The Secret Life of Evie Hamilton - Catherine Alliott [22]
I wasn't in fits now, though, I thought, freewheeling down the back alley behind our house and walking the bike in quickly through the back gate – flinging it against the wall in the manner of a woman who's definitely reached her journey's end – not if she was beating a path to my door. This was about the unfunniest day of my life. I glanced round warily at the house. Might she just turn up? Don't be silly, Evie. I crouched down and put the padlock on my front wheel, trying to cling to normality, but knowing my hands were shaking as I twisted it shut. But… it could happen, couldn't it? I straightened up. There could, one day, be a knock at my door, and there she'd be: this teenage girl, telling me she'd come to see her father. Artificially straightened hair sprang to mind, along with heavy eye make-up and rotating jaws, gum visible.
‘Yeah – me name's Stacey. I've cum for me da'.’
I froze in horror. Then reached up and shot the bolt across the garden gate before snatching up the bags from the basket and scuttling down the garden to the French windows. I let myself in and shut them very firmly behind me – locked them too. After all, there was practically a veiled threat at the end of the letter – ‘I could come to Oxford, if you like’, as in, Watch Out!
I fluttered around the kitchen, wiping already clean surfaces, realigning chairs, putting things away, but when I'd put Ant's newspaper in the fridge, I stopped, sat down, knowing my legs could support me no longer and I could flutter no more. I gazed dumbly down the garden. It should be a riot of colour at this time of year, but for some reason I hadn't quite got round to getting the bedding plants in. Hadn't had time. Ant had said we should go for perennials, which apparently came up every year – as the name suggests, he'd added drily – but I hadn't got round to that either. Shrubs, then, prevailed, mostly evergreen, and consequently rather dark and dull, and of course the ubiquitous trampoline, which took up at least a third of the lawn, and where Anna bounced higher and higher, up into the branches of the laburnum, until I'd fling open the window and yell, ‘You'll hit your head!’ It stared back at me now, like a huge, knowing eye. A Cyclops. Anna. My chest tightened. Oh God, don't go there. Don't. Don't imagine her shock, her disbelief, her incredulity. A daughter? Dad's got another child? And fortuitously, I didn't have to, as the phone rang, breaking into my ghoulish thoughts. I snatched it up gratefully, but my voice wouldn't come.
‘Evie?’ It was Caro. ‘Evie, are you there?’
‘Yes,’ I managed. ‘Hi, Caro.’
‘God, you sound awful. Have I caught you at a bad time?’
The worst.
‘No, I was just – eating. Went down the wrong way.’
‘Oh, right. Well, listen. Been meaning to phone you all week. Tim tells me you're dead set on getting this horse, so to avoid any misunderstandings I just wanted to set out a few ground rules.’
I leaned my elbows on the breakfast bar and sank my head into my hand, massaging my temples, cradling the receiver with the other. Caro's voice was brisk, combative, rehearsed. I could tell she'd been working up to this call; might even have a piece of paper with bullet points in front of her.
‘Well, no, not dead set, really,’ I mumbled. ‘It's probably not such a good idea. Too much trouble for you.’
‘Nonsense, one more mouth to feed won't make any difference. I did a quick head count this morning and d'you know, including the chickens, we've got one hundred and eleven beating hearts, so what's one hundred and twelve, I ask myself.’ She was clearly gagging to adopt the martyr's crown. ‘And anyway, Tim informs me it's a fait accompli,’ she finished crisply.
I massaged harder as I dimly registered the row they'd no doubt had, the stand-up-knock-down in the kitchen: Caro shrieking that she was rushed off her feet as