Forgive Me (52 page)

‘What are you thinking
about?’

Sophie’s question startled Ben out of
his reverie.

‘Same old stuff,’ he said,
glancing sideways at her.

Their weekend together had started out
badly. Sophie had arrived looking like a tart in a very short leopard-print skirt, a
black lace shirt that left nothing to the imagination and boots with four-inch heels.
She had expected a weekend of wild student parties, and she sulked when he explained he
had got her a guest room in the halls with no question of her taking anyone back to her
room. He had intended to wait until Sunday before showing her the statement. He wanted
her to have one day of shopping and chatting and drinking with his friends before he had
to break the news. But she showed him up on Friday night – not just by the way she was
dressed, but by being rude to some of the girls Ben liked, being too full on with two of
his friends, and guzzling down drink like she had a death wish.

He had to almost carry her up to the guest
room, and she threw up on the landing before he could get her into the room. It took him
about half an hour to clear it up, and at one point she came out of the room again and
shouted that he was a drag because he wouldn’t take her clubbing.

She looked pale and shaky the next day when
he met her
in the refectory for breakfast, but she was still eyeing up
his friends and kept going on about wanting to go to a club that night. She didn’t
even apologize for showing him up the previous evening and expecting him to clear up her
vomit. Then when she asked why he was being such a bore, he lost patience with her and
blurted out about the package he’d got from Eva.

That did bring her round quickly. He told
her the main facts of Flora’s statement and suggested they go somewhere quiet
where she could read it herself and they could talk about it.

He took her to a cafe he knew that had a
room at the back with old-fashioned booth seats. And there, armed with coffee, Sophie
read it.

As she read, Ben watched her. He despaired
over the way she’d changed since their mother had died: the tarty appearance and
the rough people she was hanging around with. And her general belligerence was awful.
She was eighteen now, and she kept saying she was old enough to do what she wanted. But
Ben felt she was as lost as Eva had been when she went through her goth period.

‘I can’t believe it!’ she
said at one point, her eyes full of tears. ‘Could Dad really be that
evil?’

They talked through many aspects of the
story, both bewildered that the home they had always thought of as happy, had only been
that way because their mother made it seem so.

‘There is one thing,’ Sophie
said. ‘Dad did suggest a few weeks ago that we both see a solicitor and sign our
half of the house over to him. He made it sound like a really good idea. The Beeches is
too big, and we could both have smaller places of our own. He said now was the time for
us to get a foot on the property ladder and have our independence.’

‘I hope you didn’t agree,’
Ben said. ‘Eva warned us about that.’

Sophie shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t
take any notice of Eva. Dad’s the one that knows about property, not
her.’

‘If he was on the level, he’d
just put it on the market in all our names, then the solicitors would divide up the
proceeds when it was sold. Do it his way and he could walk off with the lot.’

‘He wouldn’t do that, he loves
us.’

‘He said he loved Mum too, but he
didn’t mind hitting and blackmailing her.’

‘We can’t be certain this is
true,’ Sophie said desperately, pushing the statement away from her in defiance.
‘Mum could’ve written it when she was upset about something, and
exaggerated.’

‘You don’t really believe
that,’ Ben said. ‘No one writes a pack of lies and then hides it. Nor do
they change their will just a few weeks before they kill themselves unless they
don’t trust the person they were previously intending to leave everything
to.’

‘But you surely don’t believe
Dad tried to kill Eva?’

Ben shrugged. ‘How could he have done?
You said he was home that night.’ He sensed Sophie squirm. ‘You were
speaking the truth, weren’t you?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she said.

But she dropped her eyes, and Ben knew she
was lying.

They had spent the rest of the day mooching
about Leeds, half-heartedly looking in the shops and trying to put aside the question of
what they were going to do about this statement. Ben felt they should confront their
father with it; Sophie wasn’t so sure, because she was still living at home with
him.

After having a meal they went to the cinema
to see
Final Analysis
with Richard Gere and Kim Basinger. One of Ben’s
friends in Leeds had asked them both to his parents’ house for
Sunday lunch. On the way home to the halls of residence, Ben asked Sophie if she
wouldn’t mind toning down her appearance for the day. Predictably, she was
offended and stalked off to bed. Yet to Ben’s surprise, this morning she was
dressed in jeans and a sweater, with very little make-up.

It turned out to be a good day. Mr and Mrs
Price, Rod’s parents, welcomed them warmly to their rambling and comfortable house
in Bramhope and fed them an enormous roast dinner – the first one Sophie and Ben had
eaten for weeks. Rod’s two sisters and his brother were there too, and after lunch
they all lay around in the drawing room watching television and chatting. Ben
couldn’t help but compare it with past Sundays with his parents. He didn’t
ever remember all of them relaxing together like this. Sophie enjoyed it too; on the way
home she said she wished she came from a family like the Prices. But at least a nice day
with them had stopped her thinking about what would happen when she got home.

Perhaps it was because they were both scared
of going back to Cheltenham that Ben took Sophie to see all his favourite places in
Leeds before going back to the halls, and then said there was no point in leaving till
after the early-evening traffic had cleared. Now it was gone nine and they were just
leaving the motorway. In ten minutes they would be back at The Beeches.

‘How are you going to start?’
Sophie asked.

When Ben looked at her he could see she was
biting her lip with nerves. ‘I don’t really know,’ he admitted.
‘I’ll have to wing it. But if he gets nasty with us, we’ll leave,
right? We’ll get a bed and breakfast, or something.’

‘It’s not going to come to
that,’ she said, but there was alarm in her voice.

The gates to the drive were open, the light
above the porch
illuminating their father’s car parked close to
it, and there was a light on in both the hall and the sitting room.

‘He’s going to be surprised to
see you,’ Sophie said as they parked up. ‘He was expecting me to come back
on the train.’

Ben was suddenly very scared. He had only
been slapped by his father a couple of times in his life, so he had nothing really to
fear. But then he’d never before tried to stand up to him.

Sophie opened the door with her key. As they
walked in she called out, ‘It’s me, Dad. Ben’s come back with
me.’

Andrew appeared in the hall within seconds,
wearing a dark-red pullover and grey slacks. ‘Well, this is a nice
surprise,’ he exclaimed with a wide smile. ‘Good to see you, son. Needed to
see your old man?’

‘Yes, Dad,’ Ben said somewhat
sheepishly. ‘I had some things I wanted to talk over with you.’

Sophie shot him a ‘not straight
off’ kind of look.

‘Need some cash, I suppose?’
Andrew said. ‘You kids need to learn to live within your means. I’m not a
bottomless pit of money.’

‘I’ll make us some tea,’
Sophie said, dropping her holdall in the hall and darting into the kitchen. ‘Do
you want one, Dad?’ she called out.

‘No, I’ve got a whiskey,’
he said, moving to go back into the sitting room. ‘Get your tea and come in here
to sit down, it’s chilly in the kitchen.’

Ben hung his coat up on the peg in the hall,
took Flora’s statement from the pocket and went to the kitchen.

Sophie made a face when she saw it in his
hand.

‘I have to,’ he said.

‘What’s that you’ve got
there?’ Andrew asked as Ben sat down in an armchair, a mug of tea in one hand and
the statement in the other. ‘A list of your debts?’

‘No, it’s something Mum wrote six
years ago. You know the Cornish picture you let Eva have? Well, it survived the fire,
and when she took off the frame, this was tucked behind the canvas.’

There was a momentary tightening of
Andrew’s face, but he was quick to control it. ‘Oh, I see. Not satisfied
with blaming me for the fire, now she’s trying a different tack.’

‘What makes you think it’s
something bad?’ Ben asked. ‘My first thought would’ve been that it was
a love letter, or something along those lines.’

‘Are you trying to be clever with me,
son? Has that little witch been getting to you?’

‘Dad, I’m telling you Eva found
this behind a painting – or rather, an art restorer did. It isn’t a fake,
it’s Mum’s handwriting. And Eva sent Sophie and me a copy because she
thought we had a right to see it. Why are you being so defensive? Do you know
what’s in it?’

‘I can tell by the way you look that
it’s upset you. I know too that your mother could be a conniving bitch. All I did
was put two and two together. So what is she claiming?’

‘She has written about stealing
Eva,’ Ben said. ‘Exactly how, why and when.’

Andrew didn’t come back with a retort
immediately. ‘She really did that?’ he said after a few moments.

‘You know perfectly well that she
did,’ Ben said scornfully. ‘Maybe not at first, but she told you when you
were buying this house. Don’t lie about it now, it’s all in here.’

‘OK, so she did tell me. What was I
supposed to do? Go to the police and get her arrested? She was my wife, for God’s
sake. She’d had Eva for nigh on two years. And from what she said about the real
mother, Eva was better off with us.’

‘I can understand you not wanting to
shop her, if you loved her,’ Ben said. ‘But what excuse are you going to
offer
for the blackmail, the bullying and for hitting her? That
disgusts me.’

‘How dare you say such things to
me!’ Andrew got to his feet and moved threateningly towards Ben, his hand clenched
in a fist. ‘Your mother was a pathetic, neurotic woman with an overactive
imagination. What blackmail? When was I supposed to have hit her? God Almighty, Ben, she
killed herself. Doesn’t that tell you that she was loopy? You don’t know
what I had to put up with.’

‘Stop it, Dad!’ Sophie yelled
out from the doorway. ‘Don’t you dare hit Ben. I’ve read it too, and I
believe it.’ She moved to stand next to Ben’s armchair in a gesture of
support for her brother.

Andrew looked at Sophie, his face darkening.
‘You too? She’s poisoned your mind against me? You would rather take the
word of a woman who didn’t even care enough about her children’s feelings to
live and sort herself out, rather than the man who has fed and clothed you all these
years? I’ve worked my fingers to the bone to buy and restore this house, I even
took on her kid. Your mother was an idle, selfish woman who thought of no one but
herself.’

‘But you didn’t work your
fingers to the bone to buy and restore this house,’ Ben said, jumping up and
getting between Andrew and Sophie. ‘It was Mum’s money that secured it. She
came up with the plan to sell the land. She made you a rich man, and you treated her
like the housekeeper. That’s why she killed herself. You pushed her into a corner
she couldn’t get out of – she knew you would grass her up for taking Eva, she
would be sent to prison and she’d lose all three of us kids.’

Andrew gave an angry hollow laugh. ‘Is
that what crap she’s told you? Well, look here, any woman who snatches another
woman’s baby is mad. And if she gets away with it
she’s
clever too. This is her final bit of revenge, leaving a pack of lies behind to make me
look like the villain of the piece.’

‘Why didn’t you let her
paint?’ Sophie burst out, squaring up to her father. ‘Why didn’t you
let her have her own friends? And how come you had another woman lined up before she was
even buried? And why did you ask me to sign over my share of the house?’

Andrew’s fist shot out at Sophie
before Ben could prevent it. It made a loud crunch as it connected with her cheek, and
Sophie screamed.

Enraged, Ben swung a punch at Andrew, and
knocked him back on to the sofa. ‘You bastard,’ he hissed at him. ‘You
have just proved everything Mum said about you.’

‘I’m sorry, Sophie,’
Andrew pleaded. ‘You just made me so mad, accusing me of all those
things.’

Sophie had blood dripping out of her mouth;
she was holding her cheek and looking at her father in horror. ‘You did try to
kill Eva, didn’t you? You weren’t here that night. I told the police you
were, because I came home late and I didn’t want you to know. How stupid am I? To
think I was angry with Eva for saying such things about you. I’m going to call the
police right now and tell them the truth.’

As she walked towards the phone in the hall,
Andrew leapt off the sofa to stop her. Ben went to hit him again, but Andrew parried the
blow, kneed Ben in the groin, then grabbed his shoulder and punched him so hard in the
face that he fell to the floor writhing in agony.

‘Run, Sophie!’ Ben managed to
call out before he felt the room swirl around him and blackness descend.

Ben came to, and the moment he felt the
broken tooth in his mouth he remembered Sophie and hauled himself to his feet. The room
was spinning but a cold blast of air told him the front door was open. Fear for his
sister overrode his giddiness and the pain, and made him move.

As he got to the front door he saw movement
on the lawn down by the gate. It was too dark down there and too far away to make out
whether it was Andrew or Sophie. Seeing the heavy cast-iron boot scraper in the porch,
he picked it up and ran with it across the gravel on to the lawn.