Forgive Me (45 page)

‘That’s amazing,’ Phil
said. He shook his head as if in disbelief. ‘But then, I suppose the people who
set up birth
registration never imagined anyone would lay claim to a
baby that wasn’t theirs?’

‘I’m sure that loophole must
have been closed by now, since computers have started to take over,’ Patrick said.
‘Anyway, to move on, the next part is about meeting Andrew – and Flora was clearly
back to her normal self by then.’

Eva looked at Phil, then back to Patrick.
‘Can you just tell us about it, and we’ll read it all later?’ she
suggested. ‘I’m finding it hard to deal with hearing her voice in this. It
will be easier if you tell us.’

Patrick knew exactly what Eva meant; there
was a rawness in Flora’s writing that revealed how painful she found it to open
up. Yet she had clearly been determined that she must tell the truth and justify her
behaviour to herself – that she hadn’t been mad, or bad, but motivated only by
wanting to give the baby love and care.

‘OK then. But when you read this part
yourself, do take it slowly. Try to put yourself in her shoes as a single mum who has
been forced to cut herself off from all her old friends because of her guilty secret.
She’s lonely, and desperately needs someone to talk to. Most new mums I’ve
known can’t wait to show off their baby, but she couldn’t do that straight
away as she had to build a back story for herself that was entirely plausible. You must
also remember that back in the early 1970s there was a stigma attached to being an
unmarried mother.

‘Anyway, to get back to her story, she
met Andrew at the end of June. It was a hot day and she’d stopped for a drink at
The Prince of Wales and sat outside with the pram –’

‘Andrew told us that too,’ Eva
interrupted.

‘I expect he put his own spin on it,
and I’m going to tell you how I think it was,’ Patrick said. ‘I
suspect from what she says that she went there on purpose, hoping to get into
conversation with other adults and make new friends. She must have
been delighted when Andrew began chatting to her. He was, after all, young, handsome and
single. Flora pointed out that he was rather serious, but she seemed to see that as a
plus. She also liked the fact that he was attentive and seemed very caring – he even
asked if he could hold you.

‘From then on, it sounds like he
really wooed her. He turned up with flowers, toys for you, they had picnics in
Kensington Gardens, and cosy dinners together. He moved in with her after just a couple
of weeks, and soon asked her to marry him.’

‘Did she say she loved him?’ Eva
asked.

‘Not exactly. She speaks of respecting
him, that he was the marrying kind. That they were good friends, and that he loved you,
but not that he made her weak at the knees! She didn’t agree to marry him straight
away. That came about when you were almost two, Eva. I got the idea that she thought he
was almost too good to be true. Perhaps she wondered why someone as eligible as he was
would want a woman with a baby?’

‘Lots of men are attracted to the idea
of a ready-made family,’ Phil said. ‘I think it’s because they
don’t have to do the home-building stuff or take any responsibility.’

‘I’d never thought of it that
way,’ Patrick replied. ‘There could’ve been an element of that in
Andrew’s mind, but I’m afraid I’m more of a cynic. You see, house
prices began to rise around the middle of 1970. Later on, in 1972, it got quite crazy. I
remember reading about it in Canada. Andrew worked as an estate agent then, and he
would’ve been aware of this happening before the man in the street started to
notice.’

‘So you think he was a
gold-digger?’ Phil said.

Patrick grimaced. ‘It’s
difficult for me to imagine any
man not loving Flora just for herself,
but I’ve got a feeling from the moment Andrew got his feet under her table, he saw
the main chance. It also transpires – something I never knew – that she had money
stashed away. I always thought she used all her inheritance to buy the studio, because
that was what she implied. But she says in the statement that she had over twenty
thousand pounds in the bank. And that of course explains why she didn’t get a job
while in Scotland, and how she was supporting herself. With a house and that nest egg
she was rich by the standards of the early 1970s.’

Phil let out a low whistle. ‘Quite a
catch then!’

‘So who did Andrew think was my
father? Presumably he didn’t find out the truth for a while?’

‘Like he told you, a brief affair in
Scotland,’ Patrick said. ‘It was a smart explanation on her part, as most
men feel less threatened by a casual fling than a serious relationship which might not
be quite over. Everything appeared to be fine between them. Flora only admits to a
certain wariness just after they got married, when he suggested they should both make a
will. She said Andrew sulked for days when she told him she’d already made one,
and that she wanted the studio to go to Eva. She said he made a big thing out of her not
trusting him. He said that if anything happened to her, then he would take care of
you.’

‘And we know how well he did
that,’ Phil said drily.

‘Moving on, Flora was all for it when
Andrew suggested they move out of London. The studio was getting too small for a growing
child. Andrew landed a job in Cheltenham and then they found The Beeches.’

Patrick took the statement and riffled
through it. ‘I’ll read you this section, as it is the bit that explains so
much,’ he said.

I loved The Beeches as soon as I saw it,
even though it was in a terrible state, and I could also see its huge potential.
Andrew kept on grousing that we couldn’t manage a big mortgage. But I pointed
out we’d only need one for a short time, because we could sell the land at the
back of the house. That money would not only pay for all the work needed to restore
the house, but we could pay off the mortgage too.

Andrew came round to the idea then,
but he wanted me to sell the studio for the huge deposit we needed. I wasn’t
going to do that – I wanted to let it out, and keep it for Eva – so I had to tell
him about my inheritance money and use that. But in order to safeguard it, I
insisted The Beeches was put in both our names.

Patrick looked from Eva to Phil. ‘It
wasn’t common practice to have property in joint names back then. Men were
considered to be the breadwinners and therefore they mostly took the sole responsibility
of a mortgage.’

‘So was she suspicious of him?’
Phil said.

‘It doesn’t sound like it. But
Flora always had a keen sense of the value of money,’ Patrick said. ‘We were
all so poor at college, and she hadn’t had much as a child either. All her parents
had of value was their home, and she would never have risked or squandered what they
left her. I dare say that was why she never told me that she had twenty thousand tucked
away along with owning the studio. Perhaps she didn’t trust me not to suggest
doing something extravagant with it? But what I do get a sense of in this part of her
statement is that she is very aware that Andrew wasn’t putting anything into the
pot. I think that was what made her cautious.’

‘He used to boast to our neighbours
about his “foresight” in buying The Beeches,’ Eva said indignantly.
‘Mum never
said anything, so it never occurred to me she was the
driving force behind it. Why didn’t she ever insist on getting the credit for
it?’

‘The reason for that becomes clear
later on,’ Patrick said.

‘Then carry on reading,’ Phil
said. ‘I’m dying to know more.’

Patrick cleared his throat and continued to
read the next section.

We stayed in a lovely hotel in the
Cotswolds for a couple of nights while we completed on the house and took
possession. Eva stayed with Andrew’s parents. I can only put my stupidity in
telling Andrew about Eva that night down to the excitement of the move, having a
break from Eva, and getting rather drunk. It seemed to me, as we were married and
starting a new life in a new town, there shouldn’t be any secrets. So out I
came with it, while sitting in the hotel garden after dinner with another bottle of
wine.

He was shocked of course, but he
said he was glad I’d told him. And I felt so relieved, because keeping the
secret had been such a huge burden. He said we should change Eva’s name to
his, and we should tell people we’d got married in 1969 so that everyone would
think she was his child. That made me ridiculously happy. I felt that all the
sadness and anxiety about the past was over.

The first couple of years at The
Beeches were wonderful, so exciting and fulfilling. I found a property developer
interested in buying the land at the back, saw to all the legal stuff, and I did all
the negotiations with the Council for planning permission for The Beeches. And I
found the right tradesmen to do the work. Although I say it myself, I was the brains
and the creative force behind it all. Andrew was too staid, unimaginative and often
too churlish with people who needed to be won over.

I almost forgot about my art, because
along with Eva to look after, there was so much to do in restoring the house and
working on the garden. There were banisters and doors to strip, workmen to oversee,
materials to be sourced. It was me who repaired and made new pieces of cornice where
they were missing, to match the original design. I was really happy too. I felt
I’d found my niche in life, creating something beautiful, a
‘forever’ home.

Andrew was as proud as punch when
Ben was born. He was considerate towards me, he was happy at his job and, as
we’d paid off the mortgage when we sold the land at the back, there were no
money worries either. I thought then that I’d picked the right man to marry
and settle down with. We seemed the perfect team.

Everything was fine between us right
up till when Sophie was about a year old. We’d more or less finished the work
on the house, and the garden was beginning to look beautiful too.

I certainly hadn’t expected to
get pregnant again so quickly after Ben, and when Sophie was born I was very tired
and run-down. I put the changes in Andrew down to that; he often got annoyed when he
came home to find toys all over the floor and the kitchen a mess. But then he began
picking on Eva about nothing. She was only little and the things he complained about
– such as her making crayon marks on the kitchen table, or spilling drinks – were so
petty. We had a row about it one night, and he hit me for the first time. His
message was clear: ‘Don’t you dare criticise me, or else.’

What he was implying was of course
that he’d tell the police about Eva. I couldn’t really believe he meant
it, but it frightened me. So I tried harder to keep things in order, just to appease
him. But I am what I am: I was never a great housekeeper, and I needed creativity to
be happy. He came
in once and found me painting in the kitchen,
and he went mad. He threw all my paints on the floor, crumpled up the canvas, and
said he didn’t want a crazy artist for a wife.

That was the start of what was to
become my life of walking on eggshells. He would tell me what I was to cook for
dinner; he decided which of the neighbours were to become our friends. On occasions
if I’d met and liked another mother at the playgroup or school, he would check
out who she was, where she lived, and if he didn’t approve he said I
wasn’t to see her. If I ever tried to challenge him about this, he hit me.

Patrick looked at Eva’s stricken face.
‘You didn’t know he hit her?’

She shook her head. ‘No, I had no
idea. He was like she said – telling her what to cook, who to invite round and stuff –
but I thought she did that because that was the way she was.’

‘She says he was always careful where
he hit her – never her face, or people would know. If she said one wrong thing when they
had visitors, she knew he’d punish her as soon as they’d gone,’
Patrick explained.

‘I saw bruises on her legs and arms
sometimes,’ Flora exclaimed. ‘I believed her when she said she’d
banged into something. But after I was about nine or ten Andrew never let me go into
their bedroom when she was dressing. He was nasty to me once and said adults needed
privacy. But that was so I wouldn’t see anything, wasn’t it?’

Patrick nodded grimly. ‘I would say
so. Let me read out another bit where she tries to rationalize it.’

Looking back now, I don’t know
why I didn’t recognize he was a control freak as soon as I met him. Even at
the start
he liked everything to be his own way. But of course I
had the power then. It was my studio and he was living with me. I just thought he
was a bit bossy and critical – nothing more – and I could tease him out of it. While
we were doing all the work at The Beeches it was impossible to be tidy and
organized, and he seemed OK about it then.

But I had no more power once the
house was finished, I was just housewife and mother. I’ve read articles by
women who have been beaten and they always say it was a gradual thing. The first
time he swears he’ll never do it again, and he doesn’t for months. But
then it happens again and before long every time she puts a foot wrong he lays into
her.

Before Andrew began hitting me I
thought women who allowed their men to beat them were spineless wretches. I even
imagined they got some sort of buzz out of the violence. I couldn’t understand
why they stayed with the man.

Whoever reads this will probably
think I was spineless too. After all, I still owned the studio and I could’ve
gone there. Or they might think my lifestyle, the big house, the garden and a
husband who provided for me – along with my inheritance, which I’d sunk into
the house – meant more than my own self-respect.

But it wasn’t being spineless,
or money, that made me stay. I would gladly have lived in one room with the
children, just to have peace and happiness. The real stumbling block was that I
knew, if I left, he’d make good his threat and tell the police about Eva. That
would mean prison for me, and losing all three children. Goodness knows what
would’ve happened to Eva – she’d have probably ended up in care. So I
didn’t get my paints out again, and I tried very hard to have everything
perfect when he came home.

You have to experience living with
someone who is
holding a gun to your head to know what it does to
you. Bit by bit it erodes your confidence, your personality. The more you try to
appease, the more critical they become. You lose your sense of fun, you are always
trying to second-guess your abuser. You can’t ever let your guard down. I
never dared tell people that just about everything in the house was my idea, or that
it was me who stripped doors and banisters, repaired damaged cornices and sourced
the antiques. I became a nothing. And I missed painting, talking to people who liked
to laugh and were fun. I haven’t been allowed to make any decisions for years,
and I’m not even allowed to have an opinion about anything.

The only thing he hasn’t tried
to alter is my dress sense. He is sarcastic about me wearing vintage dresses, but he
doesn’t try to stop me. I know why that is. My clothes are a smokescreen. No
one who sees a woman dressed in old velvet and beaded dresses would imagine her
husband controlled her. I am quite sure that he confides in people that I am
‘arty’, highly strung and reclusive, feeding people the idea I’m
halfway round the twist. He gains sympathy, and people don’t try to get to
know me.

It is obvious to me now from
spiteful things he says that he’s used me right from the start. Moving in with
me saved him money; then he wanted to get married, because he saw that as a way to
get the studio. Maybe he even knew I had the other money all along. He used my
vision and creativity to turn an old wreck of a house into something beautiful and
very valuable. Perhaps he hopes, if he keeps pushing and pushing at me, that I will
go mad, or kill myself – that way he’ll get everything and be free of me.