City Of Lies by R.J. Ellory

Author:R.J. Ellory
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9781409124290
Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

THIRTY-TWO

Harper was shaking his head.

‘You don’t want to hear about this, do you?’ Evelyn asked. ‘You want to hear about your father, what happened with him and your mother, right?’

Closed his eyes. Tension was visible in everything about him. Wound up tight; watch-spring tight.

‘You going to say something?’

Harper slowly shook his head again, eyes were open but he was looking at the floor. He found it hard to breathe, a tightness in his chest that was suffocating.

‘You want a drink or something?’

‘No Evelyn . . . just give me a minute will you . . . just need a minute or two.’

Evelyn leaned back. There was something relaxed in her manner, almost as if telling the truth had taken the weight and tension from her shoulders and passed them to Harper. She did not seemed pleased that he was suffering, evidently suffering, but she did seem relieved that whatever she’d told him was no longer held tight inside her like a clenched fist.

‘What d’you want me to say, John? I kept all of this away from you. All those years I knew what was going on. I knew what he was like, the people he associated with. That’s why things were so difficult here. He sent Walt Freiberg over here; time and again the man came with things for you. Money, clothes, toys, things for your birthday, for Christmas. Keeping those people out of your life was a full-time job in itself. You don’t even know the half of it—’

‘So tell me,’ Harper said. ‘Tell me the half of it that you never told me before . . . for Christ’s sake Evelyn, tell me anything.’

Evelyn looked fatigued, not just tired but fatigued; the bone-deep exhaustion that comes from carrying something that drains every ounce of strength from within, not only physically, but mentally and emotionally.

‘The late-night phone calls, the threats. Times I would go to collect you from school and Walt Freiberg would be there in the street, right there in the street standing beside a car, and in the car was your father watching every move you made. One time . . . one time I went to get you and they were there. I couldn’t see you anywhere, not in the street, not in the yard behind the school, and I was convinced they’d taken you, convinced that finally he’d persuaded you to get in the back of that car and they were just taunting me, letting me know that they had the money and the power to make anything happen the way they wanted. They scared the hell out of me. Those people really, really scared the hell out of me.’

‘I never knew any of this—’

Evelyn laughed, suddenly, abruptly. ‘What could I have told you? Your mother died when you were seven years old. Your father left when you were two . . . I say left when you were two, but hell John, Edward Bernstein was leaving from the moment he found out Anne was pregnant.

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