Three weeks later, on a wet Wednesday afternoon, the weather was so depressing that Caspar decided he couldn’t possibly work. This was the trouble with skylights and broad attic windows. When the rain came down, you knew about it.
To cheer himself up—and take his mind off the fact that the painting he was supposed to be working on should have been finished a week ago—Caspar watched a bit of lunchtime Coronation Street and polished off the bowl of cherry tomatoes he’d spotted earlier in the fridge. Then he helped himself to a cappuccino mousse with whipped cream on top.
By now, Coronation Street had finished and been replaced by one of those audience participation talk shows. This one was about shoplifting. A skinny woman in an orange wig stood up to announce that she was a professional shoplifter. Another boasted about having once shoplifted a three-piece suit. The talk show host said this almost deserved a round of applause and the audience, unsure whether or not they were supposed to clap, looked nervous and fidgeted in their seats. The host then introduced this week’s expert, a woman psychiatrist with a face like a bulldog, and Caspar fell asleep.
He was woken up an hour or so later by the doorbell. Opening the front door, he found Claudia’s mother shivering on the top step. It was still pouring with rain.
‘Come in, you’re drenched.’ Caspar pulled her inside and ushered her into the sitting room. ‘Sorry, I was asleep.’ He switched off the television and made a token effort to plump up the squashed sofa cushions. ‘Claudia isn’t home from work yet. She’ll be back around five. Can I get you a drink?’
Angie Slade-Welch smiled at the sight of Caspar, so streaky-blond and deliciously tanned, in his turquoise tee-shirt and white shorts. He looked like a beach bum, and not a day over twenty-two.
‘I knew Claudia wouldn’t be here.’
She also knew that so long as you were prepared for it, a bit of rain didn’t go amiss. The damp, disheveled look suited her down to the ground. It was why, having been dropped off by her driver right outside the house, she had waited half a minute before ringing the bell. Plenty of Audrey Hepburn eye make-up and a fragile smile, and Angie could take on the world.
As long as the mascara was waterproof.
‘You knew Claudia wouldn’t be home yet? Oh dear,’ said Caspar. ‘In that case, I hope you haven’t come here to ask embarrassing questions behind her back. My mother did that once when I was in high school. She cornered the French teacher, convinced that I was being led astray—’
‘And were you?’
‘Of course.’ He grinned. ‘But it improved my French no end. So, is that really why you’re here? You want me to dish the dirt on your daughter’s love life?’
‘Not at all.’ The only love life Angie was interested in was her own.
‘You want to find out if she’s happy here?’
Angie shrugged and shook her head. ‘No, but you can tell me if you like. She’s had a couple of moans about the new girl… what’s her name? Poppy.’
Never one to boil a kettle when he could open a bottle instead, Caspar was relieved to discover an unopened bottle of Pouilly Fumée hidden behind the mineral water at the back of the fridge.
‘Ah yes, Poppy and Claudia.’ He filled two glasses and passed one to Angie. ‘The harem, as some of my not very witty friends have taken to calling them.’
‘And are they?’ Angie raised an interested eyebrow. ‘Your harem?’
Caspar pulled a face. ‘They bear a passing resemblance. Claudia doesn’t trust Poppy an inch. Now I know what it would be like, keeping a wife and mistress together under one roof. Except,’ he added with a grin, ‘I’m not sleeping with either of them.’
‘How quaint.’ Angie could imagine how desperately Claudia would have liked to. She would leap at the chance. Caspar evidently wasn’t interested. Good.
‘In fact, neither of them are to my knowledge sleeping with anyone,’ he went on, ‘which means there isn’t really any dirt to dish.’
‘Some harem.’
‘So if it isn’t a rude question,’ said Caspar, ‘why are you here?’
‘I’d like you to paint me.’
Angie crossed one slender charcoal-stockinged leg over the other. She was wearing an efficient-looking grey pinstriped suit today, tightly belted to show off her tiny waist. Unfastening her bag, she took out a calfskin-bound diary.
‘Um… no offense, but I’m pretty expensive,’ said Caspar. It was always better to come out and say it straight away, particularly when the potential client was someone you knew. Even friends-of-friends had an embarrassing habit of expecting you to do it for free.
‘That’s all right, so am I.’ Leaning closer, Angie gave him a conspiratorial look. ‘The thing is, I want the painting for Hugo. It’s his fiftieth birthday in December—’
‘If you want it finished by December I’m going to have to charge more,’ Caspar interrupted. ‘Look, it’s going to be six grand. I’m sorry, but my manager would shoot me if I said anything less.’
Privately he was marveling at the choice of gift. How many men would want to so much as glance at a portrait of their ex-wife, let alone be given one for their birthday? What if he threw darts at it?
‘Six grand, no problem.’ Angie Slade-Welch was unperturbed. ‘He’ll be paying for it anyway.’ She smiled. ‘One thing I will say for Hugo, he’s a perfect gentleman when it comes to alimony.’
Poor Hugo, thought Caspar. With four ex-wives to support, no wonder he kept having to fly over to Hollywood to star in the kind of mega-budget movies he despised so much. Small wonder too that none of the ex-wives had ever bothered to remarry. When the payoffs were that generous, where was the incentive?
Caspar, who didn’t have anything as efficient as a diary, led Angie Slade-Welch upstairs to his studio. The back of the door was covered with pinned-up business cards and scraps of paper with names and phone numbers scrawled across them. Some had dates and times added in brackets. This was Caspar’s filing system. It was a miracle he ever got anything done.
‘Mondays are good for me.’ Angie was flipping through pages with beige, French-manicured nails. ‘Wednesdays… no, that’s aromatherapy. Um, Thursday afternoons could be arranged. Or maybe Friday mornings…’
They haggled amicably for a few minutes. Caspar never felt like doing much at all on Mondays. Finally, they settled on three preliminary sittings to be going on with.
‘This Friday then.’ Caspar prepared to show her out. ‘No need to worry about getting your hair done, not at this stage. But bring a couple of outfits so we can decide what’ll look best. Nothing too fussy—’
‘Nothing fussy at all,’ Angie promised, her mouth registering amusement. ‘Did I not mention it earlier? I want this to be a nude portrait.’ She paused, waiting for his reaction. ‘That’s not a problem for you, is it?’
‘Not exactly a problem for me…’ Caspar was looking doubtful.
‘Well then, that’s fine. If you’re worried about my daughter,’ said Angie with a careless shrug, ‘don’t tell her. This is a private business transaction between consenting adults. Claudia doesn’t need to know.’
After a rotten day at work and a rain-drenched dash from the tube, Claudia wasn’t thrilled to come home and find Caspar and Poppy gossiping together in the sitting room, cozily sharing a packet of Jaffa Cakes and showing no sign whatsoever of doing anything about the mountain of washing-up in the sink.
She was even less enchanted when she spotted the empty bottle of Pouilly Fumée up on the mantelpiece. Two glasses stood side by side on the low coffee table next to the carton that had earlier contained her favorite cappuccino mousse.
Next moment her attention was distracted by something more awful still—
‘Ugh—UGH!’ screamed Claudia, shuddering with fear and revulsion. She pointed at the carpet beneath the table. ‘SPIDERS!’
Caspar craned his neck to see. He grinned, leaned over the edge of the sofa, scooped them up and lobbed them at Claudia.
‘Don’t get in a flap, they’re only tomato stalks.’
‘Oh.’ Claudia was still trembling. ‘You really are the living end…’
‘Sweetheart, I wouldn’t have thrown them at you if they’d been spiders.’
‘Not that,’ Claudia wailed, glaring at him. ‘They were my tomatoes. This,’ she jabbed a finger at the empty carton, ‘was my cappuccino mousse. And I was saving that wine for a special occasion!’
‘This afternoon was a special occasion.’ Caspar thought of the six thousand pounds. ‘That’s why I opened it.’ Then, since Claudia was looking very cross indeed, he added, ‘I’ll buy you another one.’
‘That’s not the point.’ Claudia hadn’t inherited her mother’s gift for looking good when wet. Her hair was a mess and her navy mascara had run dramatically down her face. Turning to include Poppy in the diatribe she went on, ‘You didn’t even leave enough for me to have a glass. You had to jolly well drink it all.’
Poppy had only arrived home from work ten minutes earlier herself. She looked indignant. ‘It wasn’t me, it was—’
‘Anton. From the gallery.’ Caspar indulged in a bit of improv, sensing that now was not the time to tell Claudia her mother had been round. ‘He dropped by to show me the brochure for next month’s exhibition.’ Ad-libbing shamelessly he went on, ‘It looks completely brilliant. Anton says it’s already attracting interest from dealers in Japan—’
The phone rang. Claudia picked it up.
‘For you.’ Tight-lipped, she handed the phone to Caspar. ‘It’s Anton. Calling from New York.’
Caspar, well and truly caught out, grinned. ‘Told you Concorde was fast.’
‘I’m not one of your girlfriends,’ Claudia said bitterly. ‘You don’t have to lie to me.’