Then James had agreed to leave Camille. They had tried to stay away from one another and that hadn’t worked. And now she was having his baby, and the truth wouldn’t change that.
‘No, Mama,’ Evie whispered. ‘It’s not Richard. It’s James, James is the man I love. I always have. And now he’s going to ask Camille for a divorce and we are going to be together. There are a few things to sort out but he loves me and he always has.’
She watched her mother’s face intensely, waiting for her to smile, to tell her how delighted she was, even if it wasn’t in so many words. And when she did Evie would tell her about the baby. Instead, her mother’s face contorted into a frown, her brow bone, now completely hairless, furrowing.
‘James?’ the word came out a croak. ‘James?’
‘Yes, James. James Addlington. Do you remember him?’
Her mother’s fingers tightened on the thin sheets that were pulled up around her.
‘Your father,’ she whispered. ‘Your father.’
‘I know, Papa never liked James. Tell me why, Mama. Tell me the reason why Dominic hated James’ father so much.’
Evie’s mother was in a state of full agitation now. She swiped her hands in front of her face as though fighting imaginary bugs and her breathing was ragged and even more laboured than before.
‘Mama!’ Evie gasped. ‘Nurse! Nurse!’
She grabbed for the button beside the bed to call for help. Was this it? Was her mother dying? Evie had known this moment was coming but still she felt completely unprepared. Before the nurse could arrive her mother reached out and clasped Evie’s wrist in her ice-cold bony fingers.
‘Your father,’ she gulped in air as the door swung open and a nurse ran to her bedside. As the carer filled a syringe with morphine and eased her back onto the pillow, Monique made one last lunge for her daughter and finally managed to speak.
Now
80
Rebecca
I wander through the park, my fingers clasped around a cup of coffee to keep them warm. The day is mild but the wind is biting, not enough though to keep the hordes of children from the swings and climbing frames. Groups of mothers huddle together, thumbing through their phones and trying to look delighted as their offspring fly down the slide for the sixteenth time. I stand and watch as a young girl commands the attention of a group of six-year-olds gathered around a pair of trampolines set into the floor. She is bouncing enthusiastically, apparently unaware of the commotion her scissor kicks and forward flips are causing. Her build is slight, her jet-black hair pulled into a pair of perfect French plaits that knock against each other as she bounces.
On the second trampoline another girl bounces up and down, watching the first girl from the corner of her eye. She is heavier, although only slightly, her dishwater blonde hair pulled carelessly into a ponytail. There seems nothing dislikeable about her, and yet not one of the children are watching her, their attention commanded by the smaller, prettier, more watchable girl. Look at her, I feel like demanding. Just because she’s not showing off, putting herself on display, doesn’t mean she’s not worth watching.
Just as I’m about to turn and walk away, the first girl bounces off the trampoline and goes over to the second girl. She grasps her hand and pulls her off and the girl looks as though the sun has just been turned on. Adulation is written on her plain, unassuming face and the pair of them walk off together, ignoring the crowd of children who groan and shout for more. More jumps, they shout, but they may as well be saying, Give us more of you. We don’t know why but we want to watch you, we love you. But this girl knows that one true friend is worth more than all of those spectators put together, and that what she has done is to cement that girl’s utter devotion for as long as she wants it.
It makes me think of another duo, in another time, hand in hand as they walked through another park, one of them talking about her mother, a beautiful woman who loved her father with the fire of a thousand suns, but also a troubled woman who had her own demons to extinguish.
‘It never helped,’ Evie said to me, her eyes dark, ‘that he wasn’t entirely discreet about his “extra-marital interests”. But then,’ she said with a sigh. ‘Mama is really so difficult to live with sometimes. She’s so impulsive, and nothing she seems to do makes any sense. It’s like her brain is wired differently to you and me – things she sees as perfectly reasonable that a normal person would consider absolutely bonkers.’
She opened her mouth as though she was about to elaborate and thought better of it.
‘Like what?’ I pushed. I remember the warmth of that day, the sunlight pressing down on us, smothering us. It was the height of summer in London and the too high buildings and streets gave off a whiff of garbage every time the slightest breeze got up. Today, to combat the smell and the heat rising from the pavements, Evie had dragged me to Hyde Park where she now lay draped along the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, her feet dangling in the water.
‘Nothing,’ she replied, closing the conversation. Her camera, as always, was attached to her hand, and she rolled over onto her front and began to shoot the others at the memorial. ‘Tell me about your family again.’
Sometimes Evie would tell me stories of her growing up, the kinds of parties her parents would throw and the exquisite beauty and grace of the people who attended them. But other times she would listen rapt to my stories of how I’d grown up, my parents’ council house full of children – not just my two brothers and one sister (I was the youngest by nine years, clearly an accident and resented by every last one of them) but all their friends, girlfriends and boyfriends. Saturday mornings in front of Live & Kicking where we would all fight over the comfy bean-bag so much that Mum put an egg timer on the side and rotated us every three minutes – until it got to my turn and she forgot to kick me off. Begging my sister to let me borrow her make-up, or play with her and her cool friends while they pretended to record talk shows and put on fashion parades. It was just boring everyday life for me, but for Evelyn Rousseau of the big house and the nursemaid and the glitzy parties and ten-thousand-pound-a-year schooling, my overcrowded, underfunded lifestyle was like a fairy tale.
‘What I would have given for people,’ she groaned once, all of a sudden sounding very French. For the most part her accent had blended in so seamlessly with ours that it became barely noticeable; so much so that I found it hard to believe she had ever lived in another country. But every now and then a word or two would make her sound uncannily like her father and remind me that she hadn’t just been conjured into existence the day I met her. ‘Someone to talk to, to argue with. To share my secrets and fears. You don’t know how lucky you’ve been, Becky.’
Which was probably why, the entire time I knew her, Evie was surrounded by people. Evenings were spent at poetry readings in trendy cafés, or in a tiny room of a sweeping Victorian house, where dozens of students seemed to inhabit five bedrooms. Always the smell of incense or something stronger in the air, but more noticeably, always the incessant noise, chatter, music. The nights we spent alone, just the two of us, would be to a background of the radio or at the cinema, alone but still surrounded. Now I was just alone. Tears pricking at the edges of my eyes, I blink them away to see that the girls have gone and I wonder if their future holds the same as ours.
81
Rebecca
We’d been at a house party the night I got confirmation of what people really thought of me, and of Evie. She and Richard had been together less than a month and we’d only gone to the party because it was Philippa’s birthday. Ever since the incident with the pills Evie had tried her best to stay sober, and Richard was hardly the party-going type anyway, so we’d fallen into a natural rhythm of evenings on the sofa watching a film, or one or another of us cramming for a final exam. But Pippa had begged Evie to go, and naturally we had gone with her.
It was funny how, in just a couple of short years, the lifestyle I’d thought of as wildly exotic and bohemian, lunging from one party to an
other, smoking weed and sleeping on bare floorboards, now seemed repellent to me. Although Evie didn’t seem to mind reverting to her old ways and had been debating the elections with a group of politics students with a vigour that had been conspicuously absent of late.
I was in the en-suite of the master bedroom when I heard the girls come in. Preparing to give up my refuge so they could all cram in and hold each other’s hair back in turn, I froze when I heard Evie’s name.
‘I see Evie came. Pips didn’t know if she was going to, she said she’s basically dropped everyone in the last few months.’ There was a sound as if they were undressing – perhaps I was in one of their bathrooms.
‘Well,’ a second voice said. Who are they? ‘I’m not surprised. Boring Becky had to rub off on her sooner or later. And what’s with that new boyfriend? He looks like an extra from the IT Crowd.’
There was an explosion of giggles as my face burned red. Evie would have burst out of the toilet at this moment, she’d have loved watching them squirm as they backtracked and wondered how much she’d heard, but I stayed rooted to the spot.
‘You’re such a bitch,’ a third voice said, one that was vaguely familiar but I still couldn’t name. ‘I thought he seemed nice.’
‘Oh well, if he’s nice, then he’s perfect for Evie, isn’t he?’ said the second girl. ‘I mean, don’t you just picture her with someone nice, all settled down in a pinny with four nice kids? Not. She’ll ditch him for someone more exciting – you wait and see. People like Evie don’t stick with IT losers for long.’
‘I think Becky will get with him instead.’ The third voice spoke again. ‘You know, I heard they had a thing before he fell head over heels for E. And they’re much better suited.’
I couldn’t have been more humiliated at that moment if I’d been forced to walk down the stairs naked with ‘SECOND BEST’ scrawled on my tits. So everyone knew? Were they all whispering when they saw us, about how, obviously, given the choice, he chose her? About how insecure and desperate for her friendship I must have been to step aside so easily? Which I had, hadn’t I? I’d known that if it came to it there would be no contest, I hadn’t even wanted one. I’d finished with Richard before he could dump me for my best friend – I’d taken the classic coward’s way out because I’d known that I’d never win. These witches were right – I was pathetic.
‘When all’s said and done, Evie will get what she wants in the end. Girls like her always do,’ the first girl to speak announced, and I breathed out as I heard the door open and close again and the room fall into silence.
When all’s said and done, Evie will get what she wants in the end.
Hadn’t she already? What more could she want?
82
Rebecca
She’s everywhere I look now, wherever I go. When I move around the house – her house – I sense her in every shadow, around every corner, behind every door. I see her in my dreams most nights, a ghostly spectre that won’t let me rest, besieging me to confess. But what good is that now? Evie is gone, dead, and confessing my part in her ‘suicide’ won’t change that. I tell her this, in my sleep when she comes to me, but she says nothing – just looks at me in that way she has, that way that makes you feel as though she is inside your thoughts.
Richard is starting to worry about me now, but it makes a change from him thinking about her. I’m spending more and more time at the house, and less of our time together is spent worrying about Evie, trying to uncover her past or find out why she did this to him. I think he’s coming to the kind of acceptance that I hoped he would – it doesn’t matter why she betrayed him, only that she did. Detective Michelle called him – six weeks after the wedding night – to tell him that they could find no evidence of foul play and the case was being closed. There would be an inquest on the following Wednesday where he should prepare himself for a verdict of suicide.
That was that then. I should feel relieved but somehow I feel empty.
I’m making us lunch in the kitchen, lost in the actions of chopping tomatoes, washing lettuce leaves, bright sunlight streaming through onto the worktop, when I hear a vibration from my phone in the front room. Popping through to grab it I realise that Richard is on the front doorstep talking to someone. Funny, I didn’t hear the door. Pausing to listen, I recognise the impatient tones of his brother, Martin. Urgh, what’s he doing here? Funnily enough, his next question is exactly that – about me.
‘Is she here again? Is that why you’re keeping me on the doorstep? Bloody hell, Richard, that girl is like a bad smell, you need to get rid of her.’
How fucking dare he. I knew he never liked me, he was a FOE (fan of Evie) and was often sharp to the point of rude when we all socialised together.
‘Don’t be so mean. Becky has been a godsend these past few weeks – I don’t know how I’d have held it together without her.’
I feel a rush of warmth towards Richard – so he does appreciate all I’ve done for him. I know at first he wished it had been me on that cliff instead of his wife, but I also knew that, given time, he’d realise that what he needed in his life was solid dependability. Someone who might be less glamorous than Evie White but ultimately less selfish and unpredictable. That was the only reason I’d agreed to all this, agreed to losing Evie.
‘Besides,’ I hear him continue. ‘I’m worried about her. She’s held it together so long for me that I think she might be having a delayed reaction to Evie’s death. She’s acting strange, talking in her sleep and stuff.’
‘You’re sleeping with her?’ I imagine Martin all red and blustery, in his Ralph Lauren polo shirt and straight-leg jeans that he wore so often I’d sometimes wondered if he just owned a wardrobe full of the same clothes.
‘No, of course not,’ Richard replies a little too quickly. ‘She stays over sometimes, if we’ve had a drink. On the sofa. God, Martin – what kind of person do you think I am?’
‘I think you’re lonely, and vulnerable, and to be honest, Rich, I just don’t trust her. She was always hanging around you and Evie, always sat between you or diverting one of your attention away from the other. God knows how you ever had enough time alone to propose. And don’t think I don’t know who she is.’
‘What do you mean, who she is?’
Yeah, Martin, what do you mean?
‘You think I don’t remember, but I do. Before you fell head over heels for Eves you called me talking about a girl you’d met. Really nice, you said. The kind of person you can just chat to for hours. Rebecca, her name was. It’s the same girl – isn’t it?’
I don’t hear Richard’s reply but I can picture him nodding solemnly and I know he’s confirmed Martin’s suspicions when I hear his brother saying, ‘I knew it! And here she is, a couple of months after Evie . . . after she’s gone, practically living in your house. It’s weird, mate.’
That’s it. I’m not going to stand here while he puts doubt in Richard’s mind and makes him scared to open up to me for fear that other people will feel the same as this cynical piece of shit. I’ll do the only thing I can do, go on the charm offensive. I’ll put in the work to get Martin onside. I can’t lose Richard the way I have Evie. But his next words floor me.
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Martin. You know that Evie is my absolute world. I’ll never stop loving her, and there’s no way anything will ever happen between Becky and me. Not while there’s still a chance that Evie might walk through that door. She’s my wife and nothing that has happened at the wedding or since will change that.’
So there it is. Until Evie’s body is found there is no chance of Richard and I ever moving forward. We will stay trapped in this limbo, living with her ghost. Unless I can convince Richard that his wife isn’t worth waiting for, that she didn’t love him – the way only I know she didn’t. It’s a betrayal, I promised her I’d look after him and never let him find out the truth, but it’s for the best, otherwise how will he ever move on?
There is another man, one who knows everything abo
ut the extent of Evie’s betrayal. It is time Richard found out about James.
83
Rebecca
I drop some bits into the office and on my way back I stop in at the EE shop and buy a pay as you go SIM card. Back in my car, I shove the SIM card into my phone and tap out a text message to my own number.
You should speak to James Addlington.
That’s enough for now. When I show Richard he recognises the name immediately.
‘Wasn’t he killed in the fire? The one Evie . . .’
‘He had a son,’ I interrupt. ‘Also called James. It might mean him.’
‘Right,’ Richard nods. ‘Is this the same number as before? The one Camille was texting you from?’
‘Yes,’ I lie. ‘She’s his wife. Weird. Shall I delete it?’
‘But why would she be saying we should speak to him? Does she think he knows something about why she . . .’ even after over two months he can’t say the words. ‘Or maybe he knows who she was arguing with.’
‘Maybe he is who she was arguing with,’ I suggest, trying not to speak slowly as if talking to a child.
Richard frowns. ‘Can you get me his address?’
84
Rebecca
The door opens and before us stands the man I’ve heard so much about, the man who stole Evie’s heart at nine years old and never gave it back. I’d thought Richard looked in a bad way, but finding James Addlington is a hell of a shock. Compared to this guy, Richard looks like he’s spent the last few weeks on an all-inclusive holiday. Oh Evie, what a wicked web we weave.
The Night She Died Page 22