Free Forgive Me by Lesley Pearse Page A

Shovelling them into bin liners without any thought for the memories they
held was so cold-hearted. It was as if he hated Flora now.
    ‘That’s right, cry and make a
big drama out of it,’ he said scornfully. ‘Your mother always did that too.
She took her own life, Eva! I knew she was a self-centred bitch. But I never thought
she’d put herself before the needs of her family. She didn’t give a toss for
any of our feelings. So you tell me what possible reason could I have for holding on to
this lot?’
    ‘Because it’s too soon to get
rid of it all,’ Eva ventured through her tears. ‘You might be sorry
later.’
    ‘The quicker I get everything of hers
out of this house, the better I’ll feel,’ he said, stuffing more things
in.
    ‘Including me, I suppose,’ she
said and turned away, not wanting to hear his response.
    Yesterday she had cooked Sunday lunch for
them all: roastbeef, Yorkshire puddings and all the trimmings. Ben
didn’t come back, Andrew put his on a tray and took it into the sitting room to
watch TV, and Sophie ate hers in silence.
    Eva went up to her room after she’d
cleared up, and she hadn’t been there long when the phone rang. She opened the
door, intending to go and answer it if no one else did, but Andrew picked it up down in
the hall.
    ‘I can’t talk now,’ he
said in the kind of half-whisper that Eva had used in the past when speaking to people
her parents wouldn’t approve of. ‘The kids are all here.’ There was
silence for a few moments before he spoke again. ‘I know, but it won’t be
long now. The wait is nearly over. I’ll ring you tomorrow night.’
    Eva closed her bedroom door very quietly. No
one did that lowered voice thing unless they were afraid of being overheard and feeling
guilty. She was sure it had to be a woman he was speaking to. So was he having an affair
and Mum found out? Was that what drove her to suicide? And if it was, how could Andrew
put on that huge display of grief?
    She stayed in her room until bedtime. No one
came to see her, and she felt so terribly alone and uncertain about everything that she
cried herself to sleep.
    She’d woken this morning feeling
tougher and determined. She got the local paper on the way to work, saw the bedsitter
advertised and rang to make an appointment to view it at six o’clock. Now as she
drove into the car park of the solicitor’s, she told herself that even if one door
was closing behind her, there was freedom behind the door in front of her.
    Mr Bailey was just as she imagined a
solicitor to be – old, small, slightly stooped and with half-glasses perched
precariously on the end of his nose. His office was lined with thick leather-bound
books.
    ‘Do come in and sit down, Miss
Patterson,’ he said after shaking her hand and offering his commiserations on the
death of her mother. ‘It had been my intention to contact you right after your
mother’s funeral, but you pre-empted that by calling me.’
    Eva suddenly felt she might cry, but took a
deep breath and explained that Andrew had told her about a studio she was to inherit.
‘He seemed very cross about it,’ she added.
    ‘He had no right to be, or to be
surprised by it. I drew up a will for your mother when they first moved to Cheltenham
and the studio was left to you even then. He was here with her then, and she made the
position quite clear. On that occasion she also changed your name by deed poll to
Patterson.’
    ‘Until the night Andrew told me about
her will, I didn’t even know he wasn’t my father,’ Eva admitted.
    ‘Oh dear!’ Bailey exclaimed,
taking off his glasses and cleaning them on a handkerchief. ‘To have that revealed
so soon after your mother’s death must have been very distressing for
you.’
    ‘It was, but he seemed to think I had
influenced Mum in giving me the studio. He didn’t believe that I didn’t even
know Mum owned one.’
    ‘He shouldn’t have taken out his
pique on you at such a time, but I dare say it was