by Susan Lewis
Elaine came in gently. ‘You don’t need to make excuses for her any more,’ she said in a whisper, ‘or for yourself.’
Seeming to accept that, Patty took a small, crumpled envelope from her bag and Eva felt her senses starting to swim, almost as though she was disconnecting from reality, merely watching and listening to a scenario she had no part in. This note was from her mother, written by her, the last words she’d spoken to her family. It felt so unbelievably important that it was a moment or two before she could make herself take it.
‘Would you like us to leave you alone to read it?’ Elaine offered as Eva looked down at the envelope. ‘If you prefer, you can take it home to read later.’
Eva was staring at her father’s name and thinking of the woman who’d written it – and the terror it must have struck to his heart when he’d found it.
Without answering she pulled the note free and unfolded it.
My darling Edward,
Just those three words made her feel oddly dizzy, as though she was in a place she wasn’t meant to be and could find no way out.
I am truly sorry to say goodbye this way, but I cannot go on hurting you and our children the way I am. I am so afraid of myself and what I might do, the harm I could cause to your innocent lives without meaning to. I have tried so hard to overcome these terrible, morbid feelings that blight me, to return to the woman I used to be, but the time has come for me to accept that she is never coming back. Please try to remember me as I was before this started, when we were so much in love and happy to be together. I am truly lucky to have known you, Edouardo, my love. It’s breaking my heart to see how you’re suffering now. You deserve so much more. You should be with someone who can love and care for you in the way I used to, so please think of my departure as a gift of freedom, not as a burden of sadness, or guilt, or blame. I am wholly responsible for what I am about to do, please don’t ever forget that.
Please tell Patty to think only of the times when she was sure of me and of herself, and when the sun used to shine on our world. She’s a beautiful, gentle girl who I know will always take good care of Eva. As Eva grows up she will have questions: whatever else you tell her, please remember to say, often, that I loved her and that if it is at all possible I will be looking over her and taking care of her from my next life. Perhaps I’ll be able to make a better job of it from there. Like Patty, Eva is also a beautiful girl, so adorable and mischievous – a real handful for her sister who copes so well. How am I able to see and say these things and know them to be true, and yet still find myself in the depths of despair? Even knowing that I have so much to be thankful for seems to make no difference. When I say that I love you, Edward, it no longer lights up my soul, it weights me with the guilt of what I am doing to you and the fear of what I have become.
As I leave you, my darling, I shall pray for your happiness and the chance that one day, somehow, we shall be together again,
Your Hannah
Long after she’d stopped reading Eva continued to stare at the letter, feeling the tragedy of her mother’s helplessness stealing through her like a pain. She remembered the day she’d sat where she was now and her mother had seemed close by. She found herself wondering if she was with them now, watching and listening, and trying to connect with her daughters on a level that was so profoundly mysterious and powerful that it would never be possible for them to fully understand it. It was simply there, she realised, the bond that joined them together, as invisible, yet as potent, as the aromas filling the air, and as gentle as the light in her stepmother’s eyes. They weren’t alone, she and Patty, and they could never be apart.
In the end Eva looked at Patty, and seeing how lost and worried her sister seemed, she felt her heart turn over. ‘She loved you too,’ she whispered.
Patty nodded. ‘I know, I just … She never said it and she should have.’
‘Yes, she should,’ Eva agreed.
Patty glanced down at her hands and tried to force a laugh. ‘I feel so foolish for minding, for letting it get to me the way it has. I’ve been so angry, so full of feelings that are terrible and vengeful … I think, I hope, I’ve always managed to hide them, but maybe in suppressing them I’ve made them worse. I don’t know. All I can tell you is that I’ve never consciously meant to hurt you, not even for a minute, but I know that I have, in the worst imaginable way.’
Eva’s voice was hoarse as she said, ‘You can’t make someone fall in love with you. Don has a mind of his own.’
Patty started to reply, but it took some time for her words to come. ‘It’s true, but … I’ve gone over and over things so many times in the last few days, in my own mind and with Elaine, and I still don’t know … All I can tell you is that I truly believed I loved him all the time I was with him, and I still believe it, but if being with him means I have to choose between you, then …’ Her voice faltered. ‘I love you too much, Eva, to let you go.’
Feeling Patty’s fear and desperation tightening around her own heart, Eva quickly went to kneel in front of her and wrapped her tightly in her arms. ‘I love you too,’ she whispered brokenly.
As Patty’s slender frame shuddered with sobs, Eva understood that she was crying as much for their mother as she was for the sorrow and regret of what had happened between them. There were so many years of grief locked inside her, so much longing and guilt, a world of misunderstandings and cruelly torn loyalties, that this letting go now could only be the beginning. She had a long and tortuous journey ahead of her, and thank God Elaine was already guiding her. Knowing that she must support her too, Eva pulled back to cup Patty’s precious face in her hands. As she looked into her eyes all she was seeing was the sister who was like a mother, the best friend who could never be replaced, the dear, dear person who’d always been there for her no matter what. And to think of how she’d been tearing herself apart for falling in love with a man who so clearly loved her was almost beyond bearing.
‘Where’s Don now?’ Eva asked shakily.
‘I don’t know … I …’
‘Call him,’ Eva said, ‘and tell him to come.’
‘But …’
Putting a finger over her lips, Eva said, ‘You put me back together once after my life fell apart, and now I’m going to try to do the same for you. You and Don belong together, and if you can’t see that, then all this upheaval and turmoil will have been for nothing.’
Eva was alone in Elaine’s sitting room now, absently staring into the fire while Elaine went to brew one of her special mint teas, and Patty spoke to Don in the next room. She couldn’t help wondering what they might be saying to one another and a part of her even wanted to run in there and make Patty stop, to tell her that she hadn’t meant anything she’d said and that she didn’t believe they belonged together at all. However, she knew she wouldn’t do it, because she was aware of how different she was now to the woman she’d been just a few short months ago. Something fundamental had changed inside her, and was continuing to change in a way that was making her calmer, stronger and far braver than she’d ever known herself to be before. All her life Patty and her father, then Don, had been there to protect her, sheltering her as best they could from a world where bad things happened – and when something did happen, in the form of the attack, their instincts to shield her had intensified to the point of becoming almost smothering.
It had taken this crisis, this betrayal, to show her just how dependent she had become on Patty and Don, barely moving without consulting one or the other of them, apart from her attempt to make contact with her son. They had even tried to protect her from that, afraid that she would be hurt again and unable to cope. But she had coped, and was continuing to in spite of the heartbreak they had caused her. In fact, she was starting to see just how vital this upheaval had been in their lives in order to start freeing them all from the delicate, needy, child they’d created between them in her. The time for her to grow up was long overdue; it was shaming to know that it hadn’t happened before. Sh
e must also stop blaming those whom she felt had wronged her – Nick, Don, Patty, Richie’s adoptive parents, her own father – for failings that had in fact been her own. She wasn’t that helpless, precious child any more, she was a grown woman with spirit and determination and a tenderness of heart that made her strong, not weak. She was no longer staring at the cliff edge, the way she had when Don had first left. In fact, she’d come so far since then that she was already embracing the beginnings of a new life without him or Patty at the centre of it. In truth, it still felt disorienting, even frightening to imagine going into the future without the security and reassurance they’d always provided. However, she wouldn’t have it any other way. They all desperately needed to let go of the past, especially Patty whose role in Eva’s life had become so confused that neither of them really knew who she was to Eva any more – mother or sister.
Or the woman who’d stolen her husband.
Difficult though it was, and Eva suspected it would never be easy, she must resolve to keep trying to put the betrayal behind her and start recognising Patty as a woman with her own needs and weaknesses, ambitions and fears. As the past hour had proved, she could find it in herself to put Patty first, the way Patty had always put her first before. It wasn’t exactly a role reversal, as much as a very necessary evening out of who they were and the parts they played in each other’s lives. She understood and was deeply grateful for all the sacrifices Patty had made for her, and realising that Patty had been about to do it again by giving up Don was what had provided Eva with the will and the courage to start forgiving.
It was a time to be feeling grateful too for this second chance she was being offered with her son. She knew for sure that she wasn’t about to start getting everything right from now on, any more than she’d be able to banish entirely all the bad feelings towards Patty and Don. What she could do, however, was carry on trying to make gestures of forgiveness, or understanding, or even a lightheartedness that she wasn’t necessarily close to feeling in order to make amends to those she loved and to try creating new and lasting bonds. Sooner or later, she felt sure, the gestures would become real, and because she already felt so much better for having tried it, surely it wouldn’t be too hard to try again.
A while later, after learning that Don was on his way, Elaine walked Eva to her car, putting an arm around her shoulders and resting her head against hers. ‘I’m proud of you,’ she told her. ‘I know this isn’t going to be easy for you, and there’ll probably be setbacks along the way …’
‘The first will be when I see them together,’ Eva said, managing to sound wry when she was already dreading it. However, she must stay mindful of what Patty’s presence in her life had always meant to her, and how, over Don, Patty had been prepared to make one of the biggest sacrifices of all.
‘It was very courageous of you to invite them for Christmas,’ Elaine said.
Since she’d only been able to do it because Nick had already agreed to be there too, with Maddy his eldest, Eva didn’t feel courageous at all, only worried that she was already regretting it. ‘We don’t know yet if they’ll accept,’ she said. ‘I’m sure Don won’t want to.’
‘Maybe not, but the important thing is that you were brave enough to offer – and that you and Patty are going to find a way to go forward together.’
Knowing that was going to be far harder than Elaine seemed to realise, while accepting that she really didn’t want her life without Patty in it, Eva said, ‘It seems your Universe has managed to swerve us away from out-and-out disaster, or at least a complete family breakdown.’
‘Mm, that happens sometimes, provided you let it.’
‘And what about happy endings, does it allow for those too?’
‘Oh, now,’ Elaine chided, ‘you’re too old to be believing in fairy tales.’
Laughing, Eva turned to hug her hard. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered into her jasmine-scented hair. ‘Thank you for being you, and thank you for doing what you have today.’
‘Believe me, it was all you,’ Elaine told her generously. ‘Now hadn’t you better be running along? I seem to remember you have a date with a boy and a rugby match.’
After turning the car round, Eva pulled up next to Elaine as she waved her over.
‘Out of interest,’ Elaine said, ‘do you think there’s a chance Richie’s parents might get back together in the fullness of time?’
Though she felt a skip in her heart, Eva knew there was still a lot of healing and a very long way to go before any of them could know anything for certain. However, with a mischievous sparkle in her eyes she delighted her stepmother as she said, ‘Didn’t I just hear someone say that we’re too old to be believing in fairy tales?’ and blowing her a kiss she continued on down the drive, smiling happily to herself and suddenly very eager to get home.
Acknowledgements
An enormous thank you to Gill Hall for all the legal guidance regarding adoption. A veritable minefield with many contradictions, misunderstandings and anomalies, so please accept that if your own experience differs to the one portrayed in the book it’s likely to be because various councils and social services have their own ways of interpreting and following the law. Having said that, the basic principles are the same all over, so if you feel there are any fundamental errors in the story they will certainly be mine.
Another very big thank you to Scott McGregor of Dorset Police for sharing his insights and knowledge of Bridport. And very many thanks to the charming Arthur Watson, owner of the fabulous Riverside Restaurant at West Bay, Dorset.
And last but not least a huge thank you to Lesley Wood, owner of Lesanne in Chipping Sodbury, for talking me through the running of an exclusive fashion boutique.
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Copyright © Susan Lewis 2011
Susan Lewis has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work
This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters are the product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental
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First published in Great Britain in 2011 by
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