Forgive Me (57 page)

They arrived back soon after four – all with
flushed faces
from the sun and feeling tired, because they’d
walked a long way. Sophie had remained distant, hardly speaking at all, and she’d
only picked at her lunch in The Swan.

‘I’m going up to have a bath and
a lie-down,’ she said, as soon as they got in. ‘Thank you, Patrick, for
today. It was lovely.’

Eva raised her eyebrows to Patrick. When
Sophie had gone upstairs she remarked that Sophie didn’t often remember to thank
anyone for anything.

‘Did any of us at that age?’ he
said. ‘Sometimes it takes tragedy and disaster to make us see what we’ve
got.’

Eva and Patrick took cups of tea out to the
conservatory. The sun was shining in there and it was really warm. Patrick dropped off
to sleep after just a few minutes, and soon Eva reclined her chair and followed
suit.

She woke feeling cold, and saw that the sun
had sunk down behind the garden wall. As she got up, Patrick woke and looked at his
watch. ‘Heavens, it’s nearly seven,’ he exclaimed. ‘I must be
turning into an old man, nodding off even in stimulating company.’

Eva giggled. ‘I’ve only just
woken up too. Must have been the wine at lunchtime.’

They went into the kitchen and Eva put the
kettle on. Patrick was looking in the fridge and suggesting he make a prawn salad for
them.

‘I’ll just go and see what
Sophie’s doing,’ Eva said.

Upstairs, Sophie’s bedroom door was
open. But she wasn’t in there. The duvet was crumpled, though, as if she’d
just got up.

Eva went to the bathroom next door.
‘Do you fancy some prawn salad for tea?’ she shouted out at the closed
door.

There was no response.

Eva tried the handle, but the door was
locked. She hammered on the door with her fists and shouted more loudly.

Patrick came running up the stairs.
‘What’s the matter?’

‘She’s in there with the door
locked, but she’s not answering,’ Eva said in alarm. A cold feeling of dread
and déjà vu was creeping over her. ‘You don’t think –?’ She
couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

Patrick banged on the door. ‘Sophie!
Answer me! You’re scaring us,’ he yelled.

When there was still no reply he told Eva to
stand back. Putting his shoulder to the door, he forced it open. The door frame creaked
and splintered and the door gave way.

‘Oh God!’ he exclaimed, then
pushed Eva back. ‘Don’t look,’ he said.

But it was too late. She’d seen Sophie
lying there in a copycat death of her mother’s – the bathwater red with blood, her
eyes wide open, staring sightlessly, and a similar knife dropped on the floor.

‘No!’ Eva screamed. ‘Not
Sophie too!’

Ben increased the pressure on Eva’s
hand as the curtains closed around Sophie’s coffin and they heard the faint whirr
of machinery rolling it away to the incinerator. Eva was blinded by her tears, but she
knew Ben was crying too.

Phil, on the other side of her, put his arm
around her. But there could be no real comfort for her and Ben today. It made no
difference that the sun was shining, slanting in through the chapel windows of the
crematorium and playing on the flowers, the polished wooden floor and the faces of all
those who had come to pay their last respects to Sophie. Eva felt cold – as if it was
midwinter, not a glorious spring day.

‘I can’t live with this’
was all Sophie had written in a note left by her bed. When Eva had been told about this
by the police, she’d felt much the same.

It was like being caught up in an avalanche:
first the shock of the impact, then the desperate struggle to the surface to deal with
everything. If it hadn’t been for Patrick – and Phil too when he arrived late the
same night – Eva felt she would have crumbled completely. As it was, she was barely
holding it together.

She’d scarcely heard a word of the
service, because her mind kept turning to what more she might have done to prevent
Sophie thinking that suicide was the answer. Ben, Phil, Patrick – even the police – all
said she had done everything possible, but she still kept asking herself why she
hadn’t taken Sophie to see a doctor when it was obvious that she
needed professional help. And how could she have slept peacefully in the conservatory
while her sister was preparing for, and taking, her last breath?

But Sophie had always been a drama queen.
And because of that, Eva had imagined that if she ever had suicidal thoughts, she would
have announced them loudly. The knife was new; she must have bought it on the one
occasion she went out for a walk alone. She’d picked her moment to do it when Eva
wasn’t alone, which was uncharacteristically thoughtful. But alone, or with
Patrick, the moment of finding her dead was just as terrible and devastating. A young
life had been wiped out because Sophie was unable to bear the shame of what her parents
had done.

Andrew was at the back of the chapel in a
wheelchair, handcuffed to a police officer. He’d been told of his daughter’s
death shortly after he was brought out of the drug-induced coma he’d been kept in
since his operation. Ben said he looked wizened and very old, but Eva had refused to
even glance at him. She hoped he’d be in that wheelchair for the rest of his
useless life. He was to blame for everything.

They weren’t inviting the ten or
twelve people – mostly friends of Sophie’s – who had turned up today back to the
house afterwards, because neither she nor Ben could face their inevitable questions. Ben
had said he’d rather have a little wake with Phil, Patrick and Eva, because
they’d been the only people who had helped since the night Andrew attacked Sophie.
The neighbours and many of Sophie’s friends hadn’t even rung or written a
card to show they cared.

The whole story was out now. The headline on
the front page of the local paper two days after Sophie died, was ‘The Sins of the
Father’, and the story of how Andrew Patterson allegedly drove first his wife to
suicide, then assaulted his son
and attempted to kill his daughter,
who subsequently took her own life in a carbon copy of her mother’s death, was
sensationalized for the maximum effect.

It was clear that someone in the police must
have leaked the story, because it was all there – albeit using the word
‘allegedly’ in front of everything. The fraud and the arson attack on
Eva’s house were dredged up, and the fact that Ben had attacked his father to
defend Sophie, which had left Andrew with brain damage. There was a picture of The
Beeches, taken with the wrought-iron gates closed, and they’d used that image to
suggest that neighbours never really knew what went on behind closed doors. A quote from
one of them, who chose not to give his or her name, was: ‘We always wondered how
Patterson could afford his millionaire lifestyle.’ They had published a photograph
of Andrew and Flora – one taken at a black-tie dinner and dance a few years earlier –
and that too implied that the Pattersons lived a glamorous life.

The only part of the story which
hadn’t come out in the local press, even when the nationals picked it up, was
about Eva being a stolen baby. That in its way was so juicy that, when it did leak, it
was likely to cause mayhem. Eva didn’t know what she should do about it. Even now,
ten days after Sophie’s death, reporters with cameras were still hanging around
The Beeches. She’d had to take the phone off the hook, because it rang so
often.

Phil had said last night that she
mustn’t let bitterness take over. He didn’t really understand that she
wasn’t bitter. Just empty. What she wanted now was to see Ben go back to his
studies, and then she craved being entirely alone. Ben seemed to understand what she
meant; he’d admitted that he felt much the same way as her, only his way of
dealing with it was to immerse himself in books.

The final prayers were over. As ‘Nessun
Dorma’ sung by Pavarotti began to play, Ben and Eva looked at one another and
tried to smile. It was the most unlikely record for Sophie to love – she was more of a
Madonna and Kylie Minogue fan. But she had loved it, playing it over and over again. As
Pavarotti’s voice soared, Eva hoped he was letting her sister’s spirit
free.

She could remember one day, shortly after
Sophie was born, when she’d heard her crying in her crib. Although Eva was only
four, she’d gone into the nursery and picked her up to cuddle her. Flora had
laughed when she found them together, but after giving her a warning that babies were
far more fragile than dolls, and she wasn’t to do it again, they’d sat
together on the nursing chair. Flora let her continue to hold Sophie, and she said she
wanted Eva to always be a good big sister and to love Sophie. She said she hoped
they’d always be best friends as well as sisters.

Eva knew she had always loved her, even when
she didn’t like the way she behaved. She felt now as if a chunk of her heart had
been ripped out, and she couldn’t possibly imagine a time when it wouldn’t
continue to hurt.

Six weeks after the funeral, Phil arrived
home early from work one day. He was holding in his hand the details of a house that was
for sale. ‘I’ve found this dream house in Chiswick,’ he said, grinning
like a Cheshire Cat. ‘It’s everything we want. I looked at it this morning
and knew it was the right one. I said I’d bring you round at five. I’ll just
have a shower and change. After we’ve seen it I thought we could go to the Italian
place we like.’

He disappeared into the bathroom, seemingly
unaware that she hadn’t grabbed the details with any enthusiasm. She glanced at
the leaflet, and then tossed it aside. She couldn’t
cope with
viewing a house right now, and she felt angry that he expected her to.

He was back in ten minutes, buttoning up a
clean blue shirt. ‘What do you think?’ he asked. ‘Isn’t it
great? Those photos show how it really is too – high ceilings, all the original
cornices, fireplaces and doors. It needs a new kitchen, but that’s no problem. You
are going to love the garden.’

‘I don’t want to see it,’
she said quietly. ‘I’ve had enough stress and upheaval to last me a
lifetime. I’ve got nothing left in me to cope with moving.’

‘You what?’ he exclaimed.
‘Oh come on, Eva. You can’t carry on sitting in here day after day doing
nothing. You’ll love this place, I know you will. And if we don’t act
quickly, we’ll lose it.’

‘You call all I’ve been doing
nothing?’ she said, her voice rising. ‘I’ve hardly had a minute to
myself since Sophie died. Aren’t I entitled to sit about for a while?’

Since the funeral she’d had so much to
do that she hadn’t even been able to consider going back to her old job. But
keeping busy hadn’t made the desire to be alone go away. In truth, the only times
she’d felt anywhere near being happy again was when she
had
been alone,
giving the house at Pottery Lane a final clean and sprucing up the garden before putting
it on the market, and sorting out things at The Beeches.

She hadn’t expected to feel so sad
about Pottery Lane being sold. Once she’d cleaned it all and polished the windows
till they gleamed, she had sunk down on to the floor and cried. It wasn’t just
because it was so beautiful now, but because it was her legacy from Flora. On some deep
level she could understand how Flora must have felt arriving back there with a tiny
baby. And whether it was right or wrong to take another woman’s baby, Flora had
loved her, and to Eva
she would always be her dearly beloved mother,
whatever the rights or wrongs were.

The terror of the night of the fire
wasn’t something she wanted to be reminded of, but she did want to hold on to the
memory of Phil taking her back to the studio after the handbag snatching, all those
lovely moments with him when they were just friends, and the bliss of their lovemaking
after they came back from Scotland.

She’d become a grown-up there, met
Patrick for the first time, learned so many practical skills from Brian. Flora had
always claimed the dead looked down from heaven and watched over those they loved. She
hoped that was true, and that Flora would understand why she was selling it now.

Phil’s words interrupted her thoughts
and brought her rudely back to the present. ‘I was only trying to help you to move
forward,’ he said. ‘This place is dreary and shabby, and a few pots on a
patio don’t make a garden. You’d be much happier with a project. Interior
design is your thing, isn’t it?’

‘I thought it was, until my house was
set on fire,’ she snapped at him. ‘All that effort, planning and hard work
went up in smoke. I can’t think about doing another house yet.’

‘What can you think about then?’
he asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘You certainly aren’t thinking
about us any more. Since you wound up things in Cheltenham I’ve hardly had a word
out of you. You’re either sitting there staring into space, or you’ve got
your nose stuck in a book. You show no enthusiasm for anything – not food, lovemaking,
going to the pictures, or even your appearance. I get the impression that you’d
rather be anywhere but here with me.’

‘For God’s sake!’ she yelled
at him. ‘Just because you saw a house today that you like, it doesn’t mean
I’ve got to jump up and down with joy. Just leave me alone, can’t
you!’

His face darkened. ‘Did you want me to
leave you alone after that guy assaulted you, or after the fire? Did I leave you alone
when all the stuff happened with Andrew and poor Sophie? I’ve bent over backwards
to help, I’ve felt for you every step of the way. But it’s all over now. And
now you say you want me to leave you alone? How could you?’

‘You don’t understand. I’m
sick of being talked at, of being expected to snap out of it. I don’t want people
asking me how I am, what I’m going to do next. I can’t answer those
questions, because I never get the peace and silence I need to find the answers,’
she snarled at him.