Читать книгу All the Little Lies - Chris Curran - Страница 10

The doorbell to the flat shrilled into the silence. They all ignored it. Eve didn’t take her eyes off David. Could he be her real father? Surely not. She knew how much he loved Jill. But no marriage was perfect and she guessed her parents’ must have come under strain when they realized they couldn’t have children of their own.

As if he knew what she was thinking David met her eyes and shook his head. His voice was suddenly old and weary. ‘We were wrong to keep all this from you, but there never seemed to be a right time.’

The doorbell pierced the air again, a long ring, but Jill spoke over it. ‘But we were all so happy, weren’t we? How could that be wrong?’

Eve’s phone began to buzz on the table – Alex. She had to answer.

‘I’m outside. Got your message.’ He must have come straight from the train.

‘I thought we could drive home together. The light’s not good at this time of night.’

She bit down on a spasm of annoyance. She was a better driver than Alex even with her bump. Why did he insist on treating her like an invalid?

‘Stay there,’ she said, ‘I’ll be down in a minute.’

Her father said, ‘Eve, my darling …’

She shook her head and held up her hand to keep him from going on. ‘It’s all right, just leave me to think about it.’ She shoved the article into her bag and turned to her mother. ‘But please try to find that letter for me.’

As she was buttoning her jacket, Jill said, ‘Why don’t I come round tomorrow morning and we can talk this through? You can ask me anything you want then.’

Eve nodded. ‘OK.’ She must have said it more coldly than she meant because Jill’s face crumpled.

‘Eve, you must believe we’ve always done our best by you,’ she said pulling at the curls on the nape of her neck.

It was a gesture so familiar that Eve felt a twist of pain deep inside. She said, ‘I know you have,’ and kissed her mother’s cheek. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow.’

Alex talked about work on the drive home, but she was hardly listening. He was twenty years older than her and taught art history at University College London. It was how they had met. They hadn’t got together until just before she graduated, and he never actually taught her. Her parents weren’t too happy at the time. He’d been married before and Eve knew they were hoping she would come back to live with them for a while after she graduated, but there was never any chance of that. Although she couldn’t have hoped for a better childhood, her teenage years had been difficult as she began to find their love stifling.

They’d grown to like Alex when they realized how happy he made her, especially when he agreed with Eve that they would move to Hastings after her mother’s heart attack.

As they pulled up outside the house he said, ‘What’s wrong?’

She wasn’t ready to talk about it in the car, so she shook her head and, despite the baby bulk, got out quickly and had let herself in by the time he’d retrieved his briefcase from the back seat and locked the car.

Standing in the kitchen she could hear him take off his coat and walk in behind her. When she turned, his kiss was so warm and familiar she felt bad for shutting him out.

‘Come on, Eve, tell me,’ he said.

She took the scrunched-up article from her bag, then pulled him into the living room to make him sit on the sofa beside her. ‘I found out today that my parents have been lying to me all my life.’

He took the article and glanced at her, expecting her to explain, but she tapped the paper and he fumbled in his pocket for his reading glasses. ‘What is it?’

‘Just read it, please, Alex. I’ll go and dish the dinner up.’

She’d made a casserole in the slow cooker, so there was nothing much to do except to lay the table and put on some microwave rice. She expected Alex to come and talk to her when he’d finished reading, but he didn’t, so she ladled out the food and called him. When she handed him his plate he didn’t look at her.

‘Alex? You realize who she is, don’t you? And my parents lied to me about knowing her.’

He grabbed her hand and squeezed it. ‘I’m sorry, sweetheart, that must have come as a real shock. I can understand you being upset, but I suppose they thought it was for the best.’

She knew her voice sounded bitter. ‘Best for me or for them?’

‘Well I’m sure it would have upset you to know your mother was dead. And when would be the right time to come out with something like that? Did they tell you what she died of?’

‘Just that it was an accident.’ She shuddered. ‘She died in a fire – how awful.’

‘Oh, no. Well, that would have been a difficult thing to tell a child.’

‘And there’s the suggestion that it was mysterious. Whatever that means.’

They were both silent, thinking about it, until Eve felt a kick from the baby that was so hard it made her cry out.

Alex said, ‘All right?’

‘Yeah. Just a kick.’

‘All the same, you look exhausted. Maybe you should get an early night.’

She wanted to tell him to leave the worrying to her, but she knew how much this baby meant to him. It meant a lot to her too, of course. She was thirty-one and they’d tried for three years before she got pregnant. Although Alex looked wonderful for over fifty – his hair was still thick and there were no signs of grey – he’d been anxious that he might be too old for babies soon. And of course he’d already lost two children. His first wife had taken his son and daughter to Australia after the divorce and had apparently told them all sorts of lies about Alex, so they refused to see him. They were teenagers now, but he didn’t even know how to contact them.

She touched the article. ‘Have you noticed the date of the Houghton exhibition?’

‘Yes, the year before you were born.’

‘I looked it up. It was just over nine months before.’

Alex studied the report again, then put down his glasses. ‘You’re not thinking …?’

‘It makes sense. Young artist trying to make it and an influential older man.’

Alex shook his head. ‘No, I can’t believe that of David.’

‘He knew Stella at the time and if they did have an affair he could have been lying to Mum all these years as well as to me. Or maybe she decided to forgive and forget. Just glad to get a baby.’

‘Eve, this is ridiculous. It’s your parents we’re talking about.’

‘I wonder what he’ll say if I ask for a DNA test?’

‘You wouldn’t do that, would you?’

She suddenly felt enormously weary. ‘I don’t know.’ Alex was right that she needed to rest and she wanted to be alert when her mother came round tomorrow. She collected their dishes, tipped the remains in the bin and put the plates into the sink. ‘I think I will go up now.’ She kissed his hair, but stopped at the door. ‘You know, after what I’ve learned about my parents today I don’t feel I know them at all.’

She fell into a fitful sleep as soon as she was in bed. At one point, half-awake and not sure if she was dreaming, she thought she heard Alex talking to someone on the phone.