Laura pressed the tile to the wall and held it for a few seconds, reaching down with the other hand for the plastic X pegs that set the spacing. She felt it bond and slowly released her hand from it. The tile held.
Stepping back, she admired her work. Dimpled and rustic in a matt sandy pink with starfish and winkles indented into them like fossils, they had come from a small batch of seconds a local artist had been offering in a box outside her studio. They looked lovely around the sink. Fresh.
Tomorrow, she could apply the grouting and the hut would be ready for . . . well, for what? Hardly the grand Christmas unveiling she’d bought it for.
She shook her head, trying to make the memory of last night disappear before the tears could gather. She must buy a small tree, she reminded herself, digging her nails into her hand – preferably one that was potted. And she needed to stop by B&Q at some point and get a peg rack, and some wicker baskets.
Pulling on her puffa coat and wellies, she locked the hut behind her. The dark pigeon colour she’d chosen for the walls looked great next to the vanilla windows and veranda. In the space of three short weeks Urchin had gone from being the scruffiest hut on the beach to one of the smartest.
It had started to rain and she marched quickly down the sand to the water’s edge, walking into the mercurial shallows. The water was anthracite grey today with rolling white surf, the sky a molten gold with blowsy black clouds gliding slowly across like galleons. The metallic colours brought the necklace back to mind – not that it was ever very far away, given the hours she was putting in on it. She’d worked for six hours solid when she’d gone back to the studio last night – desperate to do anything other than think, as she heated and melted, annealed, shaped, hammered and fired the happiness in another woman’s life – before falling into a fitful sleep on the sofa at two a.m.
Work was the best therapy she knew. Talking was a waste of time; she’d learnt that lesson long ago. Life would go on – she’d lived through worse than this – and she knew what she had to do. Gary, the locksmith, was booked to come in tomorrow whilst she interviewed Olive and Min, so neither Fee’s nor Jack’s keys would work and she could stay at the studio without worrying about them turning up unannounced, determined to talk – as she knew they would. Both of them had tried calling her. Fee particularly had left tearful messages, protesting innocence and begging her to call back, but Laura had simply switched off her phone. Soon, Fee would ball up her courage and make the trip face-to-face, risking Laura’s white-hot anger, and Laura was determined to deny her the chance. She wanted the silence between them to be as impermeable and slow-moving as ice, to grow thicker by the day. There was simply nothing to say. Jack and Fee – her only family – were lost to her.
Laura looked out to sea, watching raindrops pinprick the surface. She felt numb and defiant. There were things to love about her newfound freedom – like eating microwave meals for one at ten o’clock at night, getting up at dawn and not having to explain it, deleting AC/DC from her iPod and singing Florence & the Machine songs at the top of her voice.
Plus she was blitzing her workload. Kitty and Orlando’s charms were now finished; Sam and Alex’s were nearing completion. Of the interviews that had been done, only Rob’s charm remained – he had unwittingly opened up enough on the glacier to give her more material than she could have hoped for in a formal interview – and she’d been avoiding starting work on that for the simple reason that it forced her to do precisely what she was trying not to do: think about him. But with Cat’s birthday not much more than a week away, and two interviews to do tomorrow, she knew she couldn’t put it off any longer.
The water came to just an inch below her boots as she waded across the channel, but it was rough and spilt over the tops of her wellies, soaking her jeans and socks. Pulling them off at the bottom of the steps, she ran up barefoot, her hair dripping fat splodges of water down her back.
Her Skype was ringing when she unlocked the door, and she ran, skidded and lunged for it, pressing ‘connect’. The first thing she saw was Rob, peering so near to the screen that he looked like he might fall in – or kiss her again. Her eyes fell upon his in close-up, so close she could see the golden specks that dotted them like freckles; she saw the surprise register in his face at the sight of her before him so suddenly, the quick spread of his pupils against their copper beds, the breath-holding silence as they each relived the mutual bewilderment of that last moment in the lift.
‘So you just press that button there – and off you go,’ he muttered, moving back, and Laura could see Cat sitting behind him, staring quizzically at the screen. She was wearing a pistachio-green cashmere polo neck, and tufts of blonde hair fell wispily around her face.
‘Laura!’ she exclaimed excitedly when she saw Laura staring back at her, sopping wet and bedraggled, through the screen. ‘Oh my God! I can’t believe I did it. I’ve never worked this before! How are you?’ she beamed, before frowning. ‘Is it raining over there?’
Laura nodded back, trying to look at least okay – it was beyond her to pull off ‘happy’ today – as she raked her hands through her wet hair. ‘Yes, great, thanks. Did you all get back all right?’
Cat tipped her head to the side and pulled a sad face. ‘We so missed you. What happened?’
‘Oh, you know . . . the dog . . . had a temperature . . . Jack panicked.’ She rolled her eyes, keeping her voice steady as she said Jack’s name, aware that Rob was still in the room. She could see him behind Cat, flicking awkwardly through a magazine, no doubt worried Laura was going to drop him in it.
‘But it’s okay, the dog?’ Cat asked, concern tattooed all over her face.
‘Yes. False alarm. I’m sorry if anyone was worried. I didn’t want to cause a fuss.’
‘Do you hear that, Rob? It’s all okay.’ She leant in closer to the screen so that Laura swore she could pick up notes of frangipani. ‘He’s been so worried. It’s so sweet!’
‘Aaaah!’ Laura kept her eyes dead ahead, determined not to look at him behind Cat. Her peripheral vision told her they were in the bedroom – it was all very pale and milky from what she could gather, and she wondered whether there was another expensive, exotic carpet on the floor – zebra perhaps? Without moving her eyes a fraction, she saw him throw down the magazine and start to pace. Even across the country and through a screen, she could see the tension in his movements.
‘Well now, listen – I have got some great news,’ Cat confided breathlessly. ‘I must have phoned half of London since we got back yesterday, and I can confirm: The. Party. Is. On! We’ll have it in London at a friend’s flat – I’m not sure exactly where yet, so many people want to help – but it’s definitely going to be Friday week, six o’clock to seven-thirty. We’ll start early because it’s the day before Christmas Eve, obviously, so everyone’s just rammed.’
‘But isn’t next Friday your birthday?’
‘How did you know that?’ Cat gasped, delighted. ‘Who told you? I bet it was Kitty! It was Kitty, wasn’t it?’
Laura nodded, aware that Rob had stopped pacing in the background and was standing, motionless, his hands in his pockets. She wished he would go away. She wished she had never met him. ‘Yes. Kitty told me.’
‘Well, listen, we’ll do the party early evening and then whatever Rob’s got organized for me – and I know it’ll be something fabulous,’ she squealed, half turning towards him, ‘we’ll go on to it together.’
‘Oh no, Cat, I couldn’t possibly intrude in—’
‘Enough already! You’re one of the gang now. So listen, I’ll email you the address, but just bring everything you’ve got and aim to be in High Street Ken for four p.m., okay? We’ll need to set up properly. And the dress code’s cocktail.’
Laura nodded nervously. ‘Okay.’ She didn’t have anything here at the studio that would constitute cocktail; she barely had anything here that constituted ‘dressed’. She would have to go home to raid her wardrobe – but what if Jack was there? Or worse still, Fee?
‘See you next Friday, sweetie,’ Cat winked. ‘I can’t wait. And Rob’s going to make that call to Bertie, aren’t you, Rob?’
Rob muttered something unintelligible in the background.
‘Baby, how do I turn this off?’ Cat asked, lifting her hands in the air delicately as though afraid the keyboard would give her septic shock.
Rob came to the laptop, leaning over Cat so that she was lost from Laura’s vision again.
‘I’ll do it,’ he said, his eyes on Laura, his finger hovering over the button for several seconds before he cut the connection between them.
Laura sat back, her heart pounding. She told herself it was from the brisk walk over the beach; she had run up the stairs; she was excited about the party Cat was throwing for her next week . . .
She stood up, agitated, and got the fire roaring so that an orange glow lit up the studio like a beacon. Once she had pulled the duvet out from under the sofa and snuggled under it, she grabbed her laptop and checked her in-box.
The name that flashed up in it left her in no doubt as to the real reason her heart was pounding. She clicked it open.
‘It was a mistake. I apologize. Clearly it won’t happen again.’
Laura took a sharp intake of breath at the curt message. That wasn’t what his eyes had said.