Forgive Me

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with waiting until you are sure,’ Gregor said. ‘I feel kind of sorry for kids these days, courtship and wooing seems to have disappeared. In films and on TV girl meets boy and they leap into bed. It seems to be expected now. But where’s the romance in that?’

  Grace coming in made Eva realize it was getting late, and she said she must go. She left after thanking Gregor for a lovely evening, promising to bring the diary round the next day.

  Back at the hotel, on an impulse, Eva rang Ben. She had rung the number he’d given her in Leeds several times, but he’d never been in. But this time he was, and he was very pleased to hear from her.

  She told him she was in Scotland, and why. When he’d come to London for the weekend she had intended to show him their mother’s diaries. But because he was out most of the time with his friend, she hadn’t even told him about them. He was eager to talk to her now, and so she explained how she was trying to find out who her father was, and a great deal more about Flora.

  ‘Dad must know,’ he said. ‘People tell each other that sort of stuff when they get involved.’

  ‘I’m not going to ask him anything,’ she said. ‘I don’t ever want to speak to him again.’

  ‘I could ask him,’ Ben said. ‘I don’t have to say I’m asking for you, I’ll just make out I’m curious.’

  Eva agreed it was worth a try, and gave Ben the hotel number in case he managed to get anything useful out of Andrew. She was touched that her brother wanted to help. He said he’d spoken to Sophie just a couple of days ago, and that she seemed more rational and had even admitted she missed Eva.

  ‘She failed the audition for drama college, and she hates Rachel, Dad’s girlfriend,’ Ben said. ‘She said that they’d had a huge row – Rachel said she was selfish and rude and that Dad should cut her down to size.’

  ‘I wouldn’t disagree with that,’ Eva said. ‘But what’s she going to do now?’

  ‘Well, she did say she was going to college in September to resit her A levels, so I think she got a wake-up call from somewhere.’

  ‘Next time you speak to her, will you tell her I haven’t phoned her because I’m afraid Andrew will answer? Give her my phone number in London, and tell her I’d love her to come for a weekend,’ Eva said.

  ‘You should phone her tonight,’ Ben said. ‘I know she’s in, because we spoke earlier. And Dad is staying over at Rachel’s. But look, Eva, I’m sorry I didn’t treat you very well when I came to London,’ he added. ‘It was only afterwards that I realized I was out of order.’

  ‘All three of us were pretty screwed up by Mum’s death,’ Eva said. ‘What’s important now is to move on and make lives for ourselves. I think Mum would have wanted us to stick together.’

  He told her a little about a restaurant he was working in until he started at university, but then Eva’s money ran out and she had no more change.

  She was halfway up the stairs to her room when she suddenly thought she ought to get more change and phone Sophie right now. It was doubtful she’d gone to bed, as she had always been a night owl.

  Armed with more change from the receptionist, Eva phoned The Beeches.

  Sophie answered it after only two rings, but her disappointment that it was only her sister was obvious. ‘What do you want?’ she asked.

  ‘I just wanted to know how you are,’ Eva said. ‘I miss you. Ben told me you were going back to resit your A levels. I was glad to hear that.’

  ‘Why were you?’ Sophie’s voice had a hard edge. ‘So I have to stay stuck in this house for another year?’

  ‘Of course not. I was thinking of you being able to go to university, like Ben.’

  ‘I don’t want to go to university. I want to be an actress.’

  Eva wished she hadn’t rung, as it was quite clear Sophie was angry about something. She didn’t dare say she already knew that she’d failed the audition. ‘Maybe you could join a drama group in Cheltenham while you are doing the resits?’ she suggested.

  ‘As if I’d want to join one of those crummy amateur things!’

  ‘I can’t say anything right to you, so I’d better ring off,’ Eva said. ‘All I wanted to do was put things right between us. I know it’s tough for you there on your own. Ben’s got my home phone number if you ever want to talk. And I hope whoever you were expecting to call tonight does ring.’

  As Eva went up to her room she didn’t feel too badly about Sophie’s reaction to her. She’d caught her at a bad moment, and maybe in a day or two she’d come round. At least Ben had been pleased to hear from her. The day might not have started well with Dena being so peculiar with her, but she’d had a lovely evening with Gregor.

  As Flora had been very fond of saying, ‘You are stuck with relatives. Thank God we have friends.’

  Chapter Fifteen

  Eva had just showered and got dressed the following morning, when there was a frantic knock on her room door. She opened it and to her surprise it was Dena. She was wearing a grey tracksuit, her black hair scraped back from her face with one long, untidy plait over her right shoulder, as if she’d just got out of bed. She looked wild-eyed and manic.

  ‘I had to come here,’ she said, panting as if she’d run up the stairs. ‘I couldn’t sleep for worrying about you.’

  It was just after eight. Eva had intended to have breakfast and then go for a drive and explore. While what Dena said suggested a change of heart, her appearance, and her arriving so early in the morning, was a little scary.

  ‘There’s no need to worry about me,’ Eva said. ‘But I am very glad you called round because I owe you an apology. I should have told you right off who I was, and I’m sorry it made me seem devious. Come in, I could make us some tea.’

  Eva pulled up the bedclothes so Dena could sit down on the bed, then filled the kettle in the bathroom and rinsed out the teacups.

  Dena was clenching and unclenching her hands, and looking around the room as if she half expected someone to jump out on her.

  ‘I dare say some people have told you I’m a fraud,’ she blurted out. ‘But I do see things in the cards, and all I do is pass on what I’ve seen. I was disturbed by what I saw in yours, and then when you told me who you were I panicked.’

  ‘Gregor Hamilton told me last night that Flora was very nasty to you, so I understood then why you reacted as you did,’ Eva replied, wanting to put the woman at her ease. She somehow doubted that was possible, though. Dena looked as tightly strung as a violin.

  ‘Did Flora commit suicide?’ she asked in little more than a whisper.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ Eva asked.

  ‘Because I felt it, after you’d gone yesterday. I felt it in here.’ She put her hand on her heart, her large dark eyes very troubled.

  ‘Yes, she did, Dena,’ Eva replied. ‘Back in March.’

  ‘And you came to me hoping to find out why?’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t expect you to know, not when you haven’t seen her for twenty-odd years. And after what I heard she said to you I wouldn’t have blamed you if you hadn’t wanted to speak to me.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter what happened between Flora and me,’ she said. ‘But it does matter that you are searching for answers, and that you hoped I might have them.’

  Eva thought the woman was frighteningly intense. But she saw no point in beating about the bush, so she explained as concisely as she could the circumstances of Flora’s death, and the events which followed it.

  The older woman’s eyes filled up with tears; they spilled out down her thin cheeks like a waterfall. ‘How terrible,’ she gasped. ‘I am so sorry. I loved her, you know. I knew she didn’t feel as strongly about me. I think she felt I was hanging on her coat-tails. But whatever passed between us, it makes me very sad to think she didn’t find lasting happiness.’

  ‘There seem to be so many discrepancies between the mother I knew and loved, and the younger Flora Foyle,’ Eva explained. ‘This is mainly why I came looking for answers. Yo
u see, I saw her as kind, maternal, a person who liked solitude, and yet that seems to be almost the exact opposite of how others saw her. I also don’t know who my real father is, and I hoped to find out here – where I was presumably conceived. Did you know she was pregnant with me that night she said such awful things to you?’

  ‘No!’ Dena exclaimed.

  Her stunned expression was evidence she was speaking the truth.

  ‘Well, she was. I was born in April 1970.’

  ‘Why didn’t she tell me?’ Dena’s voice rose to an indignant squeak. ‘I can understand most things about her, but not that. She was grieving over the baby she’d lost when I first met her, she cried about it a great deal and I comforted her and tried to help her through her grief. She must have known I would be overjoyed for her that she’d got pregnant again. It’s not as if I was the kind to be disapproving that she wasn’t married.’

  ‘She was secretive with everyone, even her children. You mustn’t take that personally.’

  It was obvious Dena was taking it personally; she looked crushed. ‘Gregor Hamilton must be your father then,’ she said.

  ‘No, Dena, that’s part of the mystery. It seems there was nothing between Mum and Gregor until after she had got pregnant. Do you know of any other man she was seeing?’

  Dena made a despairing gesture with her hands. ‘There wasn’t anyone. Well, obviously there must have been. But she never told me, and I never suspected there was anyone else in her life.’

  ‘Did you notice her getting fatter towards that Christmas of 1969? Gregor said she was as slender as she’d always been, but men often don’t notice such things – especially if she took to wearing baggy clothes. Did she do that?’

  ‘I don’t recall her looking any different. On Christmas Eve she was wearing a long emerald-green velvet dress, with a loose beaded jacket over it. I suppose that might have hidden a bump, but then lots of women don’t show until the last couple of months with their first baby. All I recall clearly about that night was the cruel insults …’ Dena paused, her lower lip trembling as if she was going to cry. ‘That was the last time I saw her. I made sure I didn’t run into her. I didn’t even know she’d left Pitlochry until Gregor told me she’d gone. She left without a word to anyone.’

  Eva could hear raw grief in this woman’s voice. As it was now two decades later, she wondered what Dena had been like when she found out Flora had left. But she wasn’t going to ask; she thought that might open a floodgate of tears.

  ‘Well, do you have any idea who my father could be?’ she asked instead.

  ‘None. He can’t have been from around here, or I would’ve known. And anyway, she was scornful of all the local men. Except Gregor, of course, but she treated him badly too. She had such a vicious streak! She reminded me sometimes of a cat playing with a mouse, she thought it was funny to tease and lead men on.’

  Eva winced. That wasn’t the kind of image she wanted to have of her mother as a young woman.

  ‘You didn’t like to hear that, did you?’ Dena asked, cocking her head to one side like a bird. ‘But it is true. I’ll tell you now, you must give up delving into Flora’s past. It’s better that you remember her as she was, as your mother, because I’m sure you saw the very best side of her.’

  ‘I can’t give it up, I need to know,’ Eva insisted.

  ‘There was a warning in the cards.’ Dena reached forward and grabbed Eva’s hands. ‘I didn’t know who you were then, or what it was about, yet even so it scared me. The snake card can mean many things, none of them good. One interpretation is the sleeping serpent: disturb it at your peril, for once its secrets are uncovered they will not be contained.’

  Eva loosened herself from Dena’s grip and turned to make the tea. She couldn’t make up her mind if the woman was barking mad or just delusional.

  ‘I am not going to give up,’ she said firmly as she handed Dena her tea. ‘It is important to me to find out about my mother, and hopefully to find my father.’

  ‘Then you must be prepared for more heartache,’ Dena said. She put down the tea without drinking it and stood up. ‘I sensed something very bad in your cards. I knew this bad thing hadn’t been done by you. But once you told me Flora was dead, I knew it was her. I am positive now that whatever it was, it was the reason she took her own life. Trust my instinct, Eva, and leave the sleeping serpent alone. No good will come of prodding it awake, it will put you in danger.’

  She was out of the door so fast Eva barely saw her move. Eva just stood there, too stunned to run after her and beg for further explanation.

  That same evening there was a knock on her door just as she was settling down to read Scruples by Judith Krantz, which she’d found that afternoon in a charity shop. She remembered people raving about it when it came out, but she’d never got around to reading it. She opened her door to find it was the receptionist, who said there was a telephone call for her.

  Eva had wanted to lose herself in a book, as she’d felt disturbed all day by what Dena had said. Her rational mind told her the woman was a dramatic crank who got some kind of perverse kick out of giving sinister and even threatening messages. Yet the image of a sleeping serpent was a strong and insidious one, and she couldn’t quite shake off the feeling that maybe Dena was on the level.

  Assuming the phone call was from her – Phil had said he doubted he’d be able to ring this evening, as he was working late – she ran down the stairs to take the call. She hoped Dena wanted to apologize for how she’d behaved, or had remembered something about Flora. The receptionist said she could take the call on an extension at the end of the reception desk.

  But the instant she picked up the phone and heard the familiar deep voice saying, ‘Eva, is that you?’ she trembled. Andrew was the one person she had never expected to hear from again. Especially here in Scotland.

  ‘Yes, it’s Eva. Is there something wrong with Sophie or Ben?’ She assumed that would be the only reason he would call her.

  ‘No, at least not aside from you filling Ben’s head with foolishness, and pestering Sophie,’ he said sharply. ‘What is all this about secret diaries of your mother’s?’

  Eva’s stomach turned a nervous somersault. Ben had promised that he would only ask discreet questions of his father. He wasn’t supposed to tell him about the diaries, or where she was. She’d only given Ben the phone number of the hotel in case he wanted to ring her back; the last thing she expected was for him to pass it on.

  ‘I found them in the attic at the studio,’ she said. ‘Why do you call it foolishness for Ben and I to be curious about our mother?’

  ‘It’s unhealthy and unnecessary. If she wanted you to know anything more about her, she would have told you.’

  ‘So why did she leave the diaries in a place she knew I would eventually find them?’

  ‘What’s in them?’ he asked. His voice rasped, as if he hated having to ask.

  ‘That would be telling,’ she said lightly. ‘Lots of stuff about you, and some of it very worrying,’ she lied.

  It felt good to get one over on him; she hoped he’d be worrying about it all night.

  When he didn’t come back with a retort, she knew she’d got him. ‘Thanks for ringing, I must get back to the diary. I’m in 1970 now. Tomorrow I’m planning to go and visit some of the places she mentions.’

  She put the phone down and turned to the receptionist. ‘If Mr Andrew Patterson rings again to speak to me, tell him I’ve left the hotel.’

  As Eva opened the door through to the staircase which led to the guest rooms, she heard the phone ring again. She paused, thinking that it was Andrew again, and looked back to the receptionist, who was answering it.

  ‘Will you hold the line a moment, sir?’ she said. Putting her hand over the receiver, she asked Eva if she wanted to speak to a Mr Marsh.

  ‘Oh yes,’ Eva assured her, and rushed back to the extension line gleefully.

  ‘That was quick,’ Phil said when she answered. ‘Were you s
itting on the reception desk?’

  ‘A lucky break, I was just nearby,’ she said breathlessly. ‘Though if I’d known you were going to ring, I would’ve been camped by the phone.’

  ‘I’m on a quick break so I can’t chat, much as I’d like to. Just wanted to say I’m definitely coming on Saturday afternoon, if that’s OK with you?’

  Eva’s heart did a flip with excitement. ‘That’s marvellous. Of course it’s more than OK, I can’t wait to see you.’

  Phil chuckled. ‘Well, that was a good response, because I can’t wait to see you too. I think the train gets into Pitlochry at about four thirty in the afternoon. I’ll double-check tomorrow and ring and leave a message for you. I’m frantically trying to finish this job, so I’ve got to go now. I’m looking forward to hearing all your news.’

  Eva went back upstairs bubbling with excitement, Andrew and Dena forgotten. Phil had been on her mind a great deal since she’d left London, often imagining erotic scenarios. She had a feeling that their relationship was about to change, and she couldn’t be more pleased about it.

  As Eva got ready to meet Phil on Saturday afternoon she had butterflies in her stomach. She’d had her hair trimmed and blow-dried that morning, had her legs waxed, painted her toenails, and bought a new set of undies, just in case.

  She smiled at herself in the mirror as she put on some lipstick. Her appearance in a blue T-shirt and jeans was perfect – she looked good, but she didn’t appear to have tried too hard. She’d also booked a room in the hotel for him. That would save her any potential embarrassment when he first got here.

  ‘Stay cool,’ she reminded herself. ‘Let him do the chasing.’

  An hour later, as she stood on the platform at Pitlochry and saw Phil step out of the train, her resolve to be cool vanished and she ran to hug him. It was only a week since she’d last seen him, but he seemed bigger, more handsome, and his returned hug was as enthusiastic as her own.

  ‘I feel like bursting into “I’d walk a million miles for one of your smiles”,’ he joked. ‘Maybe I ought to write one called “I went four hundred miles on the train to see her again”?’