‘Can I come in?’ I ask.
She answers with a small nod, and I close the door behind me and go tentatively across to her.
‘Lina’s okay,’ I assure her. ‘They’re keeping her overnight, but they don’t think there’s any permanent damage.’
‘Good,’ Evie murmurs, and I guess she’s still trying to process her feelings about the one person she thought she could trust.
‘Do you mind if I sit?’ I ask.
She shrugs, and I take that as a yes and sit down beside her.
‘I heard you downstairs,’ she says after a moment. ‘Dad wasn’t lying,’ she goes on, her gaze still averted. ‘Imogen was. She just wanted to mess with my head. She’s done it before to another girl at school. I told the police that in case they didn’tbelieve him either. I’m sorry she’s dead and everything, but she was a bitch. Dad didn’t sleep with her. He just wouldn’t.’
I’m uncertain how to answer. It’s clear she’s protecting him. Does she really believe him, though? DoIbelieve all he’s just told me? I want to with every part of me, but I’m so scared and confused. He hadn’t told me about Jemma, maybe for what he thought was good reason, but he did deceive me. He’d lied outright about Natalia and how she’d supposedly died. Again, with what he claims was good intention: to protect Evie. How can I be sure, though, that his whole story isn’t an intricate web of lies? Dangerous lies that eventually drove Natalia to madness born of desperation?
I take a breath and broach the subject I pray she might be amenable to. ‘Would it help to talk things through, do you think?’
She answers with another apathetic shrug.
‘I realise you might not feel able to talk to me, Evie, and I get that, I really do,’ I go on gently. ‘I couldn’t talk to anyone after losing my husband and my little boy.’
That gets her attention, a small sidelong glance in my direction.
‘I did go to bereavement counselling eventually,’ I tell her. ‘I wish I’d gone sooner. It did help.’ Unsure how much she’d overheard about Jack’shuge mistake, I don’t add that it was Jemma I’d ended up mostly confiding in.
Evie unfurls herself after a moment, slides her hands under her thighs and begins rocking to and fro. It worries me, this outward indication of how fraught her emotions are. There were signs of it before the dreadful thing that happened to Imogen. Before Natalia reappeared so devastatingly in her life. Jack must have been aware of it.
‘I thought maybe you and your dad could go together,’ I venture. ‘I think he might need to talk to someone too, especiallyafter losing his family in the terrible way he did. He’s kept so much bottled up. You both have.’
‘His family?’ Evie turns to me, her brow furrowed in confusion. ‘But they’re not…’ Trailing off, she looks sharply away again.
Not what?My heart lurches as I recall how Natalia had urged me close to her as she lay breathing her last on the hall floor, the words she’d whispered.His parents… They…What had she been trying to tell me?
SEVENTY-FOUR
‘Evie,’ I go after her as she scrambles off the bed, ‘what about his family?’
‘Nothing,’ she mumbles, heading for the bathroom. ‘They didn’t get on, that’s all.’
Confounded, I stop on the landing as she slams the bathroom door almost in my face. What was that all about? There’s something she’s reluctant to tell me. Something Natalia was trying to tell me, and which Jack clearly hasn’t.
Attempting to get my chaotic thoughts in some sort of order, I go back to the stairs, then stop as my baby kicks heartily, reminding me where my priorities should lie. This ismyfamily, or so I’d thought. I have to protect my child, especially now as he battles the toxins that have been pumped through his tiny veins. In this moment, I feel I would kill to do that.
Steeling my resolve, I continue on down. Jack isn’t in the lounge. Assuming he’s in the kitchen, I head that way. Wary trepidation creeps through me when I find him sitting at the table still in his jacket and nursing a whisky, followed swiftly by almost uncontainable anger. Is this anotherjust onedrink he’s having becausequite frankly, he needs it? To take the edge offhispain? Is he going to disappear off to his office again if the conversation gets too uncomfortable for him?
Pausing, I watch him for a moment, wondering whether I know this man at all, or whether I’ve just done a good job of convincing myself I did because I wanted him to be everything I needed, someone caring who could fill the aching void in my life. I’d hesitated to tell him about my pregnancy. It was unplanned… for him. I’d felt bad for deceiving him, but I’d been so desperate to feel the warmth of a small body close to mine again. I was nervous about sharing my news, but when he’d been so thrilled at the prospect of having another child, I’d thought that perhaps fate had decreed it anyway and dismissed my guilt. Can I really have been so wrong about him?
Sensing me watching him, he snaps his gaze up and gets to his feet. ‘I heard you talking to Evie. How is she?’ he asks cautiously. ‘Should I go up and talk to her?’
‘She’s taking a bath,’ I lie. I don’t want Evie alerting him to what she and I discussed about his family.
‘Did she talk to you about anything?’ he asks, concern sweeping his features. Concern for Evie? I wonder. Or for himself?
‘A little. Mostly about Natalia,’ I reply, scrutinising him carefully.
Nodding shortly, he picks up his glass and takes a swig from it. ‘She’ll be in shock, confused by all that’s happened, I imagine,’ he says, grimacing as he swallows it back.
‘Not making much sense.’ I nod in sympathetic agreement. Is he trying to dismiss anything she might have said that doesn’t correspond with his story?
