Apple of My Eye Page 6

  Martin’s always told me that he knows me like no one else in the world knows me. I like to think I’m the same with him. I can read his facial expressions in seconds. I know the two-second pause that always happens when he’s caught out on a lie. Although, admittedly, in the past it’s been about trivial things, like spending too much money on some silly gadget we haven’t discussed or when some of the Maltesers I keep hidden in the back of the cupboard went missing. It has never before, in the ten-year history of our relationship, been about anything of any great seriousness.

  My hand goes to my stomach, instinctively, I suppose. It still shocks me to find a bump there. To feel another being inside me. I glance back into the mirror, start to give myself a little pep talk, and I’m just turning to leave the room, when I hear him bound up the stairs. He always comes up the stairs two at a time like an excited teenager. Even when tired, he still gallops up. Before I know it he’s at the door, pushing the handle down and coming in, his face creased with concern.

  ‘Eli …’ he says as if he doesn’t know what to say next. Which he probably doesn’t. Life doesn’t prepare you for conversations like this.

  I see his face and a mixture of every emotion possible rushes through me. Love. Fear. Betrayal.

  ‘You’re here,’ I state.

  ‘I am,’ he says, walking towards me.

  I want to hug him. I want him to hold me, but I feel myself holding back.

  He senses it. He looks wounded and I feel guilty, but I also feel torn. I shouldn’t be feeling guilty. I should be the one feeling wounded.

  If it’s true.

  ‘I need to ask you to your face and I need you to understand why I’m asking. Are you seeing someone else?’ I blurt.

  There’s no pause. Not even a minute one. The wounded look is multiplied. He sags.

  ‘You shouldn’t need to ask me that,’ he says.

  ‘I know,’ I say, tears pricking at my eyes. ‘But I do need to. For me. Are you having an affair, Martin?’

  He takes a step back. Or maybe I do. I’m not sure.

  ‘Eli, I’ve told you, no. I’ve told you I never would. You can’t have believed it either, or you’d have mentioned that first note to me. It shouldn’t have been down to the police to tell me.’

  ‘It seemed so ridiculous at the time,’ I tell him, feeling defensive.

  ‘So what’s changed, Eli?’

  ‘Martin, someone threw a rock through our window in the middle of the night. They made specific allegations. They seem determined to make sure I know about it.’

  He swears under his breath. ‘This is bullshit,’ he says.

  I want so much to say ‘I know’ and to de-escalate this quickly. But I can’t.

  ‘I don’t know what to believe,’ I say.

  ‘You should. You should know me, Eli. You should trust me and trust us.’

  I think back to when Rachel split from Ryan. How he’d told her the same thing. How she’d said she believed him out of a sense of duty until the evidence was so undeniable neither he nor she could deny their marriage was in tatters. She was so angry at herself that she’d let him fool her. Am I letting Martin, and my desire for us to be okay, fool me now?

  But Martin isn’t Ryan. Martin’s one of the good ones – always has been.

  He looks so genuinely wounded that I feel my heart lurch. I want to believe him. It’s easier to believe him. We’re about to have a baby, but I can’t ignore what’s happened. I doubt the person behind the notes would let me, either.

  ‘I want to believe you. I do … but … the rock through the window. Who does that, Martin? Who puts a rock through someone’s window? Especially ours. In the middle of nowhere. They had to drive down here and go to all that effort to make sure I saw it. Why would anyone do that if there wasn’t some truth in it?’

  I’m sobbing now. Gulping down mouthfuls of air as my entire body aches with grief at it all.

  ‘And it’s not like things have been great between us, is it? Ever since this baby …’

  ‘Don’t start about the baby. We both wanted a baby, Eli. We tried so hard and so long to conceive this baby and yet, you seem unhappy. As if you regret it. This is our baby, Eli.’

  I see tears well in his eyes, too. They look greener than ever. He looks so incredibly handsome in his anger and his grief, it makes it all harder.

  ‘I don’t regret it, but you don’t understand, Martin. It’s been hard. Being so sick all the time. You being away with work every five minutes. This isn’t how it’s meant to be. And I know, believe me, I know I’ve not been easy to live with, but that doesn’t excuse you having an affair.’

  ‘I’ve told you, I’m not seeing anyone else!’ He’s shouting now. Bellowing.

  I’m aware of my mother’s footsteps on the oak stairs.

  ‘I don’t know if I can believe you,’ I say, and it’s out there in a way that I can’t take back. The trust between us dented.

  ‘Don’t you shout at my daughter.’ My mother’s voice cuts through. Steely. Ice-like. The voice she uses when it’s clear she’ll countenance no nonsense whatsoever. ‘She’s pregnant and exhausted and all this stress doesn’t help.’

  He blinks at her. He’s not used to my mother telling him what to do.

  ‘I didn’t cheat on her, Angela,’ he says. ‘I don’t know how to get that through to her. To you both.’

  ‘You have to understand how this looks,’ she says, her voice softer now. ‘If it were reversed, wouldn’t you feel vulnerable? You weren’t here and what happened last night was terrifying.’ She shudders.

  He sags again. ‘You’ve no idea how much I regret not being here last night, regret that you both went through that. But I don’t know how to prove that I’m telling the truth.’ He turns to me. ‘You can go through my things if you want, Eli. My phone, my computer, my bank statements and credit card statements. You can do whatever you need to reassure yourself that I’m telling the truth.’

  For a moment I contemplate it, but it would just damage us more, wouldn’t it? It would show a complete lack of faith in him and us. I shake my head wearily.

  I can see the exhaustion on Martin’s face, can feel what little energy I have left drain from my body. I sit on the edge of the bed and put my head in my hands. A wave of nausea washes over me.

  A hand is on my knee. I’m aware of someone in front of me. I don’t know if it’s my mum or Martin. I don’t know who I want it to be. I just want to get through the next minute without being sick.

  ‘Eli.’ His voice. Soft. Breaking. ‘I wish I could explain all this to you. But all I can do is tell you, and tell you again and again and as many times as you need to hear it, that this is all some sick fabrication.’

  ‘Are you okay, Eli?’ My mother’s voice cuts in.

  I raise a hand to signal that I am, although of course I’m not. If I just have a little lie-down, maybe I’ll feel better. I pull myself back on the bed, rest my head on the pillow.

  ‘Just a moment,’ I say, ‘until the sickness passes.’

  ‘Have you taken your tablet?’ Martin asks.

  I nod, my eyes closed. Concentrating on trying to feel well.

  ‘She gets sick if she’s stressed,’ I hear him say to my mother.

  ‘I know. None of this is good for her,’ my mother says as if I’m not in the room.

  In that second I wish she wasn’t here. I wish that Martin would lie down on the bed beside me and we could talk about what’s really going on.

  But maybe it’s all gone beyond that now. Things have been said. I’ve admitted I doubt him. I’ve admitted I’m struggling with this pregnancy. It’s all out of control.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Louise

  Once I found my focus, it proved relatively easy to track them both down. That was the thing with living in that part of the world. Everyone knows everyone’s business and while that had been a curse to me as everything was falling apart, I could see that, as I put everything back together again, it wa
s also a blessing.

  It wasn’t hard to find out where they worked and, more importantly, where they lived. The leafy suburbs, of course. I should’ve known. They’d that look about them. Well-groomed, professional people. In a nice house, with loads of greenery nearby. Fields to run through. Streams to wade through. Trees to climb. I was sure they already had plans to build a tree house. I imagined they’d have a swing in that big garden. The perfect childhood awaited their perfect baby.

  But money can’t buy love. There was nothing to say that just because they had a nice house in a nice area they’d be good parents. I watched them, you see. I saw how early he went to work. How he came back late.

  She worked long hours, too. And they weren’t swamped with visitors. If I didn’t take this baby, who’d end up watching her? Would she just spend her days amusing herself on her state-of-the-art swing, with no one to push her? No one to feed her imagination. To have teddy bears’ picnics in the tree house with.

  The house looked too well kept for finger-painting and messy play. Their routine too regimented. I saw it all. I saw her bring home takeaway dinners. Children need fresh, home-prepared food. It didn’t have to cost the earth. A lot of people make that mistake.

  A child needs love and attention and to be nurtured and nourished. I had all the love in the world to give and so much more. Cruelty would’ve been leaving this baby with those people who’d never be home for her.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Eli

  Although the heating is on full blast, the atmosphere downstairs is frosty.

  My mother carries a plate of mashed potato and gravy to the dining table, which she’s served for me, then she nods to Martin that he can help himself. She looks at me as he retreats to plate up his dinner and tilts her head to one side – international sign language for ‘Are you okay?’ I nod, shrug my shoulders and look at the food in front of me. I still don’t feel like eating.

  ‘Are you not eating, Mum?’ I ask as I sit down.

  ‘I’ll eat later,’ she says. ‘I think the stress of the last twenty-four hours is catching up with me. I feel done in.’

  She does look tired. Pale even. She’s not elderly. She’s only sixty-two, but at times her vulnerability shows. I realise it’s been exceptionally selfish of me to leave her here all day to deal with SOCO and the glaziers on her own, even if she insisted she was more than okay to do so.

  ‘Oh, Mum, you’ve gone to all this effort.’

  ‘I can have some tomorrow for sure,’ she says. ‘Look, I’m going to take a cup of tea up to bed with me, if that’s okay. Give you young ones space to talk.’

  ‘You don’t have to go on our account,’ Martin says. ‘Look, Angela, I’m so sorry you’ve been caught up in all this. And I understand that your loyalty 100 per cent has to be to Eli, but I promised you a long time ago that I’d never hurt her and you have to believe me when I say that’s still true. I’ve decided I won’t go away again. Not while this is happening. Someone else can take over at work for a bit.’

  I’m taken aback. This project is his. He won the bid, worked on it from the ground up. It’s nearly there and I know he wants to see it through to completion.

  ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to prove I’m all in,’ he says.

  My mother nods, pulls her cardigan a little tighter around her.

  ‘This is between you two,’ she says. ‘I like to think I’m a good judge of character, Martin, and I’d very much like to believe you’re telling both of us the truth. Eli deserves only good things, and so does this baby. I know you young ones face different pressures these days, but the key is to keep working at it.’

  ‘We will,’ he says earnestly. ‘And I’ll be on to the police again and again until they find out who’s responsible. I won’t go away until all this is sorted. I won’t leave her vulnerable here alone again.’

  She gives him one of her smiles. It’s a start.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Eli

  Sunday brunch is usually a relaxed affair, but there’s an awkward silence as we sit around the table picking at the food Martin’s made for us. We’re all being perfectly polite to each other, but it feels scripted.

  We’re all wounded and tired.

  I sit peeling flaky pastry from a croissant I’m not going to eat while my mother nibbles at a piece of toast. Martin’s doing his best to tuck into his eggs and bacon, but everything feels off.

  ‘I’ve been thinking.’ My mother speaks and both Martin and I look at her. ‘Somebody somewhere is probably just jealous and trying to throw a spanner in the works. I think you have to trust in each other to put this right.’

  Martin and I glance at each other.

  ‘Trust in each other,’ she says. ‘Listen to each other.’

  She smiles and we smile back, tight, forced. It’ll take more than words to fix this.

  ‘I was thinking I might head back to Belfast today,’ she says. ‘Since Martin’s here. I’d say you two need your time alone. You certainly don’t need an old dear like me getting under your feet.’

  ‘Don’t feel you have to go,’ Martin says, but I know he’s already mentally packing her bags.

  ‘I don’t feel I have to, but I think it would be right to.’

  I don’t know how I feel about that. It’s been nice to have her here – even if my entire world has been spinning out of control these last few days. I chide myself. I’m a grown woman, for the love of God. I shouldn’t be so pathetic. I force a smile onto my face.

  ‘Well, I suppose you want to get back to your evening classes and all and your work.’

  ‘Well, work is a good bit quieter these days. The need for me isn’t what it was before all those stupid accounting computer programmes,’ she says, ‘but I do have some stuff to catch up on. That said, Eli, you know that I’m here for you whenever you need me. And you too, Martin.’ That last bit sounds less convincing.

  If the truth be told, I could do with them both being out of my hair to give me space to think about everything, but then again, I don’t want to be alone. I feel even more vulnerable now, in this house where people can break windows. I’ve never felt unsafe here before. I’ve thrived on the seclusion of our home, felt we were untouchable in many ways. Maybe I’m being punished by the karma gods for being smug.

  Everything, except for work, is developing rough edges and I want to find and hit a pause button. I put the croissant, still untouched, back on my plate and get up. I need a little air, so I walk out onto our decking. The coldness of the morning forces an intake of breath and I pull my cardigan tightly around myself, over my bump, then cross my arms and walk across the deck to the edge of the lake.

  It’s a crisp morning. There’s a glint of frost where the dew would normally twinkle. There’s something almost magical-looking about it. This dream house in a dream location. I let the cool air fill my lungs again and again until I feel two strong hands on my shoulders, the comfort of Martin’s presence behind me. I lean back into him.

  ‘What do you need me to do, Eli?’ he asks. ‘To fix this. Just tell me.’

  ‘If I knew who was behind these notes, I’d feel better. It’s the not knowing.’

  ‘I’ve been racking my brains but I can’t think of anyone who’d take against either of us. There are no aggrieved clients in my past as far as I know and you, well … it goes without saying, who could be angry enough at you to do something like this? It doesn’t make sense. I’m at a loss.’

  He pulls me tighter. Kisses the top of my head. I try to react as I normally would, enjoy the intimacy, but something is cracked between us.

  ‘Look, I need to call Jim. Tell him to take over the London job going forwards. He’s expecting me back tonight, so I need to warn him to gen up for the presentation. Send him my notes, that kind of thing.’

  I feel guilty. And worried. This is his pet project and my distrust is keeping him from seeing it through to the end. Am I being incredibly selfish? Will he end up resenting me over this? It cou
ld fracture things between us further. If I let him go, will he believe that I want to trust him, after all? Will it help to fix things between us? I’ve always been a peacemaker. A people-pleaser. I’ll tie myself up into tiny knots so as not to offend anyone.

  ‘Go to London,’ I say, my voice not more than a whisper.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Go to London. See this project through. I’ll ask Mum to stay.’

  ‘Eli, no. I don’t want you here alone until we know who’s behind this.’

  ‘I won’t be here alone. Mum’ll be here.’

  ‘And those notes, you do believe me, don’t you? If you need me to stay and work through this with you, I will.’

  His green eyes are set on me. I hear his words but I know where his heart lies at the moment.

  So I tie myself up into another little knot and I lie. I tell him I believe him. I tell him there will be time to work through it all properly when he gets back.

  ‘I swear, Eli. I swear on my life. I swear on our baby’s life, you’ve no reason not to trust me,’ he says.

  ‘Then go,’ I say.

  A part of me is hoping he says no. Hopes that he’ll stay anyway. That part of me is soon disappointed. He kisses the top of my head again, tells me he loves me and darts off across the decking.

  ‘I’ll just confirm my travel arrangements then,’ he calls to the wind as he goes.

  In the silence of the morning at the edge of the lake, not a person around to disturb me, I try not to feel hurt by the speed of his departure. I mentally try not to file it into the big paranoia folder in my head.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Louise

  I’ve thought about her husband a lot. That handsome man who hugged her in the café. Who joked with her and made her smile, even though she’d looked so lost before he arrived.

  I knew his name. It ran through my head on a loop. I’d say it just to see how it sounded. I wrote it down then scribbled it out. I couldn’t risk leaving any connection, but I did feel a connection. He’d be the father of my child, after all.