Forgive Me

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘I can imagine,’ Olive said in sympathy. ‘You’ve been through hell, Eva, and it sounds as if it will get worse before it gets better. But if there’s anything I can do, anything at all, even if you just need someone to let off steam to, I’ll be there. You can just leave a message on the answerphone for me, and I’ll pop round. Everyone at work is thinking of you and your family. They all want to express their sympathy and affection too, but I did tell them you need privacy just now.’

  ‘I really appreciate their kindness. Do tell them that I miss them all, and think of them a lot. Perhaps one day when this is all over I can pop in and say hello to them …’ She paused then, overcome by emotion.

  Olive put her arm around her and gave her a rather awkward hug. ‘I’m no good at this kind of thing,’ she said. ‘I think when I was designed they left out the “ability to demonstrate affection” bit. But I think you know that I care about you, Eva. So forgive me for my shortcomings.’

  Eva gave her a watery smile. ‘You’ve proved to me many times that you’ve got a big heart,’ she said. ‘If you started to get soppy with me now, I’d find it scary.’

  Olive planted a kiss on her forehead and said she had to get back to work. ‘Keep in touch, even if it’s only a couple of words on a postcard or the briefest phone call. And ask that man of yours to feed you up. You are getting very skinny.’

  On Thursday afternoon Patrick arrived with all his customary warmth and strength – and a couple of bags of food from Marks and Spencer. ‘I’m betting you haven’t felt much like shopping or even eating much, so I got a few treats.’

  He had rung Eva the previous night to suggest he came, and it was just what Eva needed. She was finding it hard to cope with Sophie’s mood swings. One minute it seemed like she was on the mend – calm, rational and even talking about the future – the next she was crying, full of self-recrimination and convinced that her whole life was ruined for ever. In the blink of an eye she veered from hating her father to feeling sorry for him. Whatever Eva said was wrong, and there were moments when Eva wanted to run away and hide from it all. She was all talked out, her sympathy was drying up, and although she might have promised Sophie she would support her till she was strong enough to stand alone, she could feel herself buckling under the strain.

  Ben had telephoned in the morning to say that Andrew’s surgeon had contacted him. He reported that the operation had gone well and he was cautiously optimistic for his father’s recovery. He was being kept in a coma for now, to aid the healing process, and when they did bring him out of it they would assess if he had any permanent brain damage.

  It was typical of Ben to say little about his own plight. He was happy to tell her he had been busy finding a solicitor to help him sort out the Power of Attorney. And he had also arranged an introductory meeting with another solicitor in the same practice who handled criminal cases. But he dismissed Eva’s anxious questions about how he felt. All he would say was that immersing himself in his studies worked for him, and that he wasn’t allowing himself to look further ahead than a week at a time.

  Eva felt that meant he was avoiding thinking about himself. And because of that, she didn’t burden him with her anxiety about Sophie. She could share that with Patrick – she knew his advice would be sound, and Sophie would probably feel more secure with an older man around.

  As Eva had expected, Patrick was brilliant with Sophie, hugging her and telling her she was beautiful. He struck just the right note, saying he hoped she would look upon him as an uncle, and that he’d come to offer support – not to judge or criticize.

  It was good to have him there that evening. They had a meal together, and Sophie came out of herself a bit, telling Patrick how she’d wanted to be an actress but had been turned down at an audition for drama school.

  ‘Even if you aren’t made of the right stuff to be an actress, there are other jobs going in the film, TV and theatre world,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Backstage work, costumes, make-up, all sorts. I could make some inquiries for you – I know lots of people in that world.’

  Later, they watched television together. Sophie lay with her head on Eva’s lap and seemed much calmer. When Eva went up to tuck her into bed at the end of the evening she said how nice Patrick was, and that she was sorry she was being such a drip. Eva’s response was to laugh and say she thought Sophie was entitled to be a drip for a while.

  Eva stayed up with Patrick for some time, talking over all that had happened. She felt she had to tell him how shaky she was feeling.

  ‘I’d been sinking into a black hole since Christmas,’ she admitted. ‘The stuff about the fire was dragging me down, and then Freya. And I was being horrible to Phil. That Sunday I saw you at Pottery Lane I resolved to pull myself together, and that same evening I went out with Phil for a meal and we had a good time. So I felt things were taking a turn for the better. But that very night all this happened. I didn’t have time to consider how I felt at the time, I just had to come and take over, but now –’ She broke off in a flood of tears.

  He hugged her to his chest and let her cry. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said. ‘You’ve had one hell of a year – even the strongest will in the world would crack with it. But why don’t you try to tell me about what’s worrying you most now?’

  ‘I can’t see an end to it, that’s the biggest thing. This house, Sophie, Ben – I can’t just walk away from it all when I’ve had enough. Sophie needs looking after, and I want to do the right thing by her. But how long can I reasonably go on doing that for?’ She leaned back, moving away from him. ‘And I keep worrying about stupid stuff – like what we’ll do with all the furniture when the house is sold, and how to pay the bills when they come in. It’s really scary.’

  ‘OK. First, there’s no point in worrying now about what will happen when the house is sold. That might be a year on – or it might never be sold. As for the bills, that’s a far more sensible thing to worry about. And the solution is to sell something from the house to pay them and to buy food for you and Sophie. Is there any of your mother’s jewellery around? Any antiques? That china cabinet there, for example.’ He pointed to a walnut bow-fronted cabinet in the alcove by the fire. ‘If I’m not much mistaken, that’s Queen Anne and must be worth at least six or seven hundred pounds. That would solve any immediate money worries. But you should talk to Ben about it at the weekend and get his approval. Likewise, you should have a chat with him about Sophie too. Maybe she has a friend in Cheltenham she could move in with in a few weeks’ time, or perhaps she could go to Leeds and share a flat with Ben? But I suspect that there’s something else the matter. Whatever it was that got you down in London isn’t resolved. Can you tell me about that?’

  ‘I just kept wanting to be alone,’ she said in little more than a whisper, because she felt ashamed to voice it. ‘I didn’t want people around me. I was even pushing Phil away, and I love him. I used to daydream of being in a little house miles from anywhere, with absolutely no one asking anything of me. Isn’t that crazy?’

  ‘Not at all. I’ve felt like that many times in my life,’ he admitted.

  ‘You have?’ She was astonished.

  Patrick smiled and stroked her cheek affectionately. ‘Oh yes. The time I remember best of all was after Flora left me, and I was living in Pottery Lane. People kept coming round, trying to jolly me along. But all I wanted to do was to be utterly alone, in silence. It got so bad I didn’t answer the door or the phone. I used to go for a walk at night, so I wouldn’t run into anyone. People who were concerned about me tried to get me to go to yoga, on blind dates, adopt weird diets, or take tranquillizers. They didn’t understand that I was OK alone, that people were the problem. Mostly I found they only really came round, under the guise of sympathy, so they could tell me their own troubles. I felt like I was a crutch to half the world.’

  ‘How did you get over it?’ Eva asked.

  ‘I went to Canada.’

  Eva was surprised that was his solution. ‘That�
�s why you went there? I thought you had a job lined up?’

  ‘I had had a tentative offer of work there, but nothing definite. I was just running away from everyone and everything. I didn’t go to the people I knew there – not for a while. I travelled around, looking at the breathtaking scenery. And the beauty of the mountains, forests and lakes cured me.’

  ‘That sounds wonderful. But I can’t run away, though,’ she said, pulling a glum face. ‘Sophie and Ben need me to be strong for them, to stay here keeping things together.’

  ‘No, you can’t, not now. But later, when this is all over – and it will be over, you must believe that. Then you can go somewhere peaceful. But I’ll pass on a tip to you that always works for me. When you are feeling stressed and worn out, lie back in a chair or in bed and picture a turquoise sea, palm trees and a white sandy beach with no one on it but you. Listen for the sound of gulls and the waves lapping, feel the hot sun burning into your skin. Just keep that image in your head, and let your mind float off there.’

  ‘I’ll try it tonight,’ she said. ‘Thank you, Patrick. I feel a bit better just for talking about how I feel.’

  The following morning it felt like summer was almost here, with warm sunshine and a clear blue sky. Over breakfast Patrick suggested they go out to the Cotswolds for a walk and to have some lunch in a pub. Sophie seemed very listless and distant, but she didn’t put up any resistance to the plan.

  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!’

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  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 Patt
erson 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.