5

‘You look… different,’ NAOMI SAID.

‘In what way?’

‘I don’t know. Perkier.’

‘Maybe it’s these.’ Miriam rattled a tub of vitamin tablets. She did feel ‘perkier’ but she doubted it was a result of vitamin pills. ‘I’m going swimming after I drop the children off.’

‘Lucky you.’ Naomi was, as usual, flicking her phone. ‘Could you collect my coat from the cleaner’s, Mum? The ticket’s on the fridge.’

‘I’ll try.’

Naomi glanced up, but Miriam offered no explanation for her uncertainty, the first small but significant marker in her self-rehabilitation.

She didn’t care for the leisure centre. It was unwelcoming. An intimidating fervour prevailed. People in clingy sportswear, gripping holdalls and ‘power’ drinks, stomped about, grim-faced, as if under military orders. They tended to be on the thin side, too – an endorsement of what they’d achieved here or, as she was more inclined to think, testimony that the people who should be here, weren’t.

She paid her money and pushed through the turnstile. After the crisp November air, the heat was sapping. The acrid smell of chlorine and the echoing shrieks of swimmers filtered through from the pool, catapulting her back into the panic of childhood swimming lessons and eroding the courage she’d spent hours summoning up.

The changing room bustled with strident women (young, old, middle-aged) and a crop of noisy, uncooperative toddlers. Her impulse was to find a dimly-lit corner in which to wriggle out of her clothes and into her swimming costume. But that would defeat her objective.

Numbered lockers lined the Spartan room. A bench with coat-hooks above and a shallow gutter beneath, ran down its centre. She stationed herself at the midway point and, looping her rucksack on a hook, began to undress, slowly and methodically. Jacket. Shoes. Socks. Cardigan. Jeans. Shirt. Until she was left in her underwear.

The heat was overwhelming and, as she removed her bra and knickers, she was overcome with giddiness. Breathing deeply, she grasped the rail, steadying herself and waiting for the wooziness to pass, acclimatising to public nakedness as her breasts, thighs, buttocks came in contact with the dank air.

The women continued nattering, taking no notice of her. Maybe they were being polite. Discreet. Or maybe they thought her unhinged. (She might have thought so too had she found herself standing next to a naked woman.) So far, so good. But for this to be a true test of nerve, she needed these women to look at her. Engage with her.

She made a neat pile of her clothes and transferred them to a locker. Fishing out two fifty pence pieces from the zipped compartment at the front of her rucksack, she walked slowly towards a gaggle of women, all fully clothed.

‘Excuse me,’ she said. ‘Would you by any chance have a pound coin? For the locker?’

They seemed unfazed by her nudity and one of them took a handful of change from her pocket and sifted through it. ‘There you go, love.’

Miriam swapped the two fifty pences for a single coin. ‘Thanks.’

She donned her black swimming costume, locked the locker and fastened the key-strap around her wrist. Then she went through to the pool and stood in the shallow end, waiting for her heartbeat to return to normal.

Next day she spent an hour in the art gallery which was part of the town’s museum. Sometimes she brought the children here but they preferred the natural history section with its mangy stuffed rabbits and animal skeletons and she had rarely had a chance to study the paintings in detail. She dawdled past uninspired landscapes, characterless bowls of fruit and stuffy-looking military men whose gaudy medal ribbons were the only relief to their khaki uniforms and brown leather armchairs. She wouldn’t have given any of them wall space.

She was heading for the café when, in a side room, she spotted what she’d hoped to find. A painting of a nude woman. In fact two of the same woman. In one, she was coming down a very ordinary flight of stairs. In the other, going up.

She consulted the card fixed to the wall alongside the canvases. ‘J. L. Knox (1899-1943). Oil on canvas. 1934.’ The woman was naked apart from a pair of red pumps. Her short, dark hair, cut in a bob, bore out the date but the titles ‘Woman on the Stair – I’ and ‘Woman on the Stair – II’ gave nothing away.

At first glance, they were purely studies of a nude woman. Yet, take a few minutes to consider, and the pumps and lack of any other artefact (even a stair carpet) created a conundrum. Were she pushed to concoct the narrative, it might be a summer’s morning, the woman pausing on her way downstairs (to boil the kettle or feed the cat), pausing again on her way back to bed or to get dressed. Miriam had never wandered downstairs naked but it wasn’t unthinkable. The unimaginable factor was that someone would be waiting at the foot of the stair, ready to capture the moment in oil paint.

She took a closer look. Sturdy. Small bust, wide hips. Fortyish? Not young, anyway. In the descending version, her head was turned slightly to her right, eyes cast down as if glancing over the banister, into the hall. Perhaps making sure there was no one about. Pausing to listen. Or to have second thoughts. A few minutes (or hours) later she pauses again, on her way up this time, head turned enough to reveal the tip of her nose beyond a curtain of sleek hair. But it was the birthmark below her left shoulder blade which caught Miriam’s eye, bringing this unknown woman to life more than either her nipples or near-black pubic hair.

Were she to pursue this life modelling job, her nakedness would be studied in forensic detail. Art students must be accustomed to nudity. Would they be critical of her shape? Her age? Would they see her as decrepit stripper or more a compilation of elements, some of which – hands, she imagined – were trickier to draw than others? Callum had said it was easier to bare your soul to strangers than to someone known to you. Baring your body might be easier, too.

She took a couple of steps back. So who was she, this ‘woman on the stair’? Knox’s wife? Lover? She certainly couldn’t imagine anyone painting their mother, or daughter, naked – although hadn’t she read somewhere that Lucien Freud…?

The young man at the desk could give her no information on the painter or his – her? – subject. And, back at the house, when she googled ‘J. L. Knox artist’ the best it could come up with was James Knox, CEO of a painting and decorating firm in St Louis.

‘I’ve been doing some research,’ she said when Callum phoned.

‘Research?’

She explained about the changing rooms. ‘I’d like to give it a go.’

‘Right,’ he said. ‘Well I’ve been doing some thinking, too. Let’s start with head and shoulders. You’ve a good face. Timeless.’

‘You mean old.’

‘I mean timeless,’ he said. ‘I’ve okayed your appointment with the college. We can sort out the paperwork when you come in.’

‘When d’you need me?’ she said.

‘Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Nine-thirty to twelve-thirty. Does that suit?’

What if the children were ill? And there were those tiresome ‘INSET’ days…

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘What should I wear?’

‘Something unfussy.’

‘A T-shirt?’ she said.

‘Perfect.’

Miriam’s worldly goods sat in a sprawling hangar on the industrial estate. The interior of AAA Storage was something to behold. Row after row of what amounted to lock-up garages. CCTV cameras scanning. Forklift trucks scuttling up and down the alleyways, laden with boxes and sofas and white goods. All accompanied by the sporadic clatter of metal doors. Sometimes, when she lay awake in bed, she imagined the place, vast and echoey, shadowy figures creeping about.

She was free to access her possessions whenever she liked. A keycard allowed her into the building and a four-digit code, chosen by her, opened the door to her container. She made a point of going there every couple of weeks, needing validation of her old life and confirmation that something else lay ahead.

Deciding what to take to Naomi’s had been like packing for a holiday without knowing where she was going or how long she’d be away. Eight months down the line it was gratifying to know she hadn’t been far adrift with her selection.

Occasionally she needed to retrieve this or that and she was heading back to the car with a couple of books and a clip-on lamp when someone called her name. Turning, she saw a woman hurrying towards her across the car park.

‘It is you,’ the woman said.

Yes, it was her. But who was this, holding her arms out in a welcoming gesture? She smiled, waiting for the appropriate part of her brain to spew out the answer but the woman got there first.

‘It’s Stephanie,’ she said. ‘Goodness me. It must be five years.’

Stephanie. Stephanie. Stephanie. 

‘Steph,’ Miriam said. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘We had to bring the car to the body shop.’ She indicated a row of prefabricated buildings off to her left. ‘I had a slight contretemps with a bollard.’

‘But I thought you’d—’

‘We did. But we’re back. Doug got a big promotion.’

Stephanie and Doug. She taught geography. He was something in the bank.

‘You’re still at Kelsey,’ Stephanie said – a statement rather than a question.

The news of Sam’s death, the scandal surrounding his gambling and her ‘illness’, had circulated more quickly than Miriam would have dreamed possible. By the time she’d felt up to facing the world, Naomi had made sure those who should know did know. She grown accustomed to friends and ex-colleagues crossing the road or diving into shops, uncomfortable at the prospect of meeting her, but Stephanie’s ignorancecaught her off balance.

‘I’m not actually,’ she said.

Stephanie’s smile gave way to a questioning frown. ‘Oh. So…?’

‘I’m at the art college.’

‘Art college? What on earth are you doing there?’ Stephanie had always been unsubtle.

‘Pastoral stuff. Admissions. Admin. A bit of everything.’

She’d rehearsed this fantasy ready to break the news of her new job to Naomi, nevertheless when it popped out so readily, and so plausibly, she was impressed with her quick reaction.

‘Really?’ Stephanie said. ‘I’m surprised. You were such a brilliant teacher—’

‘Was I?’ she said. ‘I can’t imagine where you got that idea from.’

‘Everyone… You always…’

She felt empowered by Stephanie’s floundering but her smugness was short-lived.

‘Actually I’m meeting up with the old crowd tomorrow evening,’ Stephanie said. ‘You should come along. We can have a good old catch-up.’

Miriam hadn’t seen ‘the old crowd’ since Sam’s funeral when she’d been pretty much out of it. Afterwards, several of them had tried to contact her but Naomi had fended off their calls and they’d soon given up. Occasionally she might glimpse one of them in Marks’s or Waterstones, and they’d doubtless seen her, but it was easier to walk in the opposite direction.

‘Shall I give you a piece of advice?’ she said.

Stephanie smiled a vague, expectant smile and nodded.

‘Never look back,’ she said and headed for her car.

‘But what about the children?’ her father said when he made his usual Sunday phone call.

‘It’s only a couple of mornings a week, Dad. They’re at school ’til three-thirty. My mornings are free.’

He paused and she waited for his next question. ‘Don’t they need someone in the office full-time? How will they manage when you’re not there?’

‘I have no idea.’

‘I’m surprised you didn’t ask.’

‘They must know what they’re doing. I’ll find out all the details next week.’

‘So how much are they paying you?’ her father said. ‘You’ve got a degree. You’re over-qualified for clerical work.’

‘That’s not what this is about, Dad,’ she said.

Naomi had accepted the news of her job without this cross-examination but she should have known her father would demand chapter and verse.

Time to play her trump card. ‘Aren’t you pleased I feel well enough to take on a job?’

‘Of course I am. I just think you could do better.’

‘Let’s see how this goes first,’ she said.

By the time they were saying goodbye, she almost believed that she was going to be answering emails and dealing with student applications.