Forgive Me

by Lesley Pearse

  But I had no more power once the house was finished, I was just housewife and mother. I’ve read articles by women who have been beaten and they always say it was a gradual thing. The first time he swears he’ll never do it again, and he doesn’t for months. But then it happens again and before long every time she puts a foot wrong he lays into her.

  Before Andrew began hitting me I thought women who allowed their men to beat them were spineless wretches. I even imagined they got some sort of buzz out of the violence. I couldn’t understand why they stayed with the man.

  Whoever reads this will probably think I was spineless too. After all, I still owned the studio and I could’ve gone there. Or they might think my lifestyle, the big house, the garden and a husband who provided for me – along with my inheritance, which I’d sunk into the house – meant more than my own self-respect.

  But it wasn’t being spineless, or money, that made me stay. I would gladly have lived in one room with the children, just to have peace and happiness. The real stumbling block was that I knew, if I left, he’d make good his threat and tell the police about Eva. That would mean prison for me, and losing all three children. Goodness knows what would’ve happened to Eva – she’d have probably ended up in care. So I didn’t get my paints out again, and I tried very hard to have everything perfect when he came home.

  You have to experience living with someone who is holding a gun to your head to know what it does to you. Bit by bit it erodes your confidence, your personality. The more you try to appease, the more critical they become. You lose your sense of fun, you are always trying to second-guess your abuser. You can’t ever let your guard down. I never dared tell people that just about everything in the house was my idea, or that it was me who stripped doors and banisters, repaired damaged cornices and sourced the antiques. I became a nothing. And I missed painting, talking to people who liked to laugh and were fun. I haven’t been allowed to make any decisions for years, and I’m not even allowed to have an opinion about anything.

  The only thing he hasn’t tried to alter is my dress sense. He is sarcastic about me wearing vintage dresses, but he doesn’t try to stop me. I know why that is. My clothes are a smokescreen. No one who sees a woman dressed in old velvet and beaded dresses would imagine her husband controlled her. I am quite sure that he confides in people that I am ‘arty’, highly strung and reclusive, feeding people the idea I’m halfway round the twist. He gains sympathy, and people don’t try to get to know me.

  It is obvious to me now from spiteful things he says that he’s used me right from the start. Moving in with me saved him money; then he wanted to get married, because he saw that as a way to get the studio. Maybe he even knew I had the other money all along. He used my vision and creativity to turn an old wreck of a house into something beautiful and very valuable. Perhaps he hopes, if he keeps pushing and pushing at me, that I will go mad, or kill myself – that way he’ll get everything and be free of me.

  ‘Oh God, how could that have gone on and I never knew?’ Eva sobbed.

  ‘She made sure you didn’t know, because she loved you all so much,’ Patrick said. ‘I don’t think she was even afraid of prison, really – only of losing you three. She says in one part that she sometimes felt it was payback time, for being horrible to both me and Gregor. So she tried so much harder to be a good wife to Andrew.’

  ‘Does she say if she loved him?’ Phil asked. ‘I mean, in the beginning?’

  ‘She said: “It is true I never felt the same way about him as I did about those two other good men. But I thought that love like that comes to most people only once, and I’d been lucky enough to have it twice already. But I gave Andrew everything I was capable of giving.” You can make what you like of that, Phil!’

  ‘I know she hints that Andrew would like her to kill herself, but is there any suggestion that’s what she planned to do?’ Eva asked in a small voice. ‘I was such a pain to her at the time she wrote that. I can’t bear to think I added to her misery.’

  ‘No, she doesn’t, Eva. She said how glad she was that she had the foresight to put the studio in trust for you, that at least Andrew would never get that. So I think you can put it out of your mind that you were in any way responsible. She was wild herself at the same age, and she understood the need teenagers have to rebel. I think at the time she wrote this she must’ve had the idea of waiting until all three of you came of age, and then making the break – whatever that cost her.’

  There was more – so many unpleasant incidents with Andrew that Flora had described in detail – but Patrick felt Eva had heard more than enough for one night.

  Phil had his arm around Eva, because she was distressed and crying. It was an awful lot to take in as it stood, but no doubt Eva would wonder what worse things occurred after Flora had hidden this away. Only a fool would think the abuse and bullying had stopped at that point.

  ‘You must read the rest for yourselves,’ Patrick said. ‘She could see no way out when she wrote it, you can hear her despair in every word. It was her love for the three of you alone that kept her going, and I feel ashamed that I ever called her selfish.’

  ‘Do we take this to the police?’ Phil asked.

  ‘I think you must,’ Patrick said, ‘because it makes it absolutely clear what kind of man Andrew was. When you read on from the part where I stopped, she goes on to say about him belittling Eva – another new way of hurting Flora. And he was hitting her more and more often for the most trivial of things. She also says she knew he had other women.’

  He paused, sighing deeply at the profound sadness of it all. ‘I spent all day yesterday reading this over and over again. A part of me didn’t want to hand it over to you, because I knew how distressing you would find it. But of course I had to. You needed to know.’

  ‘To think if Eva hadn’t asked Andrew for the painting, the statement might never have come to light,’ Phil said. ‘Why did she put it in there? Why not send it to someone to be opened after her death?’

  Patrick rubbed his face with his hands; he felt exhausted now, but he felt a duty to make both these two young people understand Flora’s motive. ‘I think it was symbolic. He’d taken so much from her – her personality, her self-esteem and also her art. Writing it all down was probably cathartic; she might never have intended it to be found. Yet when I looked at that ghastly frame, which would never in a million years have been her choice, perhaps she smiled to herself knowing that if Andrew ever sold or gave away the painting to spite her, the frame would be ripped off immediately.

  ‘I doubt he had any idea at all what a great artist she was – or he wouldn’t have let you have it, Eva. If it went to auction, an art collector would have paid a lot of money for it. There is also a bitter irony in that if he’d let Flora paint, she would’ve made far more money than he ever did as a salesman.’

  He got up then. ‘But I must go now and leave you two to discuss this. If you need me, just ring.’ He held out his arms, and Eva rushed to them. Patrick held her tightly and stroked her hair with tenderness. ‘Look after yourself, little one. I wish I could’ve brought you something more uplifting that would make you happy. But they do say “the truth shall set you free”.’

  The next morning Phil got up when his alarm went off and went into the kitchen to make some tea, leaving Eva still sleeping.

  After Patrick’s visit they had both read the whole statement right through. Eva had been very upset, and she’d woken during the night with a bad dream. Phil didn’t really want to leave her today, but he had to. He made two cups and took them back into the bedroom. As he put Eva’s down on the bedside table she opened her eyes.

  ‘Morning, handsome,’ she said with a forced smile.

  Her pluckiness touched him. He knew that this wasn’t something she could just brush away and forget about. He bent over to kiss her. ‘I don’t want to leave you alone today, but I’ve got to,’ he said.

  ‘Stop worrying about me, I’m not that fragile,’ she said and sat
up to drink her tea.

  Phil sat down beside her. ‘I’ll be home by six,’ he said. ‘Shall we go out for something to eat?’

  ‘No, I’ll cook something nice,’ she said. ‘I really am alright this morning. I woke up during the night and thought about it all. I feel more clear-headed about it now. I’ve accepted that I’m a Carling, not a Foyle. I shudder to think who my real father is – I suppose some casual pick-up in the pub or the bookies, as there was no mention of him in the newspaper cuttings we got.’

  ‘He can’t have been a bad man to have produced you,’ Phil said. ‘But all your influences were from Flora. And the way I see it, she made a pretty good job of bringing you up. Until I read that statement I’d imagined her as some self-centred cow, but I was wrong.’

  ‘Why didn’t I realize that Andrew was hurting her?’ she asked plaintively. ‘The policewoman who took my statement after Mum died asked me if they’d had a happy marriage, and I said they had. Did I say that because I believed it? Or just because I chose to forget how sad Mum seemed sometimes? Since then, I’ve remembered lots of things that were pointers to them being far from OK. At my age surely I should’ve suspected Andrew was violent. I was a bit afraid of him myself.’

  ‘Does any kid really question whether their parents are happy together?’ Phil shrugged. ‘I mean, we all grow up thinking whatever our parents do or say is normal. We have no other yardstick to measure it by. Your dad might be grumpy, or your mum a battleaxe, but you just accept that. I had a mate at school whose parents had blazing rows, his mum would throw his dad’s clothes out of the window. But they are still together. Flora said how careful she was to keep it from you all. She was afraid of what Andrew might do if she let it slip. Anyway, children – even ones in their twenties – don’t examine their parents’ behaviour very closely.’

  ‘Do you think that Mum never told us kids anything about her past, because she was afraid she’d let slip how unhappy she was?’

  ‘Possibly, or she was afraid that if you repeated anything she’d said in Andrew’s hearing, she’d get into more bother. But I think it was admirable that she kept quiet about everything that was going on between her and Andrew, so that you three kids would remain secure and happy. That was very noble and loving. If you keep that in mind, perhaps it won’t hurt so much.’

  ‘You are loving and noble too,’ Eva said, leaning towards him to kiss his cheek.

  ‘And I’ll be late for work if I sit here any longer.’ He smiled. ‘Now go back to sleep. But if you go out later, get that statement photocopied before we show it to the police. We can’t risk losing the original.’

  He paused as he went to go out of the bedroom door, and looked back at her. ‘I love you, Eva. However bad this seems now, together we’ll get through it.’

  Eva lay in bed for some time after Phil had left, forcing herself to look back with adult eyes at incidents she remembered from her childhood. One which stood out was being dropped home one afternoon by a friend’s mother after a sleepover in the summer holidays. She was eleven then, and Sophie and Ben were spending a few days with Granny and Grandpa, Andrew’s parents.

  She walked in the back door and Flora called out to her from the sitting room. ‘I’m in here,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a bit of an accident.’

  Flora was sitting on the sofa with her legs propped up on a stool. There was a large lint dressing on one of them, but both her legs were covered in what looked like bad grazes. Eva remembered that she was dressed, but that her hair was very tangled, as if she hadn’t brushed it that morning. She also looked like she’d been crying.

  Eva had been horrified, and asked how it had happened.

  ‘I was really silly,’ Flora said. ‘I was having a bit of a clear-out in the attic rooms this morning and I tried to carry a heavy box of old tools and things downstairs to put them in the garage. I tripped and fell, and I landed on some of the tools.’

  Eva hadn’t for one moment thought that it wasn’t the truth. Her anxiety was only about how much pain Flora was in and if she should call the doctor, because Andrew was going to be away overnight.

  But Flora said it wasn’t serious enough to trouble the doctor, and she felt better already now Eva was home.

  She quite enjoyed playing nurse that evening, as it wasn’t often she got her mum all to herself. She made them both some tea and sandwiches and she supported Flora when she wanted to hobble to the loo and, later in the evening, up to bed.

  But looking back at that incident now, where were these tools Flora was supposed to have fallen on? Anyone taking a tumble like that, and finding they could barely walk, would have left them where they’d fallen; they certainly wouldn’t have packed them back into the box and got them to the garage! Besides, why would there be tools stored in an attic room anyway?

  Clearly the truth of the matter was that there had been a row that morning, and because there were no children in the house Andrew had attacked Flora. Thinking about her injuries now, Eva thought he must have knocked her down and then kicked her hard, again and again. Then he’d calmly gone off to work after warning her she was to tell no one.

  Eva’s stomach contracted painfully at the thought of Flora being alone and hurt, forcing herself to struggle to dress the worst wound, then inventing a story to cover her injuries.

  ‘You evil bastard,’ Eva muttered to herself. ‘I’m going to make sure you pay for everything you did to her.’

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  ‘Hello, Eva! How are you feeling now?’ DI Turner asked as she opened the door to him. He had a WPC with him who she hadn’t met before.

  ‘Oh! I’m much better, thank you,’ she replied. She was somewhat startled to see Turner, because she’d just been mulling over what she ought to do about Flora’s statement.

  It was Wednesday morning, pouring with rain. Phil had left for work at seven and would be away for two days. Everything had seemed so clear and straightforward yesterday. She’d gone out and had five photocopies made of the statement. She intended to send one to Gregor – she thought that he deserved an explanation of why Flora had acted as she did towards him – and two would go to Sophie and Ben. But after Phil left this morning she wasn’t so sure about anything. Phil didn’t think she ought to send copies to Sophie and Ben, at least not yet. He said she mustn’t do anything until he got back, when they could discuss it properly.

  ‘May we come in?’ Turner asked. He half turned towards the tall and rather severe-looking WPC. ‘This is WPC Rose, and we’ve come to tell you about some new developments.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ Eva said, opening the door wider. ‘Do come in. You just took me by surprise.’

  She led them into the lounge, picked up a jacket of Phil’s from the sofa and quickly removed a plate and mug from the coffee table. ‘Let me make you a drink. Tea or coffee?’

  Turner and Rose looked at one another as Eva darted into the kitchen to get them coffee. They could see she was rattled about something and wondered if she was alright.

  She returned a few minutes later with coffee and biscuits on a tray.

  ‘You’ve come to say you can’t find any record of my birth here in London?’ she said as she put the tray down on the coffee table.

  ‘That’s right,’ Turner said. ‘Not at a hospital, or as a home birth. The first record of you apart from your birth registration is at about three months old when Flora registered you with her doctor in Holland Park for immunization. But you sound as if you already knew that.’

  ‘I did know I wasn’t born in London,’ she said, handing them their coffee and then sitting down. ‘Not about the immunization.’

  Turner was confused about how she could know that. ‘We’ve also got the blood test results from Carlisle,’ he said.

  ‘And that proves I’m Sue Carling’s child?’

  Turner glanced at the WPC; neither of them had expected such calm acceptance. The girl seemed almost dazed.

  ‘Well, Eva, I’m afraid I can’t give you utter ce
rtainty, but it’s about 85 per cent probable that she is your mother,’ Turner said. ‘I did explain to you before that all blood tests tell us is who couldn’t be a child’s parent. They are not so good at proving parentage. And the Carlisle police were unable to trace Sue Carling –’

  ‘So how did they test her blood then?’ Eva interrupted.

  ‘They couldn’t. But they were able to test her daughter’s. That result, and a close physical resemblance to yourself, does suggest she is your full sister.’

  Eva’s eyes widened at that. ‘I read in the press cuttings that she had two other children before me, but weren’t they taken into care?’

  ‘They didn’t trace either of them. This girl is younger than you, only seventeen. Her name is Freya. They only found her when they had a report of a young girl sleeping rough out on the fells. She was very sick with a chest infection and malnutrition, and they took her to hospital. On being questioned she said her mother had gone to Spain two years earlier and she hasn’t heard from her since.’

  Eva frowned. ‘She left a girl of fifteen?’ she exclaimed. ‘My God, it sounds like Flora ought to have been given a medal for taking me away from her! How could anyone leave a girl of that age and go swanning off to Spain?’

  ‘It seems she left her in the care of a friend who ran a bed and breakfast. Freya was already working there on Saturdays and during school holidays, and she had a full-time job lined up in a bakery for when she left school. Of course that doesn’t make it right to leave her, she was far too young.’

  ‘Poor kid! Girls of that age can get into serious trouble if they aren’t supervised,’ Eva exclaimed.

  ‘Quite so, but according to the Carlisle police she’s never been in trouble with them. She wasn’t sleeping rough for fun or because she got into bad company. She’d lost her job, because the bakery went bust, and the so-called kindly friend of her mother’s at the bed and breakfast threw her out when she hadn’t got the rent. Anyway, they are keeping her in hospital until she is well again and can be found a new home.’