Forgive Me

by Lesley Pearse

  ‘I did my share of rebelling,’ she admitted to Phil. ‘And for much longer than you. My excuse was that I didn’t fit in with the sort of girls that were approved of. I didn’t really fit in at home either. I wasn’t clever like my brother Ben, or stunning-looking like Sophie. I suspect I became a goth to shock my parents into noticing me.’

  ‘A goth!’ He spluttered with laughter. ‘I can’t imagine that.’

  ‘Thankfully, I’ve got no photographic evidence of it.’ Eva laughed. ‘I think it was the happiest day in Mum’s life when I bundled up all the black stuff and put it in the dustbin.’

  ‘Will you tell me about your mum?’ he asked. ‘Or is that a taboo subject?’

  ‘No, it’s not taboo.’ She went on to explain how she’d never known that Flora had been a successful artist when she was younger, or that Andrew wasn’t her father. ‘All I know about her past has come from old friends of hers who turned up for her funeral. One of them told me the name of the man who shared the place in Pottery Lane. They think he is my real father. I was thinking of trying to track him down. Do you think I should?’

  Phil shrugged. ‘I’d want to. Even if it turns out he isn’t your dad, he might be able to throw light on things you don’t understand.’

  Eva felt the conversation was getting a bit too heavy and one-sided, so she lightened it up by asking him if he liked travelling.

  ‘So far I’ve only been to Ibiza, Benidorm and Goa. But I’d like to go to a great many more places. How about you?’

  ‘Only family holidays in France and Spain,’ she admitted. ‘I got as far as applying for my own passport when I was eighteen, as I’d been on the family one before. I talked about going off somewhere, but never did. One of my stepdad’s lame excuses for telling me he wasn’t my real dad was that I might need my birth certificate for a visa and I’d see his name wasn’t on it.’

  Phil nodded in understanding. ‘Well, you’re going to show him what you’re made of, aren’t you?’

  Eva smirked. She’d had that same thought many times in the last few days. ‘Yes, I intend to. I bet he knew how awful Mum’s old studio was and hoped I’d fall flat on my face with it. But thanks to your help and advice, I don’t think I will.’

  ‘That’s what mates are for.’ He grinned. ‘We are mates now, aren’t we?’

  Later that evening Eva sat for a while on the crate in the backyard, just enjoying the fresh air, even though it was dark. She heard the landlord at the pub ring the bell for last orders, and she marvelled that in a little less than a week here, she’d begun to think of it as home.

  Phil had caught the bus home after their meal. Outside the pub, as they were saying goodbye, she thought he was going to kiss her. It had been a strange moment – half of her wanted him to, the other half was afraid. But all he did was kiss her cheek and say he’d see her tomorrow when he called with John about the windows.

  She turned to watch him walking off down towards the main road. He had a good walk, light on his feet and his back straight. He’d left her with a warm glow inside, a good, secure feeling. He had said nothing to suggest he fancied her, but a sixth sense told her he did. That could be wishful thinking on her part; she certainly wasn’t going to make any move on him to find out, because it would just be humiliating if he didn’t respond. Maybe that question about being mates was his way of telling her he didn’t see her in that light?

  She wasn’t ready to embark on another relationship, anyway. What was important to her now was to raise her own self-esteem. She was never going to allow anyone to feel sorry for her again.

  Until the windows and kitchen were done she couldn’t do much in the house, but she could make a start on the backyard. Tomorrow, after Phil and John had been, she would buy some gardening tools, some plants and tubs, and maybe a table and chairs too.

  The prospect of transforming the grubby weed-strewn yard into something beautiful was really appealing. First thing tomorrow morning, she thought she would get out here and scrub the paving stones clean.

  While she was at it, she’d mentally scrub Tod and Andrew out of her mind too. She couldn’t move forward as long as she kept looking over her shoulder.

  Chapter Ten

  Eva stood in her backyard and admired her new French doors, feeling ridiculously emotional. ‘Don’t they look wonderful?’ she said to Phil, who was cleaning up dropped plaster from the floor. ‘I can’t believe how they’ve transformed the room. It looks twice the size, really modern and airy.’

  It was Sunday afternoon, and two weeks had passed since Phil first brought John, his window man, round to meet her. Like Brian, John was another middle-aged man, tall and skinny with little to say for himself, but he was a fast worker. He had begun the job with his son Rory on Thursday, knocking out the old boarded-up window and door. Even the old sink, cooker and the graffiti didn’t look half as bad with sunshine and fresh air coming in. Eva had watched entranced as he began laying bricks to take the frame for the new doors.

  Even the weather was on their side, as June arrived with hot sunshine. On Friday they had set the uPVC frame in, returning on Saturday to put on the doors. Eva had been horrified by all the mess, rubble, old cement, dust and bricks in the backyard, but John and Rory had taken away every last bit of it that evening, including all the bags of rubbish and the mattress in the garage.

  Phil had come round today to make good all the plaster, and he’d skimmed the kitchen area and the right-hand wall of the room too. He said he was coming back to do the rest of the room once Brian had installed the kitchen units.

  ‘If you don’t look round at that,’ Phil said, nodding at where the units were stacked in front of the graffiti-covered wall, ‘you wouldn’t think it was the same place.’

  All Eva could do was grin with delight. The doors had cost £1,000, which seemed an awfully big chunk of her money, but they were worth it. John was coming back in two weeks to do all the other windows in the house. And Brian had said he would fit the kitchen during the coming week, as he had a couple of spare afternoons.

  Everything was going well. She really liked working at the bistro; Marcia, the other waitress, was fun. And the owner Antonio seemed to like her too. The short hours gave her time to work on the garden, and she was getting to know her way around London.

  Eva handed Phil a cold beer from the fridge. She hadn’t seen him since he’d brought John round to see about doing the windows. He’d been working in Windsor, so it was very nice to have him here all day today. While he’d been plastering, she’d been planting flowers. Then she got fish and chips for them at lunchtime, which they’d eaten sitting at her new little table and chairs outside.

  He got hot working, and earlier he’d stripped off his overalls – down to just a pair of khaki shorts. His whole torso, face and hair were now speckled with plaster. Eva had furtively watched him as he was working, turned on a little, not just by his muscles and smooth skin, but by the graceful sweep of his arm as he smoothed the plaster, and the concentration in his face.

  ‘I ought to get going soon,’ he said. ‘I told Mum I’d pop round to see her this evening, and I’m off early in the morning to Dorset for a job.’

  ‘You haven’t told me yet how much you want for the plastering,’ she said.

  ‘All you need to pay for is the plaster,’ he said with a grin. ‘And not now, when I’ve finished the room will do. Is it alright if I come again next Saturday? Brian should just about be finished by then.’

  ‘What would I have done without you?’ she said. ‘I’m really grateful to the handbag snatcher now.’

  He smiled, and reached out and touched her cheek lightly. ‘You would’ve charmed some other guy,’ he said. ‘Anyway, it’s been nice today. You are so easy to be with.’

  His light touch had sent a little shiver down her spine. She wished he could stay, that they could go to the pub, or just sit out in the garden with a few drinks.

  ‘Can I be really cheeky then and ask you to do just one more thing b
efore you go?’ she asked. ‘Just to get up in the attic and see if there’s anything in there? I’ve tried, but I can’t move the hatch.’

  ‘Hoping for some treasure?’ he said, finishing off his beer.

  ‘I suppose so. People do put things in attics and forget them, don’t they?’

  ‘My mum and dad certainly do. There’re old Christmas decs, boxes of stuff they don’t even remember putting there, and the cot my brother and I had when we were babies. So you never know what we’ll find.’

  He took the stepladder up into the back bedroom, and had to move a pile of books to set it up.

  ‘Have you read all these?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, they are all old friends,’ she said. ‘I love reading and I can’t wait until I can put some shelves up for them all. I joined the library the other day. I have to have a book on the go. Do you read?’

  ‘Not much,’ he replied. ‘The books I own wouldn’t even fill one shelf. I’m more of a magazine man, but I’d read if I was lying on a beach.’

  Once the stepladder was in place he went up it and pushed hard on the hatch till it finally opened.

  ‘Pass us your torch,’ he said to Eva, who was holding the stepladder. ‘It’s pitch black in there.’

  Climbing up a little higher, his top half was then in the loft.

  ‘Can you see anything?’ she called out.

  ‘There’re a couple of boxes … one’s got a load of paintings in it,’ he shouted down. ‘Want me to get them out?’

  ‘Yes, please,’ she shouted back, suddenly really excited.

  There was a kind of shuffling noise as if he was pulling stuff closer to the hatch, then he moved down the stepladder a couple of rungs.

  ‘Paintings first,’ he said and hauled out a couple of big canvases.

  Eva took them from him eagerly. One was a woodland scene with the ground carpeted in bluebells. The other was of an old door set in a wall covered in creepers. It reminded her of the book The Secret Garden. She let out a squeal of delight when she saw her mother’s initials F. F. in the bottom right-hand corner.

  Next he handed down a box in which there were about a dozen more smaller canvases. She didn’t stop to look at them, as Phil was already heaving out a much larger box which was sealed up with tape.

  She had hardly put that on the floor before a second smaller one came down.

  ‘That’s it now, nothing else up there,’ he said, putting the hatch back again and climbing down. ‘But you could do with getting some insulation up there before next winter.’

  He picked up the painting of the bluebell wood. ‘This is amazing. Not that I know anything about art.’

  ‘It was painted by my mum,’ Eva said excitedly, pointing to the initials. ‘Her maiden name was Flora Foyle. Isn’t it beautiful?’

  It was in fact so beautiful that it made all the hairs on her arms stand on end. The sunshine filtering through the trees was remarkable, and the details – not just the bluebells, but the bark on the trees, shiny ivy growing over an old tree stump – took her breath away.

  ‘I’ll have to get it framed and hung downstairs,’ she said.

  ‘A housewarming present from your mum,’ Phil said, putting one big plaster-splattered hand on her shoulder. ‘It’s a beauty. She was very talented.’

  But Eva wanted to see what was in the boxes. She tore off the tape on the first one. Whatever was in there was carefully covered in tissue paper. She folded it back. ‘Baby things,’ she gasped on seeing a tiny pink jacket. ‘Mine?’

  ‘I would think so.’ Phil smiled at her stunned expression. ‘I bet she packed them away when they got too small for you, and she forgot to get them when she left here. But as much as I’d like to go through this lot with you, I’ve really got to go. I’ll see you next Saturday.’

  All that evening, Eva pored over the contents of the boxes. The box of baby clothes appeared to be outgrown things which Flora had packed away and then forgotten, just as Phil had suggested. All that was really notable about them was that they looked rather old-fashioned – hand-knitted jackets and smocked dresses. There were old sprigs of lavender packed amongst them, and a faint hint of it still clung to the clothes.

  The collection of paintings was superb, and she was staggered by her mother’s talent. The ten smaller ones, all about twelve by fourteen inches, were very varied in subject matter. A couple were of vases of flowers, exquisite in their detail. Then there were three landscapes – all different – one of a baby sleeping in a pram, which she felt certain was her, and another of a rather run-down row of shops. The final three were of gardens: dreamy, sun-filled pictures with statues peeping out from behind voluptuous peonies and roses. She liked those three the best.

  But the second smaller box was really intriguing. Eva didn’t know if she was being fanciful, but it seemed to her that it had been purposely left here for her to find. She felt there was a meaning in every item, whether that was the old photograph album – with pictures of people who must be her grandparents and aunts and uncles – or snaps of Flora as a young student, many in fancy-dress costumes, press cuttings praising her art, and diaries, some dating back to when Flora was in her early teens.

  There was an envelope containing a pencil sketch of a cottage, and with it a photograph of that same run-down row of shops as in one of the oil paintings. They seemed to belong together. Could the owner of one of the shops have lived in the cottage? Or were they both places where Flora had once lived, and so were important to her? Eva wondered why she hadn’t attached an explanatory note to them.

  Also in the box was Eva’s full birth certificate. Just as Andrew had said, there was a dash in the space for her father’s details. Eva guessed Flora had hoped it would never come to light that her daughter was illegitimate.

  A beautiful silver necklace designed as a series of joined small hearts was tucked into a small box with a card saying simply ‘I’ll love you for ever’ and signed ‘P’. Was that from Patrick O’Donnell, the man who might be her father?

  There were several invitation cards to exhibitions of Flora’s work. They were from various art galleries, mostly in London, dated from the mid to late sixties. There was also an estate agent’s leaflet giving details of this house; the asking price was £1,500. Flora had written on it in pencil: ‘This is the one.’

  A book called The Prophet by Khalil Gibran had been inscribed inside to Flora. The message was: ‘Books, art and music belong to those who can see and hear true beauty. May your eyes and ears remain sharp for ever.’ Sadly, whoever had given it to her hadn’t put their name, just the date. April 1968. Eva skimmed through it and was entranced by the author’s beautiful, lyrical prose. She intended to read it properly later.

  There was also a sketchbook full of pencil drawings of children. Eva felt Flora must once have had the idea of becoming a children’s book illustrator, as there was the glimpse of a story in the pictures of untidy, street children reacting to one another in comical ways.

  Yet the item that affected her the most was a notebook with a Liberty-print fabric cover in shades of pink and mauve, tied with pink ribbon. On every page was a quick sketch of Eva’s head and upper body as a baby, each with a caption beneath that appeared to reflect Flora’s thoughts of the day.

  It began when she was about two weeks old and sleeping. Beneath it Flora had written: ‘So angelic now after screaming for nearly two hours.’

  A few sketches further on, she had drawn Eva screaming and had caught perfectly the screwed-up face of an angry baby. Beneath this one Flora had written: ‘At times like this I want to walk out of the door for good.’

  Eva could see her own progress as she turned the pages, her features becoming more pronounced, her small hands becoming chubbier and her hair starting to grow. She could also sense Flora’s exhaustion in her words. ‘Will the day ever come again when I’ll have the time and energy to paint?’ was one comment.

  The sketches continued until she was perhaps six months old. In the last one she
was smiling, showing two teeth clearly. Beneath that one was simply ‘Precious One’. Eva’s eyes filled with tears at this, and a terrible feeling of loss overwhelmed her. All at once she understood what grief really meant, because this was more acute than the pain she’d felt on the day Flora died.

  Yet there was comfort too in being able to touch these drawings, almost as if Flora was there in the rooms with her, whispering that her baby had meant everything to her.

  Why didn’t she give her this book on her eighteenth birthday? It would have been such a perfect gift. But then perhaps Flora had forgotten about it? Eva wondered too if it would have had the same impact on her if she’d been given it when her mother was still alive.

  Was it Andrew coming into Flora’s life that had stopped the sketch diary? Eva certainly had a sense that it was just mother and baby together at the time Flora had made the sketches. Had he even seen this box of things? Somehow, she doubted it. She sensed Flora had put them up in the attic around the time she met him.

  Was that because once she had met Andrew she didn’t want reminders of the time when she was alone with her baby, or reminders of the father? But what was it about Andrew that made her turn her back on her art when it had clearly once been so important to her?

  Although Eva had been badly hurt by Andrew, and knew him to be something of a control freak, she couldn’t believe that he would ever have wantonly suppressed Flora’s talent. What reason would he have had for doing so?

  Reading all the diaries carefully might throw some light on everything that she found so puzzling. She resolved to read some each night, make notes of any names or places mentioned, and try to piece it all together.

  ‘You are just in time,’ Brian called out as she came in from work at three thirty on Thursday afternoon. ‘Can you come and hold this for me?’

  She saw he was struggling to get a wall cupboard on to its fixings.

  She grasped the bottom of it and held it up while he clambered up on the stepladder. ‘So much easier with two pairs of hands,’ he said. ‘Fancy becoming my apprentice?’