by Chris Curran
He had tried to tell Simon to keep away from the girl, the daughter, but he never listened to his dad anymore. Couldn’t seem to understand that it was crucial to close this down – and fast. Because the loan sharks weren’t the only thing they had to worry about.
Eve
Her mum was out of intensive care the day after the operation. They said she was making progress and, although she didn’t look well, she was sitting up and talking.
When Eve visited she gripped her hand and whispered, ‘I’m sorry,’ just as her dad said she had after her attack.
‘It’s all right, Mum.’
Her dad rubbed Jill’s knee through the bedclothes. ‘They say you’ll be out for Christmas.’
‘We’ll make the dinner this year,’ Eve said. ‘You’ve already done the cake and the puddings. Alex and I will handle the rest and you can relax and enjoy your granddaughter.’
But when David went out to stretch his legs, Jill slid closer to her, wincing and putting a hand to her chest. ‘Eve, I have to talk to you.’
‘If it’s about Stella, don’t worry. Dad told me enough for now. Like I said, let’s all have a lovely Christmas together with Ivy.’
Jill shook her head on her pillow. She must have missed a hair appointment because there were lots of silver strands in her parting and framing her face. It made her look much older. ‘I blame myself for what happened, you see. I took over caring for you. Was too pushy. I don’t think I helped her confidence. But I always worried about her.’
‘Did you believe she hurt Ben?’
‘At first I thought Pamela was just jealous because she imagined there had been an affair. But then she told me about Stella’s background and that she tried to blame Ben’s accident on some kind of criminal gang, which was ridiculous.’
‘What happened?’
‘I think she felt she would never be a good enough mother. I took to it, you see. Loved it and you were such an easy baby with me, but she always struggled.’ Her mother seemed to be talking to herself now. Her lips looked chalky and Eve held up the cup of tea they’d brought round a couple of minutes earlier, but Jill shook her head. ‘It was only luck that I came back that day. She knew I’d be out for an hour or more. Must have planned to have just enough time.’
Oh God.
Jill reached out for the tea and Eve handed it to her. She drank the whole cup in a few gulps as if suddenly very thirsty. Then wiped her hand across her mouth. It was a clumsy gesture; one that Eve had never seen from her before. When she spoke it was slowly and her eyes became distant.
‘I found her with you in the garage. The door was closed. You were strapped into the car and she had turned the engine on.’
‘Oh, Mum.’
Her mother looked at her as if surprised she was there and began talking faster. ‘Yes, the door was closed tight, the engine was on and she’d left everything behind. Her bag, all her painting stuff, Eve’s clothes and toys.’ It was obvious Jill had said all this before. To David if to no one else.
A gasp that was almost painful caught in her throat. ‘So she might have killed us both?’ When she could speak properly she said, ‘Did you try to get her psychiatric help?’
Jill pulled at her curls. ‘We wanted to, but she wouldn’t have it. So we alerted the health visitor to the fact that she wasn’t coping. Didn’t tell her the details and she was just a young girl, so she accepted what we said. That Stella was feeling inadequate, not eating or sleeping well. That she wasn’t able to care for you properly.’
‘So why did she go. To Italy, I mean?’
A slow headshake. ‘I think, having made up her mind it was best to part with you, she needed to get right away.’ She reached for Eve’s hand and held it tight. ‘And I encouraged her. Thought it was a good idea. I can’t help feeling guilty about that.’
‘You’ve no need.’
‘But if she hadn’t gone away she wouldn’t have died.’
‘That wasn’t your fault.’
‘It’s just,’ Her mum shifted as if she was in pain, but when Eve asked if she was OK she said, ‘I’m fine, I just can’t get it out of my head that she was so unhappy during those last days with us.’
Eve pressed her other hand over her mother’s. ‘It’s years ago now, Mum. Don’t think about it.’
‘I know the fire was ruled an accident by the Italian authorities, but it took a while, so there’s always been a nagging worry in the back of my mind.’ Again it was as if she was talking to herself.
Eve said nothing because she knew what her mum meant and it made sense. If Stella had tried it once she might have tried it again – and succeeded.
Stella
After the little accident in the garage, as Jill kept calling it, Stella walked down to the bank on her own. Then she carried on walking. Not thinking, not feeling, just putting one foot in front of the other until she found herself back in the house. Straight up to her room to take off her shoes. One of her toes was sore and her sock was sticking to a blister that had burst, but she just tore off her clothes and dragged herself under the covers. Everything ached and she was so cold she thought she might be ill.
Had it happened as she remembered or as Jill said? She couldn’t be sure of anything.
Jill insisted on taking Eve in with her and David overnight. ‘To allow you to have a proper rest. You’re obviously exhausted.’ And she slept. Without dreams. Without movement. As if dead.
The health visitor turned up first thing. It wasn’t her normal day and Stella was still in bed when Jill called her. She didn’t dare delay and threw on the clothes she’d dropped on the floor the night before. She knew she must look terrible. Her shirt was crumpled and there were stains on her jeans. Even with the shirt hanging out it was obvious her trousers were gaping open. Her stomach was still flabby and her scar hurt when she tried to do the zip up.
Vicky was in the kitchen standing with her back against the sink, sun streaming through the window behind her and turning her face into a fuzzy halo. Impossible to see her expression.
Jill was at the Aga pouring coffee. The room smelled rich with it, but when Stella pulled out a chair with its little patchwork cushion and sat at the table she caught a hint of another, more delicate, fragrance. There was a pottery vase of fresh yellow and white freesias in the middle. It was all so beautiful and comfortable she wanted to let her head fall back, to close her eyes and sleep again.
Vicky patted her hand and she jumped because she hadn’t noticed her moving to sit beside her. She must be saying something, but Stella could only hear muffled words. Fragments of sentences floated around her as if drifting through water. Warm and fragrant water. Difficult … young mother … on your own.
She forced herself to listen.
‘I hear things aren’t getting any easier? Are you taking the tablets the doctor gave you?’
She knew she should say something, but couldn’t find the words. Any words. So she nodded, not sure what she was agreeing to.
Jill’s voice. ‘We’ve been talking about fostering Eve officially so that Stella can go on her Italian break without worrying.’
Vicky gave her broadest smile, deep dimples forming in her cheeks. ‘That sounds like a grand idea. We’re all quite worried about you, you know, Stella love. No one wants to take baby away from you, of course, but you shouldn’t be alone with her until you’re feeling better.’
They sat there with their coffees in front of them and smiled at her, while Eve cooed in her basket and Stella fought not scream and pick up the plate of beautiful homemade biscuits that Vicky was eyeing so longingly and fling them down on the shiny tiles.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Eve
Although they said her mother was on the mend she was very subdued and didn’t take as much interest in Ivy as Eve had expected. On Christmas Day she sat in a chair by the fire and held her, smiling down at her now and then, but handing her to David after a few minutes. He hovered around her all day, helping her out of her seat,
bringing her drinks and asking if she was warm enough. In fact, after days of ice and sleety rain the weather had become muggy, the cloudy sky turning everything grey outside. The lights in the tree in next door’s garden were hardly visible and the flickering electric sparkles in windows along the street did nothing to lighten the gloom.
But Eve should have been happy. Almost as happy as Alex obviously was. Ivy was feeding well, sleeping for longer at night and sharing the feeds with Alex meant Eve felt much more rested. Christmas dinner went well and Jill brightened up enough to laugh at the cracker jokes and put on her paper hat as they all crowded round the kitchen table.
‘This is lovely,’ she said and joined in with the clapping when Eve brought over the pudding that, for once, she’d managed to get flaming successfully.
Everyone made a fuss over it, and Jill chuckled, saying, ‘It’s the same old recipe. No need to go overboard because I nearly popped my clogs.’
It didn’t last. When Alex suggested they put Eve in her pram and go for an afternoon walk, and David reminded her that the doctors said walking was good for her, she pulled off her paper hat and shook her head. ‘You go. I’m a bit tired.’
All her movements nowadays were careful and her hand seemed to be permanently pressed to her breastbone. As Eve watched her she knew her dad was doing the same and tried not to catch his eye.
Of course he decided to stay too, but Alex and Eve wouldn’t leave Ivy behind. And once they’d got out with the baby bundled up against the misty rain she felt able to breathe a bit more easily.
When they got down to the town there was a chill wind coming off the sea, so they cut back along a little cobbled lane with walls on either side and into the narrow High Street. All the shops were closed, for once, and the old-fashioned lamppost lights struggled against the mist. Alex tucked Ivy’s covers closer to her chin and said, ‘Don’t worry about your mum. She’ll soon come through this and be able to enjoy being a grandmother.’
Eve said nothing. There were so many things she should talk to him about, but she didn’t want to spoil his happiness. And when they got back to the house, Jill was pottering about getting a few things ready for tea with her beautifully decorated Christmas cake in the middle of the table. Alex caught Eve’s eye to signal, I told you so, and she smiled at him, glad she’d kept quiet.
But when she took Ivy upstairs to feed and change her she heard Jill go into the bathroom next door. The usual sounds: toilet flushing, water running. But then, instead of the door unlocking, she heard something else.
Quietly, but not quietly enough, Jill was crying.
Lying in bed on Christmas night, Eve almost told Alex about what she’d heard, but stopped herself. Jill would hate anyone else to know. Instead she said, ‘I can’t help worrying, because Mum seems so depressed. Last time she was ill she was really positive.’
‘Don’t forget she was close to death at one point.’
‘How can I forget? It was my fault.’
He turned to her so forcefully the mattress dipped. ‘Stop that. None of this is down to you. I haven’t liked to say too much, but your parents were very wrong to keep all this stuff about your birth mother from you. I wish …’ He lay back heavily on his pillow.
‘What?’
‘Oh nothing. I just wish I’d been more honest with my kids. Told them how much I loved them for one thing.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said.
‘At least they’ll soon be old enough to make sense of it themselves. To see their mother’s told them a pack of lies. But when I think what she may have said to them it makes me feel sick. She was just so vindictive.’
Her beside light was on very low and she twisted so she could look at him. This was probably the most he’d ever said about it. ‘I’m sure they’ll find you as soon as they’re able.’
He gave her a long kiss and then they made gentle love, Alex asking over and over if it was all right. Did she feel all right?
Afterwards she told him what she’d learned about Stella.
He said, ‘Well that explains why your parents didn’t tell you.’ When she shifted beside him he reached for her hand and kissed it. ‘I’m not saying it excuses the lies, but it does make them more understandable. One day you should think about meeting James Stone. Get a DNA test if it will set your mind at rest. But not just yet.’
She took a breath, ready to tell him about the new Instagram comment and those frightening noises she kept hearing. But his breathing had changed and she realized he was asleep.
She woke to Ivy’s first cries and was able to take her into the other bedroom without disturbing him. Sitting in the rocking chair she smiled down at her baby. All was quiet and when Ivy was asleep again she put her in the big cot and checked the garden. It was still and silent. Maybe it had been her imagination after all.
After a while she picked up her tablet intending to read for a bit, but spotted two messages. One was from Simon:
Wishing you and Alex a great first Christmas as parents
and she smiled to think he might be also be awake in these dark hours. It was comforting.
The other was from James Stone:
Have a good Christmas and New Year. I’ll be in the UK in early January. Very happy to meet up then if you’d like to.
That made her smile too. The search for her birth mother hadn’t turned out well, but it had brought these two men into her life.
She looked through some of the photos she’d taken today wondering if she should send any to James. There were so many of Ivy it was difficult to choose.
Then she couldn’t stop herself from looking on Instagram.
A lurch inside. Under a picture of newborn Ivy was something else from intheshadows.
Clutching the fleece around her she turned off the light and went to the window, pulling the blind back just enough to let her stare down into the dark garden as the words echoed in her head: Listening at the window, Standing on the stair. Watch your step my darling. Unless you know who’s there.
To anyone else it would seem just a silly rhyme, but Eve shivered, her eyes straining into the grey night, remembering how she’d stood on the landing listening to those noises from the garden. If someone had been out there they could have seen her through the window. Seen her trip on the stairs.
Now every night-time creak and rattle she’d made herself ignore since then came back to her. Perhaps they had been nothing, as she’d told herself, but she was sure now that someone had been in the garden the night she fell, and the second time when she stood frozen on the landing, too.
Someone who knew about her connection to Stella. Someone who wanted her to know they were watching her.
Stella
Walking, walking, walking. It seemed to be all she did in the days following the little accident. Each morning, after she had given Eve her first bottle and swallowed a piece of toast, she would head down towards the sea. It was a cold spring, but she didn’t care about that. Even preferred it on the days of spitting rain when the sea boiled grey and waves whipped right over the pavement as if determined to soak her.
Vicky had come back with another health visitor, obviously someone senior. They spoke very kindly, but made it clear that she couldn’t go to live on her own with Eve. ‘We just feel you should have a little more support until you’re back on an even keel. The doctor agrees. There’s no need for any formalities as you have Jill and David on hand, but we must think about baby’s safety above all.’
All she could do was sit and let their words float through the fog that permanently surrounded her these days.
Later, in the warm kitchen, David mentioned that the flat above the gallery was nearly ready. ‘If you want to get away from us, you could move in there in a few days. Rent-free in exchange for keeping an eye on the gallery on the odd occasion when I can’t do it.’
A spark of hope before Jill came in with, ‘And, of course, you can come over to see Eve whenever you want.’
David smiled at her, taki
ng off his glasses to polish them. ‘Eventually, when you’re feeling better, you could have her there with you. Stay permanently if it suits.’
Jill, stirring something on the stove said, ‘Yes, as soon as Vicky thinks you’re well enough.’
And the spark that had flared again faded and died.
So she walked, and if she wasn’t walking she slept. In the pretty bedroom overlooking the garden, she’d sleep as if dead before dragging herself out for another walk. In the afternoons it was usually up on one of the hills overlooking the sea, the wet grass squelching under her feet as she tramped through it.
By the time she got back to the house she was so tired she often fumbled with her key, and Jill would come and let her in. After a couple of evening meals where she sat silent as Jill and David chatted away, trying too hard to include her in the conversation, they gave up and Jill said, ‘If you’re too tired to sit with us, why don’t you take your plate up to your room to eat.’
Her sleep these days was dreamless, and for someone who used to be plagued by nightmares that was a wonderful blessing. But when she woke she never felt rested, but weighed down. It was as if she had aged ten or twenty years.
One afternoon she came back so exhausted her legs felt as if they had turned to concrete.
Jill sat cradling Eve who was sucking on her bottle eyes closed in bliss. ‘You missed a phone call.’
‘Who was it?’
‘Your friend, Maggie, ringing from Italy. She said she’s still in Milan, but will be going to her new place next week.’ Jill lifted Eve onto her shoulder and began rubbing her back, her hand circling and circling while Stella stared at the flash of the diamond engagement ring on her finger. ‘She says you can visit any time after next Monday.’ Both hands busy, Jill nodded towards a scrap of paper on the table. ‘That’s her phone number from then onwards.’
Jill stood, Eve still in her arms, and handed her to Stella. She continued talking as she opened the fridge, took packets from the cupboards, a knife from the rack and placed a chopping board on the work surface. All with her usual quick efficiency. ‘Maggie’s obviously dying to see you. I told her you might come on your own.’