Forgive Me (35 page)

‘I do hope so,’ she sighed.

As Phil took a shower he felt very concerned
about Eva. In the last few months she’d had a lot to deal with, and he thought she
was now getting dangerously close to becoming obsessed with her mother’s past. He
wished that when they arrived in Carlisle he hadn’t agreed to find the street, and
they hadn’t gone into that pub. He doubted the landlord could be certain about the
year the baby was taken. Who remembered such details so long after the event?

Aside from Ben – who he thought sounded like
a good sort – Eva’s whole family left a lot to be desired. Flora appeared to have
been a highly strung femme fatale who chewed men up and then spat them out, and finally
became a complete self-pitying doormat. Andrew was a louse – Phil didn’t know how
any man who had brought up a child as his own could suddenly turn on her – and Sophie
sounded like she was a totally spoiled brat.

Considering what Eva had been through before
he met her, she was remarkably well adjusted, yet even so there were many pointers to
her having a very poor self-image. She had told him once that she became a goth because
she preferred being considered weird to being pitied for being plain and fat.

He couldn’t imagine why she thought
that about herself. That first day he saw her, when her bag was snatched, he’d
been bowled over by her pretty face, those lovely blue eyes, shiny hair and clear skin.
She certainly wasn’t fat either. She had a gorgeous body, and if her damned mother
hadn’t been so wrapped up in herself perhaps she would have noticed that Eva
needed encouragement and praise.

It was weeks ago that he realized he had
fallen in love with
Eva. It began with him just feeling he wanted to
help her because she seemed so vulnerable and scared, but once he discovered that she
was plucky, fun and caring, love took over. She was definitely the one he’d been
waiting for all these years, yet he’d begun to think such a girl didn’t
exist.

The reason he didn’t try to push her
beyond mere friendship was because he felt she needed to get over her mother’s
death. But he had suggested he join her in Scotland in the hope that something would
come of it. And it had, and it was like a dream come true. He had been as intrigued as
she was by the mysteries of her mother’s past, but it was all getting a bit much
now.

He really hoped that digging out the facts
on this baby-snatching story today would end all this nonsense and they could get back
to where they had been in the Highlands.

Eva sat at a table in the library archives
with the folder containing newspapers from 1970 open in front of her. Phil was standing
behind her, reading the story of the disappearance of baby Melanie Jane Carling, over
Eva’s shoulder.

‘Only three days old!’ he
exclaimed. ‘But as appalling and heart-breaking as that is, she can’t be
you. Look, she was born on the 29th of March, 1970.’

When Eva didn’t respond he sat down
beside her so that he could see her face. She looked stricken. ‘What is it?’
he asked. ‘Surely you weren’t hoping it was you?’

‘Mum killed herself on the 29th of
March,’ she said, and her voice shook with emotion.

A cold chill ran down Phil’s spine. He
wanted to say that it was just coincidence, but he couldn’t. ‘Come on, Eva,
get a grip. Your birthday is in April.’

‘That’s what it says on my birth
certificate, but how do we know if that’s correct?’

‘The hospital would. And mums keep stuff
like wrist tags.’

‘She could’ve told the registrar
that I was born at home. Does anyone check that kind of thing?’

Phil had no idea of the drill for
registering a birth; all he knew was that he had been registered about three weeks after
he was born. ‘They must do,’ he said, ‘or what would stop people
registering babies that don’t exist and then claiming family allowance and
stuff?’

She seemed to rally a bit at that.
‘I’m going to ask to photocopy some of these articles about the case,’
she said. ‘I’ll read them more carefully when I get home.’

Phil thought they’d both already read
them quite carefully enough. They knew that the mother had left the pram, which was
described as a green carrycot on a wheeled collapsible frame, outside the
bookmaker’s at approximately 1.45 p.m. The mother claimed she had only been in the
shop long enough to put a bet on, no more than five minutes, and she’d come out to
find the pram and baby gone.

But a few days after the snatching, the
staff in the bookmaker’s were reported as having said that Sue Carling was a
regular customer with a gambling habit, and right up till the baby was born she was in
and out of the shop almost every afternoon, often staying to watch the race she’d
bet on. The manager couldn’t say with any certainty how long she’d stayed
that particular day, because there were a lot of people in and out, and he hadn’t
even known she’d had her baby and certainly didn’t know she’d left it
outside. The first he knew of it was when she burst back into the shop screaming that
the baby had been taken.

There were no pictures of the baby – it was
said the mother hadn’t got a camera – but the baby’s birth weight was 5lbs
6oz.

‘She was very small.’ Eva looked
up at him anxiously. ‘A
month on she would still have passed for
a newborn baby. The mother told the police she was wearing a pink frilly dress, a pink
hand-knitted lacy matinee jacket, with matching bonnet and bootees. That is exactly what
I found in the box in the attic. I thought at the time they didn’t look like
clothes Mum would dress a baby in.’

Phil knew he was out of his depth. He
didn’t know what to do or say.

‘I’m scared,’ she
whispered. ‘I really don’t want that baby to be me.’

‘We’ll get the photocopies and
then we’ll go somewhere away from here so we can talk about it,’ he
said.

It was a mistake going to see
Hadrian’s Wall, as Eva was in a world of her own. Phil suggested they stay the
night in Wetheral, the village near Carlisle where she had stayed on her way to
Scotland, because she’d liked it there. After checking in, they walked down to the
river and found a bench to sit on.

‘I thought when I stayed here before
that it was the kind of place nothing bad ever happens,’ Eva said in a small
voice. ‘What should I do, Phil?’

‘We both know the right thing to do is
to go to the police,’ he said. ‘But I don’t think you’re ready
for that yet. And considering this crime happened twenty-one years ago, it’s not
going to make a scrap of difference if you wait a few more days before you do
it.’

‘Look,’ she said, turning the
photocopied pages till she came to the one with a picture of Sue Carling scowling and
holding up a fist to the press photographer. ‘She looks like one of the Fat Slags
in the
Viz
comic. It’s hardly surprising there was so little sympathy for
her.’

Phil winced, but admired Eva’s
bluntness. It wasn’t just the woman’s aggressive stance, or even the very
short skirt
and tight sweater and hair like a bird’s nest, it
was more that she looked like everyone’s idea of a stereotypical unfit mother. The
headline was what she’d screamed at the journalist: ‘OK so I like a drink
and a f—ing bet, but that don’t mean I’m a baby killer.’

Flicking through the photocopied press
cuttings, some of which were dated several weeks after the event, it was clear why Sue
Carling hadn’t got much public sympathy. A spokesperson at the hospital where
Melanie had been born said that Sue Carling had discharged herself against their advice,
just a few hours before the baby was taken from outside the betting shop. A few days
after the event, while scores of local people had joined in the police search for the
baby, she’d been photographed buying whiskey at an off-licence. There were reports
that she’d got into a fight with a neighbour, been too drunk to do a television
appeal for witnesses, and she’d punched a policeman who called on her during the
inquiry.

‘I don’t want a woman like that
as my mother,’ Eva admitted. ‘And if I go to the police, I’ll be
opening Pandora’s box, won’t I?’

She was also thinking of how Ben and Sophie
would react to having their mother pilloried in the press. She knew it would sever any
bond that had ever existed between the three of them. Of course it was right for Sue
Carling to be exonerated of any crime, if she should be proved to be her birth mother,
and also to have the peace of mind of knowing her baby had been well cared for. But Eva
didn’t think for one moment she’d want a relationship with this woman, who
might latch on to her and become a living nightmare.

‘Only if you do turn out to be the
missing baby,’ Phil reminded her. ‘I really can’t believe you are. For
one thing, everything you know about the young Flora suggests she was
quite self-centred. Apart from Dena telling you about her crying over losing her baby
there is no other evidence of her dwelling on it. Besides, women who snatch babies
because they want one to love are always caught. That kind of impulse surely
doesn’t go with the cool-headedness needed to successfully pass the baby off as
your own?’

‘So what should I do?’

‘Well, nothing in haste,’ he
said. ‘Maybe we should find a doctor or lawyer for you to talk to first? And what
about your stepfather? Wouldn’t it be a good idea to talk it over with
him?’

‘He won’t want me stirring
anything up that might affect his children,’ she said, remembering how snotty
Andrew had been when he’d called her in Pitlochry.

‘Probably not, but he did bring you
up. And I think you owe him the chance to either tell you something which proves Flora
gave birth to you or, if he can’t, give him some warning of what might possibly
lie ahead.’

She heard the understanding in Phil’s
voice, and when she looked into his eyes she saw the honesty she’d observed the
first time she met him. He’d helped her then when she most needed it, and she felt
certain he would see this through with her too.

‘Will you come with me to see
him?’ she asked. ‘I’m a bit scared of him.’

He took both her hands in his. ‘Of
course I will. We can go to Cheltenham on the way back to London. You aren’t alone
any more, Eva. You’ve got me now.’

There were times during the next few days
when Eva thought that the tarot cards must have been spot on when they represented Phil
as the ox, in as much as he was patient, calm and reliable. He joked that he was also
dim, thick-skinned and
likely to charge into things too if the mood
struck him. She liked his self-deprecating sense of humour, the fact that he was never
boastful, and that he was interested in so many different things, from all kinds of
sport to history, current affairs, music and nature. They had travelled on to the Lake
District where he bought her a pair of proper walking boots and thick socks, so they
could do some serious walking on the fells.

The walks may have been seriously strenuous
ones, but Phil made her laugh so much that she barely noticed her aching muscles and
even managed to stop dwelling on Sue Carling and her baby.

One afternoon, after lunch in a pub in
Grasmere, they had climbed up a steep path to look down on the lake. It had been raining
in the morning, but the sun had come out while they were in the pub and everything
looked sparkling: white cottages with pretty well-kept gardens, the lush grass and the
lake shining like blue glass.

‘I feel a Wordsworth moment coming
on,’ Phil said and stopped to look at the view, shielding his eyes from the sun
with his hand.

‘I wandered happily with my girl. When
all at once my head began to whirl. Was it because my lady was so fair? Or just that
I’d eaten a pudding big enough to share?’

Eva giggled. ‘I think Wordsworth might
turn in his grave at that,’ she said.

They sat down on the grass beside the
path.

‘It’s so beautiful here,’
Phil said. ‘I thought Scotland was fantastic, but this is even better. I think I
might give up the idea of seeing the world, and just tour round England.’

‘Plastering as you go?’ She
raised one eyebrow questioningly. ‘You could get a van and have a sign painted on
it: “Stop me for a plastering job”.’

‘Not a van, a posh motor caravan,’
he said dreamily. ‘We’d park up in places like this, and I’d go and do
a job while you made the dinner or washed our clothes.’

‘Nice daydream,’ she said,
leaning against his shoulder. ‘I won’t bring you down to reality by saying
how cold it would be in winter or how few people would actually want plastering done by
some itinerant man who just knocked on their door.’

‘I never used to imagine impractical
things until I met you,’ he said, putting his arm around her. ‘That’s
what falling in love does to a bloke.’

‘You love me?’ she asked.

‘’Fraid so,’ he said,
kissing her nose. ‘I had the idea of getting right to the top of this path, doing
the whole romantic bit of taking you in my arms and telling you. But I guess I’ve
blown it.’

Eva felt as if she was melting inside.
She’d almost said she loved him several times in the past few days – but she
hadn’t, for fear of jinxing everything.

‘You haven’t blown it,’
she said, catching hold of his face with both her hands and kissing him. ‘I love
you too, and nothing in my life has ever felt this good.’

‘We’ll sort all this stuff with
your stepdad – and the police, if they’re needed. And even if Ben and Sophie
don’t want to know you any more, I’ll always be there for you.’

No words had ever sounded sweeter to Eva.
She felt she had everything she’d ever wanted right here with Phil beside her, and
all the beauty of Grasmere and the mountains surrounding it, spread before her. She just
wished she had the right words to express what she felt.

‘This is where you grew up?’
Phil exclaimed in astonishment as Eva directed him into the drive of The Beeches.
Andrew’s red BMW was parked up by the front door.