He raised his head slowly, revealing a face that was ravaged, a face that had aged ten years in a single night. ‘I know.’
‘She bled to death while we were tripping our tits off on illegal drugs.’ A scene flashed into Jo’s mind, a red pool, Eve’s white face amid the swirling red that was dragging her under, drowning her. She blinked away the image and looked around at the real solid objects in the kitchen, the ashtray, the tray of cress growing on the windowsill, the rubber plant that Eve had coaxed back to life, the clock on the mantelpiece – it was still only 9.30 in the morning.
‘You okay?’ Scott was looking at her, and she realised that she was breathing loudly and faster than usual.
‘My God,’ she said. ‘I thought it was just the drugs, but I think I saw it . . . I think I actually saw the blood . . .’ Her whole body began to shake and her teeth started to chatter uncontrollably.
Scott scraped his chair back and came round to her side of the table. ‘You’re in shock,’ he said, resting his hand on her arm; ‘I think we both are.’ Then he picked up Eve’s green cardigan and draped it round Jo’s shoulders, which made her cry. He boiled the kettle and made them both tea with lots of sugar, and it did seem to help. He rolled two cigarettes, passed one to Jo then struck a match and lit them both. ‘What the fuck are we going to do, Jo?’
She smoked in silence for a minute. They’d have to call the police. One of them was going to have to walk to the phone box and dial 999. What words would they say? My friend is dead. Oh yes? And how did that happen? She had a baby and then she bled to death. And where were you when this occurred? Sitting on a settee about fifteen feet away. And why didn’t you . . . She took a drag of the thin roll-up. ‘We’ll be arrested for the drugs, definitely.’
Scott nodded. ‘But what else? We were in charge, weren’t we?’
It was a strange way of putting it and it made Scott suddenly seem very young, not a man at all but a boy, perhaps because it reminded her of when she was at primary school and was part of a group of children who were tidying up the Home Corner; her teacher had told her quietly that, as the most sensible one, she was in charge of making sure everything was done properly. Now it was clear to her that, not only was Scott just a boy, but she was just a girl. They had both behaved like stupid, irresponsible kids. Eve was the only one who’d had any sense, and now she was dead and it was their fault.
‘I think we should go.’
‘Go where?’
She looked at him, feeling more certain by the second. ‘No one ever comes to this house. I think we should clean her up, say goodbye to her, take Lily and go somewhere big, where we can disappear – London. We’ve got some money, we could find somewhere to stay, get jobs, start again . . .’
‘What?’ Scott said. ‘Are you mad? They’ll be looking for us.’
‘They won’t find us. No one knows our full names, do they? The bills here are in the name of Smith, we both work cash-in-hand, we’re not on the dole – we’re not even registered anywhere, are we? We can take anything that would identify us with us when we go.’
‘You’re saying we should just go and leave her here?’
Jo swallowed. The idea of leaving Eve all alone in the house was almost unbearable, but the alternative was worse.
‘They’ll take Lily, you know. Put her in some horrible children’s home.’
‘But I’m her dad.’
‘Who was so off his face on drugs that he sat and watched the mother of his child bleed to death!’
He flinched visibly.
‘Sorry, but it’s true.’ She was talking quickly now, a sense of urgency and excitement building. ‘They’ll say you’re not fit to look after her. And we live in a squat – people think that makes us drug addicts anyway.’ She waited, but he still didn’t say anything.
She took a breath and tried to make her voice calmer. ‘Look at it this way, Scott, if we go to the police now, we know for sure that we’ll be arrested for the drugs, they’ll take Lily away, and we’ll almost certainly be accused of – I don’t know what it’ll be, manslaughter, maybe—’
‘No! They couldn’t—’
‘Well, probably not manslaughter, but something. We let her die, Scott.’ She paused for a moment. ‘But if we take Lily and go, there’s a chance they may not find her for a while. We could change our names anyway, to be on the safe side.’
Scott stood and started pacing around the room, then he went out of the kitchen and along the hall to the living room where he stood outside the door for a moment before going in. Jo watched Lily sleeping as she waited for him to come out. What if he said no?
Then she heard his footsteps coming slowly back along the hall. He looked weary as he came back into the kitchen and sat down. ‘All right. Let’s do it.’
*
It was almost two in the afternoon by the time they were ready to leave. They hadn’t been able to clean Eve up as much as they’d have liked – there was just too much blood to deal with, and they’d had to keep stopping to give in to bouts of uncontrollable trembling or waves of nausea – but they’d washed her face, brushed her hair, and covered her with a clean white sheet. They packed the old shopping trolleys that they used for transporting stuff to the markets with a few clothes for themselves, but mostly with baby clothes, bedding, shawls and nappies. They scoured the house for papers bearing any of their names, but there were surprisingly few, and they put them in the bag she’d found all those months ago containing Eve’s birth certificate, driving licence and National Insurance number. Jo made up more bottles and a bag of cheese sandwiches, and as an afterthought, stuffed a few things from the larder into her trolley – Marmite, some jars of jam, tins of beans, packets of lentils and rice. Her stomach was churning – what if they couldn’t find anywhere to stay? They couldn’t sleep rough, not with a baby. Maybe they could find a squat? But how many squats would be suitable? No, she told herself, don’t think like that; it’s going to be fine. Including Eve’s money, they had almost ninety pounds between them. That would keep them going for a few weeks at least.
They each went in separately to say their goodbyes, Jo first, then Scott. He was tearful when he came out. ‘Right,’ he said. ‘Ready?’
Jo tucked Lily into the baby sling and kissed her head, marvelling once again at the softness of her hair. ‘Hang on a sec,’ she said to Scott. She hurried back into the kitchen and rummaged in the drawer for some scissors. Carefully, she selected a lock of Lily’s silky hair and snipped, then she went back into the living room. Tenderly, she pulled back the sheet and placed the lock of hair on Eve’s chest, at about the point where a locket would sit if she were wearing one. ‘This is your daughter’s hair,’ she whispered. ‘I will love her for you, for ever.’ And she kissed Eve’s forehead before covering her again and leaving the room, shutting the door quietly as if afraid of waking her.
Jo instinctively pulled on her parka, but with Lily nestling against her chest, it was impossible to zip up, so she took the big tent-coat Eve had bought at a jumble sale and buttoned it easily, keeping Lily snug inside.
‘Lily Hannah,’ she said as they walked up the hill to the station. ‘Did she tell anyone she was going to call her Lily?’
‘I don’t know. Who would she tell? She’s barely been out for weeks.’
‘All the same, maybe we should call her Hannah Lily. Just in case.’
*
At the station, they were about to board the train when a porter came hurrying along the platform towards them. Jo couldn’t move. This was it; they’d been found out already. But then the porter smiled and said, ‘Not long now, eh?’ then took her arm and helped her up the step into the carriage. ‘Me and me missus have just had our own nipper, so I know what it’s like.’ He lifted the trolleys in while Scott took the bags. ‘When you due, love?’ He nodded towards the bump that Lily made under the huge coat.
She hesitated, unsure how to answer, then Scott chipped in. ‘Only a couple more weeks. Thanks for your help, mate. Ch
eers.’ He smiled at the man and pulled the carriage door shut. Jo’s heart was hammering as they found their seats in the empty carriage. ‘You idiot,’ she hissed. ‘What the hell did you say that for?’
‘Well, it disguises us, doesn’t it? If they’re looking for a bloke and a girl with a baby, all he’s seen is a bloke with a girl who’s pregnant.’
‘But what if she’d cried or something?’
Scott looked at her, and for a moment she thought he was going to cry. ‘I didn’t think of that.’
They sat opposite each other in silence, both still a little stunned by what had happened and by what they’d done. Jo was conscious of the warm weight of Lily, no, Hannah; she must get used to calling her Hannah, asleep on her chest. She unbuttoned her coat so that she could gaze at the little whorl of still sticky dark hair and remind herself what she’d promised Eve. She was now a mother.
Unable to look at Scott, she turned her head to the window and for a few minutes allowed her mind to go blank as the houses and back gardens with their washing lines, bikes and discarded toys whizzed past. Then she became aware of her own reflection looking back at her. She tried to look past it into the gardens, but its gaze became more insistent, as though it were another person. A few spots of rain fell onto the glass but the speed of the train pulled them sideways, so it was as if the rain was falling horizontally. She could feel her own eyes boring into her, like when you stare and stare at someone until they can’t help but look back at you. She gave in and looked, and for a split second, it was Eve staring back. She slipped her hand into her coat pocket and allowed her fingers to close around Eve’s birth certificate, now her birth certificate.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Sheffield, October 2010
I’m on a train to Hastings. It’s been raining all morning and the sky is dark and overcast, making it feel like late afternoon even though it’s not yet lunchtime. I look at my reflection in the train window, and I try to see Eve looking back at me, but I can’t seem to conjure up her face any more.
This is the second time I’ve been down to visit her grave since I found out where she was. It was strange the first time, knowing her remains were there but with nothing to say it was her. But they put the headstone up last week, so that’s why I’m going down today. I emailed Hannah to ask if she’d like to choose the stone and what she wanted on it, but she didn’t reply. I write letters now, almost every week, but she never replies to those either.
I chose the headstone myself in the end; it’s quite small and made of smooth white marble, with a built-in flower holder at the bottom. I sent Hannah a picture. Then I wrote again to tell her when they were putting it up, and that I’d chosen a simple inscription: Eve, beloved mother. I find I’m impatient to see it now.
*
I walk along the straight gravel path past the neatly trimmed grass and the regimented lines of plots. Eve would have hated the way the cemetery looks; this part of it, at least, where there are so few headstones because this is where they bury the unnamed, the unidentified. Eve would have preferred the ancient cemetery in Sheffield. It’s not used for burials any more, but it’s a pretty walk, a rambling, overgrown place full of worn headstones and memorials adorned with tiny cherubs, chipped Grecian urns, Celtic crosses and weeping stone angels.
As I turn into the row of plots where Eve is buried, I see immediately that Hannah did receive my letter, because there are sunflowers, five big bright blooms, perfectly arranged in the holder. I know Hannah likes sunflowers; Eve did, too. Is that a coincidence, I wonder? I crouch down to touch them. Hannah has put these flowers here; it may have even been today. I wonder if she brought Toby. I wonder if she stayed and talked to her mother. For a moment, l feel unbearably lonely; a gust of wind sweeps across the grass, stripping some of the petals from the sunflowers and somehow intensifying my sadness.
The stone is rather lovely, and its simplicity sets off the beautiful lettering. I trace the words with my fingertips: beloved mother, and then Eve.
The sunflowers look nice against the white stone. ‘These are from your daughter,’ I say aloud. ‘She’s very like you, Eve, in lots of ways. She’s kind, and clever, and strong. You’d be so proud.’ I pause; I can hear the wind moving in the trees. And then I realise that I want to keep talking, and so I do. I tell her how sorry I am for leaving her; I tell her how much I love Hannah, how much Duncan loves her, too. I try to explain how scared I was back then that they’d take her away. I carry on talking, babbling away with tears streaming down my face, and I don’t stop even when a group of people walk past and I can feel them looking, wondering whether they should do anything or tell someone.
After a while, I straighten up and blow my nose. Silly really. I didn’t need to come here to talk to Eve; I could have talked to her anywhere, at any time. But there’s something about seeing her name on the headstone, something about giving it back to her, I suppose, that makes me feel close to her again, as though she’s actually here, rather than it simply being the place where her remains are buried. As I stand here talking to her, I realise that I’m becoming increasingly reluctant to leave. I know it’s stupid and irrational, but it feels like the moment I walk away from here, I’ll be abandoning her all over again.
I can hardly believe it was over thirty years ago; strange to think that Eve will be for ever twenty. When Hannah was that age she still seemed very young. At least, she did to me. And yet I remember Eve as being almost a mother figure as well as a friend; she made me feel safe; she taught me things, and she was proud of me. But we’d both needed mothers back then. It was one of the reasons I’d relished the chance to help her when she was expecting Hannah. I wanted to look after her, to take care of her just as she’d taken care of me. But in the end I let her down. ‘I’m sorry, Eve,’ I whisper eventually, and as I finally walk away, I feel myself give a small, involuntary wave.
*
I’m not ready to go back to Sheffield yet, so after I leave the cemetery, I go walking, and somehow, I find myself standing at the foot of the cliffs at Covehurst Bay, the wind whipping my hair around my face. This is where Eve taught me to swim. It occurs to me that this is another thing Hannah might like to know about her mother, so I allow my mind to drift back so that I can recall the details which, when I get home later, I’ll put into a letter.
I remember the first day we came here. It was a half-hour walk from the East Hill down a narrow, rocky path that wound in and out of woodland so that sometimes we were in the shade, sometimes in the sunshine. That first day the sun was so fierce that it made the skin on my arms prickle. The path was dry and dusty, and by the time we came to the painted wooden sign that said To the beach, I was beginning to look forward to being in the cool water, although every time I thought of actually swimming, my stomach turned over.
‘This way,’ Eve said, turning onto another path. I could hear the gentle hiss of the waves scurrying up the beach, but we still had to climb down another steep path, holding on to tree roots and rocks until we came to a clearing where the ground levelled out and we could see the sea, shimmering and glassy in the distance. There was a three foot drop onto the beach, and we both jumped down, sending pebbles spraying up behind us. The beach here was almost empty. It was sandier, not so steeply shelved as Hastings beach, and the waves were more gentle; the sea even looked bluer.
Eve smiled. ‘See what I mean? The water’s always calm here – probably something to do with the shape of the bay. It’s gorgeous to look at, isn’t it? Although personally, I prefer it when the sea’s a bit more lively.’
Eve was never happier than when the waves were crashing into the sea wall and the spray was going twenty feet in the air and drenching all the traffic on the coast road. I quite enjoyed watching the huge waves and listening to the heavy thuds as they hit the wall, but I didn’t like standing too close because when I looked over the wall, I was overcome by an almost physical fear, not so much of falling, or of being swept away, but of what I might do. It was a ter
rifying sensation that manifested as a sort of effervescence in my ankles and fingertips, as if there were some hidden presence inside me that might suddenly turn against me and make me leap over the wall and down into the grip of the deep, powerful water.
‘But this is just right if you’re learning to swim,’ Eve continued. ‘Come on.’ She took my hand. ‘Let’s get started.’ She led me into the water and turned to offer me the other hand as well. ‘First of all,’ she said, tucking her elbows in at her sides, ‘treat my hands like a float. Just hold on, and kick your feet up behind you.’
I did as she said, but I didn’t want to splash her too much.
‘Come on! Kick harder, make some noise. Okay, rest. Now, try again, only try to get your bottom up higher, right to the top of the water, so you can feel the sun. I know,’ she grinned. ‘Pretend you’re trying to get a bum-tan!’
I had to put my feet down, because Eve was making me laugh. But then I tried again, and concentrated on pushing my body up so that it felt almost straight. I nearly panicked when I felt her grip loosen, but she grabbed me again quickly. Then she got me to lie on my front with my arms out while she put her hands under my stomach to support me.
‘Look,’ she said. ‘I’m lifting you, and I’m holding on to your costume so you can’t fall, but it’s actually the water that’s keeping you up. Try and let your body relax, then you’ll feel safer.’
I could feel the warmth of Eve’s hands against my stomach; I made a conscious effort to relax, and she was right, I did feel safer. Soon I could lie flat on the surface with my face in the water, as long as Eve was supporting me. I was virtually floating on my own, but I loved the feel of her hands, warm and solid, keeping me afloat.
The lessons continued every day, sometimes twice if I wasn’t working. Eve showed me how to float on my back, and how to move my arms as if I was doing backstroke. Then she showed me how to do a front crawl and how to coordinate my arm movements and turn my head so as to take a breath, all the time supporting me, keeping me safe. After a week, she said she wanted to take her hands away to see if I could stay up on my own. What followed wasn’t real swimming, but frantic doggie-paddle. But at least I stayed up, even if it was only for a few seconds. Then she moved a few feet away from me and held her arms out. ‘Come on, Jo. See if you can swim to me.’
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