Never Close Your Eyes (62 page)

‘My book,' she said, brandishing it in front of her. ‘The first draft.' She focused at a point on the wall behind, uncharacteristically shy. ‘I wondered if you'd read through it for me.'

Nic glanced at Evie, who was frowning. ‘I don't know . . .'

‘I'd be ever so grateful,' Carol persisted. ‘I haven't shown it to anyone yet.'

Evie grabbed the pile of papers. She held them in one hand, slightly away from her body as if she were scared she might catch something.

‘All right,' she said. ‘But I don't know if I'll have any useful comments to make.'

‘I don't expect a critique or anything like that,' Carol replied. ‘I'd just like you to take a look, that's all. If you would.'

Chapter Fifty-Five

Nic reread the last few lines that she'd written:

Beattie pointed the gun right between Adamou's eyes.

‘One move and you're dead.'

Adamou took a step forward. She hesitated for a second and pulled the trigger. She didn't have time to look. She thought she caught him out of the corner of her eye staggering like a drunken sailor and then, when she reached the door, she heard a thump.

Nic typed ‘THE END' and reread it several times, savouring the feeling. After a moment or two she checked the word count: 124,400 words. She sighed, pressed ‘save' and closed the document, then she moved the mouse until the arrow was on ‘organise' and scrolled down.

She took a deep breath. ‘It's got to be done.'

She clicked ‘delete'. A message came up: ‘Are you sure you want to move this file to the Recycle Bin?' She paused for a moment before hitting ‘yes'. The file disappeared. Then she went to the Recycle Bin and emptied it.

That was that, then. All those months of work down the pan. She'd have nothing to enter for the competition. Her dreams of winning were at an end.

Her stomach tingled. She wanted to laugh.
This
dream was over, but she could start another book, something completely different. This time, she thought, her work would be gritty and real. She had such a lot to say. She'd leave it for a month or two, let the dust settle and then start afresh.

She got up slowly and rubbed her eyes. She'd been writing solidly more or less every day since last month's creative writing group when Tristram had urged her to finish. She'd been in danger of flagging again until Becca made more encouraging noises at the May meeting a week ago. Nic doubted she could do it, but there was still time to meet the 1 June deadline, Becca had insisted. She herself was right on target, as were most of the others.

Finishing, for Nic, had been slow and painful, like pulling teeth. But it was over now. She didn't have to put herself through it any more.
The Girl from Niger
had been doomed from the start. It was stupid, self-indulgent and had too many bad memories. It was definitely time to move on.

She thought of Evie, as she so often did, wondered how she was getting on with her writing. She hadn't made the May meeting. Not surprising, given the news. Neil's baby had arrived and Freya was finding it very difficult; having rediscovered the father that she felt she'd lost, he was now too busy to see much of her.

Nic had phoned Evie, trying to be supportive, but she knew that she wasn't the right person to talk to. In fact it was amazing that Evie was willing to talk to her at all.

That familiar wave of guilt rolled over Nic, knocking her sideways. She'd never forgive herself. Yet she must keep going, look forwards – for Dominic's sake. She was all he had. She wasn't sure that she'd ever let him see Alan again.

Alan. She shuddered. These days she tended to refer to him as A. She didn't want to think about him. Fortunately she didn't have to see him or to speak to him. Along with his clothes and other belongings, she'd destroyed every photograph of him that she could find.

He'd been sentenced at the crown court last week and given five years. They reckoned he'd serve three to three and a half. He'd pleaded guilty to attempting to meet a child after sexual grooming on the internet. They'd also found 269 indecent images on his laptop. His main interest, they said, was girls aged seven to eleven, but he liked young teenagers, too. He'd be on the sex-offenders register for life.

It was a relief to know that he'd been put away but she continued to question herself and there were plenty, she knew, who would always judge her and condemn her. She had to accept that. But she'd made an important decision after the verdict that had surprised even her: she'd agreed to give one interview to a Sunday newspaper.

Her main reason for coming forward wasn't to try to gain sympathy but to alert people to what ‘just looking' can lead to. The terrible pictures found on A's laptop were of real children. That knowledge had shocked her to the core. It had made her fear and loathe secrecy in families, in relationships. She felt that she'd had enough secrets for one life.

If one person could learn from her tale and voice their fears rather than sweep them under the carpet, then speaking out and telling the world about her experience was worthwhile. And whilst she abhorred the increased exposure that had resulted from the article, there had been one welcome and quite unexpected outcome: she'd received a surprising number of letters of support, including one from Evie.

She went downstairs to the kitchen and put the kettle on. Dizzy, who was snoozing in her basket, looked up and thumped her tail.

‘Good girl.' Nic smiled. ‘Dominic will be home soon, then we'll go walkies!'

Dizzy got up and trotted over to her mistress, who bent down and gave her a stroke. ‘We'll go to Richmond Park, shall we?' Nic was speaking half to the dog and half to herself. She glanced through the open glass door of the kitchen into the garden. The late sun was casting a rich, golden glow over walls, paving stones and flowers. ‘It's a beautiful evening.'

It occurred to her that the azaleas would be blooming now in the Isabella Plantation within the park; May was the best time to go, though the woodland garden was beautiful all year round. Maybe they'd walk there.

She and Dominic had taken to having an evening stroll together now that the weather was so much better. For some reason he seemed to open up on their walks. He talked about his dad, about his new school and friends more than at other times. Maybe it was the fact that they walked side by side. Perhaps it seemed less scary and intense to him than if they were opposite each other at the supper table. Whatever the reason, Nic had tried to make the walks a regular evening activity. It was their quiet time together and they both seemed to value it.

The doorbell rang. Nic glanced at her watch: seven p.m. Her heart gave a skip. She realised that she hadn't even noticed when it turned six, the time when she'd been accustomed to having her first drink.

She missed alcohol, of course, but she didn't miss being enslaved, always looking for the next drink, waking up anxious, depressed, the black pit waiting to engulf her. Besides, she needed all her strength to cope with what lay ahead. She couldn't afford to fall apart again.

‘Mum!' Dominic bundled her into the hallway followed by Toby, a friend from his new school, who started to take off his shoes.

‘Come back, Toby!' his mother scolded. ‘We can't stay now. We've got people coming for supper.'

Nic smiled, registering the surprise in the other mother's eyes; she must have forgotten about Nic's turquoise train tracks. ‘They've obviously had a good time then?' Nic said.

‘Great,' Toby's mother agreed. ‘They built a den in the garden.'

Later, after their walk, Nic read Dominic a chapter of
Harry Potter
. He pretended that he was too old to be read to but he liked it really. When she'd finished the final paragraph he propped himself up on his elbows.

‘You're all right, aren't you – without Daddy, I mean?' he asked anxiously.

She ruffled his hair. ‘Yes, darling. I'm all right.'

‘What if something happened to you, too. What if you got cancer or something. Who'd look after me then?'

She frowned. This again. ‘Nothing's going to happen to me, Dom.'

‘But what if it did?' he persisted.

She pulled the duvet back and climbed in beside him. ‘Move over.'

‘Tell me,' he said again. He wouldn't give up.

She put her arm around him. ‘If something did happen to me – and it won't – you'd live with Grandma, or Aunty Jacqueline. But I promise you I'm not going anywhere.'

He thought about this for a moment. ‘If I went to live with Aunty Jacqueline would I have my own room?'

Nic smiled. ‘She's got a big house so yes, I'm sure you would. And she'd take very great care of you. She loves you very much.'

He shivered. ‘I don't want to live with anyone else.' He was starting to cry.

Nic sighed. It was so difficult to reassure him. She'd give anything to make him happy, secure again, but she didn't know how.

‘Do you want to come in my bed?' she asked. She'd been hoping to watch a TV programme.

He nodded.

‘Come on then.'

She undressed, switched on the radio, turned out the light and curled around him, her chin resting on the top of his head, her knees in the hollows of his. She held him tight until he drifted off to sleep, the sound of chatter drowning out his thoughts.

He cried out in his sleep a few times. His whole body was sweaty and trembling. She whispered in his ear: ‘Mummy's here, Mummy's with you,' over and over again like a mantra until he seemed to believe her and was finally quiet.

Evie put her head in her hands and closed her eyes. She was in an awful muddle and she knew it. She was, she reckoned, nine-tenths of the way through her book and she still didn't know how it was going to end. She was sure that famous authors like Marian Keyes and Jodi Picoult always knew exactly how their novels would conclude before they'd written so much as a single word; she'd bet they did very detailed synopses.

The problem was that Spiculus, the gladiator-turned bodyguard, had turned out to be a love-rat after all and Cornelia had rightly dropped him. Evie had thought that she could twist the plot around so that Marcellus, the neglectful husband, would prove to be a hero. But somehow Evie just couldn't bring herself to make Cornelia fall in love with him again. It wasn't how she wanted it to end.

One of the difficulties, she realised, was that she was relying far too much on her own feelings for Neil; she just couldn't help it. There again, perhaps it wasn't surprising, given that she'd modelled Marcellus and Spiculus on Neil right from the start, right down to their looks, mannerisms, even the way they peeled apples with a knife and cut them into little pieces before eating them. Whom had she been trying to kid?

She hadn't intended Marcellus to be Neil, it had just happened. And in view of the fact that it was less than a week now till the June deadline, she hadn't time to go back and make Marcellus completely different.

Then there was Gracchus, who had become Cornelia's confidant. He kept sort of forcing his way into the writing, even when Evie didn't mean it to happen. The original plan – such as it was – was that he'd be a subsidiary character, very much in the background. But somehow he'd become one of the main protagonists and Evie didn't know quite what to do with him, how to wrap it all up. She really should have done a proper synopsis right at the beginning, she thought. She'd know next time.

She closed the document and shut the lid of her laptop. She'd taken to working on the kitchen table recently rather than in the bedroom where she often did her sewing; she found it too distracting to be constantly reminded of the other work she ought to be doing.

She walked upstairs and heard giggling coming from Freya's room. She knocked on the door.

‘Come in!'

Evie poked her head in. Freya was sitting on the bed, a magazine on her lap, her mobile clamped to her ear.

She held the cover up for Evie to see. ‘
Heat
,' she explained. ‘I'm talking to Lucy.'

‘Have you done your homework?'

‘Don't nag,' said Freya. ‘I'll do it later.'

Evie frowned. ‘I'm not nagging . . .' But then she smiled. It was a relief to see Freya acting in a normal, feisty, teenagerish way. She'd been so withdrawn and docile lately.

‘I have to leave in half an hour,' said Evie. ‘Dad should be here soon. Are you sure you're all right with it?'

Freya nodded. ‘No probs. I'll make him watch
Big Brother
with me.'

‘Homework,' Evie reminded her.

Freya gave her one of her looks before resuming her chat.