Forgive Me

  LESLEY PEARSE

  Forgive Me

  MICHAEL JOSEPH

  an imprint of

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  By the same author

  Georgia

  Charity

  Tara

  Ellie

  Camellia

  Rosie

  Charlie

  Never Look Back

  Trust Me

  Father Unknown

  Till We Meet Again

  Remember Me

  Secrets

  A Lesser Evil

  Hope

  Faith

  Gypsy

  Stolen

  Belle

  The Promise

  To my brother, Dr Michael Sargent, and his lovely wife, Jean.

  Thank you, Michael, for all the times I’ve picked your brains about DNA, poison and goodness knows what else. Even as a small child I suspected you’d come in useful one day!

  I am so proud of you too.

  Prologue

  Cheltenham, 29 March 1991

  Flora kicked off her shoes, pulled her dress over her head and tossed it on to the bed. She was about to remove her underwear too, when a glance in the gilt-framed cheval mirror stopped her.

  Dressed, she still looked quite trim for a woman of forty-eight, but naked she was flabby and her skin pale. She couldn’t bear the thought of anyone seeing her like that. Not even in death.

  She opened a drawer, took out the ivory silk slip which matched her bra and knickers and put it on. ‘That’s better,’ she murmured.

  Removing the band holding her hair back, she ran her fingers through it till it tumbled down over her bare shoulders. Her Titian-red wavy hair had always been her best feature, and even now, as desperate as she felt, she was proud of it.

  The bath was already run in the en-suite bathroom, she was primed with a couple of sleeping pills and some brandy, and no one was due home for at least three hours. She was entirely resolved upon what she intended to do, yet it hadn’t occurred to her until now that it would have been kinder to the children if she’d checked into a hotel room so that a stranger found her.

  It was the bedroom which prompted this thought. From the expensive red and gold wallpaper that Andrew had raged over to the French gilded bed and sumptuous carpet and curtains, it reflected her true character. It was the only room in the entire house which really did, as Andrew despised what he called ‘bordello’ style. Everywhere else was muted shades of cream and taupe, as befitted a Georgian country house.

  But she wanted to die here in this room which she’d fought long and hard to keep as she planned it. He’d driven her to this point by forcing her to bend to his will about everything else. He claimed he loved her, that everything he’d done was for her, but in reality he’d stifled her true personality and creativity to the point where she could barely remember who she’d once been.

  In her early twenties she’d claimed that suicides were cowards. She’d loved life so much then that she despised anyone who didn’t embrace it as she did. But she didn’t know then what heartache could do, or that a bad choice in a weak moment could change the whole course of your life.

  But it was too late for regrets now; she was feeling woozy, and Andrew would be home first so it would be he who found her. As she went over to the dressing table to take one last look at the framed pictures of her children, she was very unsteady.

  Sophie and Ben, seventeen and eighteen respectively, grinned cheerfully back at her. The picture of the two of them had been taken on Boxing Day, at the pre-lunch drinks party they had every Christmas for neighbours and friends. They were very alike: tall, slender and dark-haired. They had inherited Andrew’s looks, but she hoped they would never become mean-spirited control freaks like him.

  In a separate frame was one of Eva. It had been taken on Boxing Day too, but it was not a very flattering picture. She was smaller than the other two, curvy and pretty with lovely blue eyes, but the purple dress overwhelmed her delicate colouring and made her look plump and closer to thirty than only twenty. It pricked Flora’s conscience.

  ‘I should’ve picked a dress out for you,’ she sighed. ‘Pink or pale blue – that would’ve done you justice. I also should’ve told you never to try to be what you think other people want of you. I’m a good example of where that leads. Be true to yourself, and remember I loved you.’

  She kissed each one of their faces, biting back tears. Time was running out; she could feel her head swirling, and she still had to write a note for them. She picked up the pen and notepad she’d left by the bedside, but could no longer remember the words she’d planned to say.

  ‘Forgive me,’ she began. But nothing more came to her, and in some strange way that seemed enough.

  She left the note on the bedside cabinet and went into the bathroom. The new sharp craft knife was ready on the side of the bath. She climbed into the hot water, lay back for a few moments to brace herself and then picked up the knife.

  She hesitated. The steel knife felt cold and heavy in her hand. Could she really do it? It was the pain she was afraid of, and of not cutting deep enough to open her veins.

  ‘No more guilt,’ she murmured. ‘No more pretending. It will all be gone for ever very soon.’

  With the knife in her left hand, she quickly drew the blade sharply across her right wrist, then changed hands and cut the left one before the pain could stop her. Surprisingly, it didn’t hurt; and the way the blood began to pump out, she knew she’d cut them deeply enough.

  She let her arms sink into the hot water and watched the water turn red.

  It was done.

  Chapter One

  As Bette Midler’s ‘From A Distance’ came on, Eva turned up her car radio and sang along with it. It was cold and raining, but she was feeling happy because Olive, her boss, had let everyone go early when the heating broke down. As Eva had arranged to go to a make-up party this evening with some of the girls from work, she would have more time to wash her hair and get ready.

  She turned into the drive, but had to slam her brakes on because the wrought-iron gates were unexpectedly shut. She stopped only a whisker from them. ‘Damn,’ she exclaimed. Not only had she nearly hit the gates, but now she would get soaked opening them up.

  As she could see her mother’s red Polo parked at the end of the drive by the house, Eva felt irritated. Why had she closed the gates if she was in?

  Despite her pique at having to get out in the rain and push open the heavy gates, Eva noticed that the borders of daffodils and other spring flowers around the huge expanse of front lawn looked bright and beautiful. However inconsistent her mother was in so many ways, she lavished care on the garden – in fact, had it not been raining quite so hard she would be out there now.

  Hopping quickly
back into her car, Eva drove up the drive and parked just behind the Polo, then hurried through the arch which led to the old stable block. A few years ago her parents had converted the yard into a courtyard garden, and the stables to an indoor swimming pool. The courtyard was a real suntrap; the surrounding walls kept off the wind, and at the start of March it had been so mild they had all sat out here for a couple of hours after Sunday lunch.

  The back door was unlocked. Eva hung up her coat on a peg, then went into the kitchen, expecting to find her mother there, preparing the evening meal. But she wasn’t. The kitchen was so polished and neat, with a carefully arranged bowl of fruit and a vase of daffodils on the black marble worktop, that it looked like it was about to star in a feature in Homes & Gardens.

  This was rather unusual, as her mother wasn’t tidy by nature. When Dad was away on business for a few days she always let things slide. Sometimes Eva would get home in the evening to find the breakfast things still where they’d been that morning. But Dad was fussy, and he liked everything to be immaculate; mostly when Eva got home first she’d find her mother frantically rushing around, putting things straight, polishing and tidying before he got in.

  Eva thought today’s extreme tidiness must mean Dad was expected early or they were having visitors, as there wasn’t so much as a dirty cup or glass anywhere.

  ‘I’m home, Mum,’ Eva called out. ‘Where are you?’

  Getting no answering call, she glanced into the sitting room and the conservatory beyond, then into the study and the dining room. She wasn’t there and, like the kitchen, they were immaculate. It was also ominously quiet – usually, the radio was on.

  Puzzled, Eva stood at the bottom of the stairs for a moment. Her mother might be unpredictable: some days she made several different kinds of cakes and cooked meals to stow away in the freezer, and on others she was barely motivated to use a tin opener. Yet one thing was constant – and that was, she always welcomed her family home.

  Normally just the sound of Eva or Dad’s car on the drive was enough for her to break off whatever she was doing to come and greet them.

  Like many Georgian houses the hall was large and impressive with the oak staircase rising from the middle, then curving gracefully around to meet a gallery on the first floor. There was a skylight window above, and on a sunny day the staircase was flooded with natural light. Today the light was murky and the rain was drumming against the glass.

  Eva went halfway up the stairs, and called out again. When there was still no reply she wondered if her mother had got one of her migraines and gone for a lie-down, so she decided against calling again for fear of disturbing her.

  All the five bedrooms and two bathrooms led off from the gallery. But as Eva reached the gallery and saw that her parents’ bedroom door was open, she doubted her mother was sleeping. She peeped in; there was a dress on the bed, which suggested she’d changed, perhaps to go out for a walk. Yet that seemed unlikely when it was pouring with rain.

  Eva was puzzled as she looked in each of the bedrooms, remembering that the back door hadn’t been locked. Mum wouldn’t leave that open even to nip quickly to a neighbour’s house.

  A door with a plain wooden staircase behind it led to three tiny attic rooms. Once servants’ quarters, two were now spare rooms, rarely used except at Christmas or other special occasions when someone came to stay; the third one was used for storage. Although it was unlikely her mother was up there, Eva checked anyway. But she wasn’t there.

  For the past few weeks her mother had been somewhat withdrawn and distant. On several occasions Eva had found her just staring into space, in a world of her own. A couple of days ago Eva had talked about it to Ben, her younger brother. He’d been of the opinion it was her age, because he’d heard that all women got a bit odd in their forties. But now, as Eva began to feel anxious, she wished she’d risked Dad scoffing at her and told him what she’d noticed.

  Hoping that her parents’ room might offer up a clue, Eva went in there. The dress on the bed was the one her mother had been wearing at breakfast. Dad had been sarcastic, asking if she was going to a tea dance because it was a vintage dress from the 1940s, emerald-green wool crêpe with a small corsage of lighter green velvet flowers on the bodice.

  Flora liked vintage clothes. She said they belonged to a gentler period when women looked like women. Her wardrobe was full of old velvet, chiffon and crêpe. Dad was always sarcastic about the way she dressed. To him they were just second-hand clothes, and he thought the wife of Head of Sales for one of the largest paper product companies in Europe should dress the part.

  But although Dad got his way about almost everything, he had given in on this point because absolutely everyone else agreed Flora suited vintage clothes. Her red curly hair, curvy body and pale skin could be likened to many of the film stars of the 1940s. Crêpe dresses cut on the cross, beaded boleros and peplum-waisted jackets went with both her shape and her character. Maybe they weren’t too practical, but then practicality wasn’t exactly Flora Patterson’s strong suit.

  As Eva stood in her parents’ bedroom, she remembered the terrific row her parents had had when Dad arrived home from a business trip to find Mum had completely redecorated this room. Eva had never been quite sure whether she liked the shock of coming from the muted decor elsewhere into this red and gold, grandiose and decadent room. But she really admired her mother for not only decorating it herself, but getting the curtains, carpet and French walnut furniture in while Dad was away, and sticking to her guns when he went mad about it. She had insisted that she was entitled to have one room in the house that was just for her.

  Although it was unlikely Mum had braved the rain to do something in the garden or the garage, it would account for her changing her clothes, so Eva looked out of the window.

  People assumed by looking at the grand gates, and the sweeping drive, that the back garden must be huge. It had been, but the house was in such a bad state when her parents bought it that they sold all of the land at the back of the house to pay for the renovations. The development company who bought it built a small estate of executive houses there.

  There was just a narrow strip of patio at the back now, and an eight-foot wall to give them some privacy. But here in the front of the house it was still possible to imagine how The Beeches had looked when it was first built two hundred years ago because the trees and bushes surrounding the lawn shut out even a glimpse of the newer neighbouring houses. Eva couldn’t see the garage from the window, as it was joined to the side of the house, but it was possible that if the door was shut and her mother was engrossed in something, she might not have heard Eva’s car.

  But as she turned from the window she noticed that the door of the en-suite bathroom was closed. Like the extremely tidy kitchen, that was uncharacteristic. Except for Tuesdays – when Rose, the cleaning lady, came – there was often a trail of dropped clothes from the bed to the bath, with doors and drawers left open.

  ‘Mum, are you in there?’ she called out.

  There was no reply but she went over to the door and banged loudly on it, just in case Flora had her Walkman on in the bath. She turned the handle and opened the door just wide enough to peep in.

  To her relief she could see the top of her mother’s head just above the end of the claw-foot bath.

  ‘Oh, here you are! So sorry to intrude. I was getting worried –’

  She stopped short, suddenly noticing the bathwater was as red as her mother’s hair.

  ‘Mum!’ she screamed as she rushed in. ‘Mum! What’s happened?’

  But one look at the pallor of her mother’s face and her wide-open, yet vacant eyes was enough for Eva to know she was dead; and the craft knife covered in blood, dropped on the floor beside the bath, told her how it had happened.

  Nothing in Eva’s entire life had prepared her for such a shocking sight, and she screamed involuntarily, running out on to the landing in fright.

  It took her a few moments to pull herself together en
ough to go back into the bedroom, pick up the phone and dial 999. But as soon as she’d stammered out to the operator what she’d just found and given the address, she went back to the landing and slumped down onto the floor, too shocked and terrified by what she’d seen to go downstairs.

  The waiting for someone to come seemed endless. The only sounds were the rain thudding down on the skylight and her heart beating too fast. She wrapped her arms around her knees and sobbed.

  Nothing had happened that morning to make Eva suspect something was badly wrong. Breakfast had been utterly normal and, aside from Dad’s sarcasm in asking Mum if she was going to a tea dance, nothing unusual had been said. Mum had made a pot of tea as usual, and just sat there drinking hers as Sophie and Ben got themselves cereal. She’d said all the usual stuff. Had Sophie got her games things? Then reminded Ben he must have a proper lunch at school, not just a packet of crisps. She’d kissed them all as they left the house, even asked Dad to pick up his best suit from the dry cleaners. Did she know she was going to do this even then? And why did she tidy the whole house? Did she think her death would be less distressing for everyone if the house was looking perfect?

  When Eva heard the siren in the distance, she felt unable to move. She didn’t think she’d even be able to speak to the police or ambulance men.

  Suddenly the silence was broken by the sound of tyres on the gravel drive and loud male voices. One of them was her father’s; he must have arrived along with the emergency services. Knowing he would have Ben and Sophie with him, Eva felt she had to protect her brother and sister from what she’d seen, and so she hauled herself up.