Cover Your Eyes

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Quercus

This edition first published in 2014 by
Quercus Editions Ltd
55 Baker Street
7th Floor, South Block
London
W1U 8EW

Copyright © 2014 by Adèle Geras

The moral right of Adèle Geras to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Ebook ISBN 978 1 782 06608 8
Print ISBN 978 1 782 06607 1

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

You can find this and many other great books at:
www.quercusbooks.co.uk

‘Adèle Geras is one of my favourite writers'

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‘The evident enjoyment and ease with which the author manipulates her material will give a lot of pleasure. Sympathetic and experienced, she knows just how to balance character with story'

Sunday Times

‘A real lose-yourself-in-it book … Beautifully written, wonderfully evocative, it draws you into its haunting past and complex present, weaving the two together with charm and skill … A not-to-be-missed treat'

Penny Vincenzi

‘The setting is idyllic … yet the friction is palpable. Every bit as loud and awkward as the living are the restless dead, screaming out to have their stories told'

Guardian

‘An enjoyable and entertaining read from an accomplished storyteller'

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‘You'll be hooked from the start and when you've finished it, you'll wish you hadn't'

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‘This book is a great read … leaves you with the feeling that there is something right with the world after all'

Daily Express

‘A great story, very skilfully told'

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This is about as good as popular fiction gets'

Scotsman

‘Geras assuredly draws the reader into this deeply involving grade A saga, which has a grip that's impossible to shake off'

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It's Time For Bed

 

She's there. I've covered up her reflection in the mirror but I know she's there. I'm under the blankets. I can't breathe. Am I safe here? Can she walk out of where she was and come into the room? She mustn't come closer. She mustn't. I've hung my dress over the mirror, to hide the glass, but I want to know if she's gone so I lift one corner and look. I can see the door and the rug at the end of my bed. And her. She's caught in the glass. I want to scream but nothing comes out of my mouth. Go away, I say, over and over in my head. Go away. I'm hiding my eyes and counting to a hundred and when I look again, she'll be gone. Please. Please let her be gone.

OCTOBER

I left early that day. Everyone in the editorial office at
lipstick
knew I had permission. I'd even hinted that I was going to dinner somewhere special and allowed the others to wonder who my mystery date was. The whole way home, I was in a daydream. Simon hadn't been in the office much lately and he'd struck me as a bit distant whenever we did run into one another. I was worried he might be trying to avoid me, but then he'd phoned and asked me to dinner at Farrington's, which was the kind of formal, expensive, discreet place you don't just roll up to in the hope of a quick snack. You certainly don't invite someone there casually. He was a bit curt on the phone, but maybe someone was in the room with him. ‘Don't drive,' he said. ‘Take a taxi there and I'll meet you and pay for it.' He wouldn't have said that if something was wrong. He won't be distant tonight, I told myself, but how
would
he be? I'd been turning it over in my mind for days. As I let myself into my flat, it occurred to me that he might have bought a ring to give me. Tonight might turn out to be the night when it happened: maybe he was going to tell me that he and Gail were divorcing. They'd consulted lawyers. Discussed everything. I could imagine Simon saying:
Bet you thought I was bullshitting, didn't you? Bet you thought I'd never have the guts to do it, but look … here's the proof.
I imagined the ring exactly, lying in a small box lined with dark blue velvet … diamonds clustered round a square-cut ruby.

I spent ages in the bath. I put on sheer black tights and my favourite LBD: smart but not too dressy, and tried to stop myself wondering what might happen after dinner. Would he come back here? Would he spend the night? Maybe he'd already told Gail that he was going to be away. I was almost lightheaded with happiness as I sat back in the cab on the way to the South Bank. Did I have time to email Jay? She'd been my best friend since college. Her real name was Julia but she refused to be called that. We'd been on a gap year together, first to the Far East and then to New Zealand to see my dad, who'd run away to the other side of the world the minute he and my mum divorced. Nowadays he and I Skype and email and Dad could easily be in Scotland or somewhere, but back then, I missed him and felt the distance keenly. Jay and I had a blast and it was hard to leave New Zealand and come back to college. After graduation, she got a high-powered job in a finance company in Manhattan and I went to work on my local paper. Although we didn't see each other that often we were always chatting or emailing. I'd been at the local paper for a few years – graduating from editorial assistant to feature writer – and was thinking it was high time I got out of that office. I had my own perfectly okay, if tiny, flat, but all the time I was longing to get to London and to a real job on a proper paper or, even better, a fashion magazine. I saved as much as I could of my salary every month. Then I saw an ad in the
Media Guardian
and answered it. The job was assistant to the fashion editor at
lipstick
magazine, and definitely meant for someone much younger than me, but I was so desperate that I didn't mind a cut in pay.

The fashion editor didn't look a bit like my idea of a fashion editor. I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting, but Felix Priestley looked more like a bank manager: a tall, rather skinny man with horn-rimmed glasses and thin hair, wearing what I later discovered was something like a uniform for him: dark suit, white shirt and a tie so nondescript as to be practically invisible.

‘Come and sit, Megan,' he had said to me. ‘Or should I call you Miss Pritchard?'

‘No, Megan is fine,' I said. He smiled and that transformed his face. He instantly looked mischievous and fun and I could see him as he must have been when he was a little boy. He started to explain to me what I was going to have to do once I'd started at
lipstick
and after a bit, I interrupted him.

‘Excuse me, but aren't you interviewing other people? What you're saying makes me think that perhaps I've got the job.'

‘Oh, of course you've got the job. No point interviewing other people if I'm happy with you, is there?'

‘Well,' I murmured, not really sure of what I ought to be saying.

‘And do call me Felix. We can't be having surnames if we're going to be working closely together. I'll just get Simon in here so that you can meet him. He's the editor, but I can't see him objecting to you if I'm happy.'

Simon Gradwell came into the room. His eyes were so blue that I thought he must have been wearing contact lenses. He had a slight Scottish accent, which made every word he said sound reassuring.

‘You've come down from Nottingham, haven't you?' he said,

‘Northampton.'

‘Oh, I'm sorry … well, not as far to travel and no need for any Robin Hood references, either.'

After a bit of conversation, he said, ‘Well, Megan, I know that Felix is keen to have you. As far as I'm concerned, that's fine. Start as soon as you like.'

‘Thank you.' I said. ‘I'm going to love working here, I know, and I'll start as soon as I've sorted out somewhere to live …'

‘That's great. We … Felix and I … are both looking forward to working with you.'

‘Thanks. I'm looking forward to it too. It's the kind of job I've wanted for ages. I'm really excited …' I stopped then, not wanting to appear too eager, but I was telling the truth.

The
lipstick
job was exactly what I'd wanted. Felix is a lovely boss and we get on well. I loved going to work every day, still do. But then I fell in love with Simon, and things got slightly more complicated.

I've been in love with him for nearly a year. We've been lovers for six months. I've done something I never thought I'd do: stepped into the kind of scenario I'd have told all my friends to avoid. Falling in love with your boss is the worst sort of cliché and I've become the other woman in a love triangle that's beyond banal.

I sometimes wonder if anything would have happened between us if my mother hadn't died suddenly a few months after I came to London. Her best friend, Anita, phoned me while I was sitting at my desk, copy-editing a rather lacklustre spread about the latest beauty products. She told me the news. Mum had been on her way out of the door to the shops when she'd had a heart attack. Her next-door neighbour found her only a short while later, but she was already dead. At first, Anita's words were nothing but squeaks in my ear. I couldn't move; couldn't speak. Anita kept saying: ‘Megan? Are you okay, Megan? Do you understand? She's dead … so sudden. She can't have suffered. It must have been so quick. That's what the doctor said. I'm sorry to ring you at work only I had to tell you at once, didn't I? I phoned your poor dad and woke him up …' She laughed and her laughter sounded weird mixed in with the tears. ‘I forgot he was in New Zealand … poor man.'

I found my voice then. ‘Thanks, Anita … it's good of you,' I started to say and then I was crying too, all over my work, holding the phone to my ear with one hand and wiping my eyes with the other. Tanya, sitting across the room at her station, noticed something was wrong and came over to me. I waved her away and went on crying and listening to Anita talking about arrangements for funerals. Suddenly, I couldn't bear it.

‘I can't, Anita. I don't know what to do. I've never arranged a funeral … Oh, God, I'm so sorry, I'm being pathetic, only—'

‘Don't fret, darling,' Anita said. ‘You come down and stay with me for a few days and we'll arrange everything together. I've contacted the undertakers already … don't you worry about it. You need time to grieve. Such a terrible thing. She was too young …'

I put the phone down in the end, thinking that I would now be able to pull myself together somehow, but the opposite happened. I felt something like a tidal wave of tears rising through my whole body.

‘What's the matter, Megan?'

Simon was standing in front of me, looking worried. I couldn't speak. He came round to my side of the desk and took both my hands and, speaking over his shoulder to Tanya, said, ‘Can you get us a couple of cups of tea or something? With sugar, please.'

To me he said, ‘Come and talk to me. Tell me what's the matter.'

When we got to his office he sat me down on the comfortable chair and stood beside me. He put his hand on my shoulder and I can remember thinking:
Please don't take it away
, wishing he would go on touching me and then crying even more because how come I was thinking about this when my mother had just died?

Tanya brought the tea. I managed to pull myself together enough to stop crying and drink some of it. When I'd told him about Mum, I said, ‘I'm afraid I'll need a few days off, to arrange things …' My voice failed me and tears came to my eyes again at the thought of never seeing my mother ever again.

‘Here's what we'll do,' he said, quite calmly, handing me his own hankie. ‘We'll go round to yours and pick up your stuff. Then I can drive you there … where is it? Northampton, right?'

I told him yes. I couldn't get over how kind it was of him to offer to drive me home. I put the sodden hankie to my eyes, suddenly overwhelmed by grief again, feeling all on my own, with my father so far away. As soon as I get home, I told myself, I'll phone him. He'll make me feel better.

We left the office together. I could sense Tanya and the others looking at us. When we got to my flat, Simon waited in the car while I went inside and stuffed some things into a bag. He got out of the car to put my bag in the boot. As he opened the passenger door for me, he touched me again, on the arm, and asked if I was okay.

Driving is like being in a moving bubble. There's nothing else, just the scenery unscrolling outside the window, the rest of the world somewhere far away. You're with another person and you could be the only two people on the planet. We didn't say much to begin with, then he started asking me stuff. Normally, I hate talking about myself, but in the separate world of the car, I didn't mind. ‘Tell me about your mum, Megan,' he said.

‘She's very … it's hard to say what she is,' I said. ‘Quiet. She doesn't usually show her feelings very much, but she's kind. She was, I mean. She used to be a nurse, but she's retired now. Was retired. Oh God, I can't get used to talking about her in the past tense. Dad's in New Zealand. They divorced years and years ago.' I remembered that I had to phone him. I'd Skype him when I got to Anita's house.

‘Brothers and sisters?' Simon asked.

‘No. My parents had me when they were quite old. At least, quite old for those days.'

He turned his head briefly to smile at me.

‘Well,' he said, turning his attention back to the road. ‘I expect being an only child has its advantages too. My brother's a bit of a pain, if I'm honest.'

It was dark by now. ‘I'm really grateful, Simon. I don't know what I'd have done without your help.'

I had the sudden mad feeling that the car was driving towards some kind of precipice. The air between us felt thick with unspoken thoughts, his and mine. I couldn't guess at his but mine were tangling themselves in my head.
Had he told Gail he was driving me all the way to Northampton? Would she mind?

‘That's okay,' he answered. ‘You've just lost your mother. It was the least I could do.' I began to wonder about what would happen after we got there. Would Simon just turn round and drive straight back? Wouldn't his wife worry about him if he didn't? What had he told her?

When we were nearly there, I said, ‘D'you mind stopping at my mum's house first? Before you drop me at Anita's? I just want to—'

‘No need to explain. You can phone Anita from there and tell her when to expect you.'

I let myself in. The house was cold and dark and still smelled of the lavender furniture polish that Mum always used. It was tidy, as always. I went through to the kitchen and found a cup and saucer on the draining board, and automatically I picked them up and put them away in the cupboard, hearing my mother's voice say, as she must have said to me a million times: ‘That cup is neither use nor ornament by the sink once it's dry. Put it in the cupboard, Megan!' How many times had I sat at the kitchen table after school, doing my homework till Mum came home from work? I walked into the sitting room and noticed how small it seemed, how old-fashioned the television was. When I asked her why she didn't get a modern one, she said, ‘What's the point of that? I can watch what I want to watch perfectly well on this one. I've got better things to spend my money on.' Looking around, I wondered what those things might have been.

Simon hadn't followed me but was waiting in the hall when I said I was ready to go.

‘I'll phone Anita and tell her we're on her way,' I said.

We drove away from Mum's house in silence.

‘I am so grateful,' I said to Simon when we pulled up outside Anita's.

‘No worries. You look after yourself. Take care.'

I'd already half turned to open the door when he reached over and touched my hair, stroking it like my mother used to stroke it when I was about five. Don't cry, I told myself. Not now. I stepped out of the car and closed the door. Simon raised his arm in a wave and I watched as his tail-lights disappeared down the road.

Anita showed me to the room I was going to be sleeping in. Although she'd sounded so calm and supportive on the phone, now I could see that she was so obviously upset, I felt I should have been looking after her.

‘Will you be all right, Megan?' she asked, tears in her eyes.

‘I'm fine, Anita. Thanks. I don't know what I'd have done without you. I'm going to Skype Dad now. I haven't had a chance to talk to him yet.'

‘I'll let you get on, then,' Anita said and left the room, closing the door quietly behind her.