Katherine sat slumped on one of the benches by the path leading to the tennis courts, leather jacket pulled tight around her shoulders, bottle within close reach. How long she’d been there she didn’t know. A pair of women went by talking loudly in Polish, pushing buggies, someone else’s kids. A gaggle of schoolgirls, swearing freely, skirts rolled high. Joggers. A white-haired man pulling a small dog along on a lead, its belly scraping the ground.
Chrissy had phoned on her behalf again, a little reluctantly, the third time she’d cancelled a class in as many days. The thought of anyone looking at her, even fully clothed, never mind naked, was more than she could stand.
‘You’ve got to pull yourself together,’ Chrissy had said sharply. ‘You realise that, don’t you? You look a mess.’
Tough love, Katherine supposed.
She glanced up at the woman walking across the grass towards her; thought for a moment she recognised her, decided she was mistaken.
‘Katherine? Kate?’
She looked up again on hearing the voice, surprised. Padded jacket, black trousers tucked down into silver boots, blue beret covering most of her dark hair.
‘V? What are you doing here?’
‘Looking for you.’
Katherine shook herself, rubbed her hands across her face.
‘Okay if I sit?’
Katherine nodded.
For some moments neither of them spoke, Katherine conscious of the bottle of vodka at her feet.
‘London Fields,’ Vida said. ‘I used to come here all the time. Long time ago now. I was little more than a kid. That novel had just been out. Amis? Martin Amis?’ She laughed. ‘All changed a lot since then. Trendy now, I suppose. Hackney, the hipster’s delight.’
‘How did you know I’d be here?’
‘Chrissy. Chrissy told me. She’s worried about you.’
‘There’s no need.’
‘No?’ Vida looked pointedly at the bottle between Katherine’s shoes. ‘What is it? Close to a bottle a day now?’
‘V, don’t …’
‘Pills, too, I dare say.’
‘V …’
Reaching down, Vida seized the bottle and, fending off Katherine as she tried to grab it back, upturned it, spilling the remaining vodka down on to the grass.
‘What the fuck you do that for?’ Katherine said angrily.
‘I thought you’d had enough.’
‘None of your business, is it?’
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘All right then, my mistake.’
She was into her stride before Katherine called her back.
‘V, I’m sorry.’
‘Okay.’ Vida sat and proceeded to roll a cigarette. ‘He was a bastard, you know that?’ she said. ‘Just a wonder someone didn’t kill him sooner.’
‘Don’t.’
‘What?’
‘Don’t say that.’
‘Why not? It’s true. Never gave a moment’s thought for anyone but himself. Mind you, bloody artists, most of them, they’re all the same. Selfish through and bloody through. Anthony, if he didn’t think there was something in it for him, some way he could use you, he wouldn’t give you the time of day.’
‘I thought you were his friend.’
‘As long as it suited him, yes. Oh, he’d deign to come into my classes once in a while, sprinkle a little praise and bonhomie. But only for what he could get in return.’
‘Like what?’
‘Like you.’
Katherine stared at her, disbelieving, struggling with the implication of what she’d heard; Vida reached out a hand towards hers and she pushed it away.
‘Girls, that’s what he wanted. Girls he could use for a while and then discard when he was finished with them. With you, though, it was different. At least, for a time that’s what I thought. He saw something different in you. And it shows. It’s there in the paintings, the work.’
‘What do you mean?’
Vida drew hard on her cigarette. ‘I asked him once, what he saw, what it was that made you special, and he said pain.’
Katherine arched her back as if she’d been struck.
Vida reached out her hand again. ‘I feel responsible, guilty. For what happened.’
‘But surely …’
‘Not for what happened to him, what happened to you. I was careless, thoughtless. I should have seen you’d suffered enough already. It was there, there in the eyes. And Anthony knew. It excited him. I could tell.’
Katherine hunched her body, turned her face away and cried. After a while, Vida slid an arm round her shoulders and rested her head against the nape of her neck.
‘It’s all right,’ she said softly. ‘It’s all right.’
‘I loved him,’ Katherine said. ‘At least, I thought I did.’
‘I know.’
‘And I thought …’
‘I know, I know.’