by Ali Mercer
When the doorbell rings – 7.30 on the dot – it’s a relief that the waiting is over.
She takes a final look round. It is still light, the soft kind of light that comes from a blue evening sky in early spring, the kind of light that Renaissance artists sought to capture for cherubs on chubby clouds to bathe in. A forgiving kind of light, in which the bedsit doesn’t look despicable, but merely neglected; it is the home of someone whose energies are all directed elsewhere.
And then she goes to let them in.
As soon as she sees them on the doorstep – both pleased and excited to be out together in the evening, and to have come somewhere new – her anxiety begins to lift.
‘Come on in,’ she says. ‘You’ll have to excuse the state of the place. It could all do with a lick of paint.’
‘I’m sure it’s absolutely fine, but we don’t care about the place, dear. We’re here to see you,’ Viv says, and steps forward into the hallway to peck Rachel on the cheek. She’s carrying a Tupperware box and a bottle of sparkling elderflower cordial, which she hands over to Rachel. ‘Cupcakes from me – the fizz is from Leona. I gather she has something to celebrate, but she wouldn’t say a word about it until we were all together.’
‘I actually haven’t told anybody else at all,’ Leona says, coming in behind her. She’s carrying the noticeboard. ‘You two will be the first to know.’
She sets the noticeboard down by the wall opposite the sofa, and gives Rachel a hug; she smells faintly of patchouli. Then her attention suddenly shifts, and she moves away and makes a beeline for Rachel’s chest of drawers, and the small square of painted hardboard propped up on it: the study Mitch had done years ago for his painting of Persephone, the one and only time that he’d used Rachel as a model.
She says, ‘I know this painting. Isn’t this by Mitchell Moran?’
‘It is. He’s my husband,’ Rachel tells her. ‘It’s a study for a larger painting, which is probably the one you’ve seen, though it’s in a private collection now.
‘But you’re Rachel Steele,’ Leona says. ‘I mean, I know you said your husband was an artist… but I had no idea it was Mitchell Moran you were talking about.’
‘Steele’s my maiden name,’ Rachel says. ‘I’ve always used it for work. I had no idea you would have heard of him – he did that when he was pretty much fresh out of art school, and then a collector bought it and it ended up being part of the Provocation exhibition – do you remember that? It attracted quite a lot of attention because some of the other works in it were thought to be shocking.’
‘I skived off school to go to that exhibition!’ Leona tells her. ‘I’d heard my parents talking about it – there had been a story in the paper. They disapproved, which was why I wanted to go. But actually, I didn’t really like it. Apart from this. I still have the postcard of it that I bought.’
Viv moves closer to the painting, too, and retrieves a pair of spectacles from her handbag to help her inspect it.
‘It’s you, isn’t it, Rachel?’ she says. ‘He’s painted you as one of those poor unfortunate women who get locked up in bunkers by deranged men.’
‘Is it you?’ Leona glances back at Rachel as if to check. She appears puzzled, as if Rachel doesn’t quite match up.
‘Yes,’ Rachel says. ‘It’s me.’
The painting is so familiar to her that it is a long time since she has really looked at it. It’s become a symbol of something else: of Mitch’s talent, which she has always admired, and of how crushed he had been by being briefly celebrated for his work, and then ignored. But she’s proud of it, too. It’s proof that there was a time, long ago, when she and Mitch wanted to try and work together, and bring out the best in each other. And maybe they had.
The painting shows a young woman in a dim basement with a handle-less door, lying on a bed next to a table with a cut pomegranate in a dish on it. A calendar hangs on one wall, a newspaper on the floor has the headline ‘Missing’, and through the high barred window it is possible to see a lone snowdrop sprouting in a patch of grass in front of a slushy pavement.
Rachel had worn a favourite red jumper and jeans for the sitting; Mitch had wanted her in clothes that she wore often, so she would look as if she was in a situation that she had got used to. But that wasn’t quite how it had turned out.
As a portrait, it wasn’t a particularly accurate likeness – Mitch had struggled to capture her as well as he wanted to, probably another reason why they’d never repeated the experience. But he had conveyed something about her that she’d barely been aware of at the time: frustration and pent-up energy. The young woman in the painting doesn’t look at all resigned to her plight; she looks furious, and as if she’s absolutely determined to escape.
‘It’s amazing to see it like this,’ Leona says.
Viv doesn’t look quite as impressed as Leona. She asks, ‘Is he well known, Rachel? You’ll have to forgive my ignorance. I don’t know very much about modern art.’
‘There was quite a lot of buzz around him when he did that painting,’ Rachel says. ‘Then the collectors and the people who write about these things moved on. As they do. And he got discouraged, and lost heart. He doesn’t do much original work any more. He does commissions for a dealer in Henley – paintings from people’s favourite photographs – and he turns out a lot of copies of Old Masters, which brings in a bit of money.’
‘It can’t have been easy, sharing a house with an artist. I imagine they’re rather untidy,’ Viv says.
‘He is a bit,’ Rachel agrees.
She puts the elderflower cordial and the Tupperware down on the worktop by the sink; Viv takes off her jacket and passes it to her, and Rachel hangs it up in the wardrobe. Leona is still studying the painting.
‘I’ve always thought it’s about freedom,’ Leona says. She sounds affronted, as if the painting is a personal possession that the other two have just insulted. ‘I can’t believe Mitchell Moran has been living in living in Kettlebridge all this time, and I had absolutely no idea.’
‘Well, he is.’
Leona straightens up. ‘Do you think you might be able to put me in touch with him?’
‘Leona,’ Viv interrupts. ‘Rachel might not feel entirely comfortable with that.’
‘It’s not just because of this painting,’ Leona says. ‘I’d like to talk to him about business. Look, this is jumping the gun a bit – I was going to wait till we had the fizz open – but one of the things I was going to tell you is that I’m leaving my job, so I can concentrate on my own business full time. It’s taken me years to get to this point, but I think I’ve got enough interest to make a go of it. And some kind of collaboration with Mitchell Moran would be amazing.’
Rachel stares at her. ‘You mean your second-hand furniture business?’
‘Pre-loved. And it’s not just furniture. Yes.’
‘Is that wise,’ Viv asks, ‘at a time when so many small businesses are struggling?’
‘My running costs are very low. Everything’s online. And I have savings. I have thought this through, Viv. Though to be honest, I suppose it’s just that the time feels right, for all sorts of reasons. Will you keep it under your hat at work, Rachel? Mike knows, and he wants to tell everybody else, but he hasn’t got round to it yet.’
Viv looks concerned, but Leona is defiant, as if she’s just asked something perfectly reasonable and can’t see why Rachel wouldn’t comply. Does she really think Mitch is about to collaborate with her on a line of revarnished odds and sods from junk shops? Well, if she does, she’s in for a surprise.
‘Of course I can put you in touch,’ Rachel finds herself saying. ‘I can’t guarantee he’ll respond, though. But I’ll mention it to him when I next see him.’
‘Thank you.’ Leona is flushed, as if she’s just fought and won a minor battle. Maybe she’s more anxious about going it alone than she’s letting on, and is clutching at straws.
‘Here, let me take your coat,’ Rachel says. With the passing of wi
nter, Leona has stopped wearing the astrakhan number and is instead cocooned in a big belted cardigan, which she now slips out of and hands over. Underneath she’s wearing a rose-printed tea-dress; the vintage look suits her, though with the tattoo on her wrist and a heavy pair of biker boots, she doesn’t look entirely like a Forces sweetheart.
She does have a good eye. Who knows, maybe her business will be a success?
‘Please, sit down,’ Rachel says, and the other two women settle on the sofa, opposite the noticeboard and the pictures of Becca, Aidan and Bluebell: Aidan with his puddles, Becca barefoot in her red dress, and Bluebell looking back at them.
‘I should have come to pick you up,’ Rachel says. ‘I didn’t realise you were going to lug that all the way here.’
‘Oh, it was no bother,’ Leona says.
‘Our taxi driver was very curious about it,’ Viv tells her. ‘He was too polite to ask, though. I think he might have thought we were going to have a séance. Or maybe he thought we were amateur sleuths, trying to crack a case about missing children. Anyway, Rachel, there was no need, you do enough chauffeuring for me as it is.’ Viv turns to Leona. ‘She won’t take petrol money, either. I keep giving it to her, and she keeps handing it back and telling me to give it to charity if I feel so badly about it. The Red Cross are doing rather well out of our arrangement.’
‘I think it suits you both,’ Leona observes. ‘I’m starting to feel like a third wheel.’
‘You could never be that!’ Rachel says. ‘If it wasn’t for you, Viv and I would never have met.’
‘Quite right,’ Viv says. ‘Though even with all Leona’s efforts, we still haven’t managed to attract any more members.’
‘We’re the club that no one wants to join,’ Leona says.
‘Their loss,’ Rachel says. ‘Shall I open the elderflower cordial? Would you both like a glass?’
‘Absolutely,’ Viv says. ‘And then we can toast your new venture, Leona, and you can tell us your other piece of news.’
‘Ah. That,’ Leona says, blushing again, but she doesn’t immediately volunteer any more information. Maybe all the fussing about Mitch’s painting, and the thoughtless request to be introduced to him, was all just displacement activity. Perhaps this really is big news – too big to be easy to tell.
In which case there’s only one thing it can be about.
Rachel finds glasses and opens the cordial and pours it out, and Viv proposes the toast: ‘To new beginnings!’ and they clink and drink, and it is almost as Rachel had imagined it might be, the three of them united against the world and ready to take it on.
And then Leona tells them.
She has had a letter from Bluebell’s adoptive mother, inviting her to come to France to visit. And as soon as she has managed to tell them this, she bursts into tears.
‘I’m just not sure I’m up to it,’ she says later, when she’s calm again and Viv and Rachel have both cried, too, and have embraced her. ‘I feel like I’m auditioning for a chance at forgiveness, and I’m doomed to fail. It’s not as if anything I do now could begin to make up for what I’ve done. Bluebell is a child, and children don’t make allowances – they expect their parents to be superheroes. She knows I gave her up – why would she want to let me in her life again? What if this is just curiosity, and once this visit is over, she decides she doesn’t want to see me again?’
‘You don’t need courage to do things you find easy,’ Viv observes. ‘You need it for the things you’re scared of. You’ll go, and something good will come of it. I know it will.’
‘I hope you’re right,’ Leona says. ‘God, I haven’t even checked if my passport’s still valid. I haven’t been abroad for ages. I’ve been saving every penny for my business. In the end it was the letter about Bluebell that pushed me into taking the plunge, actually. In comparison with meeting her, it just didn’t seem like that big a risk.’
‘Work’s not going to be the same without you, but I’d say Bluebell’s done you a favour there. It certainly sounds as if you were ready to leave,’ Rachel says. ‘Anyway, Bluebell wants to see you. That means you’re welcome. When do you think you’ll go?’
‘Not definite yet. But soon, I think.’
‘Well, let me know when and I’ll see if I can give you a lift to the airport.’
As Leona thanks her and accepts, Rachel’s attention drifts back to Mitch’s painting. Who was she kidding, to think she was beginning to free herself of everything that had brought her down? Leona is the one who is escaping, not her; Leona is the one who suddenly has the chance to change her whole life. And she’s jealous. It is horrible to be jealous of a friend who is coming within reach of something she has longed for. But she is.
She knows the feeling all too well: that mix of sorrow and anger, of resentment and self-pity. And she also knows where jealousy can lead, and how far it is possible to fall. And how much she still has to lose.
Twenty-Six
Rachel
Three months before the loss
Later on, she couldn’t tell when she had entered the Deep. By the time she came to think of it that way, it felt as if she had been there forever and would never leave.
Although it was hard to pinpoint, it must have been sometime in the weeks that followed her mother’s funeral, but it wasn’t an on-off moment like a switch or something breaking. It was more a steady sinking, a sense of increasing pressure and distance from light and air, of the surface closing somewhere overhead as she drifted deeper into the chill and the gloom. Sometimes she panicked and started to struggle; sometimes all she could do was keep falling. It didn’t make any difference what she did or didn’t do. She was still there.
The first imperative was to carry on as normal. Other people didn’t seem to be able to tell how far away she was, which was how she wanted it. Mitch knew, of course, but that was different. Frank noticed, asked if she was all right. Yes, thank you, she was fine, just a little tired. He looked at her sceptically and made suggestions, which she listened to and filed away under ‘one day’. At his leaving drinks she nodded and chatted and smiled and thought how strange it was, the chitchat and pretences, all those people with their desire to save face and belong. She kissed Frank goodbye and wished herself elsewhere, and afterwards she missed him.
By midsummer she was almost used to it. The Deep was where she lived now: it was already difficult to imagine that she would ever feel any other way, or that anything might ever be powerful enough to bring her back up to the surface.
And then it did, out of the blue, on an occasion that should, in the ordinary way of things, have been pleasant and quickly forgettable: a rare night out, drinks in a pub in Kettlebridge for parents of girls in Becca’s class to mark the end of the school year.
And when it did, the shock of it was so great, so excessive, that it was impossible to make sense of it, or to trust the evidence of her own senses. And, rightly or wrongly, the cause of the shock was Mary Chadstone.
The Deep was not entirely unlike her previous existence. It was just everyday life with the light sucked out of it. There were blue skies and sunny days, all the usual signs of summer. But for her there was darkness, which permeated everything, flattened it, and made it unreal. The world around her might as well have been the view from the train windows that she rattled past twice a day on the way to and from work; she was cut off from it, and submerged somewhere out of reach.
And yet there she was, going through the motions, keeping up appearances, trying to seem like anyone else.
She went to work, she came back, she tried to eat. Her body had begun to shrink; it was as if she was on a strict diet, exerting colossal discipline. Actually, it was more as if she was melting away. She slept sometimes, but more often than not she lay awake, worrying about this or that. Things to do with work or the house; missed objectives, fire hazards, money. Things left undone. Life was a slippery monster that had got away from her, and worrying was her way of attempting to wrestle it back into her grasp.
It didn’t work.
Mitch was a glowering, unsympathetic presence. He hated her being in the Deep. She tried once or twice to talk to him; he recoiled from her, didn’t want to know. She had always been the optimistic, upbeat one, the encourager; was this what it had been like to be him, with her throwing his fears and inadequacies back at him? She knew he was afraid: of weakness, of sickness, of being dragged down with her. But also, that felt like kidding herself, soft-soaping the truth. Surely it was understandable if he was repulsed by her, the broken-down, barely-there person she had so suddenly become. She couldn’t really blame him for wanting to keep her at a distance. She was at a distance from herself.
At any rate, he had been proved right. There was no way she could have coped with taking on a promotion.
Mitch told her again to go to the doctor. She went to the doctor. It took forever to get through to make an appointment; then something came up at work and she had to cancel it. Eventually, she made it. The doctor was sympathetic and reserved, a precise, professional woman with a bob and a bead necklace that was just the right length to sit under her collar. She asked Rachel a list of questions that must have been asked many times before. A checklist. She handed over leaflets, lists of useful websites, said to come back in a fortnight. Well, what had Rachel expected? Not much. Certainly not a magic wand, a sudden transformation. Nothing happened quickly in the Deep.
It seemed inevitable that any official help would come slowly and reluctantly, if at all. Still, the doctor had listened to her, had acknowledged the possibility that there was something wrong with her, something that it might be possible to treat. A disease.
Perhaps that should have been a comfort, to think that what she was experiencing was a series of tricks her mind was playing on her: to see her life in terms of symptoms, identifiable by a checklist.
