Never Close Your Eyes (59 page)

Carol lowered herself down beside her sister. ‘Why did you do it?' she asked simply.

Zelda shrugged. ‘I don't know what you mean.'

Carol clenched her fists. She wanted to lash out. It took a moment or two to compose herself. ‘How did Evie get your number?'

‘Easy. I put a card through her door. She rang the next day.'

‘Did you know about Freya? Could you tell what was going to happen?' Carol was fiddling with the tassels on her brown woollen poncho. It was helping her to keep calm. She needed to know this. It was really important.

Zelda laughed. ‘I can't believe I'm hearin' this. You who always said you didn't hold no truck with the spirit world. P'raps you shouldn't have written me off like that.'

‘But did you?' Carol stared at her sister, willing her to meet her gaze. She might know more if she could look into her sister's eyes.

At last Zelda turned. ‘I can't see everythin',' she answered, her face very still. Her pupils were round, black and unfathomable. ‘I might be good at what I do but I'm no miracle-worker. If the spirits don't feel like tellin' you somethin', they won't.'

Carol swallowed. Zelda was still holding her gaze. Carol didn't know if she believed her sister or not. She felt so confused. She couldn't tell what Zelda's eyes were saying.

‘But what about Steve?' Carol said at last, breaking the spell. ‘You made Evie carry on with him even though you must have known he was bad news. She told me you'd said he was “The One”. Why did you do that?'

Zelda snorted. ‘Look, I couldn't force her to go with anyone. She's got a mind of her own, that girl. Besides, I thought he was good for her. She was lonely; she needed a new man to help her get over that two-timin' husband of hers.'

‘You continued talking to her, advising her after I'd specifically asked you not to.'

‘Yeah, well, she kept callin' me. She was desperate. What was I to do? Dump her? I couldn't do that, it wouldn't have been nice.'

‘I don't believe you,' Carol said. ‘I don't believe you had her best interests at heart.'

Zelda shuffled in her seat. ‘You can believe what you like,' she said, ‘it's the truth.'

‘I feel betrayed,' said Carol. ‘I can't believe my own sister would go behind my back like that.'

Zelda crossed her arms. Carol noticed that she was wearing her royal-blue fluffy slippers: the ones she'd given her for her birthday.

‘That's a laugh comin' from you!' Zelda retorted. ‘Some sister you were, stealin' my man and next thing I know you're havin' his bloody baby!'

Carol widened her eyes. ‘But that was so long ago!'

‘Not to me it isn't,' Zelda replied. ‘Seems like yesterday to me.'

Carol stared at the pond. Some mallard ducks were lazily dipping their heads in and out of the water, their tales waggling, looking for food. The drakes had emerald-green feathers; it was the mating season.

‘You know Evie's the most important thing to me in the whole world,' she said quietly. ‘You know how much I love her. It was wrong to go meddling in her life like that. She got far too involved with this man – she took her eye off the ball and neglected Freya. She could have been raped, or worse, murdered.' Carol shook her head. ‘That was bad of you, Zelda—'

‘Bad? Just listen to you!' Zelda interrupted. ‘And I suppose it's not bad to steal yer own sister's man – the only man I ever loved? What do you call that, then?'

Carol stopped fiddling with her poncho and sat quite still, her hands in her lap. ‘He was going to leave you anyway.'

Zelda jumped up. She was surprisingly quick on her pins. ‘Leave me? Don't give me that,' she laughed. ‘He comes to me house most nights, talks to me on the end of me bed. He loved me, you fool. He says you were just a playthin', you satisfied an urge, that's all. He needed it and you gave it to 'im.'

Carol flinched.

‘He never had no feelin's for you,' Zelda continued. ‘If you hadn't of gone and got yourself pregnant—'

‘Sit down,' Carol commanded, pulling on Zelda's sleeve. She did as she was told. ‘I didn't get pregnant deliberately, don't you understand? It was a mistake, I was young, he seduced me.'

Zelda grimaced. ‘Here we go, Miss Goody Two-Shoes.' There was a nasty tone in her voice. ‘You knew perfectly well what you was doin'. Don't give me that “I was an innocent little girl” bollocks. You wanted to get pregnant so you could get married and get out of that shithole of a house we was livin' in. Start a new life. Only it didn't work, did it?' She laughed. ‘They wouldn't let you keep the baby. You hadn't bargained on that, had you? Thought they'd be delighted to get shot of you. You weren't so clever after all!'

Carol was weeping now, she couldn't help herself. She wiped the tears away with her sleeve. ‘I suppose I did think, well, maybe Derek and I would marry . . .'

‘See?' Zelda said triumphantly. ‘I knew it! I knew what was going on in that sneaky little mind of yours.'

Carol swallowed. ‘But I was so young,' she pleaded, ‘I didn't see things clearly. I just thought: He's older, he's got a job. Maybe he can get us out of here. I'd have taken you with us, Griselda, that was my plan.'

Zelda growled. ‘You must be flippin' bonkers if you think I'd of gone to live with you and Derek and yer precious baby. Besides, like I said, it was me he wanted really. You was just a distraction.'

Carol shuffled in her seat. ‘Be that as it may,' she said, ‘I still can't believe that you'd deliberately put the happiness of another person at risk and maybe the safety of a child, too, just to get some sort of . . .' She paused. ‘. . . some sort of sick revenge.'

Zelda turned and grinned. Her mouth was a black, gaping hole interspersed with a few crooked teeth. ‘Well, you know what they say,' she said. ‘Revenge is sweet. I was pleased you was worried about Evie. I wanted you to sweat a bit. Shame she ain't going to marry that no-good man of hers but you can't have everythin'.'

Carol felt light-headed suddenly. The world started to spin. She closed her eyes and after a moment or two, the dizziness passed. ‘All these years,' she said, ‘that I've cared for you. Thought about you. Wanted the best for you. It was me, remember, who stood up for you against Mother and Father when we were children. I may not have believed all that psychic stuff but I never judged you. I was your only friend.

‘And now I find you've been trying your best to hurt me and my family. I don't understand how you could do it. Doesn't the fact that we're sisters, that we have the same blood, count for anything?'

Zelda wrapped her blue shawl more tightly around her. ‘When you stole Derek,' she said, ‘that was it, as far as I was concerned. You wasn't me sister no more.'

Carol put her hands over her face and hung her head. ‘I had no idea,' she said, ‘absolutely no idea.'

Zelda rustled in a plastic bag on the bench beside her, fished out a bit of bread and threw it at the pond. It didn't quite reach. Several Canada geese heaved themselves out of the water and waddled towards it, squawking loudly.

‘I don't know why you're cryin',' she mumbled. ‘Everythin's all right now, ain't it? Evie's not goin' to marry that man you dislike; Freya's safe. It's all hunky dory. You can just toddle off back to that precious family of yours. You won't get no more hassle from me. I've settled a score, I'm happy enough. I ain't bothered with you.'

Carol took her hands away from her face. ‘It's not that simple,' she replied. ‘I've told Evie I'm her mother and she doesn't want to know.' She reached in her back pocket for a hankie to blow her nose on but there wasn't one.

‘You follow her around all them years and then she don't want to know you?' Zelda cackled. ‘Priceless! That's kids for you.'

Carol started to cry again. ‘I don't know what to do.'

Zelda rose. ‘Nothin' you can do,' she said, matter-of factly. ‘If a kid don't want to know you, that's that I should think. I don't blame her. I mean, at the end of the day you did give her away. You left her to her fate.'

Carol jumped up. ‘That's so unfair,' she shouted. ‘You know how upset I was. I'd have done anything to keep her.'

Zelda tut-tutted. ‘Yeah, well. It ain't no good tellin' her that is it? Far as she can see, you turned your back on her and that's that.' She picked up the white plastic bag and tipped the rest of the bread beside the water's edge. ‘I must be goin'.'

Carol's stomach lurched. Her chest felt hollow. ‘Will I see you again?' Her voice was very small.

Zelda turned to look at her sister. Her eyes were cold and hard. Carol flinched. ‘I doubt it,' she said. ‘I don't think there's anythin' more to say, do you?'

‘Can't we forgive each other? Call it quits?' Carol was desperate. ‘We are sisters, after all. We're all we've got.'

Zelda laughed. ‘You should of thought of that before you did what you did. Too late now, darlin'.' She scrunched the plastic bag up into a ball and put it in her cardigan pocket before turning and walking slowly away.

Carol sat and watched until her sister had disappeared from view. She didn't look back once. A mother and toddler in a bright-red cardigan stopped and watched the geese eating their bread. One of them waddled towards the small child, who started crying.

‘Shoo,' the mother said, pushing the goose away with her foot. She picked the small child up. ‘It's all right,' she soothed. ‘Mummy won't let that naughty goose hurt you.'

Carol couldn't see any more. Her eyes were blurred with tears. She got up, adjusted her poncho and set off slowly in the opposite direction from her sister towards the tube.

‘“Your parents are coming to collect you this weekend,” Heidi's mum, Stella, said to Josh and Katie. Scruffy barked.'

Becca paused for a moment and glanced out of the window before continuing to type.

He started jumping up and down, yapping madly.

‘Stop it Scruffy, I can't think what's got into you,' Stella said crossly. ‘You're putting dirty paw marks on my nice clean apron.'

‘Look, he doesn't want you to go,' Heidi cried. ‘He's asking if you can stay for another week.' It certainly seemed to be the case. He had a beseeching look in his eyes.

‘Woof?' he said, his head on one side. ‘Woof?' Everyone laughed.

‘Come here, Scruff,' Josh said, giving the dog a tickle under the chin. ‘Don't you worry, we'll be back next summer – if we may?' Josh looked at Stella, who beamed.

‘Most certainly,'she said. ‘Summers at Breamwater just wouldn't be the same without you, would they?'

The children shook their heads.

‘How's it going?'

Becca started, her train of thought broken. She spun round on the chair and smiled at Tom, who was wearing jeans and his old navy-blue jumper with the hole in the sleeve. She rolled her shoulders. She must have been hunched over the laptop in her study for several hours.

‘Well,' she replied. ‘I've got the wind in my sails at last. I'm romping towards the finish.'

‘Great!' he said, peering over her shoulder.

Their arms brushed momentarily and he took a step back. She pretended that she hadn't noticed. It was Saturday afternoon. He'd been making flapjacks with the children downstairs, giving Becca time to crack on with her children's story. She was on the penultimate chapter; she was wrapping everything up. It was the final week in April so she'd have a month or so to reread the manuscript and polish it to a shine before the 1 June competition deadline. She'd never thought she'd make it; she'd amazed herself.

She had no idea if it was winning material, but she was pleased with the way the storyline had turned out; for a while her thoughts had been so black that she wasn't sure if she could bring the plot to the happy conclusion that she'd planned so many months before. Events seemed to have veered off in a most unpleasant direction.

But in the past four weeks or so she'd rewritten the blackest bits, toned them down, and she felt that all the different threads had come together nicely. It was exciting.

‘Sorry to disturb you,' Tom said. ‘Shall I bring you up a cup of tea?'

Becca shook her head. ‘I think I've done enough for today. I'll come down now. Those flapjacks smell delicious.' She paused and looked at her husband seriously. ‘By the way, I've found a couple of possible places to stay.'

He rested against the edge of the desk and crossed his arms. ‘Really?'

She nodded. ‘There's the Marriott, which has an indoor swimming pool. It's not far from Newcastle city centre and there's lots of parkland round about. I think the children would love it; I want them to have a nice time and get a good impression of the place.'

Tom cocked his head on one side. ‘Are you sure this is a good idea?'

She sighed. ‘I have to do it, Tom. I'd prefer to go with you and the kids, but if you'd rather stay . . .'

He put up his hand. ‘No,' he said, ‘you're right. This is something we should do together, as a family. We can talk about what we say to the kids later. You go ahead and book. I'll support you in every way I can.'

Chapter Fifty-Three