The Medici Mirror

by Melissa Bailey

  ‘So is that work?’ Ophelia pointed to my papers on the corner of the table.

  I nodded. ‘It’s the client’s wish-list: floating glass staircases, stone columns, refashioned metal and lots of light. The usual deal and all done in record time.’ I raised my eyebrows.

  She looked at me and smiled. ‘But you still seem excited by the project.’

  ‘I am. It’s a great job. The space is amazing. And some of the stuff in there is incredible.’

  ‘I can imagine. I’ve passed that place day after day, year after year. I always wondered what was inside, what was happening on the other side of that brick wall.’

  ‘Well, you can come and have a look. I’ll be there practically every day for the next few weeks.’

  ‘I’d love that.’ And her eyes sparkled as she looked at me. ‘So you work on-site at the beginning do you?’

  I nodded. ‘I think people at the office think I’m a bit crazy for doing it – self-indulgent, perhaps.’ I smiled. ‘But I like to. I get a better feel for the space if I inhabit it for a while. How it was used, how it might be used now, that kind of thing. So in the initial stages I find it really helpful. And there are so many things still there that we might try and incorporate into the build that it makes sense to stay near them. Plus the client doesn’t object. In fact, I think he quite likes the idea. So . . .’ I paused, suddenly worried that I was talking too much. But if Ophelia thought so she didn’t show it.

  ‘Is the place still full of shoes?’

  ‘Pretty much.’

  ‘Wow. I’ll have to bring my camera round sometime and take some shots. If that’s not too presumptuous,’ she added as an afterthought.

  I smiled. Perhaps I wasn’t the only one worrying about how I was coming across. ‘Not at all. Any time.’

  We sat in silence for a while and I shifted my gaze to the middle-aged man at the next table. He was still flicking through his paper. The couple beyond him still weren’t talking. When I turned my attention back to Ophelia I saw that she was looking at me.

  ‘So, I know you’re an architect, with a thing for old spaces. Tell me some other things about you.’

  I felt my brain seize up, as it always does when I’m put on the spot. ‘Hmm, let me see.’ I coughed and tried to think, feeling the beat of my heart suddenly against my temples. The only thing that came to mind, inappropriately enough, was my wife, Maya. And I really didn’t want to talk about her.

  ‘Well, I’m thirty-nine, I was born in north London and have lived in the city all my life. I went to school and university here. My parents still live in Islington in the house where I was born. We get on pretty well but haven’t seen one another so much lately.’ I paused, thinking about my brother. I had tried deliberately to put him – and my wife – out of my mind for a long time now. But it seemed, strangely enough, that they wanted to make their presence felt in this conversation. I looked up to see Ophelia watching me intently. Something, I wasn’t sure what, made me continue the thought out loud. ‘I have one brother, Joshua, three years older than me, who’s more successful and more handsome. More everything, basically. And now he’s living with my wife. So we don’t speak all that much.’ I laughed at that and then stopped. What was wrong with me? I was coming out with too much weirdness way too soon. I looked at Ophelia but couldn’t read her expression. Still, I could imagine myself unfolding before her eyes, a man with a colossal amount of baggage.

  My embarrassment was interrupted by the waitress, returning with the coffee. She placed the cups down on the table in front of us. Ophelia thanked her and then stirred her coffee slowly, still looking at me. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said at last. ‘I think I know what you’re trying to get at.’

  I stirred some sugar into my espresso and took a sip, hoping that the thick, sweet liquid wouldn’t make me even more edgy. That was the last thing I needed. I watched the traffic move lethargically along the road in the distance. The cars shunted along, bumper to bumper, going nowhere fast. ‘Sorry,’ I said at last, putting my cup down. ‘I didn’t mean to go on about my dysfunctional home life. I was trying to save that up until a little later.’ I laughed hollowly and spread my palms out nervously on the table top.

  ‘It’s okay. Really. Like I said, don’t worry.’ We sat in silence for a moment while Ophelia’s hands played with the packets of sweetener in the sugar bowl. Her long, slim fingers were slow and methodical, stroking the paper up and down. There was something soothing about the movement. Something reassuring. ‘So you don’t really do the whole family thing?’

  I shook my head.

  ‘Your brother I can understand. But your parents?’

  I thought about the way my father had seemed to side with Joshua and then shook my head again. No, for the moment at least I simply wanted to stay away.

  ‘That’s so sad,’ Ophelia said at last. ‘So sad.’ She looked down, a sombre expression on her face, shaking her head slowly. She stayed like that for a while. Just as I was beginning to wonder what she could be thinking, she raised her head and looked at me. ‘You must have felt very angry when it happened.’

  I nodded. ‘But it was a while ago now . . .’

  ‘Sure, but it’s a big deal, a huge betrayal. It must have been hard for you.’

  I nodded again, trying to avoid her gaze.

  But she was scrutinising me. ‘Do you still feel able, do you even want to, connect with people?’

  I laughed uncomfortably, startled by her directness. It was a pretty probing question coming from someone I’d only just met. I looked beyond Ophelia at the couple sitting in silence. Their anger seemed to have subsided but they still weren’t talking. They were each contemplating the middle distance, locked in their own little world. The last thing they wanted to do was connect. I understood it. There was some comfort to be derived from that. There was safety in solitude. You couldn’t be betrayed or hurt if you were alone. ‘I guess wanting to connect with someone in the first place is hard enough. Then actually connecting with them, really connecting, finding intimacy is almost impossible. But have I lost the capacity to try?’ I smiled wanly. ‘For a while I thought I had. But time has passed. Now I’m not so sure.’

  Ophelia smiled back at me. ‘Yeah. Intimacy’s a tricky thing. I’m pretty hopeless at it. It’s just too easy, I think, for me to be alone.’ She paused. ‘Or maybe that’s just an excuse. Perhaps I’m just scared of the risk. I don’t know.’ There was a moment’s silence. ‘Was the problem with you and your wife one of intimacy?’

  This was the second question to take me by surprise and I hesitated again before I answered. I was pretty sure it hadn’t started out like that. But somewhere along the way Maya and I had drifted seriously apart. She was demanding, I’d always known that, but in the beginning I hadn’t minded so much. It was as time went on that I had started to. No matter what I gave, it was never enough. She just needed too much of me. When I withdrew the fighting started. Great tides of anger flowed between us and, over time, left a gulf of silent rage in their stead. The distance between us intensified and little by little the whole thing unravelled. Now we were like strangers. I hadn’t seen her since we’d split up six months ago. I sighed. ‘Well, intimacy wasn’t all of it, for sure. But you’re probably right that it was a part. Whatever, we didn’t talk very much towards the end.’

  Come to think of it, we hadn’t talked much at all. I cleared my throat. I hadn’t really spoken to anyone about my wife. But, strangely, it didn’t feel that awkward with Ophelia. I looked at her. She was staring at me.

  ‘It happens a lot, you know. Perhaps you just weren’t meant to be together.’

  The way she came out with that statement made me smile. So matter-of-fact, so clear and unequivocal. Six months ago I’d probably have become angry. Asked her what the hell she knew about it anyway. But maybe she was right. I’d spent a lot of time thinking about it and I still didn’t know. Maybe, after all, it was as simple as that. ‘Well, it certainly felt that way by the end.’ I pa
used. ‘But I thought that perhaps loving her might be enough. Naive, huh?’

  She stared at me for a second and then smiled. ‘No. Maybe sometimes love is enough,’ she said simply.

  I wondered whether she was right. I’d certainly thought so at one point. We sat in silence for a few minutes, drinking our coffee.

  ‘So why don’t you tell me something about you?’

  The statement seemed to take Ophelia by surprise. ‘Me? Oh, God. I don’t think you’re ready for my story just yet.’

  The look on my face showed her that I wouldn’t be put off so easily.

  ‘Okay – how about the abridged version, then?’

  ‘I can go with that.’

  ‘Well, like you I’ve lived in London all my adult life . . .’ She stopped abruptly to take a sip of her coffee. I watched her lips touch the cup and then observed her bare neck as she swallowed, the subtle movement of the muscles, up and down. She bit down on her bottom lip again. She seemed to do that when she was unsure of herself. I wanted to reach out and touch her mouth. Instead I folded my arms so that I couldn’t. I watched Ophelia as she talked and noticed a small scar to the right above her top lip. It moved in time with the rhythm of her words. I tried to focus but her voice seemed to recede as I watched her fingers dancing, pushing her smooth dark hair behind her ears. My gaze moved down over her face, to her shoulders and then to the dark folds of her blouse stroking the edges of her breasts. I coughed and forced myself to look her once more in the eye. ‘My parents died when I was a kid,’ I heard her say.

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s okay. It was a long time ago. After that I was brought up by my grandparents.’ Ophelia raised her cup to her lips and drank the last of her coffee. Then she smiled at me. I felt a sudden inexplicable rush of contentment, as if I was sitting here with someone I’d known for a long time.

  Looking upwards to the sky I saw that the afternoon light was changing, fading slowly towards darkness. People were leaving the café. The quarrelling lovers were gone. The middle-aged man was rising from his table, pocketing his paper. One car, then another, skidded past in their haste to jump the rush-hour queue. Suddenly we were alone.

  ‘I should be getting back. I have an appointment this evening.’

  I felt a flicker in my stomach. Fear and nausea somersaulting. I couldn’t bear the idea of Ophelia leaving and not seeing her again. ‘Yeah, I’d better be heading off, too.’ I bit my lip and practised the words in my head. Then I said them out loud. ‘Perhaps we could meet up tomorrow, if you’re not busy then?’

  She smiled. ‘No, I’m not too busy.’

  ‘Perhaps you’d like to come over to my place for dinner?’ Before she could answer I back-pedalled, worrying that I might have overdone it. ‘Is dinner too much?’ I said, frowning.

  ‘No, that would be nice.’ And she laughed. The sound had a wonderfully sonorous quality.

  ‘Great,’ I said, rifling through my pockets to find a pen and paper. ‘Here’s my address and mobile number. Around eight?’ I handed the paper to her and our fingertips touched for a second.

  ‘Around eight,’ she said, standing up.

  ‘Great,’ I said again. ‘Do you eat fish?’

  Ophelia nodded, smiling. ‘So I’ll see you tomorrow.’ Then she turned and began to walk back towards the park. I watched her, in the fading light, until she disappeared.

  4

  THE FOLLOWING DAY I was distracted.

  I went to the factory and tried to settle down to some work. Sitting at my desk, I read and reread the brief and looked at the drawings. Then I read some information on the shoemaking process. I tried to concentrate, to focus on the task in hand, to turn the vague ideas I had in my head into concrete images on paper. But I simply couldn’t do it. I was somewhere else. Or my mind was, at any rate. I was thinking about Ophelia. Her red lips. Her pale hands. The intensity of her look. I was thinking about what I was going to cook that evening. What I was going to talk about.

  Unable to concentrate, I got up and walked to the front of the dispatch room, peering out of the dusty window that ran along the front of the building. But there was nothing going on. The road was quiet, deserted, as was the park beyond. I sighed and took a peek inside one of the shoeboxes at the top of the stack. A pair of large men’s shoes – black – lay within. I replaced the lid and opened another box. This time it was men’s brown shoes. I started to rifle through the contents of all the boxes. While their exteriors were yellowed and coated in dust, the shoes inside were in surprisingly good condition. There were men and women’s, lots of different styles, some old-fashioned and outdated, some now back in vogue. After hunting for a while, I eventually came across a pair of black stilettos. Size six. They had a very thin high heel, about five inches, and toes almost as slender and elongated as the heels. The leather had now lost its lustre but there was something beautiful about them nonetheless. They were flawlessly made. I ran my fingers across the surface of the shoes and something about the gesture calmed my mind. I went back to my desk, stood the shoes at the far left-hand side, toes facing me, and began finally to focus on my designs.

  I surfaced a couple of hours later with some decent provisional ideas. Leaning back in my chair, I stretched and yawned. I checked my watch. Two-forty-four. I wanted to get going quite soon but I needed to catch up with Tara first. I knew she was busy combing the factory floors, building up the inventory she was producing. But I hadn’t seen her for a while. She had passed through the dispatch room a couple of times, moving with a sense of purpose that I couldn’t even begin to muster. Whenever she’d caught my eye she had flashed me her stock smile. Broad, with a hint of promise. There was something provocative about the smile, something provocative about her in general. She was one of those women who were very aware of the effect they had on men. But the thing was she always just made me feel insecure. And what made me even more uncomfortable were my suspicions that she was having an affair with Richard. I wasn’t certain, far from it. But I got a sense of something, especially when they were around one another. Sex, attraction – what it was I didn’t know. What I did know was that the uncertainty made me even more uneasy around her.

  Moments later I heard the click of her heels coming down the staircase at the back of the room. As she came into view and strode towards her desk, I was reminded, as always, that if she hadn’t become an architect there was no doubt she could have been a model. She looked like she’d stepped out of an advertisement for Burberry or a similar brand. Tall, almost my height, the short skirt and knee-high leather boots she was wearing showed off her long legs and shapely calves. A tight woollen sweater accentuated her small waist and perfectly sized breasts. She always wore her black hair straight, cut into a sharp, sleek bob that framed her face. And what a face it was: heart-shaped, with flawless olive skin, a slim Roman nose, full pink lips and deep blue eyes. No doubt about it, she was a goddess, of both Mediterranean and Celtic extraction. And whatever situation she found herself in, I imagined that she managed to look exceptional. Never a hair out of place. Always supremely confident. I realised that in some respects she reminded me of Richard and the irony made me smile. As she sat down in her chair she shot me a glance. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘Oh, nothing. Just working on some ideas, doing some sketches, that sort of thing. How are you?’

  ‘Not bad.’ She looked me straight in the eye, direct, unflinching. Then her focus seemed to slip to somewhere beyond me. ‘What are those?’

  I turned to look and saw the shoes, sitting pert and pretty, on the corner of the desk. ‘They’re shoes,’ I said, deadpan.

  She was on her feet and beside me in seconds. ‘Did you find them over there?’ She gestured to the boxes.

  ‘Sure did.’

  ‘They’re lovely,’ she purred, picking them up and stroking the leather. ‘Just my size. Can I have a pair too?’ she added imploringly.

  I thought about it for a second. What would it hurt? ‘Take them,’ I said. ‘And
help yourself to anything else.’

  Her large eyes widened further. ‘Are you serious?’

  I nodded. ‘All that stuff will get dumped in the end anyway. We won’t be able to use it. So someone should. Go ahead, take whatever you want.’

  Her face broke into a big smile. The first truly genuine smile from her that I’d seen. It suited her. ‘Oh my God. That’s brilliant. Thanks.’

  I smiled back. ‘Don’t worry about it.’

  She continued to look at the stilettos in her hand. ‘You know, shoes are my absolute weakness.’

  ‘Well, maybe this job just got a whole lot better for you.’ As she began to walk back to her desk, I added, as an afterthought, ‘Look, probably best not to tell anyone at the office that you’re wearing the client’s shoes. It’s probably not the done thing.’

  She turned mid-stride and saluted me. ‘Don’t worry, boss. I’m not one to bite the hand that feeds me.’ Something about the gesture, the tone of her words, told me that moment of openness and complicity had passed. I felt a faint twinge of sadness.

  For a moment I sat in silence before standing and putting on my jacket. ‘Okay. I’m heading off. I’ve got some stuff I need to take care of. But you can carry on with the inventory, if that’s all right. We need to get that complete as soon as possible.’

  She nodded.

  ‘Will you be okay here on your own?’

  She raised her eyebrows and gave me a look. ‘Of course,’ she said.

  ‘Okay, then. Don’t stay too late.’ I made my way to the door. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  ‘See you, then. Have a good evening.’