Chapter 59
FIFTY-NINE
LINA
Lina heard it again, an urgent whisper. ‘Nan? Nan, please wake up.’
A bubble of hope surfaced inside her. Evie had come to help her, an old woman who didn’t deserve help after the awful things she’d done at her daughter’s behest. It had to stop.
Now. Lina knew that Natalia had only meant to keep her quiet once she’d threatened to expose her, but she could have killed her.
Had she meant to? It was a horrifying thought.
She had to do something. She’d promised herself she would be there for Evie.
She was of no use to her lying pathetic and helpless on the kitchen floor.
Come on, get up! She willed her stubborn body to obey.
She needed to get Evie out of here, away from this place and the person who claimed to care for her, to know her, but who actually knew so little about her she couldn’t see she would psychologically destroy her.
Attempting to focus, she blinked hard and tried to raise herself. It was hopeless. Her head swam nauseatingly and it was as if her limbs were made of lead. Peeling her parched tongue from the roof of her mouth, she tried to articulate but couldn’t.
‘Lie still, Nan,’ Evie urged her, clearly frightened. ‘You’ll hurt yourself.’
‘I’m all right,’ Lina managed, her words emerging elongated and slurred.
‘You’re not!’ Evie insisted. ‘What happened? Are you hurt? Can you move everything?’
Lina smiled. ‘As well as I ever could,’ she assured her, hoping to God that she could.
She’d lived in dread of having a stroke since being diagnosed with congestive heart disorder.
Her lungs were constantly filling with blood, as were her legs and feet, making her breathless and slow.
If she was completely immobilised, it would leave the way clear for Natalia to gain access to Evie.
After exacting revenge in whatever twisted way she deemed appropriate – and Lina was sure she intended to – she would try to convince Evie to leave with her.
Lina had failed her daughter – these were her just desserts – but she couldn’t fail her granddaughter. She wouldn’t.
Making a supreme effort, she heaved herself to sitting, and then, feeling woozy, gave herself a moment.
‘What happened?’ Evie crouched beside her, wrapping an arm around her.
Lina hesitated. When she’d told Evie her mother was alive, the news had rocked the girl to the core. She’d looked at Lina in that way people did when her muddled memory failed her, with something between sympathy and pity. ‘No, Nan,’ she’d said kindly. ‘Mum died, remember?’
Lina had reached for her hand. ‘She didn’t, Evie,’ she’d whispered. ‘She was here. It was her who left the locket for Kara to find.’
Evie studied her mistrustfully. ‘I don’t believe you,’ she’d said, her voice tremulous. ‘She can’t be. She would have contacted me.’
‘She wants to meet you.’ Lina had relayed what her daughter wanted her to, hating herself for it as she saw the bewildered confusion in her granddaughter’s eyes.
‘She wants to explain why she hasn’t been in touch with you.
She said she would be at the Elgar statue in Worcester town centre at three o’clock, but you need to be careful, Evie. She’s—’
‘I don’t believe you!’ Evie cried, tears exploding from her eyes. ‘Why are you doing this?’ She hadn’t waited for Lina to answer. Her expression filled with bitter disillusionment, she’d snatched her hand away and fled.
And now she was back here in the thick of it.
‘Did you meet up with your mother?’ Lina asked her warily.
‘No.’ Evie answered, her expression cautious. ‘She called me, but… Did she have something to do with this?’
Lina had no idea what to say. How much to tell her.
Natalia was determined to convince Evie that her father had lied to her, telling her that her mother was unhinged and didn’t care for her.
Just as she’d convinced Lina that Jack was a misogynistic liar and a cheat, that he’d attempted to murder her.
Now, though, after all that had happened – Natalia doing this to her, to Evie, that poor girl Imogen’s death – she wasn’t so sure who the biggest liar was.
‘She said she was going to be delayed,’ Evie went on. ‘That she was at work, in between patients. I didn’t believe her. She was sending me on a wild goose chase, wasn’t she? She wanted me out of the way.’
Still Lina hesitated. Obviously that was Natalia’s intention.
Out of the way of what, though? Her thoughts flew to Kara and all she’d already been through, and fear crystallised inside her.
Surely that wasn’t Natalia’s skewed thinking?
To rob Jack of his child as he’d robbed her?
No. She was sick – Lina hadn’t realised how sick – but she wasn’t evil.
‘Did she have something to do with you falling?’ Evie jarred her attention back to her. ‘You need to tell me.’
Lina shook her head. She couldn’t tell the girl the truth. She didn’t dare imagine what Evie’s reaction might be. A confrontation with her mother might have catastrophic consequences.
Evie looked far from convinced. ‘Why did you lock the door?’ she asked.
Lina tried to think. ‘I didn’t lock it. Your mother must have,’ she said, scrambling for a way to convince Evie to leave and go somewhere safe.
Natalia obviously had locked it, meaning she really didn’t care anything for her. Did she care about Evie? Did she not realise what finding her grandmother lying stone-cold dead might have done to her?
Cursing her na?ve stupidity in imagining that she could somehow make things right with her daughter, she pressed her knuckles to the floor and attempted again to heave herself up.
‘Lean on me,’ Evie said, moving quickly to support her, as she had since Lina had sought her out, wanting then only to have some contact with her granddaughter before she shuffled off to her lonely grave.
No one would have grieved for her. But now Evie would.
She was confused, angry, but she had a good heart.
Lina had to look after her. There was no one else.
Whether the things Natalia had told her about Jack were true or not, she couldn’t make herself trust him.
‘Careful,’ Evie urged her, helping her to sit at the table. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked, stepping back to scrutinise her carefully. ‘Should I call an ambulance?’
‘No. I’m fine.’ Lina waved away her concern with a reassuring smile. ‘I had a fall, that was all, tripping over my own clumsy feet as usual.’
Evie nodded, but still she looked doubtful. ‘Why would Mum lock the door knowing you might have a fall, though?’ she asked.
Again, Lina hesitated. ‘I don’t think your mother’s very well, sweetheart.
She seems confused about what happened to her, where she’s been.
Perhaps she suffered some memory loss,’ she lied, out of kindness.
‘I need to find her. She said she was going to see Jemma before going home. I know she used to confide in her. I should go and speak to her. She might know where your mum is living.’
‘But you can’t.’ Evie stilled her as she attempted to stand.
‘The front door’s locked. The back door, too.
I came in through the downstairs loo window.
I had to smash it. There’s glass everywhere.
You’ll never be able to get out that way.
I’ll go. I’ll check whether there are any spare keys at the house while I’m at it. ’
‘No.’ Lina caught her sleeve as she turned away. ‘I’d rather you didn’t go to the house, sweetheart. Kara will be shocked. I don’t think it’s good for her or the baby to be any more upset than she has been.’
Evie frowned, no doubt bemused as to why she would suddenly care about Kara.
‘Go straight to Jemma’s,’ Lina urged her. ‘She’s Kara’s friend too. She’ll know what to do. I’ll call your father meanwhile.’
Now Evie looked surprised, as she would after all the awful things Lina had accused him of.
‘I know he and I haven’t seen eye to eye, but he thinks the world of you. It’s better I talk to him about Natalia, rather than him finding out any other way that she’s alive.’
Evie seemed dubious, but eventually she left, albeit reluctantly.
As soon as she was sure her granddaughter was safely away from the annexe, Lina pulled herself up and headed towards the kitchen.
She had to find a way out. Her gut feeling was that Natalia had gone from here straight to the house.
She had to stop her. If anyone could reach her, she could.
Natalia was her daughter. She needed help.
She needed to be loved. Lina admitted to herself that she had probably never felt that she was, not in the way she should have been. She wouldn’t get that help in prison.