‘But Evelyn, he was a forty-FIVE-year-old man. It was his job not to screw things up for himself, not yours.’
‘I know. But I knew he was impulsive. I should have been more careful with my promises. You can’t mess with someone’s heart, make pledges and then just walk away and claim no responsibility for the fallout. If I had never let it get that far, none of it would have happened. My friend Serena was right. I should have walked away after the affair and let it stay a nice memory.’ She looks at me, candidly. ‘Those are the best memories, you know. Memories of things that end when they should. Always remember that.’
I think about this. Not sure how this will impact my memories of Justin down the road, but Evelyn’s distress stops me from dwelling on it for too long.
‘So that’s why no one ever visits him? Because, really, he has no family now? He only has you?’
Evelyn nods. ‘He only has me.’ Tears roll down her face. She determinedly pushes them away. Someone walks past with an off-lead Lab; the dog trots over to her, and she places a hand on its head. The owner smiles. When they pass, Evelyn says, ‘Oh, I felt such pressure! It was awful. I phoned him shortly after I sent the letter telling him I couldn’t go through with it. I just wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to hear that he wasn’t as devastated as I knew he was going to be, if that makes sense. But he was very short with me. He said never to phone him at that number again. He didn’t say that his wife had already made him leave – that he only happened to be there because he’d gone back to get some of his things. Stanley told me all this, but I had to press him.’
She gives a tiny whimper, like a small animal. It cuts my heart. ‘I felt this weight of what I’d promised. I remember, after the bomb, thinking, But I have to leave him! I have to honour my end of the deal, but I love Mark, too. Mark loves me and needs me! I can’t go!’
Her head has a slight tremor. I sit on the wall beside her and squeeze the top of her hand. ‘Evelyn, I understand you need to get this off your chest, but you have to let it go. It’s in the past. We have to make peace with our past, don’t we?’
I say it, but will I be thinking about Justin thirty years from now? Distraught with the memory of what he did? No, I vow. No matter what, I will not be like Evelyn.
Evelyn upturns her tiny hand so that her palm meets mine. The last woman I held hands with was my mother in the final hours of her life. I’d felt so desperate for us to somehow make our disagreements water under the bridge, in that short span of time, to make up for a lifetime of distance. I feel the firm press of her fingers.
‘I suppose I should have felt flattered that he was ready to leave his family for me. But, in a way, it made me think less of him. Deep down, I didn’t want him to be the kind of man who would put me ahead of his responsibilities. It struck me as a character flaw.’
She looks at me when I must appear momentarily lost for words at that. ‘Shall we walk again?’ She gets up. ‘I’d like to go home.’ We walk the rest of the way in companionable quiet.
‘I am a bit confused, though . . .’ I say when we are back in her sitting room. ‘When did you come back?’ There is a small photograph of a man on a walnut-coloured occasional table by the bay window. I noticed it earlier. I couldn’t quite make out who it was. My eyes fasten on it again. I wonder if it’s a young Eddy.
‘I don’t think I can face another cup of tea,’ Evelyn says. ‘How about a whisky?’ She walks over to a small drinks cabinet. ‘Or maybe a sherry, at this hour, is more civilised?’
I laugh. ‘I think I’d like the whisky, if that’s fine by you.’
Evelyn reaches for the crystal decanter. I am fascinated by her classic furniture and taste, the air of good breeding that hangs around her, even as she does something as rudimentary as pour us both a drink, placing in each glass one perfect-sized ice cube. ‘I came back four years ago, after Mark died. He had pancreatic cancer. It was very sudden. He was only seventy-ONE.’ She hands me a glass. ‘We weren’t the kind of couple who went around declaring our feelings, you know. Mark wasn’t a true romantic, whereas Eddy had it in his soul. I never knew if Mark had any idea how much I loved him. If he thought I’d stayed with him only because I’d felt it was the safer of two options.’ She looks fondly over to the bay window, and I realise that the man in the photograph is, of course, Mark. ‘So I stood over his grave and I told him how much he’d meant to me. Everything I could never say to his face.’
This threatens to break my heart. ‘Did you ever sell your Holy Island house?’
Evelyn smiles. ‘Not right away. It was rented out. Always nice tenants. They took good care of the place. I moved back in for a time. With some savings, I was able to afford to take Eddy out of the home run by social services and put him in Sunrise. It was mainly the gardens that attracted me to it. I knew they would give him pleasure. I visited as often as I could. But the journey to and from the island was too much, so I decided to sell the house and buy this place, so that I can walk to Sunrise.’ She pulls a joyless smile. ‘He’ll never know I came back to be close to him. Nor will he ever know that I lived with one man, whom I loved dearly with my whole heart, yet I thought of Eddy every day from the last day I saw him. How messed up is that for a life?’
‘You don’t know what he knows, Evelyn.’ It was depressing, though. To be such a capable, vibrant person with so many passions, then have the entire story of your life go missing from your mind.
Evelyn doesn’t answer. She just stares at the cube of ice in her drink, and chinks it against her glass. ‘I once read that very often we assume when we get to a certain point in our life that it’s all over. We’re done for. But so long as one person remembers you, it’s not over.’