Never Close Your Eyes (54 page)

She gave Evie a lingering look that made her recoil. Carol clearly knew, then. Evie didn't know how she felt about that. She didn't think she'd want everyone to know. There was Freya to think of.

Freya was still hovering just a few inches from her mother. It seemed, after talking all day, that she'd finally realised that she'd been in real danger. Now she was afraid to leave Evie's orbit. That suited Evie just fine. She wasn't letting Freya out of her sight for a long time. She glanced at her daughter, who had big black circles under her eyes. They'd both been questioned extensively and there were a lot more questions to come. They'd need counselling, too, family and individual therapy, social services visits. The ramifications were huge. It was hard to imagine that their lives would ever be the same.

Evie hadn't seen Nic since St Pancras Station. The police had taken her with them, apparently, to identify Freya. Evie was supposed to do it, but she'd been too fast for them; they'd arrived at her house after she'd left.

‘I must get Freya to bed,' Evie said. ‘She can hardly stand up. Would you mind settling Michael down for me, Bill? You've been so kind already—'

‘Of course,' he interrupted. ‘Do you still like a bedtime story, Michael, or are you far too grown-up for that sort of thing?'

‘I've got a
Star Wars
comic,' Michael said hopefully. Evie would never read him comics, she said they were boring.

‘All right, we'll have that then,' said Bill, picking up Michael's plate and running it under the tap. ‘Go and do your teeth and I'll be with you in two ticks when I've finished stacking the dishwasher.'

Carol rose slowly, pushing herself up from the table with her hands. ‘I'll be off then,' she said. ‘Thanks for everything, Bill.' She spoke in an odd, loaded way. Evie didn't like it. Suddenly she wanted Carol out of the house this instant. What was she doing here anyway? Bill shouldn't have let her in.

‘I'll see you to the door,' Bill said. They glanced at each other. Something passed between them that Evie didn't understand. There was a familiarity, a knowingness that made her cross and curious at the same time. She decided that she couldn't see the back of Carol soon enough.

‘Come on, my love,' Evie said, taking Freya's hand, which felt small and frail. Guilt washed over her for the hundredth time that day. She'd failed Freya and failed as a mother. How could she not have spotted the danger signs? From now on, Freya came first – and Michael too, of course. The pair of them were her absolute priority.

Carol patted Evie on the shoulder in the hall as she and Freya started to go upstairs, but Evie ignored her.

‘If there's anything I can do . . .' Carol said.

‘No thank you,' Evie replied, without looking back, ‘we just want to be alone.'

‘You've been a saint,' Evie said when she finally came downstairs.

Bill was on the sitting-room sofa looking at the newspaper. He put it down the moment she spoke. ‘Glad I could help.' He started to rise. ‘Is Freya asleep?'

She nodded.

‘I should think you're ready for bed now yourself,' he went on.

She rubbed her eyes. ‘I am absolutely exhausted, but I'm not sure I'll be able to sleep.'

Bill frowned. ‘Do you want to talk?'

She shook her head. ‘You've done quite enough for me today. You must be exhausted, too. You go home. I might have a bath. That'll help me relax.'

He started to put on his coat, which was in the hall. His shirt was still hanging out and he tucked it in.

‘Oh Bill,' she said, flinging her arms around him. ‘You were so brilliant with Michael. He was happy as anything when I came in. You did a fantastic job of keeping the home fires burning.'

Bill gave her a squeeze.

‘I've been a rubbish mother to Freya,' she went on. ‘I've let her down hugely. I've been so wrapped up in my own problems that I couldn't see that she was crying out for help. Even you saw it, Bill.'

He was silent.

‘I remember at Christmas when you said she seemed troubled and suggested she talk to a counsellor. If only I'd taken your advice . . .'

‘The main thing is that she's all right,' he replied. ‘You can get her all the help she needs now.'

For a moment they stood there, her cheek on his chest. It felt right somehow, as if this were her own, special place. He gave her another squeeze and pulled away.

‘I'll be off,' he said, zipping up his Barbour. ‘Busy day tomorrow.'

‘What are you up to?' Evie crossed her arms and cocked her head on one side. She hadn't even thought about tomorrow; it had been hard enough getting through today. Tomorrow seemed like another planet.

‘I'm doing a tutorial, nine till one,' Bill replied, putting his hands in his pockets. ‘Then I plan to spend some time on the allotment, weather permitting. Fence is falling to pieces, needs repairing and creosoting.'

‘English tutorial?' Evie asked. ‘GCSE or A-level?'

‘Neither.' Bill scratched his head. ‘She's a mature student. Ukrainian. Doing an Open University degree. Working nights in a bar and studying during the day. She had a very disrupted schooling and she's trying to make up for lost time. Wish all my students were as diligent as her.'

‘Oh,' said Evie. ‘Is she clever?'

‘Very bright, yes. Excellent English. Doing a dissertation on T. S. Eliot. I'm just giving her a few pointers, that's all. The OU's a bit impersonal. She seems to be blossoming, I'm glad to say.'

‘How old is she?' Evie asked. It just popped out.

‘Ooh, I don't know. Late twenties?'

‘Married . . . children?'

Bill shrugged. ‘No idea. We tend to stick to T. S. Eliot.'

‘But you must know if she's married or not,' Evie persisted. ‘Doesn't she wear a ring?'

Bill laughed. ‘I'm not as nosy as you, Evie,' he said. ‘I haven't noticed, but I'll make a point of looking tomorrow if you like.'

She felt herself redden. She hoped he wouldn't notice.

‘Well, I'll be off,' he said, opening the door. ‘I hope you get a decent night.'

He pecked her on both cheeks and started to walk down the path.

‘You too,' Evie called after him. ‘Thanks again for everything. And good luck with the tutorial tomorrow.'

Tom parked the car in St Martin's Street and they walked side by side towards Trafalgar Square. It was strange to see central London so deserted; Becca was used to going during the day when the place was humming.

Her heart was beating loudly. She was glad that she was wearing trainers: high heels would have heralded her approach and she didn't want that. Tom's soles were soft, too.

He stopped when they reached the corner. She gave him one last look: ‘Don't leave me!' He gave her a thumbs up and she turned into the square on her own. If Gary saw them together he might bolt. They needed him to hear what they had to say first.

She glanced at Nelson's Column towering darkly above her; he seemed to be presiding over the whole square. He must have seen a thing or two in his time, she thought.

She started when she spotted Gary, already waiting, his back to the gallery. But it was a relief, really. It would have been agony to have to hang around; she might have lost her nerve. He was in the black leather jacket that he always wore, with the black and red rucksack over his shoulder. What did he keep in there? She didn't want to know.

He walked swiftly towards her. She noticed that he was frowning. ‘Becca, what the hell are you playing at?' He put out his arms as if to grab her but she dodged away out of reach.

‘Tom knows everything,' she said quickly. ‘About my past, about you. It's over, Gary. You can't threaten me any more.'

Gary stopped in his tracks. He seemed to be processing the information. ‘Dawn . . .' He looked over her shoulder and his mouth gaped. ‘What the . . . ?'

Tom was beside Becca now. ‘That's right, Gary,' he said coolly, ‘I know all about Dawn. It doesn't make any difference. She's my wife.'

‘The papers,' said Gary desperately. ‘Everyone will know.'

Tom shook his head. ‘We've had enough of our London life anyway. We'd always planned to live abroad. You can tell the papers what you want, we don't care.'

Gary's face clouded over. His shoulders drooped and he seemed to shrink before Becca's eyes. He looked small and gaunt in the lamplight. How could she have ever feared him?

‘We should be going, Becca,' Tom said. ‘It's late.'

He jabbed a finger at Gary, suddenly aggressive. ‘And if we see you ever again, you little shit, we'll call the police, d'you understand? We'll tell them you've been stalking Becca. She's kept a diary, everything's there. Just get out of our lives and fuck off back down your stinking drainpipe.'

They spun around and headed back in the direction of the car. Becca felt about ten feet tall; she didn't look back once. It had all been so easy, so much easier than she'd imagined. She felt like singing; she felt like going up to complete strangers in the street and hugging them. Life was so beautiful.

Tom opened the car door for her.

‘Thank you,' she said, turning to him. She opened her arms to embrace him but he was already moving round to the driver's side.

She clambered into the passenger seat and did up her seatbelt. She couldn't wipe the smile off her face.

‘Let's get the hell out of here,' Tom said, lowering himself into his seat and starting up the engine. ‘I want to go home.'

Chapter Forty-Nine

Evie arrived deliberately late for the March creative writing group. She slunk in and sat down right at the back of the church hall, nearest the door. Several people turned and looked at her impertinently, she thought. She shivered. She'd never get used to the stares from those who thought they knew so much about her from the press. She wanted to scream at them not to believe all they read, that much of what had been splurged across the papers was inaccurate. But she knew there was no point.

Since the nationwide alert, everybody seemed to think they were qualified to talk about the Freestones, including neighbours whom she'd never even spoken to. The quotes were so conflicting, it would have been almost funny if it wasn't so hurtful. Some people said what a ‘nice, normal' family they were and what ‘lovely, polite children'. Others, though, were damning.

Evie had been particularly stung by a stranger who, it turned out, lived at Number 22, who said she'd noticed that the children were often alone. Evie, said the woman, was frequently out with her ‘long-haired boyfriend' and the father only visited rarely. Well, that was a lie. She made Freya and Michael sound like latchkey kids.

There again, Evie couldn't deny that she'd often left Freya to babysit, and when Nic had had the accident and Steve had buggered off without telling her, Freya and Michael had been alone all night. Had the neighbour's curtains been twitching? Maybe she deserved to be pilloried.

Evie had tried to stop Freya reading the papers, watching the TV news or listening to the radio but she'd picked things up all the same. She'd gnashed her teeth when she caught sight of Chantelle smirking in a TV report and claiming that they were ‘best friends' at school. ‘I knew she had a boyfriend, but she never let on how old he was.' When the reporter had asked Chantelle what kind of girl Freya was she'd said: ‘Cool. Really popular.' Evie had had to stop Freya throwing her glass of orange juice at the screen.

Even some of the mums whose sons played football with Michael on a Saturday morning had put in their tuppence ha'penny. Michael, one of them said, was ‘very outgoing'. She'd obviously never tried speaking to him, then.

It was Nic, though, Evie had to admit, who'd borne the worst of it. Many newspaper columnists – mostly women – had insisted that Nic must have known that Alan was a paedophile, grooming young girls on the net.

‘Is this the most wicked mother in Britain?' screamed one headline, above a picture of Nic looking dazed outside her front door. The columnist argued that Nic was evil because she'd put her son at risk of being abused himself. She'd also called her a ‘pathetic lush, who thought only of herself and where her next bottle of wine was coming from'.

Evie hadn't spoken to Nic, but she couldn't reconcile this portrait of depravity with the woman she knew and had spent so much time with. And whatever else she might have done, she'd never knowingly have put Dominic in danger. Evie knew that much.

Fortunately, since Freya had been found, the papers had largely respected Evie's request for privacy and hadn't camped outside her door, though they'd certainly doorstepped friends, neighbours and relatives. But Nic had had bricks thrown through her front window and ‘paedophile' sprayed across the walls. She and Dominic had been forced to move to a safe house nearby while the furore died down. As far as Evie knew, Dominic was getting a taxi to and from school.