Read Cover Your Eyes for Free Online

them. I wanted them to lose sleep. I didn’t care if they never slept again.
    ‘Hello? Simon?’
    ‘Who’s that?’
    ‘Who the fuck d’you think it is? It’s me. Megan. Remember?’
    ‘It’s three in the morning.’
    ‘Can’t help that.’
    ‘Can we talk tomorrow?’
    ‘No, I want to talk now.’
    ‘I can’t do that.’
    ‘Why not? Is she there? Next to you in bed?’
    ‘Go to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.’
    ‘No I won’t. I’ll feel worse.’
    ‘I said: I can’t talk now.’
    ‘Is she getting suspicious? Is she looking at you? Thinking: who’s this ringing up my husband on his mobile at three in the morning?’
    ‘I’m going to hang up now.’
    I sat there with my mobile in my hand, trembling. She must have heard. She’d have a couple of questions to ask him, about who was phoning him in the middle of the night. For a few moments I allowed myself to imagine a fight so dreadful between the two of them that he’d walk out of his house and come straight round here saying:
Forgive me, Megan, you were the right one all along and I’ve behaved so badly. What can I do to make it all up to you?
I felt disgusted with myself for being such a self-deluded idiot. I must really be pissed, I thought, if I can believe even for a second that he’d do anything like that. I put the phone down and went into the tiny kitchen of my tiny flat and made myself a cup of coffee.
    As I drank it, I tried to work out what would happen next. No Simon, no job, and no idea what I wanted to do beyond crawl into my bed and never come out. ‘Bastard,’ I said aloud. He could have timed it differently. He could have waited a few days and allowed me my bit of glory in the office later in the week, with everyone saying nice things about my Eva Conway article but no, he had to mess that up as well. He knew how much it meant to me and how I was longing to see my name appear in bold type at the top of the page. Now I could never go to that office again. Someone, probably Tina, the current intern, would be given the uninspiring job of taking everything out of my desk, putting it in a box and bringing it round here. Maybe I’d phone in the morning and tell them to bin the bloody lot. Yes, maybe I would.
    I went back into the bedroom and lay face down on my bed. I wanted to Skype Jay but she’d be in the office, not able to speak properly. I could smell Simon on the pillow. Could I really? I fell asleep before I decided.
    *
    Eva was wide awake in the middle of the night. There was something comforting about thinking of everyone else fast asleep. A dim light was always on outside the girls’ room and downstairs, the spaces that were filled with voices and light during the daylight hours collected shadows and whispers that Eva was never able to identify. Was that old woodwork contracting in the colder night air? Or was it faint traces of everyone who’d ever lived here, the distant whisperings of ancient voices, audible in the dark? It was easy at such times to imagine that Rowena, Conor, Dee and Bridie had vanished altogether. Salix House became truly hers again. She could, if she felt like it, go from room to room and see it as it used to be when Antoine was alive. Or when they’d first found it. At that time, the gateposts at the end of the drive were entirely covered in ivy. The salix trees, after which the house was named, had almost disappeared in the undergrowth that had sprung up around them.
    Eva sighed. She could go over in her head the thousands of decisions they’d made as they restored the house, about what colours the walls ought to be, where this or that piece of furniture should go or was that the right picture for that space? Sometimes, she amused herself by mentally redesigning parts of the house. Shall I change my red velvet sofa for a black one? What about the hall table? Is it too much? Until the last few weeks, her home had been at the same time a source of happiness and a repository of memories,