Cover Your Eyes (22 page)

She heard Lissa and Jason laughing as she moved from one room to another. The kitchen was small but perfect. The bedroom had fitted cupboards and more room in them than she'd expected, but still, she told herself, I'll have to get rid of so much. For a moment this thought depressed her, but then she caught sight of the en-suite bathroom, through an archway, and this distracted her. She wandered into it, admiring the simplicity of the fittings and the intelligent layout. A mirror was fixed into the wall above the sink and seeing it (though what else did she expect in a bathroom?) made her turn away, rather too quickly and she sat down on the edge of the bath feeling a little dizzy. That'll have to be covered, she thought. Perhaps I could hang an embroidered cloth of some kind over it. I'll have to put hooks into the wall but it could be very striking, if I get the right fabric. She managed to leave the bathroom without so much as glancing in the mirror again.

Once Jason had shown them everything in the flat and walked them round the garden, he left Eva and Lissa together at the gate.

‘I'll be in touch very soon,' Eva said. ‘I'd like to come and see it again with my daughter.'

‘Don't leave it too long,' Jason smiled. ‘They're going very quickly, you know. In spite of the recession.'

‘Are you going to take it?' Lissa asked when he'd driven away. ‘I do hope so. It is a most gorgeous place and think of it, there are five other flats full of probably the most wonderful people for you to be friends with.'

‘You don't change, Lissa. You always were ridiculously optimistic. What if the other flat owners are crashing bores or even worse?'

‘They won't be! I promise you they won't.'

Eva smiled. She was already imagining herself in those rooms. She was seeing the flat as a possibility. With the sale of her dresses, and the proceeds of the auction, she had enough in her personal savings to be able to afford it. I don't have to keep my money, she thought. I can spend it. When she died, the flat could be sold and that money passed on, but meanwhile, there was no reason for it to sit in a bank somewhere. For the first time since Rowena had told her that Salix House was to be sold, she felt something like anticipation. The dread – it had been like a physical weight on her for a long time – had suddenly gone. She could hardly wait to tell Rowena. And Megan, too, was sure to be happy for her.

After Lissa had said goodbye and waved her off in her taxi, Eva took out her phone. Why not, she thought? What am I waiting for? I know this is right. She punched in Jason's number and when he answered, she said, ‘This is Eva Conway. I'd like to make an offer for 22 Frobisher Court.'

When the phone call ended, she put her phone back in her handbag and felt happier than she had for a very long time.

*

By the time I reached Salix House, I was out of breath. I'd stopped running after about ten minutes and had walked the rest of the way in a daze, feeling as if I'd been punched in the face. I was too shocked to cry. Round and round in my head went a carousel of horrible thoughts. I'd tried over the last few weeks to put Simon's phone call out of my head but it was there now and I went over it again and again, asking myself why he'd done it. What possible reason did he have for lying to me like that? For making me believe I'd been responsible for the death of his child? The answer was obvious. He'd wanted to hurt me and he'd succeeded. He'd made sure that whatever else happened to me for as long as I lived, one thing would be there in my heart for ever. My head felt as though a buzzing insect had taken up residence behind my eyes. Be rational, I told myself. Be sensible. How can this possibly be bad? Look what's happened. Look what you've discovered. You haven't killed anyone after all. What was I supposed to be feeling? Happiness? Relief at being let off the hook? I was blameless, so why wasn't I rejoicing? What was the matter with me? Because far from rejoicing, I could feel myself filling up with a kind of black self-loathing and fury and above all, anguish at the way the entire history of our time together now had to be rewritten. It was false from beginning to end, everything about it. Simon never had any intention of leaving his wife, and far from loving me, there must have been a sort of hatred there which allowed him to condemn me to a whole lifetime of thinking I was wicked.

I wanted to ring him up, to send him a screaming email, to threaten him, to expose him. I didn't. Instead, when I got to Salix House, I went into my bedroom and lay on the bed and started to cry. I wept till I didn't have a single tear left inside me. The girls and Rowena wouldn't be back for a while but I didn't want Eva to find me. I had no idea when she'd be home. I decided to go for a drive. I didn't care where. I needed to think.

‘Does anyone know where Megan is?' Eva asked Dee.

‘She was sitting in her car when we got home,' Dee answered. ‘Bridie went over and asked her if she was coming inside but Megan looked funny. And she hasn't come inside yet. She's probably still in the car, I expect. Shall I go and find her?'

‘No, I'm sure everything's fine,' Eva asked. ‘It's nearly your suppertime so I'll go and talk to her. Maybe she just wanted a bit of time on her own to think. You can turn on the television if you like.'

She picked up the jacket she'd put on the back of a chair and put it on again. On her way to the door, Eva wondered what could possibly have upset Megan so badly that she didn't even want to come inside. Could she have had some kind of a fight with Tom? Hadn't she been seeing him today?

Eva stood on the porch till her eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. The air smelled of bonfires and dead leaves. She turned up her collar against the cold. There was Megan's car, parked alongside Conor's, a little bit crookedly. She couldn't really see into the vehicle but thought that perhaps that might be Megan's head she could make out, leaning on the steering wheel. Eva approached the car boldly. There was no point in trying to disguise her footsteps on the gravel. She knocked on the window and peered in. Megan's face loomed suddenly white, almost under her hand as she rapped on the glass.

‘Megan? Open up, dear. Whatever is wrong?'

For a moment, Megan seemed to hesitate then the car door suddenly opened and Megan's voice, as ragged and hoarse as though she'd been screaming for days, said, ‘Oh, God, Eva. Get in. I can't bear to see anyone at the moment but I suppose …'

‘Megan! Megan, dearest child. What is wrong with you? What has happened? Tell me.'

‘I can't even cry, Eva. Bet you don't believe that, but this is too awful even to cry about. I don't know what to feel. I have no idea what to do or even if I
should
do anything.'

‘Tell me.'

Megan took a deep breath. ‘Okay. Yes.' She paused. ‘I met Luke Fielden today when I was out for a walk and he told me something …'

‘Let me guess. He told you he knew Simon Gradwell. I did warn him not to …'

‘Well, yes, he told me that, but I'm not upset about that. I wouldn't have cared about that. It's what else he said. He told me that he'd seen them at lunch recently and he could see that Gail was pregnant.'

Can I be hearing her properly, Eva asked herself. This baby Gail was carrying had to be the one Megan thought she'd killed. The one he'd mentioned in that terrible phone call, on the day Megan came to Salix House with the magazine. Megan couldn't possibly think of herself as a murderer now. The dead weight of guilt that had been round her neck the whole time Eva had known her was surely lifted now, wasn't it? She looked at Megan for signs of something resembling relief and could see only misery and the haggard face of despair.

‘You're not saying anything, Eva. Can't you understand how this makes me feel?'

‘I'd have thought you'd be relieved. You didn't hurt Simon at all. Nor his wife. His baby will be born and all is fine.'

‘But don't you understand? It's far worse like this. It means I obviously never meant anything to him. Everything I thought we had, every word he ever said to me was a lie. He didn't have to do what he did, ring me up and suggest that it was my fault Gail had lost her baby. He knew I'd feel terrible about what I'd done for the rest of my life and he was okay with letting me go on suffering. I feel as if I was nothing to him and less than nothing. I thought there couldn't be anything worse than what I'd done, but it's worse to be the one that things are done to. Worse to be the victim.'

‘You can't possibly think that!' Eva burst out, unable to stop herself from interrupting. What was Megan saying? ‘Didn't you tell me he was drunk? He can't be held responsible for what he says at such a time.'

‘But there was the next morning, wasn't there? And all the mornings after that. He could have rung again. Apologized. What am I supposed to think, then? He meant to hurt me. That was the only reason he rang up and why he was happy for me to go on believing a lie. I don't feel better, I feel much worse.'

‘If that's really what you feel, then I don't understand you. Your whole attitude baffles me and I don't know what to say to you. I'm going inside now.'

She could hear the coldness in her own voice. She couldn't help it. Suddenly, unaccountably, she wanted Megan far away. What she was saying, her attitude to this latest discovery, set Eva's whole being on edge, as though someone were scraping fingernails across a blackboard. She could feel a lurch in her stomach and a kind of dizziness came over her, as though she'd started down a path that led to something dreadful, to something she didn't want to look at or contemplate but that suddenly she was being forced to confront.

‘I think,' she said, taking a deep breath to steady herself, ‘that it might be a good idea for you to go away by yourself for a few days. Think matters over. You're not in a fit state to look after the girls.'

‘Me? How can you possibly say that?
You're
the one who's being completely weird, Eva! What's the matter with you? I've never seen you like this before. I've told you how I feel and you're just … you're not like yourself. You've been unsympathetic and unkind and now you're basically telling me to leave.'

‘All I said was: I think it would be a good idea for you to get some distance from Salix House for a few days. For your own good. I'm going inside now. You should go up and pack your things.'

‘Eva! You can't mean it. Are you saying I've got to go?'

‘I am. You must go. You must go now. Until you've calmed down.'

‘But what about the girls? It's the Nativity Play soon. They've got rehearsals. Who's going to ferry them around? What's Rowena going to say?'

‘I don't care what Rowena says. We managed for a good long time to get the girls to school before you came. Conor'll just have to help out for a while, won't he?'

‘Please get out of this car, Eva. Go on.' Megan was shouting now, tears standing in her eyes. ‘Get out.
Now
. I'm not going to bother to pack. Please ask Phyllis to put some things in a case for me. My laptop. I want that but I don't care about the rest of the stuff. Tom'll come and pick it up tomorrow. Go on, get out.'

*

Megan's face was bone-white but she had stopped crying and part of Eva wanted to put out a hand and touch her, and say
No, I don't mean any of it. Stay. I'm sorry
, but it seemed as though she'd started down what felt like a slope and didn't know how to climb back to where she'd been before. Something had frozen in her. What Megan had said:
It's worse to be the one that things are done to; it's worse to be the victim,
kept going round and round in her head till Eva felt sick with thinking about it. Also, looking at Megan frightened her and she couldn't work out why. I need her to be out of Salix House, Eva thought, and then maybe I'll be able to think straight. As things stood, she was confused and frightened and angry with Megan and wanted her gone. Everything else she'd been thinking about had shrunk into such insignificance that she struggled to remember what it was. The flat at Frobisher Court, the Museum, Lissa … all of it no more than bits and pieces seen through a telescope: very small and very far away.

*

Perhaps I oughtn't to have driven, but it was the only thing that made me feel a little more like a normal person. I'd already spent half the day going nowhere and then coming back and I was tired but I had to leave at once. Eva had sent me away. I couldn't work out what was supposed to happen next. I drove and drove without really noticing where I was going. I just wanted the motion and the silence and nothing but the noise of the engine and my own breathing around me. Where was I meant to spend the night? Where was the nearest hotel? Could I phone Tom? After what had happened this morning? It was hard to believe that was only a few hours ago. It felt like a lifetime. I didn't know what I was going to do. All I knew was: something had happened to Eva. She'd totally lost it. Even though I was still torn up about Simon's baby and the way he'd treated me, this was what was taking up the space in my head. I felt worse about what Eva had said than I could possibly account for. If what she was doing was sacking me, she didn't have the right. Rowena had employed me and was paying my wages. The girls … what would she tell Dee and Bridie? How could I leave them without a word? I was going to cry. I tried to think of something else. Where was I? I had no idea but I could see a service station coming up ahead of me and turned into the car park. I'd be sensible. I'd have a drink and something to eat and think about what I was going to do next.

The café was drab. The coffee tasted of nothing and was grey and not brown. The bun I picked out from a selection quietly going stale under a transparent plastic hood was sweet and that was about all you could say for it. I asked the cashier where I was. She looked at me as if I was mad. ‘On the M40, just outside Oxford.'