Forgive Me

by Lesley Pearse

  All at once Eva came out of the dazed state she’d appeared to be in when they first arrived. ‘That’s absolutely dreadful,’ she said, and her eyes filled up with tears. ‘She must have felt very alone and frightened. Does she know about me?’

  ‘Only that someone of the right age to be her sister has been making inquiries. She doesn’t know your name or address. She did tell the police, though, that her father, and yours too, was Michael Borthwick, a drayman for a local brewery. He died of stomach cancer when Freya was thirteen, but by all accounts he was a good father. He paid her mother maintenance, he visited Freya regularly and took her on little holidays. He had no police record.’

  ‘So we really are full sisters?’

  ‘So Freya said, and the blood test bears that out. The Carlisle police are redoubling their efforts to find her mother.’

  Eva didn’t respond to that. She just sat there, looking at her hands in her lap, and appeared to have gone back to her earlier dazed state. Knowing what she’d been through recently, Turner wondered if everything was getting too much for her.

  ‘Are you alright, Eva?’ WPC Rose ventured. ‘I’m sure this has been a great shock to you.’

  Eva looked up at her concerned face. ‘Perhaps it would be as well if they never found her. There doesn’t appear to be anything good about her.’

  The policewoman was right about shock. Patrick bringing round Flora’s statement had left her reeling. That same night, and all day yesterday, she’d thought about nothing else. She’d told Phil last night that she felt oddly comforted to know the whole truth, but that wasn’t strictly true. Flora’s statement had been like opening Pandora’s box, and the stuff that had come out was just too much to deal with.

  Now to get a second shock – to learn that she had a sister – had taken her a step too far. She felt shaky, frightened and very vulnerable, and she knew she really needed time to digest what this meant to her, before she said or did anything further.

  Yet at the same time she felt she must tell these two police officers now about Flora’s statement. She needed them to understand why Flora took her, and to prove that Andrew had a real motive in trying to kill her.

  ‘Phil, my boyfriend, said I was to wait until he was with me before I showed you this,’ she said, and got up to fetch the folder she’d put Flora’s statement in. She took out one of the photocopies and handed it to Turner. ‘But under the circumstances, I think you need to see it now.’

  She explained carefully who had found it, and where. And she confirmed it was Flora’s handwriting.

  Turner took about ten minutes to read the first few pages. Eva could see he was as affected by it as she and Patrick had been.

  ‘My goodness. This is something I didn’t expect,’ he said, looking very troubled. ‘No wonder you didn’t seem that surprised or even interested in our inquiries at the hospitals. I will of course read it all thoroughly when I get back to the station, but there’s far too much detail about taking the baby for it not to be true. This must have been overwhelming for you?’

  ‘I seem to reel from one shock to another these days.’ Eva shrugged. ‘Mostly I wish I’d never found the diaries Phil told you about. I could’ve been happy in blissful ignorance. A psychic up in Scotland gave me a weird warning about “waking the sleeping serpent”, and I really wish I’d heeded that warning, however barmy that sounds. Nothing good has come of me trying to solve the mysteries – even my brother and sister have turned against me for claiming their father set the fire.’

  She stopped for a moment, overcome with emotion. The policewoman got up and put a comforting arm around her, urging her to sit down and asking if she’d like a cup of tea.

  ‘A cup of tea won’t make this any better,’ Eva said sharply. But she did sit down again. ‘But what might help me is if you arrest Andrew Patterson.’

  ‘We’ve already explained we have no evidence against him to charge him with starting the fire at your house,’ Turner said.

  ‘Just read on in that statement and you will see that he knew all about Flora taking me. It was Flora who financed getting the house in Cheltenham, and he used blackmail and physical abuse to keep her in line. He drove her to kill herself too.’

  Turner shook his head as if unsure of what to say. ‘I will read it, Eva. And believe me, I have every sympathy with you. It must be utterly devastating to discover such unpalatable truths and to realize the people you trusted and believed in were not as you thought.’

  ‘Are you trying to tell me you can’t arrest Andrew now?’ Eva asked, her voice shaking as she pointed to the statement. ‘That proves his motive for trying to kill me.’

  Turner looked abashed. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Eva,’ he said. ‘This statement could possibly be used by the prosecution to show the man’s character if we had firm evidence to prove he set the fire, but it has no other value in this case. Even then, the defence could argue that Flora had made it all up. A self-confessed baby-snatcher would not be considered a reliable witness alive. And as she’s dead, she can’t be cross-examined.’

  Eva felt as if he’d stuck a pin in her balloon. ‘He drove Flora to kill herself, tried to kill me too – and he gets away with it?’

  Turner shrugged. ‘Unless some firm evidence turns up, I’m afraid so,’ he said. ‘The police in Cheltenham are still keeping an eye on him and making inquiries. We will pass this on to them too. I know they do think Sophie lied, or was mistaken, when she said he was in bed when she arrived home that night. She might have a change of heart – people do sometimes, when they get a guilty conscience.’

  ‘So it all rests with Sophie to tell the truth?’ Eva was incredulous. ‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I know it was Andrew who set the fire. By the time you’ve read the whole of that statement you won’t have any doubt he was capable of it either. Get the police in Cheltenham to talk to Sophie again. Give her a guilty conscience, for God’s sake, before he tries to shut me up again!’

  ‘We’ll look at this statement and try to see if it gives us another angle to bring him in for questioning,’ Turner said soothingly. ‘Now, speaking of guilty consciences!’ He put his hand in his pocket and brought out an envelope. ‘I very nearly forgot this. We had to open it of course, just to check the contents.’

  Puzzled, Eva pulled the letter out of the envelope and gasped when she saw it was from Myles.

  ‘Go on, it’s alright,’ Turner urged her.

  Hesitating slightly, Eva started to read.

  Dear Eva,

  I am writing to apologize for my appalling behaviour towards you. I can offer no good excuse at all; you didn’t do anything to deserve it, and I am ashamed of myself. I guess I didn’t see the light until I heard about the fire and you being trapped in it. That was such a terrible thing that it made me see it was so very wrong to keep on lying and saying I didn’t insult, hurt and frighten you.

  You may think this is a cynical attempt to get you to drop the charges against me, but it isn’t. I have already changed my plea to guilty, as the police will tell you, and I will accept whatever punishment the court deems appropriate.

  I really hope you have fully recovered now and that you can rebuild your house and your life soon.

  All my good wishes for your future,

  Myles

  ‘Hum!’ She sniffed. ‘I suppose someone told him I was in two minds about dropping the charges against him!’

  ‘No, they didn’t,’ Turner said. ‘We were told he was changing his plea to guilty some time before we got this. I promise you, I hadn’t told anyone that you were considering dropping the charges – because, quite honestly, I didn’t think you would. He just came into the police station and asked for this to be passed on to you.’

  ‘He sounds sincere,’ Eva said thoughtfully. ‘But then men like him always do. There’s no way I’m going to decide right now, I need to think about it, and talk to Phil. Meanwhile, he can sweat a bit longer with the court case hanging over him.’

 
Turner nodded. ‘I think that is a wise decision. Now, what would you like to do about this sister of yours?’

  Eva realized he wasn’t going to be drawn back to the subject of Andrew, and she felt too weary to even try further. ‘She’s still in hospital in Carlisle?’

  ‘Yes, and I believe she’ll be there for a few more days.’

  Eva thought about it for a moment. ‘I really don’t know. Freya and I might have a mother in common, but that’s all. And by contacting her I could open up another can of worms.’

  WPC Rose had said almost nothing all this time. She reminded Eva of a bird, because she had small dark eyes which kept darting from Eva to Turner.

  ‘I got the Carlisle police to send down a photograph of her for you,’ she said. ‘It’s only a Polaroid, and as it was taken in hospital she looks a bit gaunt. But we thought you might like to see what she looks like.’ Rose reached into her tunic pocket and pulled it out. ‘We both think she’s very like you – her eyes are identical to yours.’

  Eva stared at the photograph. ‘We’ll leave it with you then,’ Turner said, as she seemed to be transfixed by it. ‘Thank you for letting me see this statement. I’ll be in touch again soon.’

  Eva let them out and said her goodbyes. Still holding the photograph, she went into the kitchen and just stood there studying it.

  Turner was right, Freya did look like her. She was very thin, and her eyes dominated her face; they were the same blue and the same shape as her own. Her nose looked the same too, though that could just be the angle of the photograph, and her hair was the same light brown that Eva had been born with. It made goosebumps come up all over her to see a younger version of herself. For as long as she could remember she had been compared unfavourably to Sophie and Ben, and in some strange way it was comforting to see her own features mirrored in this photograph.

  Yet it was more than the physical resemblance that spoke to her. There was sadness and resignation in Freya’s face that said she’d learned long ago not to expect anything good to come to her. Eva had felt that herself at the same age – never quite belonging, feeling second-rate.

  She wondered too about their father, Michael Borthwick. She had a mental picture of a big burly man wearing a leather apron, rolling barrels. He was dead, Sue Carling was missing, and Eva didn’t think she wanted to know anything more about either of them. But Freya was all alone and sick.

  At two that same afternoon the Glasgow train pulled out of King’s Cross Station with Eva settled in a window seat.

  She felt compelled to visit Freya in Carlisle. It might not be wise, but the more she’d looked at the picture of her sister, the more she felt she must go. Her nerves were jangling, she’d had a recurrence of coughing while on the tube, and she knew Phil wouldn’t approve. But the alternative – to sit at home looking at that sad, forlorn face of a young girl with nothing and nobody in her life – was too grim to contemplate.

  In an effort to calm her nerves and make the train journey pass more quickly she opened her book, The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough. It had come out years ago, but it wasn’t until she was in Scotland that she had got around to buying it. She had only read a few pages before that copy turned to ashes in the fire, so she’d bought another one from W. H. Smith before boarding the train.

  Books had always been her escape from reality ever since she’d learned to read, and she soon found this one so enthralling that she was barely aware the carriage was packed and the rain was pelting down outside. She had a small overnight bag with her, and she intended to find a bed and breakfast when she got to Carlisle. She’d telephoned the hospital to make sure Freya was still there, and had also rung Phil’s company so they could tell him where she was. She was afraid he’d be worried, if he rang home tonight and got no reply.

  It was only as the train got to Cumbria and the sun came out that she put her book down and looked out of the window. The trees here were already in full autumn colouring and it looked very beautiful, reminding her poignantly of when she saw the same scenery before – on her way to Scotland, full of hope she might find out who her father was.

  So much had happened since then: discovering more about Flora, meeting Patrick and Gregor, falling in love with Phil, her terrible suspicions about her own origins, and then the fire. But she did feel that all these things, good and bad, had given her new strengths. She thought she was more confident, less concerned about other people’s opinion of her, and she was becoming more self-reliant.

  It had been a severe body blow to learn Flora’s statement wouldn’t put Andrew behind bars. Not just because he’d tried to kill her, but for all the hurt and humiliation he had heaped on Flora. Maybe a great many people would think Flora deserved the life he gave her. But Eva knew better; she was a good woman.

  In another ten minutes she would be arriving in Carlisle, and it was even more unclear to her now why she felt compelled to come all this way.

  Was it purely an emotional response, because the girl was young, sick and alone? Did she think that it was some form of restitution or apology for what Flora did? Or because she could hear Dena’s voice telling her that one of the tarot cards she’d turned up, the rabbit, was a vulnerable family member who needed her help?

  She’d told herself hundreds of times that the whole tarot thing was just ridiculous mumbo-jumbo, but she couldn’t deny that some of what Dena had told her appeared to have come true. But what if this was more of the sleeping serpent thing? What if, by seeing this girl she knew very little about, Eva would get drawn into something that she’d regret later?

  Her stomach began to churn with anxiety. Freya might be her biological sister, but she’d been brought up in a different world to her, and there was no guarantee that they would like one another. In fact it was quite likely that Freya might resent her, because she’d had a much better childhood.

  On arriving at Carlisle Station Eva stood for some time looking at the departure board, wondering if it would be wisest to get the next train back to London. She looked down at the carrier bag in her hand. In it was a basket of toiletries from The Body Shop, which she’d bought for Freya at King’s Cross.

  ‘You can’t go back without seeing her,’ she told herself. ‘That’s plain cowardice.’

  That decided her – she’d come all this way, and it would be pathetic to chicken out now. She didn’t have to take on any responsibility for the girl; it was just a visit, and she could make that quite clear.

  There was just half an hour before the hospital’s evening visiting hour. So, bracing herself, she bought some fruit and chocolate too, then caught a taxi to the hospital.

  With butterflies in her stomach, Eva walked down the big ward. Nearly all the other beds were occupied by old ladies, and the sister had told her Freya was at the far end. As she approached the bed, she saw Freya was lying on her side, hunched up with her back to all the visitors coming in. Eva’s heart went out to her. It was awful to think that someone so young had no one other than a total stranger to visit her.

  ‘Freya?’ Eva said softly as she approached the girl’s bed.

  She rolled over on to her back to look at whoever was speaking to her. She had been crying, and she quickly put her hand over her eyes to hide the tears.

  ‘I’m Eva, and it looks as though I’m your sister. I’ve just come up from London.’

  Freya took the hand away from her eyes. ‘Really!’ she said, looking startled. ‘You came all that way just to see me?’

  Eva didn’t speak for a few moments, because it was extraordinary how alike they were: two sets of identical blue eyes, the same full lips and small nose slightly turned up at the tip. Freya was painfully thin, her long hair desperately needed washing and trimming, her nails were bitten down to the quick and her skin was rough and wind-burned from being outside in all weathers. But the similarities between them would be obvious to anyone.

  ‘Yes, just to see you. I was told you weren’t very well.’ Eva smiled. ‘Now, are you going to sit up and tal
k to me?’

  In books long-lost relatives always seemed to have an instant connection, falling upon each other’s necks to hug and kiss. But it wasn’t like that with Freya. Although she sat up, wiped her eyes and thanked Eva politely for the fruit, chocolate and toiletries, she was very guarded and awkward. Her strong Cumbrian accent was a little hard to understand too.

  Eva had to make all the running. Having no idea how much Freya knew about the sister who had been taken long before she was born – or even if the police had made it clear to her why her blood had been tested, and what that meant – she had to explain everything. Then she went on to tell her about finding Flora’s diaries after her death, and how she began her own investigation in Scotland to see if she could find out who her real father was.

  Freya didn’t react to any of it; she just sat up in bed picking at her nails and avoiding looking directly at Eva. It was as if she wasn’t interested in any of it.

  ‘There was a photograph of a row of shops in her stuff too, and someone in Scotland told me it was in Carlisle. So I came here looking for that street,’ Eva went on. ‘Then I found out about the baby that had been taken from there and I suspected that baby was me. I didn’t want to think the woman I thought was my mum had done such a terrible thing, but I’ve found proof now that she did.’

  ‘Is that right?’ Freya said with what seemed to Eva complete contempt.

  ‘The police officers who came to tell me about the results of the blood test also said you’d told the Carlisle police we had the same dad. Have we?’

  ‘Yes, but he’s dead now. And Mam might as well be. Everyone thought she’d killed you. Did you know that?’

  She spoke in an accusatory manner, which unnerved Eva. ‘Yes, I did hear that, Freya. That was very unfair of people to claim such a thing without any evidence to back it up. And it must’ve been very hard for you growing up with that hanging over you?’