by Chris Curran
He shook his head. ‘It’s just one of those monsters that lurk on the Internet.’
She wished he hadn’t phrased it like that, but for now she decided to do nothing. An online remark couldn’t hurt her.
Alex said, ‘Let’s get a takeaway tonight. We’re both exhausted and I don’t fancy any of those casseroles your mum put in the freezer. I’ll go and collect it.’
They settled on Chinese food, but when Eve had made her choice a wave of weariness came over her and she said, ‘I think I’ll lie down while I wait.’ Ivy was in her carrycot fast asleep by their feet, and Alex took her upstairs as Eve dragged herself after him.
These days sleep came like a shutter descending. One minute she was listening to Alex in the hall putting on his coat, the next she was struggling up from the depths to Ivy crying beside the bed.
A noise – Alex coming in again – made her jump and Ivy snuffle and let out a little grizzle, but looking at the time Eve stifled the urge to call out. It was too early for Alex. She raised her head from the pillows to hear better. Nothing. Must be the wind. But, no, there it was again coming from the kitchen or the back door. Ivy was working herself up to cry, so she scooped her from the carry-cot and rocked her for a few minutes until she slept again.
But she couldn’t relax. Slipped her phone into the pocket of her joggers and, with Ivy dozing on her shoulder, lowered her legs over the side of the bed and tiptoed onto the landing. All was silent, so she switched on the hall light.
Another creak. Her heart thumped. It was the back door. Was there a shadow behind the glass? Alex wouldn’t come in via the kitchen. He didn’t keep a key for that door with him.
She stood totally still. Listening.
The same noise again. A rattling or scratching coming from somewhere – maybe the garden. Probably just a cat or a fox. She should go back into the bedroom, close the door and try not to hear it. Alex wouldn’t be long.
But she couldn’t move. Imagined someone creeping around downstairs. The tiniest movement from Ivy made her breath catch in her throat. She mustn’t wake and start to cry.
She felt horribly exposed; something icy crawling up her spine. Wished she hadn’t turned on the hall light so she was visible through the landing window. Holding Ivy tight she pulled out her phone. Hand shaking she clicked on Alex’s number. The recorded voice asked if she wanted to leave a message. She fought not to scream at him to come home.
It was nothing, just a few noises, and she didn’t want him thinking she couldn’t be left alone for five minutes. She began to edge back towards the bedroom.
Another rattle. The front door this time. Her heart juddered.
‘Eve, are you all right?’ Alex coming in with the food. ‘Why did you ring?’ She breathed again as she headed down to him.
On the stairs, Ivy still in her arms, her foot caught. She was falling. The wooden floor rising towards her. The solid wood floor.
Ivy. Oh God, Ivy.
Somehow she grabbed the banister with one hand, clutching Ivy with the other and, instead of falling, she stumbled on to one knee, the trapped foot twisting in agony. Then she was on her feet staggering in a half run to the bottom of the stairs.
Ivy began to scream, and Alex and dropped the bags of food with a cry. A bottle smashed and red wine poured across the floor. Then he was there clutching her and trying to take Ivy from her, but she clung on, holding Ivy to her face, kissing and stroking. ‘Oh, God, oh God.’ Her knee was a fiery agony, but she managed to say, ‘It’s all right. We’re all right.’
When she let Alex take the baby he carried her into the sitting room, and Eve staggered over to close the front door. Alex had put Ivy on the sofa and Eve picked her up gingerly and held her saying, ‘It’s all right, it’s all right now,’ through gasping breaths.
He knelt in front of her, his hands on her knees. ‘What happened?’
She moved the hand that was resting on her sore leg and rubbed the place. ‘Caught my foot in the stair carpet.’
He sat back, forehead creased. She clung to Ivy’s warm softness.
‘I thought I heard a noise. Thought someone was trying to get in. That we’d left the kitchen door unlocked.’ She put Ivy down on the sofa again and reached for him. He held her without speaking, his hands loose on her back. Then he stood up and went away.
Eve sat, unable to do anything but wait and listen to him clearing up the mess in the hall. When he came in he had the carrycot, put Ivy into it and placed it on the floor. Then he went back for the food, spreading everything on the coffee table.
‘Alex?’ Her voice was hardly there. ‘It was the carpet. There must be a loose bit or something. And I thought I heard someone trying to break in.’
He was piling his plate with food and took a long swallow of water. ‘Yes, you said. It’s all right, I checked the back door and it was locked, but I couldn’t find anything wrong with the carpet. You must have tripped over your own feet.’
Her knee and ankle were throbbing and there was a hard lump in her throat. ‘It was an accident, Alex.’
He kissed her cheek. ‘It’s all right. No harm done. But I was worried. You called me, but didn’t answer when I rang back.’
Eve looked at her phone, and he was right. There was a missed call from him. A flush of heat as she realized she had switched it to silent to avoid waking Ivy. She just shook her head.
When she got to the bedroom she turned up the sound on her phone, feeling her mouth twist in a bitter smile as she realized she was doing it so Alex wouldn’t know how stupid she had been.
Then she saw there was another Instagram comment under the portrait of Stella.
Starry girl, starry girl, just had to die. No good will come of wondering why.
Stella
David drove Stella and her belongings down to Hastings then wouldn’t hear of taking any money for the room. ‘It’s just going to waste at the moment.’ The college had agreed to her taking some time off. Her tutor must have guessed why she needed it and why she had fallen so far behind with her work.
David had phoned when he got her letter and told her she could come right away if she wanted to, but she said she was fine in the flat and had paid the rent until the middle of January. That much was true, but she lied and said she had college work to finish and was spending Christmas with friends in Newcastle. She told her flatmates the same story. In reality, her Christmas consisted of hiding out in her room. But she was happier like that than in someone else’s family home.
David’s house was actually what she would have called a cottage. It was on the outskirts of the town with a garden that looked pretty even on a winter’s day. There were window boxes filled with snowdrops and lavender bushes edging the brick path. David would only allow her to carry her shoulder bag.
The woman who opened the front door had to be his wife, Jill. ‘Come in, come in, Stella, we’re so pleased to have you.’
Stella hesitated in the little hallway. It smelled of polish and the old wooden floor shone nut-brown in the weak sunlight.
‘David can take your things up. You go through to the kitchen.’
Mrs Ballantyne had a round and rosy face surrounded by a halo of brown curls. Stella guessed she must be a similar age to David. She had made a chocolate cake, and Stella had to sit at the big pine kitchen table and take a huge piece and the mug of tea that Mrs Ballantyne, it’s Jill please, Stella, you make me feel like an old woman, held out to her. It was a lovely room with worn tiles on the floor. Some kind of green plant tapped at the window and she guessed the garden would be beautiful. A good place to paint.
David came in, took some cake and settled himself in an easy chair beside the Aga that was giving out a gentle heat. Apparently his gallery, which he was still setting up, was right in the centre of the Old Town as he called it. ‘It’s where the fishermen have always lived. They draw the boats up on the shingle beach there. That area of town is very picturesque.’
Eventually Jill showed Stella to her ro
om at the back of the house overlooking the garden. Even this early in the year it was filled with light. Another perfect place to paint.
The floorboards, like those in the hallway, looked old, but shone with polish. David had set up her easel in one corner by the window and placed on it the carefully wrapped painting of herself and Maggie she had been trying, and failing, to complete.
Stella said, ‘It’s lovely, thank you.’
Jill touched her arm. ‘We’re very glad to have you and you must stay as long as you like. There’s plenty of space.’
They stood awkwardly for what seemed ages, Jill looking at her with a smile. When she finally said, ‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ Stella closed the door and lay on the bed staring out of the window at the ice blue sky and listening to the shriek of gulls that reminded her of home and childhood visits to Whitley Bay.
This wouldn’t just be the perfect place to paint. But the perfect place for a child to grow up.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Eve
When Alex came up Eve was lying awake. He put Ivy’s carrycot beside the bed and kissed Eve’s hand. His brown and gold eyes glimmered. ‘I don’t know what I’d do if anything happened to you and Ivy. It’s not easy for you, I know, and I’m getting a lot of things wrong. I’ve been trying so hard to do it better than with my first children. I was hopeless with them.’
She sat up and went into his arms, but the movement made her knee and ankle throb so she couldn’t hold back a little yelp of pain.
‘Let me see,’ he said. A big bruise was forming on her knee and her ankle looked puffy. Alex went into the bathroom for two flannels soaked with cold water.
She watched as he undressed and found herself feeling more remote from him than she could ever remember. The second Instagram comment had chilled her and her first instinct had been to show it to him. But she hadn’t done it – worried he would pass it off as nothing to worry about.
He climbed in beside her, stroking her hair before turning away and falling quickly asleep. Eve lay awake trying not to think. Trying not to let dark thoughts overwhelm her.
When Ivy began to whimper she crawled out of bed, wincing from the pain in her leg and limping into the room they had so much enjoyed getting ready for their baby. Sitting in the rocking chair she told herself to get a grip. This should be the happiest time in her life. And she was spoiling it. Alex was obviously struggling too, however much he tried to hide it. He had told her he would never forgive himself for being so wrapped up in work that he had left the care of his first two children to his ex-wife. ‘That was why I lost their love,’ he told Eve soon after they met. ‘And it was only what I deserved.’
He was trying so hard this time.
But tonight Eve had felt he thought Ivy might not be safe with her. And he could be right. Why hadn’t she just left her in the bedroom in her carrycot? And how had she managed to trip like that? She had been so sure there was something wrong with the carpet, but it had been her own carelessness. Her stupid panic that someone was trying to break in just because she heard a noise. It must have been a cat or an urban fox getting at the dustbin by the back door. She would never have been frightened by something like that in the past. So maybe Alex was right to be worried. Maybe she should be too. Instead of getting into a state about some random stranger lurking in the garden or a couple of peculiar Instagram comments.
Her thoughts twisted in tortuous circles, and Ivy took ages over her feed, twisting and mewing. By the time she had fallen asleep, Eve was so tired she could have slept there and then in the rocking chair. But that wouldn’t do. What if she let Ivy fall?
She carried her – oh so carefully – back to the master bedroom, knelt on her sore knee to place her in the carrycot and crawled into bed again. But she couldn’t sleep and lay staring at the grey windows, imagining the wide stretch of empty grass out there, the cliffs, and beyond them, the dark sea.
In the morning she woke to see Ivy sleeping soundly beside her. She had only stirred once more in the night and Eve had stayed in bed to feed her. After that she fell into a restless dream-filled sleep. In one she was in a small boat on a wild sea clutching Ivy to her until a wave tossed the boat into the air and she lost hold of her. She watched helplessly as Ivy disappeared down, down into the depths and was gone forever. Eve screamed so hard it hurt her throat, but the sound was lost in the wind unheard even by herself.
Alex leaned over and kissed her. She opened her eyes, glad to have woken, and shivered.
‘It’s trying to snow again out there,’ he said pulling the duvet up. He nodded towards the carrycot, keeping his voice low. ‘She slept well.’
She sat up gathering the covers around her shoulders. ‘Yeah, she only woke twice.’
‘What about you? You seemed to be crying in your sleep at one stage. Bad dreams?’
‘I don’t remember.’ As she said it a wave of sorrow came over her. Only a short time ago she would have told him the whole thing right away knowing he would kiss her and make her feel better.
He climbed out of bed. ‘I know I’m still on leave, but one of my students is having a serious wobble, so I should to go in and talk to her. Will you be all right for a few hours? There’s plenty of food in the fridge. I’ll light the living room fire before I leave, but keep the heating on too.’
Eve kissed him. ‘We’ll be fine.’ When she heard the door close behind him half an hour later she told herself the relief she felt was only because she would be glad of a quiet few hours on her own with Ivy.
After she’d had breakfast she sat in front of the fire and for the first time was able to simply enjoy the warm weight of her baby in her arms.
The back door opened and she tensed, but the, ‘Only me,’ from her mum made her lean back with a sigh. Jill bustled in. ‘I used my key so as not to disturb you if you were having a nap. Alex called to say he had to go into work, so I thought I’d pop round and ask if you needed anything.’
‘I wish you’d knocked or called before you came. I had a panic yesterday when I thought someone was trying to break in.’ She tried to clamp down on her annoyance.
Her mum sat beside her touching Ivy’s little pink mouth where she must have spotted a strand of hair or cotton. ‘Yes, Alex said. And you hurt your leg too. What a nuisance.’ She reached for Ivy. ‘Shall I take her for you?’
Eve stood, pain shooting through her leg. ‘I’m fine. I’m going to put her in her big cot for a while. Start her getting used to it during the day.’
Jill stood. ‘I’ll make us a cuppa.’
‘Have one yourself, but I’m all right.’ She didn’t dare look at her mum because she knew she was being unkind. But as she carried Ivy upstairs she was very aware of Jill standing at the bottom. Poised to catch them if they fell. She wanted to scream. Instead she put the baby in her cot and sat on the rocking chair, rocking back and forth very fast, until Ivy began to whimper with hunger.
She slept as soon as she was fed and changed, and Eve left her and went down to find her mum mixing eggs for omelettes. Cheese omelettes were one of Eve’s favourites. Jill turned to her, her face crumpled and pink. She had been crying. ‘I’m sorry, love, I was only trying to help. We all are.’
Eve put her arms around her. ‘I know and thank you.’ She cut some bread and added a few tomatoes to the little salad Jill had put ready on the kitchen table.
While they were eating her mum started talking about the book club she belonged to. ‘You should come when Ivy can do without you for a bit longer.’
‘I’ll be back at work by then I expect. Won’t have much time.’ She shouldn’t have said it because she knew her mother thought she should take at least a year off.
After they’d finished Jill said she would wash up, and Eve went back into the living room picking up her phone to see if she’d had any messages from Alex.
There was an email from Ben Houghton.
Ben
He regretted it almost as soon as he’d pressed send. Pamela was r
ight, he should have kept out of it. But then perhaps the email would do what nothing else could and draw a line under the whole sorry business. Pushing his wheelchair over to the window he watched the snow coming down. He’d always hated the British winter. Used to dream of living in Italy. And this weather made getting out of the house even more difficult.
Thank the lord for Mark. He could always rely on him for running errands as well as the more basic stuff. Been with him for years. His carer Mark called himself when they first hired him. Ben wouldn’t have that, was tempted to call him my valet but could see that wouldn’t wash. So they’d settled on assistant.
Wasn’t much of a job for a man in Ben’s opinion. Although there was the heavy lifting and Ben had to admit he wasn’t getting any lighter. Mark was a decent chap – not too bright, but that was an asset as far as Ben was concerned. He’d been really useful these last few weeks, of course. Unlike Simon he did what he was told and asked no questions. Had been keeping an eye on the situation, making his presence felt.
Ben had done what he could too, within his limitations. And in a way had quite enjoyed it. But nothing seemed to have had much effect. They’d have to step it up.
And he needed to talk to Simon, at least try to persuade him to stop seeing this girl. But that needed serious thinking about too. They’d never discussed it, so he had no idea what Simon remembered of that night. It had always seemed best not to ask. And of course Simon didn’t know how much Ben recalled either.
He forced himself to go back to the laptop on his big antique desk – the desk he loved and that Pamela never stopped trying to get him to sell – and called up the message to Eve Ballantyne. She was still using David’s name, he noticed, even though she was married. Bloody David. A lot of this mess was due to his interference.
Dear Eve.
He shook his head. Had dithered over that for ages.
My dear Eve.
Too familiar and she might even think it condescending – or worse – fatherly!