The Woman Who Went to Bed for a Year Read Free Page B

for nothing
less than tragedy.’
    They had waited by the lift for a few moments to see
if it would return their father again. When it did not, they went to their
rooms and tried, but failed, to contact their mother.

 
     
    3
     
     
     
    At
ten o’clock Brian Senior came into the bedroom and started to get undressed.
    Eva closed her eyes. She heard his pyjama drawer
open and close. She gave him a minute to climb into his pyjamas and then, with
her back turned to him, she said, ‘Brian.’ I don’t want you to sleep in this
bed tonight. Why don’t you sleep in Brian Junior’s room? It’s guaranteed to be
clean, neat and unnaturally tidy.’
    ‘Are you feeling poorly?’ Brian asked. ‘Physically?’
he added.
    ‘No,’ she said, ‘I’m fine.’
    Brian lectured, ‘Did you know, Eva, that in certain
therapeutic communities, patients are banned from using the words, “I’m fine.”?
Because invariably, they are not fine. Admit it.’ you’re distraught because
the twins have left home.’
    ‘No, I’m glad to see the back of them.’
    Brian’s voice trembled with anger. ‘That’s a very
wicked thing for a mother to say.’
    Eva turned over and looked at him. We made a pig’s
ear of bringing them up,’ she said. ‘Brianne lets people walk all over her, and
Brian Junior panics if he has to talk to another human.’
    Brian sat on the edge of the bed. ‘They’re sensitive
children, I’ll give you that.’
    ‘Neurotic is the word,’ Eva said. ‘They spent their
early years sitting inside a cardboard box for hours at a time.’
    Brian said, ‘I didn’t know that! What were they
doing?’
    ‘Just sitting there in silence,’ Eva replied. ‘Occasionally
they would turn and look at each other. If I tried to take them out of the box
they would bite and scratch. They wanted to be together in their own box-world.’
    ‘They’re gifted children.’
    ‘But are they happy.’ Brian? I can’t tell.’ I love
them too much.’
    Brian went to the door and stood there for a while,
as though he were about to say something more. Eva hoped that he wouldn’t make
any kind of dramatic statement. She was already worn out by the strong emotion
of the day. Brian opened his mouth, then evidently changed his mind, because he
went out and closed the door quietly.
    Eva sat up in bed, peeled the duvet away and was
shocked to see that she was still wearing her black high heels. She looked at
her bedside table, which was crowded with almost identical pots and tubes of
moisturising cream. ‘I only need one,’ she thought. She chose the Chanel and
threw the others one by one into the waste-paper basket on the far side of the
room. She was a good thrower. She had represented Leicester High School for
Girls in the javelin at the County Games.
    When her Classics teacher had congratulated her on
setting the new school record, he had murmured, ‘You’re quite an Athena, Miss
Brown-Bird. And by the way, you’re a smashing-looking girl.’
    Now she needed the lavatory. She was glad that she
had persuaded Brian to knock through into the box room and create an en-suite
bathroom and toilet. They were the last in their street of Edwardian houses to
do so.
    The Beavers’ house had been built in 1908. It stated
so under the eaves. The Edwardian numbers were surrounded by a stone frieze of
stylised ivy and sweet woodbine. There are a few house buyers who choose their
next property for purely romantic reasons, and Eva was such a person. Her
father had smoked Woodbine cigarettes and the green packet, decorated with wild
woodbine, was a fixture of her childhood. Luckily, the house had been lived in
by a modern-day Ebenezer Scrooge who had resisted the 1960s hysteria to modernise.
It was intact, with spacious rooms, high ceilings, mouldings, fireplaces and
solid oak doors and floors.
    Brian hated it. He wanted a ‘machine for living’. He
imagined himself in a sleek white kitchen waiting by the espresso machine for
his morning coffee.