The Visitors(86)

He stood in the doorway, his expression incredulous as he took in the wads of cash scattered everywhere.

Holly looked from David to Cora. She felt trapped, like a rat in a cage. Her head swam with faces, past conversations. It drummed a beat of fear into her chest. She stood up, still, closed her eyes against it. She heard their voices far, far away.

Then Cora’s hand touched her shoulder. Holly swung around and pushed with all her might. She watched as the old woman staggered back, slipping on the cash underfoot.

David cried out, tried to reach her, but he was too far away.

As Cora toppled backwards – it seemed like slow motion to Holly – her head hit the edge of the black iron fireplace with a dull thud.

Holly stood over her and watched the thick pool of red trace its way neatly around the edge of the stone hearth.

She stiffened as David grasped her arm.

‘What… have… you… done?’ His words sounded like an old record, slowed right down.

They both looked at Cora on the floor, her eyes wide and staring, her body bent at an unnatural angle.

‘Holly, what have you done?’ David repeated.

'I have to get some fresh air… I have to get out of here.’ Holly’s legs felt as if they didn’t belong to her. She took long strides out of the room.

Holly watched as David bent over Cora’s body, feeling for a non-existent pulse.

‘Please.’ He looked at her as she left the room. ‘Call an ambulance.’

She ran downstairs, through the kitchen and burst out of the back door, gulping in air.

How did it get to this? What could she do now… she had to get the money and go. It was her only chance to find Evan again.

She made the call and stepped back inside. There wasn’t much time now.

Holly half-filled a glass with water from the tap and drank it. Then she took a deep breath and slowly climbed the stairs again.

David sat next to Cora’s body, his head bowed in sadness.

When he saw her he slowly rose to his feet.

She thought he looked queasy, as if he might be sick at any moment. He opened his mouth to speak but closed it again.

‘Just say what you want to say,’ she told him. ‘For once in your life have some bloody courage.’

‘It’s time,’ he said. ‘To tell me the truth about what happened back in Manchester.’





Chapter Seventy-Two





Holly





‘We’ll keep Evan at ours, look after him while you get your strength back,’ Geraldine had told her.

‘No!’ Holly had squared up to her. ‘I want him with me.’

‘You can’t live here any more, Holly, for obvious reasons. You had sex with my husband behind my back.’

‘I didn’t! He—’

‘Save it. I don’t want to hear it.’

‘But you said… I thought Brendan was leaving. You said we’d live together like sisters.’

‘Fortunately, Brendan and I have settled our differences. Take Evan if that’s what you want. If you have the money and experience to care for him then go.’

Holly had stared at her, an icy hopelessness sweeping up from her feet into her chest.

Geraldine had touched her arm.

‘Look, I’m just saying we all need some space, that’s all. You can visit every day, of course; he’s your baby. But you can’t live here.’

Holly couldn’t speak.

‘If you want to take me up on the offer, we’ll find you a nice apartment and give you an allowance. Just until you get back on your feet, and then you can take Evan back. I promise.’

What could she say? She had nothing, nothing without them. She was nothing. She knew Geraldine’s preferences better than she knew her own.



* * *



They had put her back in the apartment she’d shared with Markus for one night, overlooking the River Irwell.

‘Back where it all started,’ she’d whispered to herself as she pressed her forehead to the cool glass.

The once sparkling river looked flat and black now, and the animated people who walked by on the bank seemed stooped and broken, like Lowry figures.

Holly phoned Geraldine constantly, asking to visit Evan, but she was always either unavailable or busy or Brendan was home.

She used her allowance to buy alcohol. Bottles of cheap white wine, which she’d drink before staggering around the streets searching for her baby, unsure in her addled mind of his whereabouts.

Then the allowance ran out. Stopped.

Holly took to her bed. For days she didn’t eat, didn’t sleep.

She’d hear the door open and bags rustling. Then footsteps, and the door would close. When she went into the kitchen, there was food in the cupboards, the fridge.

The doctor visited her a couple of times, but then that stopped too. She wasn’t ill, he told her; she just needed to get out, get some fresh air.

‘You need to start living your life again.’ He’d said it like it would be an easy thing to do.

One day she’d heard someone in the kitchen, opening and closing cupboard doors. She’d crept out of her bedroom and peeked around the door.

‘Patricia!’

‘Missus says I shouldn’t talk to you.’ The housekeeper had emptied the carrier bags out hastily. ‘Go back to your bedroom.’