Forgive Me (31 page)

‘Well, until I found Mum in the bath
it hadn’t been such a bad one,’ she said. ‘You probably remember Mum
was very fond of saying, “On every life a little rain must fall.” Although
that seemed like an absolute torrent …’

‘It is not something any young girl
should have to see,’ Gregor said. He looked very thoughtful, as if he was mulling
over something in the past. ‘You know, Eva, I was always afraid that’s what
Flora would do. When she first came here I half expected to get a call one day to say
she’d been found in the river. It wasn’t that she was always gloomy or
tearful, nothing tangible to point to anything wrong. But there was an aura about her,
like a sadness that took her off somewhere else. I did my best to encourage her to talk
about whatever it was. That was why I took her out for long hikes. We even camped out in
the mountains sometimes. She was lively, chatty, fun to be with, but every now and then
I’d see this expression on her face …’

He paused. He looked as if he was searching
for the right expression to describe it.

‘Have you been at a prize-giving when
you thought you were going to get one?’ he asked Eva.

‘No, I was never in line for any
prizes,’ she said.

‘Well, imagine it then. You are
sitting there, expecting your name to be called. But someone else’s is read out.
You have to adjust your face, to hide your disappointment and look glad for the person
who has won. Flora often had that kind of look. Dena saw it more than I did. I think she
might even have found out the reason for it, and that was why Flora attacked her
verbally that Christmas.’

‘But you did love her?’

‘I certainly thought it was love
then,’ he sighed. ‘When I was away from her I thought about her all the
time. Yet when we were together I was frustrated by the distance she kept between us. I
used to beg her to tell me what she wanted, but she’d just make a joke of it. Once
she said she wanted a golden eagle’s tail feather.’

That jolted Eva; she remembered hearing
Flora say it to Andrew once. There had been many times when Eva had seen a similar
pensive expression on her mother’s face to the one Gregor had described. Yet when
asked if something was troubling her, she always laughed it off.

‘Was she painting while she was
here?’ Eva asked.

Gregor nodded. ‘Yes, and selling some
of her work, both here and in Edinburgh. She told me once that a gallery in London
wanted to put on an exhibition of her work, but she didn’t feel inclined to get
back into what she called “the London scene”. I did wonder if that was
because of someone from her past. She certainly didn’t seem to be motivated by
making money from her art.’

After they’d finished the meal Gregor
wheeled his chair over to a coffee table and picked up a photograph album.

‘I dug this out this morning,’
he said. ‘There aren’t many pictures of Flora, she tore up all the ones she
didn’t like. Until today I hadn’t looked at them for about eighteen years,
and a lot of good memories came back.’

He turned the pages till he came to one of
Flora kneeling beside a stream filling a bowl with water. It was a black and white
picture; Flora was wearing jeans and a thick Fair Isle sweater, and her hair was fixed
up on the top of her head, the loose curls looking very pretty. She obviously
didn’t know he was taking the picture, and her face was soft and relaxed.

‘She was lovely, wasn’t
she?’ Eva said.

‘Yes, very much so. All my best
memories of her are like this one. She loved camping, she didn’t do that prissy
thing most women do about getting wet or mucky. She liked camp-fires, watching the
sunset, hearing owls hoot at night. That day was the one she told me about her parents
in Cornwall. I got the idea she felt guilty that she hadn’t made the effort to
sort out the grievances she had with them before they died. She told me they left her
their cottage and some money, and that with hindsight maybe she should’ve gone to
live there and reconciled herself with the past.’

‘Maybe, as she had lost a baby then,
she finally understood why her mother was so odd with her,’ Eva suggested.
‘When was this picture taken?’

Gregor slid it out of the plastic folder and
looked on the back. ‘The 29th of August, 1969. Near Glencoe. I remember we got
badly bitten by midges. We went over to the coast the following day to get away from
them.’

‘So she must have been pregnant
then?’ Eva said.

‘I suppose she must’ve been, if
you were born the following April. But she certainly didn’t say or do anything to
suggest she was. You’d think someone who had miscarried would be careful with the
next pregnancy, but she was climbing up rocks, running and jumping. We walked miles
too.’

Gregor turned the pages to a photo of Flora
in the garden of the cottage. She was wearing just a man’s shirt, with her legs
bare and her hair tumbling over her shoulders. She looked so young and beautiful.
‘I took that one right after our first night together. That was a few weeks after
the trip to Glencoe.’

Eva wanted to ask if he’d noticed she
had a tummy. But he was looking at the picture as if reliving the night, and she
couldn’t bring herself to.

‘Do you get on alright with Dena?’
she asked instead. ‘If you do, could you ring her and talk her round, about me?
Try and get her to agree to meet me again?’

He smiled. ‘I’ll give it a go.
That is, if you’ll let me look at Flora’s diary. I might be able to see
something in it that you’ve missed.’

Eva agreed, and then looked through his
album at the pictures of him. She couldn’t imagine why her mother hadn’t
fallen head over heels in love with him, as he looked so tasty in his climbing gear.

She told him a little about Phil and said he
was coming up to join her on Saturday. ‘May I bring him to meet you? He’s
not my boyfriend, just a friend, but I’m beginning to think it’s time I
pushed things on to another level.’

‘There’s nothing wrong with
waiting until you are sure,’ Gregor said. ‘I feel kind of sorry for kids
these days, courtship and wooing seems to have disappeared. In films and on TV girl
meets boy and they leap into bed. It seems to be expected now. But where’s the
romance in that?’

Grace coming in made Eva realize it was
getting late, and she said she must go. She left after thanking Gregor for a lovely
evening, promising to bring the diary round the next day.

Back at the hotel, on an impulse, Eva rang
Ben. She had rung the number he’d given her in Leeds several times, but he’d
never been in. But this time he was, and he was very pleased to hear from her.

She told him she was in Scotland, and why.
When he’d come to London for the weekend she had intended to show him their
mother’s diaries. But because he was out most of the time with his friend, she
hadn’t even told him about them. He was eager to talk to her now, and so she
explained how she was trying to find out who her father was, and a great deal more about
Flora.

‘Dad must know,’ he said.
‘People tell each other that sort of stuff when they get involved.’

‘I’m not going to ask him
anything,’ she said. ‘I don’t ever want to speak to him
again.’

‘I could ask him,’ Ben said.
‘I don’t have to say I’m asking for you, I’ll just make out
I’m curious.’

Eva agreed it was worth a try, and gave Ben
the hotel number in case he managed to get anything useful out of Andrew. She was
touched that her brother wanted to help. He said he’d spoken to Sophie just a
couple of days ago, and that she seemed more rational and had even admitted she missed
Eva.

‘She failed the audition for drama
college, and she hates Rachel, Dad’s girlfriend,’ Ben said. ‘She said
that they’d had a huge row – Rachel said she was selfish and rude and that Dad
should cut her down to size.’

‘I wouldn’t disagree with
that,’ Eva said. ‘But what’s she going to do now?’

‘Well, she did say she was going to
college in September to resit her A levels, so I think she got a wake-up call from
somewhere.’

‘Next time you speak to her, will you
tell her I haven’t phoned her because I’m afraid Andrew will answer? Give
her my phone number in London, and tell her I’d love her to come for a
weekend,’ Eva said.

‘You should phone her tonight,’
Ben said. ‘I know she’s in, because we spoke earlier. And Dad is staying
over at Rachel’s. But look, Eva, I’m sorry I didn’t treat you very
well when I came to London,’ he added. ‘It was only afterwards that I
realized I was out of order.’

‘All three of us were pretty screwed
up by Mum’s death,’ Eva said. ‘What’s important now is to move
on and make lives for ourselves. I think Mum would have wanted us to stick
together.’

He told her a little about a restaurant he was
working in until he started at university, but then Eva’s money ran out and she
had no more change.

She was halfway up the stairs to her room
when she suddenly thought she ought to get more change and phone Sophie right now. It
was doubtful she’d gone to bed, as she had always been a night owl.

Armed with more change from the
receptionist, Eva phoned The Beeches.

Sophie answered it after only two rings, but
her disappointment that it was only her sister was obvious. ‘What do you
want?’ she asked.

‘I just wanted to know how you
are,’ Eva said. ‘I miss you. Ben told me you were going back to resit your A
levels. I was glad to hear that.’

‘Why were you?’ Sophie’s
voice had a hard edge. ‘So I have to stay stuck in this house for another
year?’

‘Of course not. I was thinking of you
being able to go to university, like Ben.’

‘I don’t want to go to
university. I want to be an actress.’

Eva wished she hadn’t rung, as it was
quite clear Sophie was angry about something. She didn’t dare say she already knew
that she’d failed the audition. ‘Maybe you could join a drama group in
Cheltenham while you are doing the resits?’ she suggested.

‘As if I’d want to join one of
those crummy amateur things!’

‘I can’t say anything right to
you, so I’d better ring off,’ Eva said. ‘All I wanted to do was put
things right between us. I know it’s tough for you there on your own. Ben’s
got my home phone number if you ever want to talk. And I hope whoever you were expecting
to call tonight does ring.’

As Eva went up to her room she didn’t
feel too badly
about Sophie’s reaction to her. She’d
caught her at a bad moment, and maybe in a day or two she’d come round. At least
Ben had been pleased to hear from her. The day might not have started well with Dena
being so peculiar with her, but she’d had a lovely evening with Gregor.

As Flora had been very fond of saying,
‘You are stuck with relatives. Thank God we have friends.’

Eva had just showered and got dressed the
following morning, when there was a frantic knock on her room door. She opened it and to
her surprise it was Dena. She was wearing a grey tracksuit, her black hair scraped back
from her face with one long, untidy plait over her right shoulder, as if she’d
just got out of bed. She looked wild-eyed and manic.

‘I had to come here,’ she said,
panting as if she’d run up the stairs. ‘I couldn’t sleep for worrying
about you.’

It was just after eight. Eva had intended to
have breakfast and then go for a drive and explore. While what Dena said suggested a
change of heart, her appearance, and her arriving so early in the morning, was a little
scary.

‘There’s no need to worry about
me,’ Eva said. ‘But I am very glad you called round because I owe you an
apology. I should have told you right off who I was, and I’m sorry it made me seem
devious. Come in, I could make us some tea.’

Eva pulled up the bedclothes so Dena could
sit down on the bed, then filled the kettle in the bathroom and rinsed out the
teacups.

Dena was clenching and unclenching her
hands, and looking around the room as if she half expected someone to jump out on
her.

‘I dare say some people have told you
I’m a fraud,’ she blurted out. ‘But I do see things in the cards, and
all I do is pass on what I’ve seen. I was disturbed by what I saw in yours, and
then when you told me who you were I panicked.’

‘Gregor Hamilton told me last night
that Flora was very
nasty to you, so I understood then why you reacted
as you did,’ Eva replied, wanting to put the woman at her ease. She somehow
doubted that was possible, though. Dena looked as tightly strung as a violin.

‘Did Flora commit suicide?’ she
asked in little more than a whisper.

‘What makes you think that?’ Eva
asked.

‘Because I felt it, after you’d
gone yesterday. I felt it in here.’ She put her hand on her heart, her large dark
eyes very troubled.

‘Yes, she did, Dena,’ Eva
replied. ‘Back in March.’

‘And you came to me hoping to find out
why?’

‘No, I wouldn’t expect you to
know, not when you haven’t seen her for twenty-odd years. And after what I heard
she said to you I wouldn’t have blamed you if you hadn’t wanted to speak to
me.’

‘It doesn’t matter what happened
between Flora and me,’ she said. ‘But it does matter that you are searching
for answers, and that you hoped I might have them.’

Eva thought the woman was frighteningly
intense. But she saw no point in beating about the bush, so she explained as concisely
as she could the circumstances of Flora’s death, and the events which followed
it.

The older woman’s eyes filled up with
tears; they spilled out down her thin cheeks like a waterfall. ‘How
terrible,’ she gasped. ‘I am so sorry. I loved her, you know. I knew she
didn’t feel as strongly about me. I think she felt I was hanging on her
coat-tails. But whatever passed between us, it makes me very sad to think she
didn’t find lasting happiness.’

‘There seem to be so many
discrepancies between the mother I knew and loved, and the younger Flora Foyle,’
Eva explained. ‘This is mainly why I came looking for answers. You see, I saw her
as kind, maternal, a person who liked
solitude, and yet that seems to
be almost the exact opposite of how others saw her. I also don’t know who my real
father is, and I hoped to find out here – where I was presumably conceived. Did you know
she was pregnant with me that night she said such awful things to you?’