Never Close Your Eyes (56 page)

Evie sat and listened, spellbound, as Becca – or Dawn – spilled her story. She started with her background, described the grim council estate in Newcastle where she'd grown up; her father, who'd abandoned them; her boozy mother who used to get beaten up by various boyfriends while Dawn and her sister, Jude, hid in the bedroom pretending not to hear. She described Jude, older than her by two years, with a different father and completely different in looks and character. She was always teasing Dawn about her ‘posh friends' at the grammar school, picking on her, trying to get her into trouble.

‘I desperately wanted to get out of the council estate, out of Newcastle,' Becca/Dawn explained. ‘I was determined to make a better life for myself and I saw education as a means to that end. I worked like crazy at school.'

Then she came to the murder. Evie sat very still while Becca recounted that terrible afternoon in 1978 when she'd completely lost it. Time seemed to be suspended.

‘I just saw red,' she whispered. ‘I can't explain it. It was like a madness that came over me; I didn't know what I was doing. I just kept hitting and hitting.' She wiped her eye with the sleeve of her black cardigan. ‘I didn't mean to kill her.' She looked at Evie pleadingly.

Evie stared back; she couldn't give Becca the comfort that she imagined she was craving.

‘I thought she was going to kill me at first,' she went on. ‘She was on top of me, bashing my head against the floor again and again. But then I found the hockey stick and pulled it out from under the bed. I hit her several times. It was self-defence, really. But then I carried on.' Becca hung her head. Her black hair fell in front of her face.

‘I'll never really understand why I didn't stop. Psychologists told me I had this anger stemming from my background that had been burning away inside of me for years. It was like a ticking time bomb. But lots of people have difficult childhoods, and they don't all turn out to be murderers.'

Evie felt sweat trickling from her armpits. She wanted to squeeze Becca's hand, to reassure her that she understood and it was all right, but she couldn't. Her stomach was straining. ‘So why are you telling me this?' she asked.

Becca explained about the trial; the verdict of manslaughter; the judge's summing up: he said that she was dangerous and should be watched very carefully.

Evie started when she heard that; the hairs on the backs of her arms stuck up. Dangerous? It didn't seem possible. She put her elbows on the table and rested her chin in her hands; she felt that she needed the support.

Becca came to the correctional institute and her new identity. She spoke very fast, scarcely stopping for breath until she got to the bit about Gary and her flight to Normandy. ‘I thought Tom and the children would be better off without me,' she said.

Evie was finding it hard to process so much information. ‘So you're telling me that Tom knew
nothing
about your past?'

Becca shook her head.

‘How did you manage to keep up the lie for so long?'

Becca winced. ‘Lie, yes,' she said. ‘But I felt I had to, you see.'

Evie noticed for the first time that Becca's perfectly manicured nails were gone. They were bitten down to the quick. And the skin around them was red-raw. She started picking at a scab on the edge of her thumb. Evie had to look away.

‘I'd been warned when I left prison that if anybody ever found out – anybody at all – my cover would be blown and it would be a massive story. There'd be people out to get me – lunatics. You know what they've been like with Nic.

‘I'd have to move, change my name, my looks, start all over again. I suppose I got so used to being careful, to watching my back all the time, that it became second nature. Then, when I found Tom, I was convinced that if he knew what I'd done he'd dump me. There were so many times when I did want to tell him, it was such a massive burden, but I just couldn't.'

Evie took a slug of wine. ‘But he knows now? How has he taken it?' She still couldn't believe what she was hearing.

Becca ran a finger round the rim of her glass. ‘He's been amazing. He says we've got so much going for us and we'll get through this as a family.' She glanced at Evie. ‘It seems almost too good to be true.'

Evie took a deep breath. ‘He must love you an awful lot.'

Becca smiled. ‘I feel incredibly lucky.'

‘What's it like between you?' Evie wanted to know. ‘I can't imagine. It must be like strangers getting to know each other for the first time.'

‘We've talked a lot,' said Becca. ‘He's being so strong.' She hesitated. ‘There's just one thing . . .'

‘What?'

‘He's hardly touched me, not since I told him. He makes excuses, tries to avoid it.' She tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘I guess it's not surprising really.'

‘It'll come,' Evie replied. ‘Give it time.' She topped up their glasses. ‘Your story's safe with me.' She shivered, remembering the neighbour at Number 22 who'd been so eager to talk to reporters about her own family. ‘I won't tell a soul.' She took another sip of wine and cleared her throat. ‘But I still don't understand, you haven't explained. Why have you told
me
?'

Becca looked at her hands. Those pale hands with long, slender fingers that had grabbed a stick and beaten someone to death. ‘Because you're my friend.'

There was a pause. Evie wasn't sure who owned the silence: her or Becca. For a second she found herself imagining what Becca must have looked like with fair hair. How she must have appeared when she was clubbing her sister again and again until she stopped breathing, until there was blood everywhere. Was her face contorted with rage – or pleasure? Did she enjoy it?

Evie felt sick with revulsion. Even in their angriest moments, during one of their fiercest rows, Freya and Michael would never, ever do that to each other. They wouldn't be capable of it. But Becca grew up surrounded by hardship and violence, there were extenuating circumstances. She'd changed now, she was lovely and clever and funny and kind. Becca and Dawn were two different people.

Could a person really change as completely as that?

‘Thank you for sharing this with me,' Evie whispered. ‘It must have been really hard.' It was all that she could manage right now.

‘Thank you for listening,' Becca replied.

Chapter Fifty

Evie dropped the letter in the letterbox. With luck, the advertisement would arrive in time to appear in next month's issue of
Brides-to-Be
magazine. It had cost rather a lot but she was determined to get her business back together and start earning proper money. It was time to stop whingeing and get off her backside.

Back home she made herself a cup of tea before going into the sitting room to resume sewing. She'd moved her tailor's dummy from her bedroom a few days ago so that she could admire the spring flowers in the front garden while she worked.

Something made her ears prick up. She peered out of the bay window and squinted, wishing that she had her glasses to hand. Normally she loved feasting her eyes on the miniature daffodils and tulips that she'd planted a few years before, and the purple hyacinths in her window boxes were at their very best.

But today she hardly noticed them; she was too busy trying to get a better look at the young woman walking up Bill's front path clutching a folder and a notebook in one arm, and carrying an orange plastic shopping bag in the other hand. The woman, who appeared to be in her mid to late twenties, was tall, slim and attractive, with long, silky brown hair. She was wearing brown boots, a rather jaunty pink and brown flowered skirt and a pale blue denim jacket.

Evie guessed that she was Bill's mature Ukrainian student. She'd seen her coming and going quite a lot recently, and she often stayed longer than three hours. Evie wondered what was in the orange plastic bag. Lunch for them both?

‘Hi, babe!'

She spun around. Steve was standing in the doorway with just a pair of Neil's old stripy pyjama bottoms on. He must have found them in the cupboard. He had a serious case of bed-head, and his chest and feet were bare. He'd clearly just woken.

Evie glanced at the clock: ten forty-five. All right for some on a weekday morning. She'd already taken Michael to school, got back, booked a doctor's appointment for Freya, cleaned away the breakfast dishes, tidied the kitchen, hoovered the hall, started pinning the hem of the wedding dress. And she'd got another client coming round this afternoon for a fitting. It was all go.

Steve's chest looked rather white and puny, Evie thought, and his arms were very long. He reminded her of a spider. Amazing how he'd wheedled his way back into her life. How had that happened? She hadn't even noticed, and here he was right at home again.

‘I fancy poached eggs,' he said, running his hand through his long, sticking-up hair.

‘Do you?' Evie replied. ‘You know where the fridge is.'

She resumed her position at the window. The woman had disappeared into Bill's house now. Evie sighed, plumped up the cushions on the sofa and turned back to her tailor's dummy in the corner of the bay. She could hear Steve rattling plates and cutlery in the kitchen. ‘Where's the butter?' he called.

‘By the bread I expect,' she shouted back. He was hopeless at finding things.

She pricked her finger on a pin. ‘Ow.' It was no use, she wasn't in the mood just now. She'd make a mistake. She got up off her knees and caught sight of Freya's black sweatshirt on the Lloyd Loom chair. She picked it up, started to fold it, sniffed. It smelled of Freya and that fresh, lemony scent she wore. Evie hugged the sweatshirt to her, thinking how different things could have turned out.

It was three months since that dreadful day in January and, thank God, things were slowly improving. Freya had swapped schools after Easter and seemed to have enjoyed her first week. She was going to have to re-do a year because she'd missed so much, but she said that she didn't mind. She'd admitted that she hadn't been working properly for months and needed to go through the syllabus again. She seemed to be enjoying her subjects more this time around, though it was still early days, and the therapy sessions were certainly helping.

She and Evie had been in the shopping centre one Saturday afternoon when they'd spotted Gemma and Chantelle. Freya had stopped dead in her tracks. Evie could sense her fear. They'd scurried into Claire's Accessories but the girls had followed them in.

‘Hi, Freya, how are you?' Gemma had smiled. ‘Do you want to come round my house and listen to some music?'

Freya had mumbled something about being busy. After the girls left, Evie whispered: ‘They want to be your friend now.'

‘Because they think I'm famous,' Freya replied through gritted teeth. ‘No chance. I'll never forget what they did to me.' But she'd seemed, at last, to accept that they were no longer a threat, that they couldn't hurt her any more.

Neil's baby was due any day and Evie did worry that it would set Freya back. On the other hand, father and daughter were getting on better and it might even give Freya something else to think about. Although Freya still professed to hate Helen, Evie did think that she could detect a slight softening.

Evie thought of Nic. They hadn't been in touch but Evie had seen Russell from the writing group a few times. He'd been talking to Nic too, and had passed on some of her news. Thank God Alan was where he should be: locked up. At first Evie had been so angry with Nic, so furious, that she couldn't see beyond that. How could she have ignored the signs and put Freya in such danger? But Russell had pointed out that it had taken a lot of courage for Nic to do what she did in the end and turn him in. She'd shown what she was really made of. And, of course, she'd lost so much in the process.

She and Alan were getting divorced and money was a major worry. She'd had to take Dominic out of his private school, where he was happy and secure, and she was going to need to sell the house.

As for Becca, well, Evie still found it hard to absorb. The fact that she'd led this secret life for all those years, concealed her past so brilliantly, was difficult to take on board. She'd found herself googling Becca – or Dawn – repeatedly, poring over the facts of the case and the newspaper stories written at the time and subsequently, trying to connect this disturbed girl from Newcastle with the Becca that she now knew, or had thought she knew.

Evie had tried to convince Becca that their friendship was unchanged but in truth, both recognised that it would and could never be the same. Becca said the whole story would probably come out some day, one way or another, but of one thing Evie was sure: she wasn't going to be the one to spill the beans.