She could hear them talking and she closed the door for privacy and went down to her room and pulled out her old broken pink suitcase and threw her clothes into it, not bothering to fold them. She searched under her bed for her Christmas slippers and piled all her toiletries into a plastic bag and dumped them in her case.
A last search of the room revealed a hair tie and a pink sock with a hole in the toe, which she threw in the rubbish bin.
She carried her suitcase downstairs and checked the study, and found her notes on the book, which she put on Edward’s desk.
Her laptop was in the snug along with some books and the tote bag the twins had given her for Christmas, which she placed her last items inside.
She thought for a moment and then left a box on the desk.
She wouldn’t take anything with her that he’d given her, not now. Not after everything he had taken from her.
Eve went to the front door as the police car drove away and Hilditch was coming inside.
‘Where are you going?’ asked Hil, looking at the suitcase.
‘Home,’ said Eve, taking out her phone and ordering a taxi.
‘Home? Why? Is everything okay?’ Hilditch looked confused.
‘Everything is perfectly clear thanks, Hil.’
‘Where are Edward and the children?’ Hil looked behind Eve down the empty hallway.
‘In the tower,’ she answered. ‘Oh great, the car is two minutes away. That’s lucky isn’t it? Considering we’re in no-man’s-land.’
Hilditch looked at Eve closely.
‘What’s happened? Was it because of Amber?’
Eve shook her head. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘It does. Edward and the children have been happier than they’ve ever been since you arrived.’
Hilditch had always been polite, sometimes verging on warm but this was unlike anything she had offered Eve before.
‘It’s not my sole reason for living though,’ she said, trying but failing to keep the bitterness from her voice.
‘I didn’t suggest it was,’ said Hil. ‘But you seemed happy too.’
Eve shrugged as she pulled on her coat and beret that hung in the hallway and pulled her suitcase outside. ‘I was,’ she said. Then she turned to Hil, who was standing alone in the doorway. ‘Tell me, how many different women did Edward have stay here from Henshaw and Carlson?’
Hil shook her head. ‘None besides Serena. She was stuck here because she booked the wrong train back and couldn’t get a driver because of a roadblock.’
Eve rolled her eyes. Knowing Serena, she would have probably felled the tree with a withering look on her way up to Cranberry Cross to ensure she couldn’t get back and would have to stay.
‘So who was Amber talking about?’ asked Eve.
‘I honestly don’t know,’ said Hil. ‘But why don’t you stay and ask him yourself? You shouldn’t leave without speaking to him about this.’
Eve heard herself give an ugly laugh just as the taxi pulled into the driveway.
She walked towards the car as the driver opened the boot of the car for her suitcase.
‘I’m not leaving because of other women. I’m leaving because Edward Priest just lost me my job.’
She lifted the case into the car and then went to the back seat.
‘Tell the children I’m sorry I couldn’t say goodbye. It wasn’t them. It was never them. I was their protector for a while but I am not their mother. They have one, and a father. They need to do their job now.’
