Forgive Me (32 page)

‘No!’ Dena exclaimed.

Her stunned expression was evidence she was
speaking the truth.

‘Well, she was. I was born in April
1970.’

‘Why didn’t she tell me?’
Dena’s voice rose to an indignant squeak. ‘I can understand most things
about her, but not that. She was grieving over the baby she’d lost when I first
met her, she cried about it a great deal and I comforted her and tried to help her
through her grief. She must have known I would be overjoyed for her that she’d got
pregnant again. It’s not as if I was the kind to be disapproving that she
wasn’t married.’

‘She was secretive with everyone, even
her children. You mustn’t take that personally.’

It was obvious Dena was taking it
personally; she looked crushed. ‘Gregor Hamilton must be your father then,’
she said.

‘No, Dena, that’s part of the
mystery. It seems there was nothing between Mum and Gregor until after she had got
pregnant. Do you know of any other man she was seeing?’

Dena made a despairing gesture with her
hands. ‘There wasn’t anyone. Well, obviously there must have been. But she
never told me, and I never suspected there was anyone else in her life.’

‘Did you notice her getting fatter
towards that Christmas of 1969? Gregor said she was as slender as she’d always
been, but men often don’t notice such things – especially if she took to wearing
baggy clothes. Did she do that?’

‘I don’t recall her looking any
different. On Christmas Eve she was wearing a long emerald-green velvet dress, with a
loose beaded jacket over it. I suppose that might have hidden a bump, but then lots of
women don’t show until the last couple of months with their first baby. All I
recall clearly about that night was the cruel insults …’ Dena paused, her
lower lip trembling as if she was going to cry. ‘That was the last time I saw her.
I made sure I didn’t run into her. I didn’t even know she’d left
Pitlochry until Gregor told me she’d gone. She left without a word to
anyone.’

Eva could hear raw grief in this
woman’s voice. As it was now two decades later, she wondered what Dena had been
like when she found out Flora had left. But she wasn’t going to ask; she thought
that might open a floodgate of tears.

‘Well, do you have any idea who my
father could be?’ she asked instead.

‘None. He can’t have been from
around here, or I would’ve known. And anyway, she was scornful of all the local
men. Except Gregor, of course, but she treated him badly too. She had such a vicious
streak! She reminded me sometimes of a cat playing with a mouse, she thought it was
funny to tease and lead men on.’

Eva winced. That wasn’t the kind of
image she wanted to have of her mother as a young woman.

‘You didn’t like to hear that,
did you?’ Dena asked, cocking her head to one side like a bird. ‘But it is
true. I’ll tell you now, you must give up delving into Flora’s past.
It’s better that you remember her as she was, as your mother, because I’m
sure you saw the very best side of her.’

‘I can’t give it up, I need to
know,’ Eva insisted.

‘There was a warning in the
cards.’ Dena reached forward and grabbed Eva’s hands. ‘I didn’t
know who you were then, or what it was about, yet even so it scared me. The snake card
can mean many things, none of them good. One interpretation is the
sleeping serpent: disturb it at your peril, for once its secrets are uncovered they will
not be contained.’

Eva loosened herself from Dena’s grip
and turned to make the tea. She couldn’t make up her mind if the woman was barking
mad or just delusional.

‘I am not going to give up,’ she
said firmly as she handed Dena her tea. ‘It is important to me to find out about
my mother, and hopefully to find my father.’

‘Then you must be prepared for more
heartache,’ Dena said. She put down the tea without drinking it and stood up.
‘I sensed something very bad in your cards. I knew this bad thing hadn’t
been done by you. But once you told me Flora was dead, I knew it was her. I am positive
now that whatever it was, it was the reason she took her own life. Trust my instinct,
Eva, and leave the sleeping serpent alone. No good will come of prodding it awake, it
will put you in danger.’

She was out of the door so fast Eva barely
saw her move. Eva just stood there, too stunned to run after her and beg for further
explanation.

That same evening there was a knock on her
door just as she was settling down to read
Scruples
by Judith Krantz, which
she’d found that afternoon in a charity shop. She remembered people raving about
it when it came out, but she’d never got around to reading it. She opened her door
to find it was the receptionist, who said there was a telephone call for her.

Eva had wanted to lose herself in a book, as
she’d felt disturbed all day by what Dena had said. Her rational mind told her the
woman was a dramatic crank who got some kind of perverse kick out of giving sinister and
even threatening messages. Yet the image of a sleeping serpent was a strong
and insidious one, and she couldn’t quite shake off the feeling
that maybe Dena was on the level.

Assuming the phone call was from her – Phil
had said he doubted he’d be able to ring this evening, as he was working late –
she ran down the stairs to take the call. She hoped Dena wanted to apologize for how
she’d behaved, or had remembered something about Flora. The receptionist said she
could take the call on an extension at the end of the reception desk.

But the instant she picked up the phone and
heard the familiar deep voice saying, ‘Eva, is that you?’ she trembled.
Andrew was the one person she had never expected to hear from again. Especially here in
Scotland.

‘Yes, it’s Eva. Is there
something wrong with Sophie or Ben?’ She assumed that would be the only reason he
would call her.

‘No, at least not aside from you
filling Ben’s head with foolishness, and pestering Sophie,’ he said sharply.
‘What is all this about secret diaries of your mother’s?’

Eva’s stomach turned a nervous
somersault. Ben had promised that he would only ask discreet questions of his father. He
wasn’t supposed to tell him about the diaries, or where she was. She’d only
given Ben the phone number of the hotel in case he wanted to ring her back; the last
thing she expected was for him to pass it on.

‘I found them in the attic at the
studio,’ she said. ‘Why do you call it foolishness for Ben and I to be
curious about our mother?’

‘It’s unhealthy and unnecessary.
If she wanted you to know anything more about her, she would have told you.’

‘So why did she leave the diaries in a
place she knew I would eventually find them?’

‘What’s in them?’ he
asked. His voice rasped, as if he hated having to ask.

‘That would be telling,’ she said
lightly. ‘Lots of stuff about you, and some of it very worrying,’ she
lied.

It felt good to get one over on him; she
hoped he’d be worrying about it all night.

When he didn’t come back with a
retort, she knew she’d got him. ‘Thanks for ringing, I must get back to the
diary. I’m in 1970 now. Tomorrow I’m planning to go and visit some of the
places she mentions.’

She put the phone down and turned to the
receptionist. ‘If Mr Andrew Patterson rings again to speak to me, tell him
I’ve left the hotel.’

As Eva opened the door through to the
staircase which led to the guest rooms, she heard the phone ring again. She paused,
thinking that it was Andrew again, and looked back to the receptionist, who was
answering it.

‘Will you hold the line a moment,
sir?’ she said. Putting her hand over the receiver, she asked Eva if she wanted to
speak to a Mr Marsh.

‘Oh yes,’ Eva assured her, and
rushed back to the extension line gleefully.

‘That was quick,’ Phil said when
she answered. ‘Were you sitting on the reception desk?’

‘A lucky break, I was just
nearby,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Though if I’d known you were going to
ring, I would’ve been camped by the phone.’

‘I’m on a quick break so I
can’t chat, much as I’d like to. Just wanted to say I’m definitely
coming on Saturday afternoon, if that’s OK with you?’

Eva’s heart did a flip with
excitement. ‘That’s marvellous. Of course it’s more than OK, I
can’t wait to see you.’

Phil chuckled. ‘Well, that was a good
response, because I can’t wait to see you too. I think the train gets into
Pitlochry at about four thirty in the afternoon. I’ll double-check
tomorrow and ring and leave a message for you. I’m frantically
trying to finish this job, so I’ve got to go now. I’m looking forward to
hearing all your news.’

Eva went back upstairs bubbling with
excitement, Andrew and Dena forgotten. Phil had been on her mind a great deal since
she’d left London, often imagining erotic scenarios. She had a feeling that their
relationship was about to change, and she couldn’t be more pleased about it.

As Eva got ready to meet Phil on Saturday
afternoon she had butterflies in her stomach. She’d had her hair trimmed and
blow-dried that morning, had her legs waxed, painted her toenails, and bought a new set
of undies, just in case.

She smiled at herself in the mirror as she
put on some lipstick. Her appearance in a blue T-shirt and jeans was perfect – she
looked good, but she didn’t appear to have tried too hard. She’d also booked
a room in the hotel for him. That would save her any potential embarrassment when he
first got here.

‘Stay cool,’ she reminded
herself. ‘Let him do the chasing.’

An hour later, as she stood on the platform
at Pitlochry and saw Phil step out of the train, her resolve to be cool vanished and she
ran to hug him. It was only a week since she’d last seen him, but he seemed
bigger, more handsome, and his returned hug was as enthusiastic as her own.

‘I feel like bursting into
“I’d walk a million miles for one of your smiles”,’ he joked.
‘Maybe I ought to write one called “I went four hundred miles on the train
to see her again”?’

‘It hasn’t got the same snappy
quality.’ She laughed. ‘But I’m really glad you came.’

She tucked her hand under his arm as they
left the station. ‘I’ve got heaps to tell you,’ she said. ‘But
Gregor invited us
up for supper with him tonight. I can phone and
cancel if you don’t fancy it.’

‘I’m easy,’ he said.
‘As long as we can do what we like the rest of the holiday.’

‘I think I’m done here
now,’ she said. ‘I thought we could drive further north tomorrow. Maybe we
could go to Glencoe.’

Eva’s premonition was right. Even as
they walked out of the station to her car, she felt something different between them. He
ruffled her hair affectionately, and she tucked her hand through his arm. She wanted to
get closer still.

After he’d seen his room, which was on
the floor beneath hers, they went out for a walk down by the river, then stopped to have
tea and cake in a cafe. She told him about both the visit from Dena and the call from
Andrew.

‘I want to dismiss Dena as a
nutter,’ she said. ‘But there’s something about her that makes me
think she really does sense things. As for Andrew, why is he so worried about the
diaries? You don’t get in a flap about something if you’ve got nothing to
hide, do you?’

‘No, you don’t,’ Phil
agreed, and then frowned as if worried. ‘You might ask something like “What
did she say about me?” but you wouldn’t assume she’d written something
damaging. It also strikes me as odd that he couldn’t stop himself from phoning
you, given that you’ve had no contact with him since you left home. It looks like
Ben put the wind up him, asking awkward questions.’

‘And what do you think about
Dena?’

He shrugged. ‘Well, I’ve never
believed in all that tarot and stuff. But she does, and therefore she is convincing. Do
you believe your mum did something bad?’

‘I don’t know. I don’t
want to believe it. And anyway, what can it be? She murdered someone? She robbed a bank?
I
can’t see her doing either of those. What do we know so far?
She was mean to Patrick, abusive to Dena and heartless with Gregor. But I can’t
see anyone killing themselves over twenty years later because of that.’

‘No, but she got pregnant by someone
she didn’t want anyone to know about. Someone prominent, maybe? And also married?
Was it possible she stopped painting because she was afraid he or someone connected with
him would be able to trace her through that?’

That hadn’t occurred to Eva. She
thought about it for a moment. ‘But if that was the case, she wasn’t likely
to go back to live at her old address in London. She could be found straight away
there.’

‘Umm. We’re missing something.
I’ve got a feeling Andrew knows, though, and he’s running scared you are
going to find out about it.’

Eva changed into a pink dress and high
heels when they got back to the hotel. When she met up with Phil in reception, just
before seven, he’d shaved and put on a short-sleeved white shirt and navy-blue
trousers. As they walked to Gregor’s house he took her hand in his. Just the
sensation of his warm, big, calloused hand against her far smaller one sent delicious
shivers down her spine. She glanced up at him and he grinned. But by then they were at
the gate of Gregor’s house and she realized she was going to have to spend the
whole evening thinking, ‘Will he, won’t he?’

His grin said that he was totally aware of
this.

Grace was joining them for dinner too. Eva
introduced Phil to both Gregor and his sister as her ‘ox’ and everyone
laughed. Grace looked him up and down approvingly and added that she thought he looked
more like a sleek panther.

‘There’ve been a couple of
developments,’ Gregor said,
once Grace had poured them all a
drink. ‘First, I called in a favour from a friend who works at the doctor’s.
It was completely wrong of me, because it’s totally against the law for anyone to
divulge anything on medical records, even if they are the records of a patient who no
longer uses the practice. But I thought, as Flora is dead, it wouldn’t do any harm
to know what was on her file. However, this information mustn’t go outside this
room, as it could cause a lot of trouble for my friend.’