Chapter Thirty-Six Evie’s House
Chapter Thirty-Six
Evie’s House
As soon as she arrived home, Evie disappeared into a bottle of red wine.
She was so angry with herself for doing Amelia’s dirty work with that out-of-character display of anger and jealousy.
She also realised, with a sharp pang of regret, she’d managed to fall out with the people who mattered most to her.
It was such a mess, and she had no idea how to fix things.
Evie polished off the bottle far too quickly and then opened another.
As she hadn’t eaten all day, she was soon blind drunk, feeling maudlin, weepy and sorry for herself.
She sat slumped in her beautiful Orkney chair.
Tears of self-pity rolled down her cheeks as she muttered to herself, “Oh Christ, I am so blootered. They all hate me and I’ve ruined everything and it’s all that Amelia’s fault.
She’s turned everyone against me. I should never have answered her email. ”
Evie vaguely remembered dragging herself to bed and going through the ‘whirlies’ as the room spun round before she crashed out. She woke up the next morning with a blinding headache and feeling sick to her stomach.
She squinted into the bright early sunshine beaming in through the window, and felt her heart sink as she remembered the events of the night before.
She groaned and her cheeks burned with shame, but there was also cold rage in her heart against Amelia, who had spread her tentacles into every part of Evie’s life.
‘What am I going to do about her?’ she thought in despair. ‘What the hell is she up to? It’s creepy and scary and I can’t believe they are all on her side. How has she been able to turn them against me? Even Freya.’
She couldn’t forget Freya’s look of bitter disappointment as she told Evie to leave and go home. That really had been the final punch in the stomach. Evie couldn’t bear to think of Freya being angry and upset with her. She was always her staunchest supporter and ally.
She hauled herself up and out of bed with a loud moan and headed downstairs.
There was only one thing that would take her mind off her monstrous hangover and all of her woes. Evie had to paint. She went into her studio, took off the sheet covering her painting of Freya, and gasped in horror.
The portrait she had slaved over for months had been ruined, with red and purple paint violently smeared thickly all over the canvas. Great globs of angry colour had vandalised the paining. It was completely beyond repair.
Evie couldn’t take it in. This was to have been Freya’s precious birthday present. She had poured her heart and soul into the portrait and now it was utterly destroyed. She knew right away that somehow Amelia was responsible.
No one else would be so vindictive and she’d seen the painting the other day when she came to crow over the fact Ross had asked her out, pretending all the while she was there to ask for Evie’s permission. It must have been her.
The paintbrush and paints were scattered all over the floor, leaving trails of what looked like blood on the wood. Then Evie looked down at her hands. They were smeared red and purple, and when she ran upstairs to wash it off, she saw splotches of the same colours smearing the sheets.
Up until then, she had been certain Amelia had ruined the painting, but now it looked like she had blacked out and done it herself. After all, she had been completely drunk and beside herself with self-disgust, but even in that state, could she really have destroyed the painting of Freya?
She felt clammy and her stomach started to spasm, and she barely made it to the toilet before throwing up until there was nothing left but bile. Feeling shaky and trembling, she curled up into a ball on the cold stone floor of the bathroom and sobbed her heart out.