Forgive Me (44 page)

Months later when she turned on him and made
his life a misery, he had put it down to her having no heart. But now, as he read this
long statement from her yet again, he realized that she’d just grown a thick shell
around her heart, thinking she was protecting herself.

Her statement wasn’t from the Flora he
knew. There were no sharp comments or sarcasm, nothing cryptic that you had to struggle
to understand, just an account of what she’d done, and the consequences. But as
horrified as he was, he felt he’d found the nicer, kinder sister of the Flora he
fell in love with all those years ago.

Although she had written it retrospectively
in 1986, and underlined this heavily to make it quite clear, she had begun the
confession with the date: 1 April 1970.

Today, sixteen years ago, I took a
three-day-old baby girl from outside a betting shop in Carlisle. It was raining and
I
just wheeled her little pram to two streets away where my car
was parked, put the carrycot on the back seat, folded up the wheels and put them in
the boot, then drove to London with her.

Patrick brushed away a stray tear and
carried on.

I intend to hide this somewhere where
it may never be found, and I have asked myself what is the point in writing it if no
one ever reads it. But the point to me is that I have a need to put it on paper, and
that perhaps when I’m done I might even be brave enough to go to the police
and confess.

I went to Scotland after I lost the
baby Patrick and I were expecting. I knew I was growing crazier by the minute, being
vile to Patrick and anyone else who came near me. I thought if I was entirely alone,
in a peaceful place, I could heal myself.

It almost worked. There were good
people there – especially Gregor, who made me laugh again and paint. I’m not
sure if I really loved him, or just wanted to, but it did feel like love at the
time. When I found I was pregnant again, I really thought I could be happy with him
for ever. But at only a few weeks, in early December, I miscarried and the craziness
came back even worse than before.

I had never told Gregor I was
pregnant – perhaps because a sixth sense told me I might lose it. So I did what I
always seemed to do in those days: I was nasty to everyone who cared about me,
withdrew into myself, and then lay low.

Six months before that, Scotland had
looked so beautiful. But after the miscarriage I found it ugly, and all through
January and February I holed up in that little house by the river, in bed most of
the time, thinking constantly about committing suicide. By late March I knew I had
to get away,
and I slunk out like a thief in the night without
saying goodbye to anyone.

I didn’t go straight back to
London, even though Patrick had left the studio. I stayed in Edinburgh for a few
days, then went down to the Borders – a night here, a night there – and ended up in
a village not far from Carlisle. I went into the town one day and I was having a cup
of tea in a cafe when a very pregnant woman of about twenty-five came in. She
ordered tea and a cake, then found she had no money. The owner of the cafe
wouldn’t let her have it without any money. I felt sorry for her, because it
was very cold, so I paid for her.

She was very rough, her accent was
so thick I could barely understand her, but I gathered she didn’t want the
baby she was carrying. She expected the social workers would take it from her
anyway. I left then – I found what she said upsetting, and it played on my mind all
that night.

A few days later, on the 1st of
April, I decided I would go back to London. My plan was to go into Carlisle first to
buy some new canvases, then drive on down as far as the Lakes, stay the night there,
then continue on to London the next day. I was told there was an art shop in
Botchergate but I couldn’t see it, so I parked my car in a side street, and
walked up the road a bit to see if I’d missed it. I went into a
newsagent’s to buy a newspaper, and while I was in there I saw that woman
again, passing by the window. She’d had her baby and she was pushing it in a
small green pram. I remember thinking that the baby couldn’t be more than a
few days old, and I couldn’t believe she’d brought it out on such a
cold, rainy day.

Perhaps it was fate that as I was
walking back to my car, I saw the green pram left outside a betting shop. I looked
in the pram and saw the tiny baby; she was wearing a pink bonnet
and crying. Instinct made me rock the pram. I couldn’t see through the shop
window, because it was covered over with pictures of racing horses, but I knew the
mother was inside, I could hear her voice shouting as she watched a race on the
television. I knew I ought to open the betting-shop door and tell the woman off for
leaving her baby outside, but suddenly I took the brake off the pram and wheeled it
away.

I wasn’t thinking clearly at
all – although, in my defence, once I’d put the carrycot part of the pram in
my car, and folded the wheels and put them in the boot, I did drive back on to
Botchergate where I’d found her. I told myself that if the mother was outside,
frantic because her baby had been taken, I’d give her back straight away and
tell her what a lousy mother she was.

I stayed parked in that street for
some time. I saw a couple of men go in to put a bet on, and another three come out.
But the mother didn’t emerge. So I drove off.

I wish I could claim I was shocked
by what I’d done, but all I could think of was that I’d lost two babies,
and there was that woman stuck in a smoky betting shop while her brand-new baby was
out in the cold and the rain. I felt the baby was meant for me.

I was so calm. On the other side of
Carlisle I stopped in a side street and took the waterproof storm apron off the
carrycot. There was a bottle of milk made up, wrapped in a nappy to keep it warm,
tucked down the bottom, and there was a new tin of baby milk too, which she’d
clearly bought earlier. In my mind that was further proof the baby was meant for
me.

I got the baby out and fed her there
in the car. She took the bottle like a dream, and all I could think while I cuddled
her was that I’d rescued her, and no further harm could come to her.

Putting her back in the carrycot, I
drove away and didn’t stop till I got to Preston. Eva – I decided to call her
that – was fast asleep, the rain was pelting down outside, but we were snug and
warm.

In Preston I found a branch of Boots
that I could park outside, and I bought another couple of bottles and teats, plus
other baby essentials, including a packet of disposable nappies, and then drove off
again.

Eva slept the whole way to London –
I suppose that was the motion of the car – and it was just as well, as I
couldn’t make up a bottle with powdered milk anywhere without drawing
attention to myself. I guessed that Patrick would have left the little nursery at
the studio just as it was when I lost our baby; he wasn’t the kind to pack it
all up without my permission. And knowing it would all be there still – clothes,
bedding, even a sterilizer – I felt I was taking our baby home.

Looking back at that day, sixteen
years on, I find it astounding that I didn’t panic or worry about anything.
Eva felt like mine from the moment I held her in my arms. Instinct took over, and I
seemed to remember all the advice I’d read in baby books before.

Patrick put down the statement, because his
eyes were swimming with tears. He could remember Flora reading baby books all the time
when she was pregnant; he used to tease her about it, because he hadn’t expected
her to become so maternal.

She was right, he hadn’t touched the
nursery; he couldn’t bring himself to. He was also glad he’d cleaned the
studio thoroughly before he left it back then. He’d been tempted to trash it just
to spite her, but in the end he couldn’t.

Reading her words, he got a picture in his
mind of her arriving back with the baby. The studio must have been icy
after being empty so long, and the enormity of what she’d done must have hit her
hard as the practicalities of sterilizing bottles, four-hourly feeds and wet nappies
kicked in.

How did she summon up the nerve to go and
register the baby’s birth? Wasn’t she afraid they had some way of checking
the baby was really hers? And to put down the date of birth as nearly a month later than
it was! That was such a risk, but he supposed she took it because she thought the police
might look at all registered births around the time the baby was taken.

But Flora said nothing about any of that. Or
perhaps by the time she’d begun her statement all that had faded from her memory,
and she could only recall the joy of having a baby to love?

Tomorrow he would have to give this
statement to Eva, and he wondered how she would react. At least it was clear that Flora
had loved her deeply and that she’d been a far better mother than her real one
would ever have been.

Patrick rang Eva on Monday afternoon. Using
the excuse that he had a brochure of picture frames for them to choose from, he asked if
he could pop round that evening if Phil was home. He didn’t want to leave Eva on
her own after she’d read Flora’s statement.

Phil opened the door when he arrived at
seven thirty. ‘You didn’t have to rush and get the picture done,’ he
said. ‘But Eva will be pleased to have it hanging up again.’

‘I’ll be there in a sec,’
Eva called out from the kitchen. ‘Just finished the washing-up, and I’m
making a cup of tea.’

They went into the lounge.
Coronation
Street
was just starting as Eva came back into the room with the tea on a tray.
Patrick thought she looked very pretty in a fluffy turquoise sweater and jeans. Phil had
said she hadn’t been sleeping well after the fire, and he thought she was
depressed, but she looked rested now. He hoped his news wasn’t going to set her
back.

‘Is everything alright,
Patrick?’ she asked as she put the tray down on the coffee table. ‘You look
very tense.’

Patrick was tense, but he hadn’t
thought either of them would notice. If nothing else, her question gave him the perfect
opener – something he’d been worried about all day.

‘Selecting the right frame is a tough
job, but someone’s got to do it,’ Phil joked.

‘Showing you this is an even tougher
job,’ Patrick said, opening the battered old music case he used as a briefcase and
pulling out the folder containing the statement. ‘It isn’t a
catalogue of frames; it’s something my friend the art restorer
found behind Flora’s painting.’

‘What is it?’ Eva asked.
‘You’re scaring me, Patrick, with that grim face.’

‘It’s the answer to all your
questions about Flora,’ Phil said. ‘Written by her. I think you need to sit
down and read it.’

Eva frowned in puzzlement. Phil turned off
the television, and the pair of them sat down side by side on the sofa. Patrick handed
the folder to Eva, then sat back in his chair to watch her reaction as she read it.

Patrick had found it hard to keep a lid on
his emotions while he read it – even on the second and third reading it still had the
same impact. He didn’t know how Eva would take it. She’d already been dealt
enough bad cards this year; most girls of her age would have crumbled under the
strain.

Yet as disturbing as this statement was, the
truth – however unpalatable – was always better than supposition and half-baked
theories. He really hoped she would see it that way.

Eva had tears running down her cheeks as she
finished the first page and handed it to Phil. But she made no comment and carried on
with the second page without once looking up. At the end of the third page, which
Patrick knew was the part where she arrived as a baby in Pottery Lane, she handed it to
Phil and put the other pages down beside her.

‘I know what she did was wrong,’
she said to Patrick, the break in her voice even more telling than the tears on her
cheeks. ‘But why does it sound so right?’

Patrick had asked himself that same question
too when he read it. ‘Because she gave you the childhood you deserved,’ he
said. ‘Somehow I doubt you’d have fared so well with your birth
mother.’

Phil had finished it too. He took Eva’s
hand in his and for a moment said nothing, clearly overwhelmed by what he’d read.
‘Losing the second baby must have tipped her right over the edge,’ he said
eventually. ‘Yet even if she was mentally ill at the time she did it, she sounded
rational and calm as she wrote the story.’

‘Well, that comes of writing it down
sixteen years later. I doubt she’d have presented it so clearly at the
time,’ Patrick said. ‘She doesn’t say very much about the first few
weeks with you, Eva. I’d say that was because she was overtired, like all new
mothers are. But that book of sketches she did of you is proof enough that she held
everything together and that the pair of you bonded well.’

‘I can’t imagine how anyone with
no experience of newborn babies could cope alone.’ Eva’s voice cracked with
emotion. ‘Especially when the baby isn’t your own. I’d be terrified if
it wouldn’t stop crying.’

‘As she makes no comment on that, I
think we can surmise that the joy of taking care of you wiped out her depression. The
bit that puzzled me most was how she had the nerve to go and register your birth as her
child. I think most people would be far too afraid of getting caught out to do that. I
didn’t know anything about the process of registering, so I made some inquiries.
It seems she must’ve had some prior knowledge, because the only documentation
needed is a marriage certificate in order to put the husband’s name on the birth
certificate. Without that, the section for the father’s name is left blank –
unless he accompanies the mother. I suppose she rang them and asked what was necessary
in advance. It seems a doctor or midwife’s signature isn’t
needed.’