I drove along Hyde Park, passing expensively coiffed Kensington mums and aggressive Rollerbladers. The orange-gold sun hovered just over the horizon, the color of a tangerine.
I turned onto one of Mayfair’s quiet back streets and parked just down from Rose’s house.
It wouldn’t be long, I knew. Rose took Laura for a walk every evening to tire her out before bed. The street was quiet, empty. A gentle, summer breeze set the mimosa trees stirring. I clutched Barnaby tight, feeling dizzy and disoriented. When was the last time I’d eaten? The last time I’d spoken to another human besides Seb? I couldn’t remember. I had been demented with grief and despair and anguish since Eva died.
I fiddled with the radio to fill the silence as I waited. Somewhere through the fog of my mind, I heard the newscaster reporting on the fire in North London last week.
“Cooking oil was detected on the outside of the Gardener, at the spot where investigators believe the fire started.…”
Cooking oil.
I thought of the tin of cooking oil Seb had thrown at me. And the policeman who had questioned me.
I felt like such a fool. How had I not put it together sooner? Seb started the fire at the Gardener. I was certain of it.
I gazed at the pink-streaked horizon, a soft blush as twilight draped itself around the city. Big Ben chimed the evening hour in the distance. The sky was darkening, turning the deep, satiny blue of a ball gown. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, just a few peekaboo stars twinkling in the distance.
A wave of dizziness rushed over me. I shook my head to dislodge it.
What a bloody wretched night to kill a child. I couldn’t let him do it. I had to stop this.
Finally Rose and Laura emerged. They were wearing matching green cardigans, the last strands of late-evening light winding through their red hair. They held hands as they turned up a cobbled street, heading in the direction of the private garden the neighborhood residents had access to.
I felt quite faint as I watched them, my palms slimy with sweat. I rubbed furiously at Barnaby’s bloodstained ear. After a moment, I put the car in gear and crept slowly after them. Nobody could see me. If word got back to Seb that I had warned Rose, my punishment would be severe.
Twilight pressed in, the pink bleeding into the darkness. Rose withdrew a key from her coat and slid it into the park’s locked gate. My heart twanged painfully in my chest. She was going to disappear and I would miss my chance.
I threw the car in park and staggered out. “Rose!”
Rose jumped at the sound of her name, darting a furtive look around. When she saw me she grabbed Laura’s hand and tugged her through the gate, shutting it as fast as she could behind her.
I stared at the blank space where they had just stood as the final rays of the sun slipped beneath the horizon.
seventeen
eva
I GRABBED A CUP OF strong tea and a cheese croissant from the café beneath Jacob’s flat. On Old Street, I found a stall selling pay-as-you-go phones and bought the cheapest one. The first thing I did was google David Ashford.
Clicking on David’s gallery’s website, I saw that it sold everything from antique to contemporary pieces of Asian art, including ceramics, ancient Japanese armor, and an entire display of items that had been repaired using kintsugi. When I clicked on History, I read that the gallery had originally opened in 1972, but had relocated to the bottom floor of Selwyn House in Mayfair about ten years ago. The address was the same as the one written on the torn piece of paper from my mom’s.
That’s where I needed to go.
“Excuse me,” I asked the shopkeeper. “Do you know how to get to Mayfair?”
He handed me a Tube map. “Take the Tube to Bond Street.”
It sounded so simple. It wasn’t. Even the ticket machine was a ridiculous puzzle to navigate. I somehow managed to buy a day ticket before a helpful businessman informed me that an Oyster card would’ve saved me money.
I made my way to the platform and boarded the next train, getting off at Bank Station to change to another line. Bank Station was a cramped maze of tunnels with escalators leading in every direction. I promptly got lost and spent the next twenty minutes shuffling, bewildered, through underground passageways to nowhere.
I finally managed to find the right Tube line and made my way to Bond Street, my eyes gritty, nose itching from subway dust. Outside, the sun had broken through the clouds, leaving the sky a dazzling blue with puffy, cotton-ball clouds skidding by. October leaves glowed like golden embers.
I plugged David Ashford’s address into Google Maps and followed my phone past eighteenth-century Georgian mansions, swanky redbrick Edwardian buildings, sophisticated wine bars, and exclusive designer shops.
Selwyn House was a beautiful three-story house with a symmetrical white-stucco façade, white bow windows, and fluted pillars that rose on either side of the entryway. It was set a little way back from the road behind a gold-tipped fence. A plaque above the door read SELWYN HOUSE ART GALLERY.
Inside, the open-plan space was painted a stark white with elegant mahogany cornices. Oriental rugs were scattered artfully across the dark hardwood floors. Wooden room separators with birds in flight carved into the panels sectioned off each area: sculptures, armor, ceramics, silk screens, paintings.
I walked through the gallery almost reverently. It was, I realized, exactly how I would’ve decorated my own gallery, if I had one. It practically murmured with the voices of the past, ancient and true.
A group of college kids chatted in front of the East Asian ceramics, talking loudly and jotting notes into their notebooks. I stopped in front of a mahogany-and-glass case filled with items repaired using kintsugi. There were bowls and plates, teapots, urns, vases, even lamp bases that had been repaired using gold to mend the broken pieces.
One bowl in particular caught my eye. It was plain, the gray-green of old clay, spidered with threads of gold. But where one chunk was missing, the artist had used a large opal to fill the hole. The end result was stunning.
I pressed my fingers to the glass, wishing I could hold it in my hands and see how the artist had mended it. My own clay plates and bowls seemed so amateur in comparison.
“It’s a beautiful piece, isn’t it?”
I whirled around to see a very young woman beside me. She was thin, her shoulders protruding from her black sheath dress like tiny fists. She had a sharp nose and chin, angular cheekbones, and strawberry-blond hair pulled into a sleek bun. “Yes, they’re gorgeous.”
“You know about kintsugi?”
“Not much,” I admitted. “It’s funny, I only heard about it for the first time the other day, and suddenly I’m seeing it everywhere.”
She laughed. “Yes, I often find it’s like that. Like when you buy a car and then you realize there are so many more of that model on the road than you ever noticed.”
“Exactly.” We smiled at each other.
“That piece there, the one you were looking at, the artist repaired it using a kintsugi technique called yobitsugi. That’s when a completely new piece is used to fill in the missing area. This artist used opal to fill the hole. I think it was a rather good choice.” She clasped her hands behind her back and smiled at me. “This is my favorite display. I think there’s something rather magical about how kintsugi transforms the broken, isn’t there?”
“I think so too. You work here?”
“Yes. I’m Charlotte. This is my father’s art gallery.”
Her father?
A child’s cry filled the gallery. Charlotte bustled over to a stroller next to the cash register and lifted out a baby who looked about a year old. She cradled the girl’s head as she bounced in slow, rhythmic moves. After a moment the baby stopped crying, blinking at me with wide doll-blue eyes and pink-stained cheeks.
“Apologies.” Charlotte returned to me still bouncing the child. “I’m helping my father for a bit. Is there a particular piece you’re interested in?”
Up c
lose, I realized that Charlotte looked very tired. Her mascara was smudged a little under her eyes. She had a smile taped on, the kind I knew was fake because I’d done it so many times.
The little girl grinned and reached out her chubby hands for me. I smiled and extended a finger for her to grasp. “She’s adorable.”
Charlotte kissed the child’s cheek. “And she knows it!”
I swallowed hard, my throat raw as a wound, and the all-too-familiar spiral of regret and anguish coursed through me.
After I found out I was pregnant, I’d decided to have an abortion. But the day I went to the clinic, my mom had unexpectedly shown up. It was fall, the golden afternoon light dripping over the abortion clinic like butter. I still remembered looking at the light, the way it oozed over the buildings, dribbling over the metal and concrete, and thinking, I would kill for some pancakes. It was a crazy thought. I didn’t even like pancakes, and my every waking minute was spent throwing up, so why would I want pancakes?
“Having an abortion won’t change what happened to you,” Mom had said. “It will just damage you more.”
“I didn’t choose this!” I’d exclaimed. “Somebody did it to me, and I can’t even remember who. I can’t have a baby I hate.”
“Sacrifice is hard, but it is part of being a good person. You hold a child’s life in your hands. What happened before is done, it is entirely out of your control. But what happens now is your responsibility.”
The baby squealed, straining against her mother’s arms to get down.
Charlotte rolled her eyes and laughed. “She’s getting to the age where she wants to explore, but I can’t have her wandering around an art gallery.”
She strapped the baby back into the stroller and gave her a cracker to gnaw on, then kissed her forehead. Her eyes were washed with a love so intense it physically hurt me.
“So, was there something I could help you with?”
“I was actually looking for David Ashford,” I said.
“I’m sorry. My father isn’t seeing visitors right now.” Her smile had frozen, revealing one front tooth that was slightly crooked.
“It doesn’t have to be right now,” I assured her. “I can come back later. I don’t mind.”
“No, I’m afraid you don’t understand. My father’s in the hospital. He’s been taken ill, you see. I’m running the gallery in his absence.”
My heart sank. “I’m so sorry to hear that. I hope he’s okay. It’s actually really important that I speak to him. Is he okay to see visitors at the hospital?”
Her gaze turned a shade cooler. “I’m not certain that’s a good idea. What did you say you wanted from him?”
“I … I …” I stuttered, taken aback by her tone.
“What was your name again?”
“I’m …” I reached into my purse and withdrew the birth certificate I’d found in the folder at my mom’s, unfolding it to show her. “I’m Eva. Eva … Clarke. I think he knew my mother a long time ago.”
For a second, Charlotte looked lost, her eyes darting back and forth between me and the paper. Slowly the puzzle pieces clicked into place, her mouth twisting as she took a step away from me. Her elbow caught the edge of a stapler on the desk, and it clattered to the floor. I knelt, fumbling for the stapler.
“Here.” I held it out to her, but she ignored it.
“How dare you!” Charlotte clenched her fists, her voice low. “Are you another reporter? My father is sick! Don’t you get that? He’s sick! Why won’t you leave us alone?” The college students across the room turned to watch us, tittering behind their hands.
I gaped at her, embarrassed and confused, helpless in the face of her anger. “What are you talking about? I’m not a reporter. I’m Eva Clarke.”
“You can’t be Eva Clarke!” she cried. “Eva Clarke is dead!”
I stumbled back, her words striking me like blows.
Dead? But it wasn’t possible. I’d seen my birth certificate.
I shook my head as I backed away from her, the walls pressing in on me. And then I turned and ran outside, into the cool, bright day.
* * *
I leaned against the brick entrance to the Tube station, the air like sludge in my chest. Cold sweat beaded on my face, slid down my back. I felt like I’d been shredded into a million tiny pieces; that a small gust of wind could blow me apart.
Eva Clarke is dead.
The words ricocheted inside my head. Trying to control my spinning thoughts, I watched red city buses, black cabs, and delivery vans lumbering past.
If Eva Clarke is dead, who the hell am I?
My chest squeezed like someone was crushing it in an iron grip.
“Fuck,” I muttered.
A woman walking into the Tube station clutching a young child’s hand glared at me. Sorry! I mouthed.
“You all right, missus?” a voice interrupted my thoughts.
I whirled around. A dreadlocked man sitting on a damp piece of cardboard was staring up at me. He shook a Styrofoam cup hopefully. I dug in my purse and pulled out a two-pound coin.
“Thanks, lady.” He grinned, revealing a mouth of missing and jumbled teeth, like toppled little headstones. “You gonna go talk to ’im?”
“Who?” I asked.
He jerked his chin across the street. “That man over there been starin’ at you.”
I followed where he was pointing and saw the outline of a man across the road—dark hair, tall build, dark coat—then a bus whizzed by, obscuring his face. The skin at the back of my neck prickled.
A feeling of déjà vu crawled over my skin, cold and sticky as pudding.
I was on the floor of Mom’s living room. A leaden weight was crushing me. And then the weight was gone. A man crashed to the floor next to me. Mom’s voice cried out.
“Run, Eva!”
Run, Eva!
I launched myself into the Tube station, slammed my travel card into the ticket reader, and lunged for the escalator. I flew past the tiled walls, along the corridor, and onto the first train that approached, not caring where it went, as long as it was away from here. The doors slid shut, and the train rumbled into the dark tunnel, shifting under my feet as I gripped a metal pole, trying desperately to steady myself.
The lightning marks on my arm pulsed, a scalding trail of fear zipping through my body, adrenaline and panic fighting for space.
Because I knew.
Whoever was at Mom’s house that night had found me.
eighteen
eva
THE CARRIAGE WAS PACKED. I wedged myself into a corner, my thighs touching someone’s knees, swaying along with the sea of humanity as the train rumbled down the line. It smelled like someone had burped after eating a burrito, the greasy scent hanging thick and heavy in the air. I covered my nose, my stomach roiling dangerously.
But I didn’t get off.
Someone exited at the next stop, and I slid into their seat. I closed my eyes and let myself relax for just a moment as the train clattered along, feeling safe among the press of other humans. Nobody here knew me. Nobody was following me.
Most people—normal people—hated crowds. They hated rush-hour traffic and shopping malls at Christmastime and the crush of a mob after a baseball game. But I’d always liked them. There was something reassuring about being one of many who acted the same, cheered at the same time, groaned at the same time. I knew how to act in a crowd, which way to turn and what expression to put on. I loved the vibe and energy of a crowd. I could be anyone or no one. It was when I was alone that the sharp fangs of fear and insecurity sank into my brain.
For the first time I realized that maybe that was why I’d felt a little … off since moving into Liam’s house. It was so isolated.
A metallic shriek filled the carriage as the train jerked to a stop at the next station. I felt calmer now, so I got off, checking over my shoulder and along the platform to make sure no one was following me. I stepped onto an escalator that seemed to continue for miles, only
to be elbowed in the back as someone plowed into me.
“Stand to the right,” he barked.
I squeezed to the right as a parade of people marched up the left. When I finally emerged at street level I started walking, wandering the cobblestone streets in a daze. The fall sun was warmer than I would’ve expected, absorbing into my hair and heating my skin as I walked.
Eventually I ended up in a place called Covent Garden, which was packed with tourists and street entertainers performing magic shows, miming, juggling, unicycling, and breathing fire. Music from the buskers filled the air. I wandered into a soaring glass atrium and through a bustling market filled with designer fashion stores, cafés, and crafts stalls.
In one of the stalls, a piece of grayish-green jade caught my eye. It was smooth, roughly shaped like a heart. I picked it up, thinking of the kintsugi art I’d seen at David Ashford’s gallery and of Fiona Hudson’s urn, which I still needed to repair.
It was kismet. It had to be.
* * *
After buying the jade, I stopped at an old Victorian pub to grab something to eat and to call Liam. Mahogany-red banquettes, ornate woodwork, and elegant chandeliers decorated the interior. The place was packed, and I instantly relaxed.
I approached the bar and grabbed a menu.
“What can I get you?” The bartender was small and very young, with dark hair and bright-blue eyes, her bangs cut severely across her forehead. She was wearing all black, a trend I was noticing among Londoners.
“What’s a toad-in-the-hole?” I asked, pointing at the menu.
She smiled. “You American?”
I nodded.
“It’s sausage.”
I made a face. “I’m a vegetarian. What’s black pudding?”
She laughed out loud at this. “You won’t like that if you’re a vegetarian. It’s blood sausage.”
Just the thing to serve a family of vampires, I thought, trying not to gag.
Behind Every Lie Page 11