‘This is mad. You could have talked to Cass at the college she’s there today and she’s got Charlie with her. What do you think I can tell you that you can’t find out from her?’ Pandora sipped her Rioja and studied Paul across the wooden table. The bar was busy with lunchtime office workers, mostly female. They were all very tidily dressed – lots of sleek black trousers and slinky-neat wrap dresses. There were power earrings and vein-blood nail polish and big, big handbags, all the trappings of women who knew just how to play the full feminine game. She felt an out-of-place scruff in her long turquoise T-shirt, beads and silver bangles and old jeans. Her pink Converse shoes had paint splashes on them, and stains from the restaurant’s eternally leaking grease. The wooden floors made the place very echoey. It reminded her of school: there were so many girls in here talking – no – twittering at once. She half expected her old maths teacher to come in, clap her hands and boom ‘Silence!’
To cut across the racket of chatter, she’d almost shouted to Paul, and what she’d said seemed pretty aggressive, too. She tried smiling at him but it didn’t feel right – from his side of the table she probably resembled an ape baring her teeth. In fact this whole situation felt wrong, to be here sitting opposite her sister’s boyfriend having a secret meet-up. The motives were good, though. That was something she must remember. She kept picturing how Cass and Paul had been, that day in the hospital with their new baby. If she could help them to hang on to that, she’d do what she could.
‘She doesn’t want to have anything to do with me. That’s why I can’t talk to her,’ Paul told her, sounding defeated. ‘She just won’t. End of. I don’t know why.’
Pandora was silent for a while. Did he really not know? He was an intelligent bloke, supposedly. Well, didn’t you have to be to take on a maths MA? He was very good-looking, if you liked the sporty type. He played rugby, mad keenly. She didn’t really go for hefty muscles but Paul was lucky – he hadn’t (yet?) acquired that thick neck and meaty-shoulder look that she’d seen in occasional international matches on TV. Perhaps that came later, then when they gave up the game the next stage was their whole body mass turning to blubber. How unattractive. Pandora was conscious, suddenly, that her expression was possibly registering dislike. It was terribly inconvenient, this way she had of revealing all over her face what she was thinking. More than one person, on the receiving end, had said she’d make a good actor. She said she wouldn’t, because it was always what she really thought that showed not what she was pretending. If she could do the pretending, she wouldn’t upset people.
Like with the baring-teeth thing, she imagined how she would look from across the table. Not good. She didn’t feel real dislike; it was nothing personal, nothing at all to do with Paul himself, just her thinking with a painter’s eye: she was picturing a hugely flabby, naked man, lying on a sofa with a remote control in one hand and a Greggs steak pie in the other. A bit Lucian Freud, she thought, suddenly itching to have a paintbrush in her hand and to be smelling oil paint rather than the surrounding hundred designer perfumes. Except L. Freud probably wouldn’t have included the pie. That thought at least brought a genuine smile to her face.
‘Do you really want her back?’ Pandora was almost surprised at her own question. ‘I mean, come on Paul, how much do you really like suddenly being a grown-up with a family? Because I think that to Cass, you’ve seemed like you’re already opting out on the deal, not joining in like you promised you would. And now she’s left, be honest, doesn’t a little bit of you think, oh great I’m free again? I can go back to being a lad?’
Paul visibly flinched. ‘You don’t pull your punches do you, Panda?’
It was Pandora’s turn to flinch. No one outside her immediate family called her Panda. It was a pet name among them, intimate, childlike. Even Ollie hadn’t called her by that name (irritatingly, he’d considered Doreen to be an amusing nickname. Not funny). But then Paul was now, by way of Charlie, a sort of relation. He was family. Which was a relief, really, because that meant it was all right to be sitting here in a bar with him. Apart from the secrecy bit, obviously.
‘No, I don’t hold back,’ she agreed. ‘But didn’t you want honest? Or did you come all this way just so I’d say, “Oh poor Paul, how awful for you, I must get my vile, selfish sister to come running back to you.” Is that what you expected?’
He grinned, suddenly, his blue eyes sparkly, laughing at her. ‘Well no – I knew you might be pretty fierce! You’re really scary, did anyone ever tell you?’
Pandora treated him to her foxiest smile, the one no one ever expected. ‘Everybody tells me that, Paul! But no, really, tell me what you want me to do. I can’t promise anything, though. Cass and I – well, we don’t always agree on stuff.’
‘Yeah, but deep down . . . there’s loyalty, isn’t there?’
Pandora laughed, loudly enough for a group of the lunch-break women to turn and look at her. She got a swift impression of shiny, smeary make-up, of over-straightened, overstreaked hair gleaming with serum. Women as slicks of sticky product, surface oils. The longing for paint swished back again, stronger now.
‘Loyalty! God, Paul, you sound so public school! The way you just said that, like you’re talking about Queen-and-country stuff ! I bet you were in the CCF at school, running round the woods at fourteen with your bayonet fixed and camo paint on your face.’
Paul said nothing. He looked a bit hurt. ‘Sorry,’ Pandora said. ‘Have I touched a nerve?’
‘Actually I opted out of anything military on principle, if you really want to know. Which I doubt you do. But all the same, what’s so hilarious about loyalty?’ He said it very quietly. ‘Cass thinks I fancy other girls and that I’m forever off with them. I don’t and I’m not and I wouldn’t. I work on my course stuff. I do sport . . . OK, maybe too much of it, but she’s always known that’s a top priority. And maybe I hang out in the Union bar a bit too much – I can either fix that or she can come too. There’s no good reason why not, especially while Charlie’s still so small. That was what we agreed – that we’d be the same as normal for as long as we could. I just want the chance to have another go at getting it right. I want you to make sure she knows it – that’s all I’m asking. That’s if you can summon up enough loyalty to .. .’
‘Paul, I’m so sorry . . .’ Pandora could feel her eyes filling with unexpected, very unwelcome tears. Where did they come from? There were girl things that Pandora just didn’t do. Cutesy dresses, hair maintenance, heels, mascara and . . . tears. ‘It’s just that I haven’t had much experience of men who do fidelity long-term.’ She could have added ‘not with me, anyway’, but managed to keep that much to herself.
‘Oh shit, I’ve made you cry!’ Looking horribly alarmed and embarrassed, Paul grabbed her hand across the table. ‘Sorry!’ he said, overloudly. The cosmetic women on the next table turned and had a good stare, silent and unapologetically curious. Magnified by Pandora’s tears, the eyelashes on the nearest of them looked to her like a row of sharp black spines, as if someone had stolen them from a porcupine’s underbelly and marketed them as a hot fashion item. Agonizing, she thought; so ugly, these rigid-looking splinters. And right now, she felt lucky she hardly ever wore make-up, as she mopped her unshadowed eyelids with a tissue. She might look a bit pink and blotchy, but she wouldn’t have slimy, shiny slug trails of goo all over her face, no ugly smudgings of under-eye charcoal.
‘It’s not you,’ Pandora reassured Paul, extracting her hand from his. The warmth of it had surprised and slightly shocked her. From somewhere inside had come a longing to keep clinging to his hand, absorb that comforting heat. But it wasn’t really Paul’s hand she’d wanted, just . . . well, someone who loved her. She was over Ollie (just about) but not over being loved. Did that ever go? The thought that maybe it didn’t, but that maybe she’d be stuck with the wanting and not the reality for evermore, almost sent the tears into full flow again.
The girls on the next table turned away, no longer interested now it apparently wasn’t a lovers’ spat. Glass would not break, drink would not be thrown. Pandora sniffled into a torn tissue and said to Paul, ‘I’m OK really. It’s just, oh life and stuff. I’m broke, boyfriendless, got nowhere to live, nowhere to paint and the only job I’ve got is two nights in the local pub where Goths gather. But hey!’ She attempted half a smile. ‘It’s not all good news!’
‘You’ll find someone,’ Paul said, finishing his drink. ‘Sure to.’
‘You know what?’ she said. ‘You must be quite a romantic, deep down. Of all the things I said were wrong with my life, the lack of love is the only one you picked up on. Like the others didn’t matter. Actually, I suppose in the big forever life plan of things, none of them matter.’ She laughed, but it sounded unconvincing and squawky.
‘Especially not the lack of a man thing. But hey, I’ll talk to Cass for you. No worries. Just stay cool, don’t hassle her and I’ll help you sort her out. At the very least, you’ve got to be able to see Charlie. I might be a fairly crap sister at times, but I’ll always be a top aunt for him. I promise.’
The house was still a complete pit. Sara opened the fridge and picked out salami and tomatoes and a chunk of cheese, then wandered around eating them while making a moody start on clearing the kitchen surfaces.
‘Where the hell is everybody?’ she asked Conrad when he came in and took a beer from the fridge. ‘How can they disappear and leave it like this? Why do I get left with it all while they wander off? They’ll be back later, expecting there to be food. There bloody won’t be, that’s for sure.’
‘Just leave it then.’ Conrad shrugged. ‘Go out, leave them a note, tell them to get it done or bloody else. Jasper’s around – I can hear what he calls music. Panda said she’d be back later. The two of them can have a go at it together.’
‘They can but they’ll mind, even though it’s mostly their stuff. I feel really put on and I hate that feeling. I’m not here for domestic slavery. You know, Conrad, what I’d really like to do is paint again. It’s a feeling that’s been creeping up on me. I think it’s rubbed off from one of my students, Melissa – she’s completely new to it and her enthusiasm is so brilliant. She’s reminded me how it feels to get excited about the colours and the feel of the brushes and so on.’
‘The opposite to me, then.’ Conrad looked a bit moody. Was it, she wondered, because she would be invading his space? In the past they’d shared the studio quite easily.
‘I’d really love it if you moved your Dinky Car collection off that grotty table at the end of the studio so I can reclaim my old work area. Would that be OK? Would you mind sharing the space with me again?’ She poured a glass of iced water from the fridge and followed him outside to the pool.
‘You really want to paint again?’ he said. ‘But you haven’t for ages. Apart from the keen student, what’s really brought this on?’
She felt a bit shifty and shaded her eyes with her hands, cutting out the bright sunlight but really avoiding Conrad’s look. She could feel her phone in her skirt pocket. Why had she even mentioned this? Too late now. ‘Well . . . OK, I met someone. At the college. He’s called Ben, lives along the river here and he’s got a sister – at least I think he said it’s his sister – who’s opening a gallery and she’s looking for someone for the first exhibition, though I’m sure they’ll have tons of possibles to choose from. Anyway, I gave him a CD of my work. If he likes it . . . well . . .’
‘Oh he’ll like it, all right,’ Conrad said quietly. ‘What wouldn’t he like?’ Sara said nothing. She knew from his tone he didn’t mean the painting. She wished she hadn’t said anything. But how could she not? If anything came of this – in exhibition terms, that is – Conrad would wonder why she hadn’t mentioned it sooner.
‘Well, I suppose it’s really the sister who’s got to like it. But hey, I’m sure it’ll come to nothing,’ she said eventually. ‘I was thinking it was just a chance to offload all those leftover paintings from the Bath exhibition that never happened.’
‘Does he know you’re married to me?’
‘Er . . . no. I mean, he knows I’m married, but you know that at the college I’m McKinley. So he wouldn’t know about you.’
‘He asked if you were married then, did he? The subject came up?’
‘Conrad – what is this? Why are you cross-examining me?’
‘I’m just curious. That’s all.’ She wished he’d smile. He looked moody and suspicious, which was very unlike him. Why didn’t he tease her? Why didn’t he say, ‘Oh I suppose he’s yet another of the admiring husbands?’ like he did about practically every other man she knew?
‘It could be that he’ll really like my work, you know. Have you thought of that?’
‘Yes of course I have. I said so, didn’t I? That he’d like it? So he’s seen it then? When was this?’
‘No of course he hasn’t! But soon he will, I hope. I sent him a CD of photos.’
Conrad picked a yellow snapdragon flower and played with it, opening and closing its bunny-rabbit mouth. He didn’t look at her.
She moved closer and put her arm round him, hugged him. ‘Conrad, I wear a wedding ring. Which bit of that would say “this woman’s available”?’ At which point her phone rang. Sara felt her heart rate double. She didn’t recognize the flashed-up number.
‘Hello?’ she murmured, very much wanting to rush into the house, be somewhere private.
‘Sara – it’s me! Lizzie! Can you come and get me?’ Her sister’s voice was both a relief and a disappointment.
‘Lizzie – where are you? Where’ve you been all night?’
‘Long story, darling! I’m in Chelsea. I bought some big vase things and I can’t get them home. Please come and get me – I can’t afford a cab all that way! I’m on the King’s Road, near the Town Hall.’
Sara thought about the alternative – cleaning, clearing, mucking out the Augean stables, placating Conrad . . . ‘OK – I’ll be along. But try and get to the Putney side of World’s End will you, or you’ll have to chip in for the congestion charge.’
*
Lizzie was sitting between her pair of tall vases on the grass at the edge of Parson’s Green.
‘You look like some kind of weird table decoration!’ Sara called to her as she stopped the car just off the King’s Road. ‘Are you sure they’re big enough? What will you do with them?’
‘I don’t know yet,’ Lizzie said as she clambered to her feet. She looked tired, weary, Sara thought. She opened the Golf ‘s boot, shoved the back seats down and moved a bag of garden-centre compost aside to make room.
‘How did you get them to here from wherever you bought them?’ Sara asked. ‘You couldn’t have carried them, surely. They’ve got to be nearly three feet high and not the easiest shape to lug around.’
‘Marvin dropped me off here,’ Lizzie told her.
‘Marvin? And he is?’ Sara wedged the compost bag
between the vases to stop them rolling around and closed the boot. Lizzie was already in the car, leaning back on the headrest, eyes closed. She smelled a bit . . . stale, in need of a shower. What had she been doing? What on earth did Jasper make of his old-hippy mother, staying out for random nights with possibly random men?
‘Marvin and I go way back,’ Lizzie said, not opening her eyes. ‘But . . . I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing him again. There are some . . . well you just have to know when to call time, don’t you?’
Sara pulled out on to the King’s Road and joined the tail end of the school-run traffic. Lovely, she thought, a nice slow ride back home.
‘Though of course you don’t know, do you, Sara? You’ve always been little Mrs Good-Wife. Never looked at anyone else since Conrad came along.’
‘I’ve got male friends. One or two of them I’ve even fancied a bit in a what-if kind of way. I’m a normal human, Lizzie,’ Sara told her, slowing to look at the Victorian nightdresses hanging in the window of Lunn Antiques. ‘I just don’t get the big deal in you sleeping with all your exes. What are you looking for with them that you didn’t find when you were with them first time round?’
‘Oh I don’t know.’ Lizzie yawned. ‘It’s just about . . . still being desirable, I think. Or at least I did think. What I think right now is I’m tired of it all. There isn’t any better sex out there than even the worst you get with someone you really love.’
‘At last!’ Sara laughed at her. ‘You’re catching up with the rest of us! Taken you a while, hasn’t it?’
Lizzie sighed. ‘You’ve just got no idea how lucky you are, Sara,’ she said. Sara’s phone, which was propped up in the drinks holder, rang. ‘Got it,’ Lizzie said, grabbing it before Sara could get to it. ‘Hello?’ Sara held her breath. It was probably Conrad. Or one of the girls. Or Marie.
‘Er . . . no, I’m Lizzie. No . . . no, right number, I’m Sara’s big sister! And you?’
‘Give me the phone Lizzie!’ Sara hissed, turning left abruptly and without signalling and stopping on a double yellow line.
Lizzie handed over the phone, smirking in an annoyingly knowing way.
‘Hello. Hi Ben!’ Sara was aware of sounding overkeen and a bit high. ‘Er . . . oh good! You liked them. Wow!’ Lizzie made a face and giggled, mouthing ‘Wow?’ at her.
‘No . . . sorry, it’s my sister. She’s being really stupid. We’re in my car.’ Sara slapped Lizzie quite hard on her arm. Why did he have to call when she wasn’t alone?
‘OK – yes, great. See you soon. Bye.’ She pressed the off button, twice, and put the phone back. Without comment, she started the car again, did a neat three-point turn and went back to the King’s Road.
‘Go on, say something then,’ Sara said to Lizzie. ‘You’re almost exploding with it.’
‘I’m saying nothing,’ Lizzie said, smothering laughter.
‘It’s not what you think.’
‘I didn’t think it was. But . . .’
‘But?’
‘Well it must be, mustn’t it, or you wouldn’t have said that. Not to mention you’ve gone all pink and flustered. Your hands are trembling on that steering wheel. I’m surprised we’re not up the back of that Volvo.’
‘No really. It isn’t anything. It’s just about paintings, for a new gallery. Ben likes my work and there’s an exhibition possibility coming up. That’s all.’
‘Ben. Let me guess, he’s about your age, attractive, divorced . . .’
‘Er . . . well sort of but that doesn’t mean . . .’
‘Does he know you’re married to Conrad?’
‘That’s what Conrad said! What’s the big deal there? I do exist in my own right, you know!’
‘Oh come on Sara! You know it’s always the big deal. Like would any magazine, TV show and so on have been interested in Coleen McLoughlin if she wasn’t with Wayne Rooney? Get real! The Conrad connection would guarantee a private-view guest list that would have all the art wallahs taking notice. And editorial coverage. Exactly what a new gallery needs.’
‘Well thanks for your faith in my talent, sister dear! And no as it happens, he doesn’t know I have any connection with Conrad.’ Sara felt upset, hurt.
‘Ah . . . so he likes you, then. And you like him. Well it’s only natural; don’t feel bad. Conrad’s getting older. You looking for someone else is just nature’s way.’
Sara slowed. Putney Bridge was jammed with traffic. People were walking in the road – something had happened. ‘But I’m not looking for someone else,’ she insisted.
‘Subconsciously, you are, darling. It’s like at the end of a pregnancy when even the idlest domestic slut starts cleaning behind the fridge. Instinct. Nothing you can do about it. You’re anticipating a partner vacancy.’
‘That’s a horrible thing to say, Lizzie! Really vile and completely untrue!’
‘OK.’ Lizzie shrugged. ‘Well in that case you’re going to have to admit you’re looking for a bit of good old-fashioned fun with someone your own age. Who could blame you now Conrad’s gone tame? He doesn’t paint, he doesn’t go out much, he’s smoking again. I think it adds up to losing the will . . . I hesitate to say it, possibly losing the will to live.’
Ahead in the road, people were getting out of their cars and looking at something. It wasn’t an accident: they were smiling, pointing, watching as three men and a woman carefully herded a lost swan off the bridge and down to the slipway, where it could get back to the Thames.
‘People are so much kinder to animals than to humans, aren’t they,’ Sara commented to Lizzie. ‘If that had been a confused old man wandering about, nobody would have helped him. They’d just have beeped their horns and got cross. It’s so unfair.’
‘Life is, Sara sweetie. It just is.’
*
The house was clean; an unexpected delight to come home to. So the tidy fairies had visited after all while Sara had been out collecting Lizzie.
‘Wow, this is wonderful! I must go out more often when it’s a complete wreck!’ Sara said to Pandora who was in the kitchen, washing rocket for a salad. Sara was touched; not only was the house back to the state she liked, but Pandora had organized dinner for everyone. Perhaps there was an upside to having a house full of people after all. Panda had bought lamb for a barbecue and chunks of it were marinating in something interestingly fragrant and herby on the worktop. The glass door of the oven showed a big bubbling dish of dauphinoise potatoes. It looked as if working in that restaurant, only a spit (in all senses) away from Mr Big-Deal Celebrity Chef had paid off.
Pandora smiled at her. ‘Well it was easy. Xavier came over for an extra couple of hours earlier. Him and me and Jasper did it together – it doesn’t take long with three, does it?’
Sara gave her a suspicious look: since when had Pandora been keen on domestic labour? When she’d lived in the house as a teenager, her idea of tidying her room had been to put all loose items in a bin bag – not to be thrown out but to be retrieved for use as and when she needed them. At one time, Sara had counted nine overloaded rubbish sacks in there, randomly stuffed with stray clothes, CDs, magazines and used plates complete with toast crumbs. Only actually starting to load these into the car on the pretence of taking them to the charity shop had scared the girl into screaming out of the house in protest, promising to go through her possessions and find suitable space for them.
‘So did you pay Xav or do I owe him?’ Sara asked, as she took a bottle of chilled white wine from the fridge.
‘Oh, he said not to worry about it. He only really came to borrow a DVD from me, some movie I happened to have that he wanted to see.’ Pandora sounded peculiarly breezy, as if Xavier calling at the house on a casual social mission was an everyday thing. Perhaps it now would be. That was fine by Sara, though if she was going to have to look for another cleaner she hoped he’d give her some warning. She hadn’t ever expected to keep him for long; he was only cleaning to finance his way through law school.
‘Right – so while he was here he thought he’d just put in a few unpaid hours?’ Sara struggled with the bottle’s cork and concentrated on hauling it out. She decided not to pursue the topic of Xavier. If he and Pandora were getting together, that might be a good thing. Panda could be such a prickly girl; whatever it took to keep her as relaxed and cheerful as she was at this moment had to be worthwhile. She’d gone to all this trouble too, which was very sweet of her and quite unexpected. Panda’s past ideas of dinner preferences had tended to need the film pierced or a bloke on a moped knocking at the door.
The day’s warmth had continued into the evening. Everyone except Conrad agreed there was still enough heat in the air to have dinner outside on the pool terrace and he had been firmly overruled. Sara glanced at him now and then as he ate in silence, looking mentally a bit absent. Was he sulking? What was to sulk about? Surely not still the Ben thing. But now he was very quiet and kept looking down the garden towards the studio. The huge old oak had burst into leaf in the last few days, and the studio was now almost hidden behind it. You couldn’t see the tree house at all. Perhaps he was hankering after doing some work again, after all, she thought. If that was what he really wanted, it would be a good thing. He needed something to absorb his mind – perhaps it would give him a way to resume normal service, stop feeling overwhelmed by the demons of age.
‘. . . And he’s still alive!’ Lizzie had been twittering in the background for a while now. Sara’s attention returned at these words.
‘Who is?’ she asked, in case it was someone she knew as well.
‘Oh Sara! Do keep up!’ Lizzie squealed. ‘Is she always like this?’ she asked Cassandra. ‘Just because you’re a granny now, darling, doesn’t mean you can let your mind wander off like this! I was talking about Bagshot Brian, you remember – from when I was in my teens! We went to the Isle of Wight Festival together, me all in flowers and a bell round my neck. He was my older man.’ She glanced sideways at Conrad. ‘You see, Conrad, even I’ve had one.’
‘You’ve had more than one of everything going, according to you,’ he said, grouchily. Jasper, big-eyed and wary, looked nervously at his mother, and put his iPod earplugs firmly in, shoving his long dark hair aside impatiently in his hurry to block out the conversation. Sara didn’t blame him. He’d probably heard Lizzie’s old-lover descriptions a million times before. If not, seventeen was a vulnerable enough age for a boy, full of embarrassment and flying hormones, without his mother making things worse.
‘Yes I have!’ Lizzie agreed with Conrad delightedly, mistaking his comment for admiration. ‘I’ve had lots of everyone! Share the love, I suppose they’d say today. That’s always been my motto, nothing new about it. And don’t tell me it hasn’t been yours, over the years. Don’t think I don’t know.’
‘Only before Sara,’ he told her.
‘Yes, well you had plenty of years before Sara.’
‘La la-la!’ Pandora sang, putting her fingers in her ears.
‘Cut the information now! Nobody like wants to know about their parents?’
‘And . . . er . . . I’ll go and check on Charlie.’ Cassandra hurriedly picked up some of the plates and vanished swiftly into the house.
‘See? You can still clear a room in thirty seconds with your vacuous talk of endless sex. And where did you spend last night? Don’t you ever bloody stop?’ Conrad grumped, lighting a cigarette.
‘Oh good grief, lighten up, man, will you?’ Lizzie hissed at him. ‘Is this because Sara’s getting back into painting? Why aren’t you pleased for her?’
‘I am,’ he said. ‘Of course I am, don’t be ridiculous.’
‘Hmmm. Well in that case are you simply going mental and moody now you’re approaching the three score and ten? You’ll end up one of those old sods who pushes people out of the way on the street shouting “I’m eighty-five you know,” as if we’re supposed to be impressed at the number. Nearly seventy ain’t even that old, babe.’
‘Enough!’ Conrad slammed his hand on the table and got up, stalking down the garden towards the studio.
‘Thanks Lizzie,’ Sara said. ‘It was a lovely evening till you started.’
‘Me? What did I say? I was just making frivolous conversation! I don’t get this down in Cornwall with Jack, you know, we still have a laugh!’
Then why aren’t you there with him, Sara almost said. She decided not to. It was enough that one of them was in a vile mood.
‘He’s very sensitive about this age thing, isn’t he?’ Lizzie took the last piece of avocado from the salad bowl and bit a chunk off it. ‘It’s not a big deal, for heaven’s sake. He’s still well and good-looking and can work if he wants to or not if he doesn’t. What the fuck’s he got to complain about?’ She gave Sara a sly glance, one that was close to saying ‘apart from his wife looking elsewhere . . .’
‘I don’t know.’ Sara felt weary. ‘He keeps deciding he’s giving things up.’
‘What? For a while, like Lent? What things?’
‘No – for good. Travel and work and. . .’ She wasn’t going to add ‘life’ or ‘sanity’ to the list. What Lizzie had said had made her feel more uneasy about Conrad. If even Lizzie could pick up on him changing, then it must be true. He’d certainly, if today was anything to go by, given up on good manners. He’d always been friendly and warm to Lizzie before.
Sara and Lizzie started clearing the rest of the debris from the table. Somewhere in the back of her head Sara was aware, as she went in and out of the house, of a chopping noise somewhere not too far away – a neighbouring garden, she assumed. There was some slight question as to who would be demolishing something in the dark, but she felt, vaguely, that the noise was probably further away than it seemed, carried by the night and the river, nothing to make her investigate.
‘Let’s open another bottle and stay outside,’ Lizzie suggested, peering into the fridge and checking wine labels. ‘Get a bit pissed and all cheered up again.’
Jasper was now stretched out on a teak lounger without having bothered to get the cushions for it from the cupboard beside the pool shower. He would have stripy marks on his skin where the slats pressed against him. Briefly Sara thought of the marks Stuart had once described, the ones he’d like to see etched into her skin from the sharp application of willow on flesh. She saw again the marks on Marie’s wrist from Angus’s handcuffs. Why were some men so tricksy? Did the partners of anyone she knew come into the category labelled normal?
Cass and Pandora brought coffee out to the terrace, where Lizzie was opening another bottle of Cloudy Bay. The silence was blissful, Sara thought, aware that the chopping had stopped. But suddenly, that peace was cut by a massive, whooshing flash and an explosion. Monumental flames flared up beside the oak tree.
‘Dad! What the fuck . . . ?’ Cassandra got up and screamed. ‘Noooooo!’ The next shriek came from Pandora. She hurled the mug of coffee she was carrying on to the table and raced past Sara and Cass down towards the studio.
‘Dad! What are you doing? Stop it!’ she wailed. Cassandra ran after her, catching up with her sister and with Sara. Sara saw the two girls exchange fearful glances.
‘It’s the tree house!’ Pandora yelled. ‘He’s cut it down
and burned it! WHY?’
‘Where is he, is more to the point!’ Sara felt frantic, looking around but barely focusing; there was no sign of Conrad – had all that hinting about death been leading up to this? Personal immolation sparked off by a stupid sulk? Then he appeared from the far side of the crackling, sparkling fire, covered in sooty grime, his teeth startlingly white as he grinned at them all.
‘It was cold!’ he explained, waving a red plastic fuel can at them. Sara carefully stepped forward, like a brave cop approaching a nervous gunman in a movie involving bank heists.
‘Give me the can, Conrad,’ she murmured calmly, putting one hand on his arm and cautiously removing the can from his fingers. She got the impression he was trembling. What the hell was he up to? What kind of logic said that being a bit chilly meant you climbed a tree, pulled down a rotting tree house and risked an agonizing death by starting a blaze with a gallon of lawnmower fuel? Behind her, she heard Cassandra switching on the garden hose, aiming it at the flames. In the firelight, she could see Pandora was crying. The tree house wasn’t all he’d burned, either. Lying among the flames she could see a heap of Conrad’s paintbrushes, precious, years-old brushes that he’d loved and cherished. He’d burned, she realized, his career.
‘Come on, Conrad, let’s go back to the house. For a moment there, I really thought you’d set yourself on fire.’
‘God no, Sara, are you crazy? That’s a terrible way to go. I won’t be choosing that one.’