42

“Love looks not with the eyes but with the mind, and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind”

—William Shakespeare, A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Matthew’s commission is finished. The couriers came to package and case the canvases for delivery to Catlin’s gallery last week. One I was happy with, the other perhaps not so much for I found something jarring about it. A discordance as though the turmoil of my mood had transmitted itself through my fingers to the canvas, leaving a hint of unhappiness concealed in the curl of a wave or hidden in a rift in the rock.

Normally I would’ve been at the gallery to meet the client. Not this time. I couldn’t face it, or rather him. I could hear the confusion in Cait’s voice when I asked her to handle things for me but for once she didn’t challenge. She didn’t tell me how unprofessional it was or how much it could damage my reputation—as if I actually have one—or all the other things I already knew. I wonder, did she sense that something else lay behind my words, as she didn’t question me at all other than to ask, “Are you all right?”

The truth is I don’t know what I was most scared of; seeing Matthew and feeling the burning attraction of before, or perhaps not feeling it. Whatever the reason I felt the need to stay away and now I’m left with a sense of loss, as if I’ve let something wonderful slip from my grasp. That could just be wishful thinking on my part for we’ve had no more direct contact since his visit here, only emailed images and updates that were warmly professional. Nothing more.

It shames me to admit it but my days feel almost more empty and desolate now than they did when Tom first left me. Maybe it’s the combination of his leaving and my project ending that gives me this sense that I’m in limbo, waiting.

The twins have gone out for the day—again. They’re becoming so bored with life here. I’ve spent the morning clearing up and rearranging the studio for whatever comes next. I’m dressed for the task in old jeans ripped at the knee and a discarded T-shirt of Tom’s, which I’ve knotted at my hip. It was freshly laundered so it doesn’t carry the smell of him. I couldn’t bear that. My hair started the day caught up in a scarf. Now loose strands have escaped and are tucked behind my ears, leaving my scar on full display.

It’s a clear day, bright and warm for the time of year. I’ve worked with the door and windows open to let in the air. Since knowing my visitor was Joe this spot has once again become my place of quiet solitude. I’m still fixated, I still have a real and unsettling puzzle to solve but it’s lost its sense of immediate threat.

My mood has lifted once again in that strange unpredictable rollercoaster of emotions that’s part of who I am. I hated it at first, those mood swings that sent me from excitement or joy one moment to devastation the next. It’s improved over the years, my keel has become more even but still I shift more quickly than most from despair to happiness, from anxiety to gay abandon. Today I am abandoned in more ways than one.

Even as I’m thinking these thoughts I hear the crunch of gravel and with it comes the familiar lurch in my chest. I go to the door expecting to see Bill or maybe even Tom, since I ignored his last text. Instead it’s Matthew. I hold my breath and watch him.

Matthew walking toward my studio, Matthew caught in winter sunlight, Matthew with that same tentative smile playing at his lips. He’s wearing jeans and a tweed jacket—I’ve always had a weakness for tweed—and despite all my resolve, the sight of him makes my heart sing.

He stops a few feet from the door and looks at me. I sense that he’s nervous.

Neither of us speaks. For the moment we’re the same people we’ve always been, nothing has changed. All I need to do is greet him with calm detachment, warmly but perhaps with a hint of polite confusion—whatever is he doing here—and nothing need happen. We’ll discuss the paintings, I’ll hope he likes them, he’ll insist that he does, a polite handshake, a goodbye and he’ll be gone. Nothing need happen at all.

“Isabel . . .” he finally says.

It’s only my name but it’s enough.

I let my eyes meet his. Now I’m almost lost.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I say and my voice sounds soft and hoarse in the silence.

“I know,” he says and he takes a small step toward me, his leap of faith.

The heat of his lips against mine ends all my doubts and resolutions. I have never felt so sure and certain about anything in my life. I reach my arms up around his neck and mold my body into his. A little part of me registers that I must look a sight, all disheveled and grubby from working but I don’t care. We stand in the driveway and kiss, here in the open where anyone could see us but I don’t care.

I take his hand, leading him into the studio. I push the door closed behind us and he turns, gently pressing me back against the door. I’m pinned by his hips and he runs his hands up my bare arms before cupping my face in a way that could remind me of Tom. Luckily, there’s something different in his touch, it’s less proprietorial somehow. Not once does he touch my scar or so much as look at it, instead his eyes are fixed on mine and I’m trapped like a moth in the light of his gaze. He pulls the scarf from my hair and bends to kiss me again with an urgency that matches my own and I slide my tongue along the ridge of his teeth until it finds that tiny chip at last.

I feel the pull of my old impulsiveness, that shuddering, reckless excitement as my boundaries and inhibitions fall away. It’s been so long since I’ve let myself feel like this. My fingers find the button of his jeans and I see his eyes snap open with surprise. This time it’s he who pulls away.

“Are you sure about this?” he whispers.

I could still stop this. I could continue my pretense that I don’t want this. In answer I press my lips against his and slide my fingers between the buttons of his shirt to feel the silky heat of his skin.

He lifts me up and I curl my legs around him as we all but fall on my old sofa. It lets out a soft gasp of disgust as we land. Spoilsport, I won’t let it ruin things.

He unknots my T-shirt and his hands are on my skin bringing me alive. He dips his head and his lips graze the skin of my stomach and I’m lost.

We make love there on the sofa, our bodies each finding the rhythm of the other as though we’ve done this a thousand times before. The sofa’s small and cramped and spiteful on our skin. It doesn’t matter. We laugh and we kiss and I feel at last as if some missing part of me has found its way home.

When it’s over and we’re lying in each other’s arms I feel a fleeting dread that maybe that was it. That now we’ve given it free rein the attraction will be spent and we’ll be strangers again. I still find it hard to believe I can feel this way about someone I’ve met no more than a handful of times. Then he turns to look at me and I know, without any doubt, that he feels the same.

He smoothes the hair back from my face.

“I tried to stay away, I know you’re married and this is wrong. . .”

I take his hand and press his palm to my lips. He doesn’t need to say anything. I understand him completely because I’ve felt the same irresistible pull. Like I’ve known him and loved him before, perhaps in another lifetime if I believed in things like that.

This has made everything so much more complicated, still I’m glad. My father’s words come into my mind, his warning not to settle, to take happiness where you find it. Oh, I’ve certainly done that and now we’ll see where it leads. There’s no going back from this and I can hear the spit and crackle of my bridges burning.

Matthew is looking at me with such tenderness, his fingers tracing the line of my jaw and the curve of my lips. I need to be honest with him. He’ll know from Caitlin’s promotional efforts that something dreadful happened to me in the past. I need him to understand what he’s getting into.

I open my mouth to speak, “There are things you need to know about me . . .”

He places his fingers gently across my lips.

“Shush,” he says, “I don’t need to know anything. I don’t care what you may’ve done or what might have happened to you. I don’t need you to tell me all the things you think are wrong about you. I don’t care. To me you’re perfect as you are. You don’t need to lay yourself bare or tell me your secrets. I want to unwrap you like a gift, to get to know you little by little while you do the same with me. All I know is we’re meant to be together.”

No one, not even Tom, has ever spoken to me that way before. Not had doubts or concerns because of what happened to me, not needed to know the sordid details or how it affected my life—or might affect theirs. It’s a breath of fresh air and I’m grateful.

“One thing you do need to know is my marriage is over, Tom’s left me,” I tell him, and then hastily add in case he misunderstands, “That’s not what this is about, please don’t think that’s why this happened.”

He smiles at that. “It never would’ve crossed my mind. I know you feel the same way as me. I’ve seen it in your eyes.”

I have to know so ask him, “What about you, have you got someone in your life?”

I hold my breath. I can’t bear to hear there’s a wife somewhere, or worse that there are children.

“There was someone for a while but she died,” he says. “We married young, we had fun and it was good for a while but we were starting to, not exactly drift apart, more like grow out of each other. We’d started to want different things from life. We weren’t exactly fighting or anything like that but there was a lot of tension. Then there was the accident and it was all over.”

I feel sad for him but recognize within myself a distasteful little stab of relief, which shames me. I hold his hand more tightly and do both him and her the courtesy of not asking anything more.

“Don’t look like that. It was sad but it was all such a long time ago now. I’m glad for the time we had but I’ve sometimes wondered how much longer we would’ve lasted. She wasn’t happy anymore and if I’m honest neither was I. The only thing I’m relieved about is that there weren’t any children. That would’ve made everything so much worse.”

I feel the familiar pain at the mention and picture the pretty dark-haired babies he’d never have with me.

He misreads my expression. “I don’t mean I don’t like children, it’s just it would’ve been so hard for them whichever way things went. Losing their mother or, if that hadn’t happened, the upset of divorce which I’m sure would’ve come eventually.”

I have to torture myself with the question. “Did you want children?”

He hesitates for a moment before answering.

“Not back then I didn’t, we weren’t ready, and I don’t really think about it now to be honest. If it happened with the right person, that’d be great but if it didn’t I wouldn’t care too much. Anyway, what’s with the third degree?”

I shut up and kiss him again. Let’s not spoil things before they’ve even really started.

He kisses me back and I know this is where I want to be, cocooned from the world forever.

All too soon we’re gathering our clothes from the floor and reassembling some sense of normality. I coil up my hair and hold it while Matthew hunts for my scarf down the side of the sofa. He holds it up triumphantly and I see his cheeks are flushed. He’s lost the tentative smile and gentle hesitation of earlier. I can feel the energy coming off him. He’s charged and elated and his eyes shine with something that puzzles me for a moment for it looks surprisingly like victory. Men are so strange sometimes.

He twirls me round to bind my hair with the scarf and as he does he blows gently on the back of my neck. For a moment the magic is shattered by a skewer of fear and a fleeting memory. I spin round startled but he gathers me into his arms, oblivious to my panic and kisses it clean away.