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Terri picked up a feather boa and draped it round her neck, flicking it back over her shoulder. There was a mirror hanging from a hook further along the shelves and she went to examine the effect, turning a little this way and that, gauging the effect from different angles. It was the Monday afternoon and she was alone again in the studio. Peter had not returned from lunch and Luc had gone to Marseille to visit a supplier. Walking back to her office, she was idling along Peter’s jumbled collection of artefacts and props. She removed the boa and tried on a succession of hats, then pulled out a piece of exotic fabric to find that it was a long silk smoking jacket. ‘Oh, very elegant,’ she murmured. On a lower shelf she found a tumbling stack of Venetian masks and picked through them, holding a couple against her face, checking them in the mirror. Then, buried at the bottom of the pile, she found the missing notebook for 1973. So it hadn’t been destroyed, just mislaid. She’d created an intrigue where there was none. Probably everything she’d thought was odd or suspicious could be just as easily explained.
She flicked through it and noticed that yet another page had been torn out. But it was the following sheet which really caught her attention. The reverse of the removed drawing must have been covered in soft pencil and some lines of the sketch and of Peter’s annotation had been transferred, ghost-like, to the paper beneath. Through the smudging and confusion of marks, the drawing suggested the outlines of two people, one taller and female; the second smaller, little more than a child and, underneath, were two clear initials: J and T. Terri glanced towards the door, quickly replaced the masks as near to their original position as possible and took the book into her office, pulling the door to behind her.
She stared at the initials. J and T. T for Tom? It must be. From the drawing she thought she could see the similarity with the features of the boy. So who was J? She studied the shadow drawing till her eyes ached but it was too hazy to make out. Then she heard the unmistakeable sounds of Peter returning, quickly slipped the book into her bag and returned to her work. He’d been courteous to her that morning, almost cheerful, as if the quarrel of the previous week had been forgotten. But she wasn’t going to be fooled again into thinking that they’d formed the kind of relationship where they could genuinely talk. It was going to be quite impossible to mention the notebook entry to Peter. In any case, he was intentionally hiding something and the clue to what that something was might be in these notebooks.
Collecting her things together at the end of the afternoon, Terri surreptitiously slipped the rest of the damaged notebooks into her bag and took them back to her room. After carefully checking through them for more ghostly imprints, she found two more pencil shadows which were just legible: one said Tom and the other Josie.
Josie. So who was Josie? The question distracted her all evening. An older sister perhaps? But if so, why had she been removed from the record? Did she die too? But that would be surprising, surely: two children from one family? Or maybe she hadn’t died. Maybe... All Celia’s hints about Terri being part of the family fell into place. She thought she’d been stupid not to realise before. Even Peter had started questioning her about her mother. Terri fought the implication, laughed at the absurdity of it, but found herself inevitably returning to the same conclusions. If Madeleine had indeed given birth to another child who lived - a daughter - that child if still alive would be about the age Terri’s mother would have been. Terri snorted, shaking her head. Really it was too preposterous to take seriously. There was no way that her mother could have been Madeleine’s daughter. Why would Celia even think it? And what had happened to that daughter that might make it remotely possible?
But the thought lodged in her brain, tenacious and insistent, and she began to dredge back through the memories from her childhood. What did she actually know about her mother? Bits and pieces that amounted to nothing really. So how could she be sure? There again, Terri had never really wanted to know anything about her mother, not after what she’d done. She simply didn’t think about her.
But the issue would not be so conveniently dismissed. By the time she went to bed, having argued herself round in circles, she reluctantly accepted that the only way to settle her mind was to go and see the eccentric Celia. And it wasn’t a visit she relished.
*
On the Sunday afternoon, Terri walked up to the pigeonnier, knocked three times firmly on the door and waited. She glanced round Celia’s personal domain: a scrap of dusty garden, unkempt and bordered by a low stone wall. A wooden seat, painted a vivid purple, stood against the wall and, to the side of the door, a couple of gaudy glazed pots contained sickly plants. The high afternoon sun glared off stone and wood and Terri shifted restlessly in the heat. There was no answer to her knock and the waiting ate into her resolve; this had been a stupid idea.
A head appeared through a window high above her.
‘Oh it’s you, Terri,’ Celia called down. ‘How nice to see you. Come in. It’s not locked. Keep coming through and up to the top.’
Terri opened the door and stepped into a room which looked dark after the sunshine outside. She waited while her eyes adjusted and saw that she was in an open-plan living room: a large square space with a sitting area, a small table and two chairs, and a run of kitchen units along the far wall. To the right, at the back, was a staircase. She climbed to the first floor where a landing gave access to two doors and yet another staircase took her up to a large bright square room.
Celia’s studio made her brother’s look tidy. There were paintings propped up everywhere, put down wherever opportunity presented, and every surface was covered in artistic paraphernalia. On the table against the side wall an old laptop computer stood open, red paint smudged across its blank screen, both the table-top and keyboard swamped in odd fragments of paper and articles torn from art magazines; a colour-stained painting cloth hung over the back of the chair in front of it. At the far side of the room, at a huge wooden easel, Celia, brush in one hand, cigarette in the other, contemplated a broad canvas. She turned her head as Terri appeared and put her brush down.
‘Welcome to my eyrie,’ she declaimed. ‘Coffee? Tea?’ She made for a cupboard on which stood a tray with red wine, whisky, a bottle of mineral water and a selection of glasses. Another tray had an electric kettle on it, coffee, tea bags and a couple of mugs. She waved the hand with the cigarette in a circular motion. ‘Or would you rather have wine?’
‘No, tea would be fine, thanks.’
‘Find a seat...if you can. Throw something on the floor.’
Terri glanced around.
‘Black,’ Celia said, dangling tea bags in each of two mugs. ‘If you want milk I’m afraid you’ll have to go down to the kitchen for it. Long-life stuff. Disgusting.’
‘Black’s fine. Thanks.’
Celia removed the teabags, took a final drag of her cigarette and stubbed it out in a dish. She handed one of the mugs to Terri. ‘There’s a chair under those sketches there.’
‘I’m OK standing, thanks.’
‘Really? Is there something the matter?’
‘No.’
Celia raised enquiring eyebrows but said nothing, manoeuvred her way back to the high stool by her easel and perched herself on top of it. She sipped her tea, her eyes not leaving Terri.
‘Enjoy the barbeque, did you?’
‘Yes...thank you.’
‘It sounded jolly. Though I’m not sure Angela does jolly exactly.’ Despite a line of amusement to the set of her mouth, her gaze was intense, the resemblance to Peter unnerving.
‘You didn’t go,’ said Terri.
‘No, that’s right, I didn’t.’
There was an uncomfortable silence.
‘You want me to look at your paintings,’ said Terri. ‘Any in particular?’
‘Are you in a hurry?’ Celia smiled but appeared to be disappointed. ‘I’ll have to find the ones I was thinking of putting into the exhibition. Though you could suggest anything really.’ She dumped the mug on her table and got up, wandering round the room, peering at pictures. ‘Except the ones I showed last year. Have a nose around, do. Five I can put in. I’d appreciate an opinion.’ She bent over to look through a stack of paintings balanced against the leg of a table, pulling out a couple as she did so. ‘I hope I sell a few this year. I’m running out of space to store them.’
Terri, cradling her mug, slowly worked her way round the room, glancing at paintings as she went. Any comparison with Peter’s work would have been risible; Celia applied her paint quickly and thickly. There was none of Peter’s nuance and delicate handling, nor apparently of his careful draughtsmanship and planning. These were broad, colourful statements: flowers and landscapes, farm buildings and town terraces, recognisable but loosely painted, crude even.
‘Very expressive brushwork,’ Terri observed politely.
Celia paused in her search, looked up and gave a beaming smile. ‘Thank you. I don’t like to take too long over a painting. Makes it more spontaneous I think...’ She bent over again, rooting through a stack of pictures. ‘Ah, good, here it is. I wondered where this picture had got to.’ She picked up a number of canvases and moved them over to one side, lining them up. ‘These were my suggestions. What do you think? You can be honest. Painting’s a very subjective thing. Peter’s paintings are wonderful of course, but I don’t have his patience...or talent. I don’t pretend I do.’
Terri ran her eyes from one picture to the next. ‘Have you been painting long?’
‘Donkey’s years. I started when my husband walked out. It was therapy. Though I was better off without him; he was a bastard.’
Terri glanced up at the suddenly acerbic remark but Celia had wandered back to stand in front of her easel and was blandly studying the current painting.
‘I think I’ve used too much raw sienna in this picture,’ she said. She tipped the last of the tea into her mouth and turned to look at Terri. ‘Can I get you some more dear?’
‘No, I’m fine, thank you.’
Celia grunted, picked up a brush and began to lift some paint off her canvas, tongue protruding a little with the concentration. ‘Did you ever look for that history of the house I told you about?’ she said, still staring avidly at the tip of her brush.
‘No.’
‘No?’ The word held the clear note of disbelief. Celia continued working however, dabbing the brush on an old cloth to remove the paint before reapplying it to the painting.
‘Celia?’
‘Mm?’
Terri waited for the woman to look at her. ‘Who was Josie?’
Celia stared at her for the fraction of a second then turned back to the painting.
‘Why dear?’ she enquired, mildly. ‘Have you found a painting of her?’
‘I found...a reference to her.’
Celia turned and smiled knowingly. ‘Now you’re being coy.’
‘I don’t seem to have the monopoly on that.’
With a fleeting expression impossible to pin down, Celia returned to the picture and continued dabbing at it with her brush. Terri was increasingly convinced that the woman’s apparent absence of mind was faked - a useful way of avoiding questions and being underestimated. It was becoming frankly irritating.
‘There, that’s better.’ Celia wiped the brush and leaned back to regard her painting more objectively. ‘I’ll use a different green there...perhaps with a bit of lemon yellow though I’m afraid all this fiddling will make it look overworked.’
‘So who was Josie, Celia?’ Terri pressed. She abandoned her tea and the pictures she was supposed to be examining, and walked across to stand by the easel, obliging Celia to look at her.
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘Isn’t it what this is all about: the comparisons with Madeleine? The suggestion that I look in her studio? The way you look at me...the way Peter looks at me now because of what I guess you’ve said to him. So who was Josie and what happened to her?’
‘Have you asked Peter?’
‘No. I’m asking you.’ Terri threw her hands in the air and shook them in angry frustration. ‘For God’s sake, why will nobody talk around here?’
Celia paused and her eyes rolled towards Terri then away and around the room. Finally she got up and walked across to the cupboard, pulled the stopper out of the red wine bottle and poured some into each of two glasses. She came back and handed one to Terri who accepted it wordlessly.
‘Josephine was Peter and Madeleine’s daughter,’ she said. ‘Simple as that.’
‘So what happened to her?’
‘Nobody knows.’ Celia drank from the glass, savouring it in her mouth before swallowing. ‘After having her, Madeleine had a series of miscarriages. She became frail and I came to stay. My husband had walked out...I told you that, didn’t I? Anyway Peter thought I might be able to help out.’
Celia turned and eased herself back onto the stool. ‘Maddy finally managed to carry a little boy: Tom...remember? But there were problems in his delivery – took an absolute age. Not that I know anything about these things.’ She took another large mouthful of wine. ‘Drink up dear. It’s not good but it’s not plonk and it’s keeps you hearty. Anyway Tom was damaged, poor little mite, and Maddy died soon after - complications. Peter was bereft. Josie too. She was only ten. She struggled to come to terms with it and she...became a handful, shall we say?’ She smiled at Terri. ‘So...have you chosen which paintings you think are best?’
‘Yes I think so but, please go on, what happened to Josie?’
‘Like I said. Nobody knows. When she was nineteen she had a row with Peter. A big row. She ran away.’
‘Where to?’
Celia smiled again as if Terri were simple.
‘That’s the thing about running away,’ she said, ‘you don’t want people to know where you are. She could have gone anywhere. She might have gone to England. She’d been to school in England. She spoke both English and French fluently.’ Celia leaned forward and put a couple of fingers under Terri’s chin as if examining her and then moved them up to lightly touch her cheek. Terri flinched. ‘Josephine was pregnant when she left here,’ said Celia. ‘It was August, thirty-five years ago now. When is your birthday, by the way?’
‘February,’ said Terri slowly, counting the months back.
‘Hm. Were you premature, just a couple of weeks maybe?’
‘No.’ Terri shook her head. ‘I don’t know. Look, you can’t really believe that Josephine was my mother. It’s absurd. What possible reason could you have for thinking it? My mother’s name was Susan. She was English and...’ Terri waved her hands about, searching vainly for other information. ‘...blonde.’
‘My, how strongly you protest,’ said Celia mildly. ‘I’m not saying anything. She would probably have changed her name but of course you’re right. How could she have been?’ She paused, flashed her bright smile and stood up. ‘Anyway which of these paintings do we favour?’
Forcing herself to concentrate, Terri pointed out the ones she preferred.
‘Thank you, dear.’ Celia picked up a palette knife and started mixing a new green.
‘Are you sure about all this?’
‘About Josie?’ Celia flicked her a glance. ‘Are you suggesting I made it up? Well, of course, Angela does that all the time.’ She returned her attention to her palette. ‘I believe Josie wrote a diary. A number of them in fact. I think they’re in the attic too. You can read her story by her own hand if you’re that interested. Of course it would probably be wiser if you didn’t mention what you were doing to her ladyship. Believe me, it wouldn’t go down well. Or Peter, come to that.’ She paused. ‘Just a suggestion.’ She finished mixing, picked a fresh brush out of a jar, and dipped the tip into the paint. She turned suddenly and smiled at Terri who was staring at her blankly. ‘Sorry, would you like another drink?’
‘I should be going.’ Terri deposited the barely touched glass of wine in a narrow gap on a nearby bureau. ‘Thanks for the drink,’ she added vaguely.
‘Oh, well, thank you for coming. Would you mind seeing yourself out?’
Terri paused by the door. ‘Supposing, just supposing, that there were any truth in this idea...isn’t it an amazing coincidence that I should come to work here?’
‘Only if you don’t believe in fate,’ replied Celia serenely. ‘Things have a way of coming round, don’t you think?’
Terri frowned but did not reply. ‘Where’s the key to ‘Raphael’?’ she asked.
‘The key? Peter keeps it in his study...drawer of his desk. Or did anyway.’
Terri slipped out of the door and hurried downstairs, suddenly anxious to get away. Celia was manipulating her, she was sure. She felt like a character in a play except that no-one had shown her the script.
*
Angela had a headache and was resting in the garden room at the front of the east wing, her feet up on a stool, her eyes closed. The patio doors were open but she had latched the shutters across to stop the glare of the sun. Even so, the air was still and humid. She had consumed a little wine the night before but dismissed the idea that the headache was a hangover, blaming tension. She’d been under a lot of stress lately and she tried some breathing exercises learnt from her yoga classes. They didn’t help and after a few minutes she gave up. Sleep was elusive. Then she heard Peter calling her name from the hall. A few minutes later, the door opened. She feigned sleep but could sense him there, staring at her, and eventually, reluctantly, opened her eyes.
‘Did you want me?’ she murmured.
‘Ah, you are awake then. I wasn’t sure.’ Peter crossed to stand nearby, looking down on her. He didn’t look cross exactly, more preoccupied. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I’ve been dozing a little.’ She fluttered a hand up towards her forehead. ‘Bit of a headache. I didn’t sleep well last night.’
‘Oh...yes...well, I didn’t mean to disturb you.’
Angela lifted her head to see him better and noticed that he was holding some papers in his left hand. While wondering what was so important that he had brought them with him like this, it also occurred to her that his hand was much improved. He was using it in a more normal way.
‘Don’t stand over me like that Peter.’ She put her hand to her head again. ‘Please sit.’
‘Mm, what? Oh, right.’ He perched on the edge of a neighbouring chair. ‘I’ve been going through the bank statements.’
‘Ye-es. And?’
‘I haven’t looked at them for a while...got rather behind with things...’ He hesitated. ‘Anyway there are some entries I’m puzzled about. I wondered if you could shed some light on them.’
‘Oh Peter, you aren’t going to ask me what I spent money on six months ago, are you? I really won’t remember.’
‘But they’re cash withdrawals. Large ones.’ He tapped the papers impatiently with the fingers of his right hand. ‘From our current account and one from a savings account. Here...’ He held out the papers to her. ‘...look for yourself.’
Angela sighed. ‘Do we have to do this now darling?’
‘Well I’m worried. It could be serious. Did you really take all this money out?’ He began to read a list of withdrawals.
Angela shrugged. ‘Yes, probably.’ She massaged her temples.
‘But you must remember?’ His voice had risen, developing a strident, insistent note. ‘We’re talking about several thousand euros over the course of six months...in cash. I’m concerned someone else has gained access to our money. Have you lost any of your cards? I’m thinking of putting a stop on the accounts.’
Angela was aware of the slow fuse burning on his temper. She pushed herself up, reaching to the side of the chair for her handbag. ‘OK, I’ll check now.’ She pulled out her purse and began to flick through the card pouches. ‘No...no...no...no...’ She moved across to the other side. ‘No...no. No, they’re all here I think. There’s no need to alert the banks Peter. I can’t remember exactly but I’m sure it was me who took the money out.’ She snapped the purse closed and dropped it back in her bag. ‘But I can’t believe we’re having this conversation,’ she added, sounding hurt. ‘You’ve never checked up on my spending habits before. I didn’t realise I had to account for every little thing I bought or did.’ There was silence. Peter got to his feet, frowning. ‘Just the other day you suggested we might have a trip to Paris,’ she added. ‘Now it seems we’ve got money problems. I really don’t think it’s fair to accuse me in this way.’
‘No, we don’t have money problems,’ said Peter heavily. ‘I thought you said you wanted to visit Paris.’
‘Well not if you’re going to check on all my spending.’
Peter looked on the point of saying something else but wandered out of the room instead.
Angela listened to his receding footsteps along the passage. A few minutes later she heard him padding across the terrace, heading back towards the studio. His behaviour bothered her. He had never challenged her use of money before. His early success had already made him a wealthy man by the time she’d married him and, though he’d never squandered money, he had never been mean with it. And it was not just this business with the accounts - for she had indeed withdrawn a lot of cash lately, had perhaps been incautious. But in all sorts of subtle ways he’d not been quite himself recently. He was alternately more talkative than usual, then more introspective; his temper had shown less frequently. And then there was the offer of a weekend in Paris. Or Rome, he had suggested. ‘We don’t get away enough, do we? You must get bored.’ It had been years since he’d thought to take her away like that. She’d put it down to the head injury but now she was less sure. And she supposed she should be glad – she had struggled long enough with his temperament and his neglect.
Restless all of a sudden, Angela got up and walked through to the kitchen. She stared listlessly at the kettle; it was too warm for tea. The endless summer had started. Most of her friends thought the long hot days were a joy but she’d never really adjusted to the Mediterranean climate. When Peter had proposed to her all those years ago – handsome, wealthy, charming in a gruff sort of way - she’d thought his life in France was something exotic and exciting; she’d had no idea what the reality would be. And she’d vaguely assumed that they would split their time between France and England, taking the best of both, not hole up permanently in this forgotten corner of the mountains. True, Peter had suggested at the outset that he intended to live in France but she hadn’t really thought he meant it, or maybe she’d expected him to change. She had been disappointed.
She shrugged the thought away, poured herself a glass of chilled cranberry juice and was putting the carton back in the fridge when she heard the front door open and close. She got to the hall doorway just in time to see Terri slipping through the sitting room towards the annexe and she stared after her pensively. When she’d asked Peter what Celia had said about hounding Terri, he’d been vague, evasive even. And she’d seen him watching Terri at the barbeque, a reflective expression on his face.
And now Terri was creeping about in a strangely furtive way. So where had Peter’s little helper spent the afternoon, she wondered.
*
Terri fumbled in the back of her bedside cabinet and pulled out a small plastic wallet, flipping its two leaves open. It was an old, cheap affair - she couldn’t remember now why or where she’d bought it – but years before she had put a photograph of her father in each of the two clear pockets. In the picture on one side he was standing alone in the garden, looking awkward, cigarette in hand. She had taken it herself with her first camera. How old had she been? Ten? No, the camera was her eleventh birthday present. It wasn’t easy to see him in the weak bedroom light and she leaned across and flicked the bedside lamp on, moving closer. The photograph on the other side had been taken of him with his young daughter, his arm awkwardly round her shoulder. To judge from the way he looked, it had been taken around the same time, probably by her grandmother.
Her eyes glazed. The last time she’d seen her father had been six months before his death. They had lunched together in a pub near where he lived. A little over four years previously a woman called Lizzie had moved in with him and Terri had rarely visited the family home after. The two women had been mutually suspicious, wary, an uncomfortable atmosphere sitting between them. At her father’s funeral at the crematorium, Lizzie told her that her father had wanted his ashes scattered on the downs where they often went walking and a week later they had gone to do it together, virtual strangers, a difficult and somewhat bizarre expedition. Lizzie had seemed genuinely distraught. Presumably her father had loved her and his love had been reciprocated. Ever since, Terri had felt a painful regret at her behaviour before he died; she thought she’d been childish, jealous perhaps of her father’s new found happiness or feeling herself excluded.
She tried to put the thoughts away, felt two fingers down behind the second photograph and carefully pulled out two more pictures. These were snaps of her mother. The first was taken in a park somewhere, her mother standing in front of some iron railings. Behind her, ducks and moorhens paddled on a lake. Her eyes were puckered against the sunshine and she seemed to be saying something to the person taking the photograph. Terri peered more closely at it. It was small and the extreme brightness of the day had rendered her features flat and hard to distinguish. Her hair was shoulder length, pushed back behind her ears, and blonde. She was wearing a mini skirt, a short-sleeved, V-necked top and platform mules. She looked very young. Presumably it had been taken in the seventies.
Terri picked up the second photograph. In this one her mother was cradling a baby, her face turned down to look at the child. Terri stared at it and felt the familiar pang somewhere deep inside. She hadn’t looked at these pictures for years; they’d been left in a drawer, ignored. Only when her father had died had she taken them out again. Coming away she had slipped the wallet in her bag on an impulse, reluctant suddenly to leave it behind.
She always told people that her mother had died young from a short, aggressive illness. She’d told the story so many times, she almost believed it herself. But the truth was that Susie Challoner had simply walked out of the house one day and, nearly two years later, thrown herself from a bridge into the Thames. As a child, Terri had struggled to sleep. Creeping down the stairs one evening, long after bedtime, she’d heard her father and grandmother discussing the news and how it would be best to tell her. Confused and upset she’d crept back to her bedroom. On top of her certainty that she was to blame in some way for her mother leaving, it had been the final proof of what she had already known: her mother could not have loved her or she wouldn’t have left her like that. Not a word; not a single word. And now she’d gone forever. It was a hurt that had burnt deep into her. Even after all these years, the pain had hardly diminished.
Terri pushed the photographs back roughly into the wallet. She was angry, really angry. She was not going to go searching for diaries and who knew what. Damn Celia and her stupid games, bringing it all back again. The whole story was foolish anyway and what difference did it make to her who her mother was? She never knew her and it was too late now.
