Never Too Late (53 page)

up to Stephen after all these years. Just then, she heard a

noise and whirled around in time to see Sasha’s terrified

face peering around her door. One plump hand clutched

her new elephant to her face; her thumb was lodged firmly

in her mouth. She looked like one of those children you

saw in newspaper photos about domestic abuse: traumatised

and scared.

Olivia felt the final vestiges of fear chip off like the last

bits of bright varnish from a nail.

‘The final reason I want you to go is that you scare our

daughter. When I disagree with anything you say, or when I

don’t immediately do what you’ve ordered, you go berserk.

You change, fly into a rage. That rage terrifies her and me. I

grew up in a house where I was always afraid: afraid my

parents would get pissed and go crazy after me; afraid

there’d be no money for food or bills; afraid of what terrible

things my mother would say to me when she was in a rage.’

She could remember it all so vividly. The terror of sitting in

the kitchen when Sybil was in full flight - you never knew

who’d be blamed for what or why. Waiting for bombs to fall

in wartime must have been similar. You could hear it

coming: you just didn’t know where it would land.

‘I don’t want Sasha to go through all that,’ Olivia said.

‘I don’t drink.’ protested Stephen, looking strangely

vulnerable for the first time.

‘That only makes it worse,’ she said simply. ‘You have no

excuse except your own total lack of control and the fact

that anyone has dared to go against your wishes. We’re all

screwed up in some way, Stephen, we all have our demons

and insecurities. But you can’t see that about yourself You

think you’re perfect. You’re not and you need help.’

‘Help?’

‘Yes, help. To make you understand that you’ve got to

take responsibility for your own temper. What happens

when you hit Sasha or me?’

‘I’d never do that.’ The muscles in his jaw were corded

with tension. ‘You know that, Olivia.’

‘How do I know that? I never know when you’re going

to change from Dr Jekyll into Mr Hyde so how do I know

you’ll never get violent? You have so much rage in you,

Stephen. I don’t want to put up with it anymore. You

should leave. Perhaps when you face up to your problems,

we might have a marriage.’

She wasn’t being entirely truthful. She’d never been

afraid he’d hit her. He’d never even touched her. But

telling him she was afraid of it was the most shocking thing

she could think of and it had certainly worked. Stephen

looked shocked out of his mind.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, ‘I never meant to … Please, Olivia,

don’t let it end this way. I love you, and I love Sasha.’

‘I love you too, but I don’t know if I can live with you

anymore. It would be better if you moved out, then we can

decide if we do want to be together.’

He looked like a broken man. ‘What about Sasha?’

She’s your daughter, I’m not stopping you seeing her.

But I don’t want her living with us when our relationship

is so appalling. I don’t want her to suffer that.’

Maybe we could get counselling,’ he said wildly.

‘We can. But you’ve got to move out first, Stephen. If

you won’t, I will and I’ll take Sasha with me. This is the

only chance we’ve got to see if we can sort out our

marriage. If you don’t agree, I’ll just file for divorce. End of story.’

In the end, he took only the suitcase he’d brought back

from Germany. ‘I’ll come by tomorrow and pick up the

rest,’ he said hollowly.

‘Fine.’

When he left, Olivia sat down on the chair in the ball

and wept silently. Giant, heaving sobs wracked her body.

She knew she had to do it but telling him to leave was the

hardest thing she’d ever done. She loved Stephen, God

help her, she still loved him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Evie looked at the assembled bags and cases on the floor of

her bedroom and realised that none of them was fit for a

glamorous villa holiday in the south of Spain. None of

them was fit for a wet weekend in a caravan park, for that

matter, unless it was a seventies revival weekend where the

older and grungier things looked, the better.

The dilapidated old blue suitcase she and Tony had

bought on their honeymoon had been stuck in a cobwebby

corner of the attic for years and looked it. She used to store

Rosie’s old toys in the case and she’d had to jam a lot of

headless dollies and threadbare teddies into an old laundry

basket when she emptied it. But she couldn’t throw them

out, they were too precious for that. Every tattered but

much-loved cuddly thing had a history behind it: the

rabbit named Charlie that Rosie wouldn’t get into her cot

without; the little clown with the sad face she’d gone to

sleep sucking until she was four. Evie dragged her attention

back to the matter at hand - her lack of luggage.

The enormous barrel bag she and Rosie had taken to

Ballymoreen for years wasn’t in a much better condition

than her honeymooning case. Only the black and red

edged weekender Olivia had given her one birthday in an

attempt to get Evie to go away for a girls’ weekend was fit

to be seen. And that was so small it wouldn’t have

accommodated all the shoes she’d been considering taking.

The main problem, Evie knew, was all the advice she’d

been given about the holiday destination.

Puerto Banus was stylish, the travel agent had said.

Glamorous, one of Olivia’s friends had pointed out, adding

that everyone looked good with a tan.

‘You’ll feel like a bog woman beside those beautiful

Spanish women,’ said Lorraine’s aunt mournfully.

Out of the three options, Evie was putting her money on

Lorraine’s aunt’s forecast. She had nothing stylish and had

never had anything close to the peanut butter tan Olivia’s

friend seemed to sport permanently. Which meant she’d

almost definitely feel like Bog Woman on holiday.

‘You can take the woman out of the bog but you can’t

take the bog out of the woman,’ she muttered to herself

forlornly.

Consequently, with all this contrasting advice, she had

panicked over what to take and decided simply to take

everything even vaguely summery. Plenty of non-summery

things were also going on the basis that Ireland’s climate

meant Evie didn’t have a vast summer wardrobe and just

wore her winter clothes without the jumpers and opaque

tights.

It was a glorious Wednesday evening, three - well, two

and a half - days before she and Rosie were leaving for

Spain: three days in which to transform herself from an

ordinary office worker into a glamorous jet-setter who’d

look at home sipping cocktails poolside and asking for cafe con leche, por favor.

Evie stood in her bedroom, arranging and rearranging

the piles of clothes on the speckled duvet, valiantly trying

to make each pile smaller by rejecting things that were too

similar.

She’d never known she had so many pale pink Tshirts.

There were nine of them in varying degrees of washedoutness.

Somebody must have told her once that pale pink

suited her.

Holding one up to her face and looking critically in the

mirror, she decided they’d been wrong. Pale pink made

her look like a Beatrix Potter piglet. All she needed was a

frilled mob cap and she’d have looked at home beside

Mrs Tiggywinkle, which wasn’t exactly the look she was

going for.

‘Shit!’ cursed Evie with unaccustomed venom. She

rarely swore but today just couldn’t help herself.

The mellow July sun flooded in through the half-open

windows and the scent of next door’s freshly mown lawn

mingled with the perfume of her aromatherapy burner

which was overloaded with lavender in the hope of

relaxing Evie. Some hope. Only serious tranquillisers

could do that, she decided grimly. The holiday was a

mistake, that was the problem. It wasn’t simply her lack

of clothes or lack of suitcases: it was her complete lack of

self-control. She should never have agreed to go to Spain

with her father, Vida and Max. What had she been

thinking of? It was bad enough avoiding Max at home how

could she avoid him when they were staying in the

same house?

OK, so he was only going to be there for two days as he

was arriving at the villa on Thursday and she was leaving

the following Saturday. But she’d still have to see him, to

talk to him, to spend time with him.

How could she do that without making it terribly

obvious that she was crazy about him? That she longed to

talk to him; to sit with one hand on his thigh as they

watched the sunset? Even though he was a terrible rake

who went through women faster than a rock ‘n’ roll band

did groupies.

Evie examined the denim mini skirt she’d found at the

back of her wardrobe and had tried it on in desperation. It

looked awful: so did she.

Her dark hair was lank and badly in need of a haircut,

her skin was pale from too many hours spent in the office

and she had the beginnings of a PMT spot the size of Texas

on her forehead. It would be hard enough having to see

Max without having to look terrible into the bargain.

But she couldn’t suppress the excitement she felt at the

thought of seeing him again. Banishing him from her life

had been her only ammunition against him. She’d avoided

Vida’s birthday party with a fake case of ‘flu because Max

was going to be there, yet her sudden food poisoning had

cleared up miraculously in time for dinner in their new

house when she realised he wouldn’t be present.

It was better not to see him, she’d told herself endlessly.

That theory rang hollow on those hot, sweaty nights when

she spent more time staring at the alarm clock than asleep.

In her imagination, there was no escaping those flashing

deep blue eyes. Night was when she thought about Max,

giving him full rein in the hope that he’d remain one of her

midnight fantasy heroes and would stop tormenting her by

day as well. At night, she could remember every word he’d

ever said to her and in a half-slumber, imagine his arms

were around her, holding her, hugging her, making slow,

passionate love to her.

In the daytime, she was ruthless with herself. Max was a

rogue and she couldn’t give up all the things she’d fought

so long for simply because he’d waltzed into her life,

nonchalantly assuming she’d dump her fiance for a fling

with him. And a fling was all it would be, she thought

fiercely. After all she’d been through, Evie couldn’t take

that risk. Wouldn’t take it.

‘Does this top go with this skirt?’ Rosie appeared at the bedroom door, long bare legs clad in a pink pelmet of a skirt with her top half just about covered by a flimsy

tie-dyed T-shirt that revealed her entire midriff. ‘Of course,

I’ve got to fake tan my legs,’ she added, looking down at

her slim brown limbs critically.

Thanks to a post-exam gift of three hundred pounds

from her grandfather, Rosie had purchased an entire new

wardrobe for her week in Spain. A cheap wardrobe of

wondrously short and skimpy clothes that were youthfully

sexy. Her mother shuddered at the thought of what the

teenage male population of Puerto Banus would do when

they saw Rosie wearing them. Or not wearing them, as the

case may be. They were all so skimpy. One pair of shorts in

particular looked like nothing more than a tiny pair of

knickers and the thong bikini Rosie was so thrilled with

would undoubtedly give anyone with a heart complaint

severe palpitations.

‘It’s lovely,’ Evie said truthfully, forcing herself to be

honest about the skirt and not to say it was a pity they ran

out of material when they were making it. ‘But it’s a bit

short…’ she couldn’t help herself from saying.

‘Oh, Mum, come off it.’ Rosie threw herself on the bed,

bouncing all of her mother’s carefully folded piles of

clothes as she did so. Lounging on one elbow with her legs

swinging in time to the George Michael CD playing loudly

in her bedroom, Rosie began to extract things from the

piles and rearranged them in different combinations.

‘Jeez, Mum, we’re only going for a week. You’re bringing

tons. And this,’ she said, holding up a white baggy T-shirt as

if it was contaminated by Lassa fever, ‘is terrible. You can’t

wear it. I don’t know why you haven’t turned it into a

duster.’

Evie snatched it back. ‘It’s only three years old,’ she

retorted.

‘A hundred and three,’ Rosie replied. ‘It doesn’t matter

how old it is, it’s bloody awful on you.’

‘Don’t say bloody,’ Evie corrected automatically as she

pulled off her cardigan and dragged the white T-shirt over

her head. Rosie was right: it was terrible. Baggy and

shapeless. With her denim mini skirt on as well, she looked

a complete slapper. All she needed was a pair of white