Chapter Twenty-Three
She couldn’t believe it had finally happened – did this woman hold the clue to Evelyn’s birth story? Had she come to the museum to see the lace and to tell Evelyn everything?
‘Please, come inside and have a seat,’ Evelyn said, aware her words sounded too high and tight.
She touched the woman’s sleeve, almost afraid she might disappear if she let go.
Her mind was racing: this young woman clearly wasn’t her birth mother, but she’d recognised the lace. Might she be another relative?
Not taking her eyes off the woman sitting at her desk, she rushed over to Della.
‘Please, can you take everyone into your shed?’ Della took one look at Evelyn’s face and sprang into action.
Holding the last two bottles of wine above her head, she called out, ‘OK guys, let’s take the party next door. My shed needs saving too!’
In minutes, the museum was empty. There were smeary glasses set on windowsills, and pastry crumbs and creased flyers littered the floor, but Evelyn barely noticed as she rushed back to the mystery woman at her desk.
‘I don’t even know your name,’ she said breathily.
‘I’m Edie,’ the woman replied and Evelyn felt excitement welling up.
Such similar names – surely this was a good sign?
She scanned Edie’s face, looking for echoes of her own features and wondered if, yes, there was something familiar about her mouth.
In fact, the more she looked, she saw that Edie’s eyes were also a little like her own, despite being a flinty blue to her brown.
‘Well, as you know, I’m Evelyn.’
‘It’s so good to have this chance to talk.’ The woman’s expression turned serious as she held out her hand. In a daze Evelyn shook it, although what she longed to do was pull this woman to her, hold her and never let her go.
Evelyn gathered herself. ‘So, let’s start with the lace. As you can imagine, I’ve always treasured it.’ She looked down at the floor, worried her emotions were about to get the better of her. ‘In a way, this museum has been one huge cabinet for it, keeping it safe until someone came.’
‘It must be very special to you,’ Edie replied.
‘Well, of course. It’s my most precious thing.’ Evelyn balled her hands together in her lap, trying to regain some control. But she couldn’t wait any longer. ‘So please, Edie. Tell me everything you know.’
‘Well, a lot is under wraps for now, but we’re all very excited.’
‘All?’ Evelyn gasped at the thought of not just one relative but a whole family waiting to meet her. ‘Yes, I understand. Introductions should be done slowly,’ she said. ‘But if you could give me a name – well, that would be wonderful.’
A tiny crease formed between Edie’s eyebrows and she began to flick through her smart shoulder bag. ‘I have documents here that will answer all your questions.’
Evelyn watched as she retrieved a glossy white folder. On the front was an artist’s drawing of a black timber-clad building that looked very much like her own museum, but above it a large sign read Cornish Fish & Chips by Rufus Rowan?.
‘All the relevant proposals are in here,’ Edie continued. ‘As for the name, it’s on-brand with the other outlets but of course with a local angle.’ She gave a bright smile.
Evelyn was hit by a dizziness, as if she was teetering on the edge of a carefully constructed edifice that was collapsing inwards. She had made a terrible mistake.
‘But, the lace – you said you knew its story . . .’ she stumbled.
Edie wrinkled her nose. ‘Hmm, I think I said I felt like I knew its story. I mean, isn’t that the point of the exhibition? To convey the story of each object?’
Things began to feel very far away and as if through a tunnel Evelyn heard herself say, ‘You were just being polite, then. This is about my shed and you’ve come to butter me up.’
‘That’s not a phrase that I would use,’ Edie replied smartly, zipping up her bag.
‘My role as local liaison manager is to forge links between the company and the community.’ She gave a sniff.
‘I was expressing an interest. Because Rufus Rowan Holdings finds that if we establish common ground with locals at an early stage, future negotiations tend to be smoother.’
Already, this Edie woman was standing up, keen to get away. She cast a final look around the museum. ‘Wonderful high ceilings,’ she said. ‘So authentic.’
Evelyn kept her voice calm and low. ‘Out. Now,’ she said and pointed to the door. She listened until the tip-tap of Edie’s heels walking down the quay had faded and then double locked the door and turned off the lights: the mess could wait until the morning.
The sounds of laughter and music drifted in from the shed next door, noises from a parallel world that was continuing unaware of her pain.
There had been many occasions in Evelyn Silver’s life when she’d got the wrong end of the stick and then felt a crushing shame at her mistake. But this had to be the worst.
In a daze, she walked to the diorama at the back of the museum.
It would provide a warped sort of comfort, but in that moment, it felt fitting.
She had no expectation of sleep as she folded herself into the small single bed and gazed up at the familiar outlines of Mr and Mrs Cornish Life beside her.
She imagined what her parents might say if they were still alive.
‘Oh, Evelyn, you silly goose,’ Edwin would have said with a shake of his head, while her mother Elsbeth would have sounded softer: ‘Oh, dear me. What a fix.’
Her mother had said something equally anodyne when Evelyn arrived home from London, after ‘the incident’. Evelyn’s inability to judge a situation correctly had been the problem then, too.
‘You can’t go accusing men of things that simply never happened,’ her father had said, his face rigid with anger.
Separately, Elsbeth had soothed: ‘You made a mistake, it happens.’
But now, as she lay gazing up at the faint outlines of the rafters, Evelyn went back over the evening’s events, separating them into strands and then smoothing them out so each incident was laid in a row and she realised something.
Yes, she had jumped to conclusions when she saw Edie, but at the same time, the woman had deliberately misled Evelyn for her own gain.
Through her shame, Evelyn was struck by the revelatory thought that two things could simultaneously be true: she had been mistaken, but that didn’t cancel out the fact that the other person was lying. And she began to consider if that might also have been the case thirty-nine years ago.