26
Evie
Three minutes had never felt so long. Alone in her sterile white en-suite, Evie sat on the closed toilet lid with her knees pulled up to her chest, watching the time as it dragged itself towards that third minute, the minute that could change her whole future.
Dread wrapped itself around her insides, snaking through her ribcage and clutching at her heart, lungs. Maybe she would die now of fear, and never have to deal with the consequences of her actions.
A small bleep indicated that her time was up. The walls of the bathroom seemed closer together, claustrophobic and suffocating. Evie put her face in her hands. What the hell had she done?
Slowly she stood on legs that didn’t even feel like hers. When this was over it would either be the end of life as she knew it, or a silly overreaction. This was a moment of extremes – there was no in between.
Picking up the small white stick, she turned it over. It only took a second to see, two bright pink lines marking out her fate. Strangely, she didn’t fall to the floor, faint or be sick. Evie simply slipped the stick into her handbag, a light feeling of finality seeping over her. The waiting was worse than the knowing. That was that, then. She was going to be a mother.
27
Rebecca
I’ve already decided I’m not going to tell Richard about Evie’s affair when I go to visit him the next day. I’d contemplated not telling him about Thomas turning up here at all but he’s going to find out eventually, that bastard has a stone in his shoe about something and he isn’t going anywhere until he dislodges it. Even if that means dislodging our lives at the same time.
Plus, of course, I have to make him aware that I’m his alibi as quickly as possible – before Thomas goes to question him and he gives me away completely. Truth is, I’m not exactly sure where Richard was at the moment Evie went over those cliffs – I was too busy watching for the man she was arguing with to reappear, waiting to see if he had been successful in dragging Evie back off the edge. For all I know Richard could have been swinging from the chandeliers with both of Evie’s bridesmaids – the thought makes me chuckle.
I bang on his front door, noting that the house is in darkness. It’s a long while before he appears, fingers clutching at the doorjamb. All the blood has seeped from his face, leaving it a deathly grey. His pallor makes his deep brown eyes, underlined with heavy grey circles, stand out.
‘What is it?’ I ask immediately. ‘Have they found her?’
‘What?’ He looks distracted, thrown by the question. He’s leaning against the doorframe as though it’s the only way he can stay upright. I think he might be sick.
‘Have they found her, Richard? Have they found Evie?’
‘No,’ Richard shakes his head. ‘Nothing like that.’
‘Then what’s happened? You look like you’ve seen a ghost.’
For a moment I think that maybe he has. Maybe he’s seen Evie’s ghost the way I’ve felt it – at times the air so thick with her that I can feel her fingers around my neck, choking the life from me.
‘She wasn’t sick.’
I have no clue what he’s talking about. Who wasn’t sick? Evie? And then it dawns on me. He’d asked his solicitor to get hold of Evie’s medical records to try and fathom her actions. If she had been dying it would all make sense, an unselfish act by someone who didn’t want to make her friends and family suffer. But she wasn’t sick. I already knew that. I just didn’t think Richard would be allowed access to those records until she was officially registered as dead – seven years from now. Shit.
‘Well that’s good, isn’t it?’ I hope he can’t hear the falter in my voice. Because I know what’s coming. ‘That she wasn’t coping with some terminal illness on her own? I’d feel terrible if she felt she couldn’t tell me that—’
‘Because she told you everything, right?’ Richard snaps. I recoil at the malice in his voice. He knows.
‘Obviously not everything, otherwise I’d know why . . . but I thought she did, until now . . .’
‘No, she didn’t tell you everything. She didn’t tell either of us everything. She was pregnant.’ His face crumples. ‘She was pregnant, Rebecca, and she never even told me.’
28
Evie
‘Oh dear God, Evie.’ Her mother stumbled to her feet and pushed past her into her bedroom’s en-suite where Evie could hear her retching into the toilet. When she reappeared she leaned against the doorway for support, her face as pale grey as the wall. She lifted a towel to her face and Evie heard her mumble through it, ‘This is all my fault.’
Given the seriousness of the situation, Evie fought back her instinct to laugh bitterly. Leave it to her mother to find a way to make everything about her. As much as she loved Monique, she didn’t feel up to consoling or reassuring her that her teenage daughter getting knocked up wasn’t her fault. Just once, she’d hoped for some comfort of her own, for her mum to hold her and tell her it would all be okay.
Now Monique stalked the floor on unsteady feet, her hands working furiously at whatever she could get them on, picking at her nails, fingers raking through her hair. If she was having another episode Evie would have to call the doctor, again.
‘Have you told anyone else?’
Evie shook her head. She had wanted to tell Harriet, but her best friend had never been the type to keep secrets, and unless Evie wanted the news all over town before the end of the day she was best to keep quiet.
‘Okay,’ her mother nodded, pleased with her answer. She looked at Evie again and her eyes brimmed with tears. ‘I know what we’re going to have to do.’
Evie felt a wash of relief at the word ‘we’. She wasn’t alone any more. For once in her life her mother was going to be on her side, she was going to be there for her, support her.
‘We need to deal with this before your father finds out. He can never know, Evie, do you understand?’
Evie shook her head, confused. How would he not know? Even her father, as busy as he always was with work, would notice something like a baby popping up around the household.
‘We’re going to have to tell him eventually,’ her voice was small.
‘No,’ her mother shook her head. ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. I know a doctor in Pembrokeshire who can help us. He will be very discreet, not like Patterson, who would have called your father by the end of our session. This man, he’s helped me before. He’s kind, and he will be able to get us the referral you need. You don’t have to worry, baby, I will be with you the whole time.’
Evie was no longer confused, she knew exactly what her mother was talking about. At the word ‘referral’ her heart had begun to pump faster in her chest, her throat closing in around her words. She knew now how her father would never find out, and why they were going to Pembrokeshire. Her mother wanted her to abort her baby.
‘I’m not getting rid of it.’
If it were possible for her mother’s already pale face to turn any whiter, Evie was sure it did. She froze, and gripped one hand with the other, her nails scratching at the inside of her palm.
‘What do you mean, you’re not getting rid of it? Surely you don’t think you can have this baby?’
‘I’m not saying it will be easy,’ Evie said. ‘I know how hard it is, Mama. But I can’t just kill my baby.’
Her mother moved towards her, wrapping her arms around her daughter’s shoulders in what Evie assumed was supposed to be a comforting gesture. But Monique’s arms were spindly, bony and cold, and the gesture just felt stilted. There was none of the warmth Evie so desperately craved. She could feel her mother shaking and wondered who was comforting who.
‘You don’t understand, Evelyn, you’re so young, you wouldn’t understand. But your father would never allow it. And it can’t be allowed . . . If it were any other boy perhaps, but not this one . . .’
‘This is pathetic!’ Evie screamed, pulling away from her mother who flinched at the sound. Ladies don’t shout, remember, Evelyn? A
nd they certainly don’t get pregnant – especially by boys their daddies don’t like very much. ‘Your stupid feud with these people – you would force me to kill your grandchild because you don’t like its grandfather? For God’s sake, it’s all a bunch of playground crap! Dad will just have to get over it, and the pair of them will have to act like adults and accept that James and I are together and there’s nothing you two can do about it.’
Her mother’s hand connected against Evie’s face with a sickening snap. Evie stepped back in shock, her cheek burning hot. In seventeen years her mother had never raised a hand to her. Even Monique’s eyes were wide with shock and fear.
‘I’m so sorry. Sweetheart, please.’ Her mother stepped forwards but Evie recoiled in shock, avoiding the hands grasping towards her. ‘I’m sorry, I . . .’
‘Don’t touch me!’ Evie turned her face away, blinking furiously to stop the tears from falling. ‘I’m keeping this baby, Mama.’
‘Fine.’ The apologies had dried up as quickly as they had begun. ‘If you’re determined to go ahead with having this . . . it, I think we should see what your father says about the whole thing. Yes,’ she muttered, almost to herself. ‘Let Dominic deal with it.’
29
Richard
Pregnant.
Richard pictured Evie as he’d last seen her, long white dress swooshing around her dirty bare feet, her hair falling from the pins that had held it tightly in place for the ceremony. Her green eyes sparkling with happiness, a glass of water in her hand.
Water. He’d thought she was pacing herself, assumed she’d been drinking champagne in between the glasses of Pellegrino, but now he thought about it he couldn’t actually remember her drinking at all for a while. She hadn’t made it obvious but hindsight, they say, is twenty-twenty. Not to mention that, despite how nervous she’d been about the wedding day, he hadn’t seen her slip off for a cigarette lately either. Evie didn’t smoke in front of him – he hated the smell – but when he wasn’t around he knew she would sneak off to light one up, a mischievous twinkle in her eye when she returned. He’d lost count of the amount of times he’d been working all evening and come home to the faintest smell of weed under the air freshener. It made him smile, to think of his carefree, bohemian wife who had never been controlled by anyone in the years he’d known her – probably in her life – spraying the patio with air freshener and scrubbing her teeth before he came home. She didn’t have to, Richard would have let her get away with murder, but that glint in her eye as she covered up her ‘crime’. . . He had enjoyed acting like he didn’t know, letting her have her moment of defiance.
Something about all this felt so wrong. A baby? Why hadn’t Evie told him she was pregnant? How could she be so selfish as to kill herself while she was carrying his child? She hadn’t just deprived him of a wife now, she had deprived him of a whole family. And why had she stopped drinking and smoking if she’d known she was about to kill herself, and her child? But the biggest one – the one he didn’t have room for in his head it was so huge and yet it continued to slip in at the edges anyway. Was the child his?
No, he wouldn’t entertain that. Instead he fixed on all of the reasons that this new information changed what he already knew. None of it made sense. Why would you take such care of something you knew you were about to kill? And why bother with doctor’s appointments at all? Unless it was a spur-of-the-moment thing – Evie was all about the last-minute decisions. Until now he’d pictured this as a planned event, a meticulously contrived betrayal, but her pregnancy put an entirely new spin on things. She wouldn’t plan to kill her baby, he was sure of it. Evie was a wonderful, gentle, loving woman and would have been an amazing mother. He wouldn’t say out loud what this meant to him, he didn’t want to hear Rebecca tell him he was being stupid, overreacting, that he was emotional or in shock.
Because now, more than ever, he believed that his wife had been murdered.
30
Evie
Evie lay on her bed, watching a small spider crawl across the ceiling, stop halfway and make its way back. How easy it must be, to spend your days weaving webs and laying eggs, she thought. No one to scream at you that you were ruining your life, the way her father had done, no one to put you under house arrest. House arrest. It sounded archaic, a historic way of dealing with naughty children, and yet that was the exact situation seventeen-year-old Evie Rousseau found herself in now. Confined to her bedroom while the adults decided what to do with her.
Telling him had been worse than she’d imagined.
‘How could you be so stupid?’ he’d yelled, every word worse than a slap to the face. Her father had never raised a hand to her in her life but at that moment she swore he was close. ‘Do you have any idea what you’ve done? No, of course you don’t. I warned him I would kill him if he ever went near you—’
‘Dominic,’ her mother said softly as Evie began to sob.
‘And you!’ he rounded on her mother now, his face growing redder by the second. ‘This is all your fault! Can you see what you’ve done? Do you understand?’
‘Of course I see,’ her mother whispered, but she shrank backwards and Evie knew her support was wavering.
Once his yelling and hand-waving, complete with a diatribe of expletives in his native tongue, had subsided she had been sent away in tears so that he could talk to her mother in private, her phone confiscated, all contact with the outside world forbidden. She was lucky she wasn’t shackled to the wall in the cellar, although she may as well have been. However comfortable her bedroom, she was no less a prisoner.
Evie’s hand slid to her belly. It was too soon to feel the life growing inside her move – her baby was less than ten weeks in the womb – but still she felt its presence as keenly as though it was in her arms. She’d never expected to feel this way. She’d ignored her first missed period and put it down to confusion over dates, but when it still hadn’t come a month later she’d known in her heart, and she’d been petrified. She didn’t want a baby, she would get rid of it, she decided immediately. It wasn’t until she’d seen those two pink lines that the reality of her situation had hit her, and she’d known that she could never kill something that was a part of her – and a part of James.
James. Not being able to contact him was the worst part. During the weeks following that day in the hotel they had barely been out of contact – snatched moments in the village at weekends, text messages late into the night. Now, not being able to have him comfort her, share her anxiety and excitement about their child – it was all she could do not to climb out of the window and walk the five miles to his home.
After what seemed like hours of waiting to hear her fate, and the fate of her baby, there was a knock at the door. Evie expected it to be Yasmin, calling her downstairs like a prisoner to face the jury, but it was her mother’s face she saw, raw and puffy from her tears.
‘I brought you some stew,’ she said, carrying the tray in and placing the steaming bowl on the dresser, next to a plate of crusty bread. ‘You need to eat.’
‘Where’s Papa?’ Evie demanded. ‘What did he say?’
‘Your father has gone to the Addlingtons, to speak with James and his parents.’
Evie froze. ‘Noooo,’ she moaned. ‘I should be the one to tell him. What is Papa thinking?’ How humiliating. Even now, now she was to be a mother, she was still being treated like a child. ‘He should have at least taken me with him.’
‘No,’ her mother shook her head. ‘He doesn’t want you to have the stress of confrontation,’ she lowered her voice to a hushed whisper, although God knows why because there was no one in earshot that couldn’t have already heard the screaming that had taken place earlier. ‘He has gone to demand that James marries you before the baby is born.’
Evie groaned as though she was in physical pain. ‘No! Mama – do you have any idea how humiliating that will be? And not to mention that neither James nor I want to get married yet! This isn’t the Victorian era – plenty of peop
le have babies without getting married. And let’s say for a moment James says yes – how will it look, me rolling down the aisle the size of a house? You think people won’t know it’s a shotgun wedding? It will be the talk of the town anyway.’
‘Do you think we don’t know that? Do you think any of us have the first idea how to deal with this? Evie, your father is just trying to do his best by his little girl – and yes, his approach may be a little hot-headed and over the top but believe me when I say he loves you and he’s only trying to do the right thing by you. He’s so, so frightened.’
Of course she had thought about marrying James in the future, didn’t all seventeen-year-olds in their first throes of love? But it had been on their own terms, with James making a grand gesture of a proposal, down on one knee, perhaps on the Eiffel Tower – Papa would like that touch. Never in her dreams had it been some forced, arranged affair, James bullied into marriage by her father. She pictured Dominic holding him by the ear and dragging him down the aisle while she stood back, her circus tent of a wedding dress billowing behind her. Evie took a few deep breaths to steady her nerves. Okay – this wasn’t the end of the world. As long as James just agreed to the wedding for now – they had plenty of time to convince their parents to wait a while, until after the baby was born and they’d had time to adjust to being a family. This was all about damage control – and hopefully James would see that too.
She wondered how he would react to the news of the baby, wishing she was there to see his face when her father told him that there was a little piece of him growing inside her. Would they have a boy, or a girl? What would it look like? Would it have James’ dark shock of hair, or her fair golden halo? Whose eyes would it get? More than anything she wished she could see his reaction, have him take her in his arms and tell her that it would be okay – that yes, they may be young but they would face this together.
The Night She Died Page 10
