Eva said. ‘But I never saw that side of her. In fact I didn’t
recognize the woman they described as being my mother. I was never aware of the wildness
they spoke of; I never even knew she’d been a successful artist. While she
certainly wasn’t conventional, she was a good mother, always there for
us.’

‘Did anything unusual happen prior to
her death?’

‘No, nothing at all. My brother and I
had noticed that for some weeks she seemed kind of distant and withdrawn, but
she often had periods like that and she would never talk about it.
She was unpredictable, like you said. Some days I’d arrive home to find
she’d made enough cakes for the whole neighbourhood, and on other days she
hadn’t done a thing all day, not even clearing away the breakfast things. So there
wasn’t any reason for us to think there was anything seriously wrong. Our home was
beautiful, and there were no rows or money worries. It is such a mystery.’

‘Then she left no explanation for
you?’

‘Only a note saying “Forgive
me”, nothing more. Nothing further has come to light. I’m still as much in
the dark about it as I was that day in March.’

Patrick sighed deeply. ‘I know how
that feels. When she left me there was no real explanation either,’ he said
sadly.

The ideas that Eva had formed about this man
just from his illustrations seemed to be correct. He was caring, sensitive and he had
great warmth. She felt he had a strong moral code, and that she could trust him.

As they continued to talk – about her old
home in Cheltenham, Sophie and Ben, and the kind of life they’d had before Flora
died – Eva found herself liking him even more. He didn’t shy away from asking
questions and she found it easy to answer them truthfully, because he wasn’t
judgemental. In no time at all she was telling him how her mother’s death had
changed everything she had once thought was set in concrete.

‘It felt like I’d been pushed
out to sea in a small boat without even any oars. I felt totally alone. If Andrew had
told me that he wasn’t my true father for a good reason, I think I could have
accepted that quite easily. It was the maliciousness of it that hurt so much, as if
he’d always despised me and I’d only ever been there on
sufferance.’

‘I really cannot offer any explanation
for why he, or any
man, would do that,’ Patrick said, shaking
his head in bewilderment. ‘Grief and loss can make us irrational, but he’d
taken you on as a baby, so he must have cared for you. But how did you find out about
me?’

‘From Jack and Lauren, two old student
friends of Mum’s that came to the funeral.’

‘They came?’ He looked
astounded. ‘I lost touch with them years ago, but they were very good friends at
one time. Lauren was really the only close girlfriend Flora ever had, and Jack and I
were inseparable as students. I’ve often regretted that we lost
contact.’

‘They seemed to think you were my
father,’ Eva blurted out.

His eyes widened at that. He shook his head
and didn’t speak for a moment. ‘They are very much mistaken, Eva,’ he
said eventually. ‘The way things have been for you, I wish I could lay claim to
that honour. But I am not your father, my dear. Like you, I always believed Andrew was.
I think I must tell you more detail about Flora and myself to set this
straight.’

‘I would appreciate that.’

‘Flora and I met at Goldsmiths Art
College in South London in 1964. She was twenty-one, studying Fine Art, I was
twenty-eight and taking a short course in jewellery design. We became friends, and the
following year we and some other people, Jack and Lauren included, shared a house
together in New Cross. Let me explain how it was in 1965. That was the year the rigidity
of the Fifties gave way to what people now call the “Swinging Sixties”.
London was suddenly the place to be, everything was opening up, there was a real buzz in
the air.

‘Yet, even so, our lot were a little
before our time. It was almost unheard of then for men and women to share
accommodation, but we art students considered ourselves
“Beats”. Beatniks were the forerunners of hippies, really. We wore black
baggy jumpers and skintight jeans, and we weren’t concerned with society’s
petty rules.