by Susan Lewis
However, as the initial surprise began to wear off she started to feel faintly ridiculous, for there was, in fact, no real likeness to her paintings at all, except perhaps in the jarring blends of colour here and there, and the hugeness of aggression some of them exuded. She had simply been shaken back to the time she’d used this medium to help rid herself of all the pain and hate she was feeling. It didn’t mean Andraya shared the same turbulence, or even anything like the same experiences. Andraya’s life and complexities were her own, depicted in abstract brilliance on these walls, while hers remained behind the closed doors of her flat, and buried in the shadowy depths of her past.
‘Here I am, your date for the evening,’ Anita cried, sweeping up behind her. ‘Sorry I’m late. I got caught in traffic. How are you?’
‘Great,’ Sherry answered, as they embraced. ‘Or maybe I should say bedazzled.’
Anita gazed up at the towering masterpiece beside them. ‘Awesome,’ she mumbled.
‘So come on, what are they saying?’ Sherry prompted. ‘What do they tell us about Andraya, apart from the fact she’s sublimely gifted?’
‘I don’t know if I’d even dare to go there,’ Anita replied with a baffled tilt of her head.
Sherry grinned. ‘OK, then how’s the boy?’ she asked as they moved on. ‘Where is he?’
‘You’ll be pleased to hear I’ve dumped him,’ Anita declared. ‘It’s a shame, but, well, let’s put it this way, plenty going on in the basement, but nothing in the loft.’
Sherry spluttered with laughter. And that was that, she was thinking. So typical of Anita, mad about a man one day, forgotten his name the next. ‘Does that mean you’ve met someone else?’ she ventured.
‘Possibly. I’ll let you know when there’s more to tell.’ She was watching Laurie, who was laughing at something Elliot was saying. ‘Now that’s how I want to look,’ she said wistfully. ‘Loved and in love.’
They raised their glasses as Laurie waved out.
‘She’s radiant,’ Anita declared. ‘And Rachel Hendon’s glowing like some heavenly body too. Just look at her. What must it be like to have a relationship that works? Not only are my own affairs disasters, my entire life is riddled with other people’s screw-ups, which could be the reason I can’t get it right. There’s no role model there. I’m saturated in human misery, because whoever goes to see a therapist when they’re on a roll? All I get are the saddos in search of someone else to blame for their pain and ghastliness – mother, father, inner child, God – or the suicide junkies who blame themselves, but never quite manage to carry out the deed. It’s no wonder I’m such a failed human being.’
Sherry’s laugh was weak. ‘Hardly,’ she commented, inwardly flinching at the mention of suicide. Since she’d found out Nick was in London, she’d been thinking more about Bluebell than she’d ever want to, and this was the kind of reminder that she could do without.
‘Oh God, is that my phone?’ Anita grumbled, fishing around in her bag. ‘Yes, it is. How embarrassing. Everyone’s looking, but I’m on call. I’m a doctor. This is my emergency number.’ Finding it, she put it to her ear and turned away from the crowd. After listening for a few seconds, she interrupted the caller. ‘Hang on, I’ll have to go outside. Sorry,’ she said to Sherry. ‘I’m on the suicide shift tonight, and someone’s having a problem. I might be back, if not, explain for me.’
As she disappeared Sherry drained her glass and grabbed another from a passing tray. After downing half of it she looked around for someone to talk to, and found herself quite impressed by the number of celebrities and high-flying politicians the event had brought out. Now she was paying attention she was amused by the way the journos were sidling into star-studded photographs, eager for the world to know they were on the A list, which was certainly where this showing ranked. She could just see them tomorrow morning, preening with self-importance and pleasure as they scoured the papers in greedy search of themselves hobnobbing with London’s crème de la crème. The greatest kudos, she imagined, would be achieved by occupying a space next to the artist herself, whose totally transparent cream trouser suit with its tantalizing swirls of sequins and beads was every bit as much a source of fascination as her remarkable talent. Right now she was standing between Chris and Elliot, facing a battery of cameras and managing to make a standard shot of an artist with her dealer and a potential client look like a smouldering moment of foreplay. It was no wonder the woman was so successful, when she was as brilliant at packaging and marketing herself as she was at creating her art.
Deciding to go and join Laurie, Sherry was just starting to squeeze a path through when Anita came back.
‘Emergency over,’ she declared, looking round for another glass of champagne. ‘I managed to talk them down.’
Sherry’s eyes simmered with irony. ‘Good,’ she commented. ‘Let’s go and talk to Laurie.’ She didn’t need to know the details of an aborted suicide attempt, nor did she really want to hear any more about the next easy conquest on Anita’s busy dance card.
‘At last,’ Laurie cried, as Sherry reached her. ‘I’ve been trying to work my way over to you. Anita. How lovely to see you again. How are you?’
‘Wonderful, thank you,’ Anita cooed, kissing her on both cheeks. ‘No need to ask you the same, one look at those eyes is answer enough.’
Laurie laughed. ‘So what do you think of the show?’ she asked. ‘Who are you writing this up for, Sherry?’
‘Elle actually,’ Sherry answered. ‘And I can’t decide whether to focus more on the artist or the art. The trouser suit’s going to provide a nice little intro with some kind of parallel to the Emperor’s new clothes, I just have to figure it out. God, I wish I had her courage.’
‘I wish I had her figure,’ Anita stated.
Sherry laughed. ‘So what’s your take on the paintings?’ she asked Laurie.
‘I love them,’ Laurie answered. ‘But listen,’ she went on, taking Sherry’s arm and drawing her to one side, ‘Elliot had to bring his lunch forward with Nick, so it happened today.’
Sherry’s heart missed a beat. ‘Really?’ she said, feeling her face draining of colour. Then, realizing they were shutting Anita out, she quickly drew her in. ‘It’s OK, Anita knows about Nick,’ she told Laurie.
‘She only told me yesterday that he was in London though,’ Anita chided.
‘So what happened at the lunch?’ Sherry asked, already sensing something had.
Laurie’s eyes were shining in a way that didn’t seem to be heralding bad news. Even so, Sherry was hardly daring to breathe. ‘Apparently his wife left him about three years ago,’ Laurie said softly. ‘She went to live in Boston with some multimillionaire businessman and took his daughter too. And now …’ she squeezed Sherry’s hand, ‘Nick is moving back to England.’
Sherry almost felt as though she’d been struck. Or maybe she wanted to faint. Her head was spinning, her insides were in turmoil. She had to be dreaming, she just had to be. Nothing ever happened that perfectly, not for her, anyway. ‘What about his mother?’ she said, her voice sounding strangely distorted, at least to her.
‘I don’t know, she wasn’t mentioned. But isn’t that amazing about his wife? He’s free now, so maybe you two …’
‘No, don’t even say it,’ Sherry cried, covering her ears.
Laurie laughed. ‘It’s high time something worked out for you in the love department,’ she told her, ‘and if you ask me …’
‘No, don’t,’ Sherry protested, starting to feel drunk on all the hope that was flooding in. ‘Oh my God,’ she laughed, putting a hand to her mouth. ‘This is too much. It’s just too much. Is he divorced, do you know? What about someone else? He’s sure to have met someone else by now. If you knew him …’
‘Tell you what,’ Laurie cut in, ‘why don’t we go and rescue Elliot so he can tell you everything himself?’
Sherry was on the point of going with her when she suddenly stopped. ‘No! No!’ she exclaimed, pulling Laurie ba
ck. ‘We can’t just go up to Elliot like this. It looks … childish.’
‘Oh come on. He won’t mind.’
Sherry could feel herself shaking, and was half afraid it showed. ‘No,’ she said as firmly as she could. ‘And not in front of Andraya either. It’s her night. We can’t start talking about other things when she’s the star turn.’ Visions of her own paintings were racing through her mind again, and for one fleeting moment she wanted to run. It was all too much, first this peculiar reminder of her own past through Andraya’s art, the obscure mentions of suicide, now Nick being free … Or possibly free … It felt hard to breathe all of a sudden. She needed some air. ‘I’m going to the Ladies,’ she said, blinking as a series of flashbulbs went off nearby.
Laurie was about to follow when Rachel called out to her. ‘Come on, you should be in this,’ she told her.
‘It’s all right, I’ll go with Sherry,’ Anita assured her.
Laurie shrugged apologetically, and went to join the group around Andraya. After the photographers moved on to snap the other guests, she said to Elliot, ‘I’ve just told Sherry about your lunch with Nick. Did he say anything about being involved with anyone else now?’
‘No. Just that his wife had left him.’
‘What about Sherry? Did he mention her at all?’
Elliot shook his head. ‘Not that I recall.’
Laurie glanced in the direction of the Ladies.
‘What are you looking so worried about?’ he said, shouting over an explosion of laughter nearby.
‘It was just weird, Sherry’s reaction,’ she said. ‘I got the impression she wants to see him again, but …’ She shrugged and shook her head. ‘I suppose she’s just nervous. It’s been a long time.’
Elliot’s eyebrows went up. ‘I imagine the real challenge now, if they do get together,’ he said, ‘is whether he’ll live up to the image she’s created in her head, because memory has a peculiar way of altering perspective and reinventing the facts to how we want them to be, rather than how they actually were.’
Laurie’s eyes widened, then standing on tiptoe so her lips were against his, she said, ‘You know, it’s one of the things I love most about you, how you never cease to impress me. So now, impress me again, and tell me whether we should try to get them back together, or just let fate take its course.’
After taking a moment to kiss her, he said, ‘Fate gets my vote, and she’s coming this way.’
Laurie turned round.
‘Sherry, hi,’ Elliot said, pulling her into an embrace. ‘Are you buying, or just looking?’
For once she was lost for a witty response, though Elliot didn’t seem to notice as someone chose that moment to drag him away.
‘Are you OK?’ Laurie asked her.
‘Sure, I’m fine,’ she responded.
In the background Anita was shaking her head, denying it. ‘Maybe you should have something to eat,’ Laurie suggested, wondering what had been said in the Ladies.
‘Actually, I think I might leave now,’ Sherry said. ‘I’ve got enough to conjure a thousand words. If they want any more I can always get it from Rachel.’
Laurie was now more concerned than ever. ‘Why don’t you come over to the office tomorrow?’ she said. ‘We need to discuss our next moves in the immigrant story.’
‘I’ll check my diary,’ Sherry replied, hugging her. ‘Say goodnight to Elliot, and Chris and Rachel. Tell them it’s a wonderful exhibition.’
‘I will,’ Laurie assured her.
As she started towards the door Laurie put a hand on Anita’s arm and held her back. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.
‘She’s afraid,’ Anita answered. ‘I think we both know that she’s never stopped loving – or at least wanting – that man, and now I guess, if they do get together, she’s going to find out whether or not it’s been the same for him.’ Her eyes seemed to increase in intensity. ‘After seven years, and all the heartache she went through, I’d say that was pretty scary, wouldn’t you?’
Laurie nodded and let her go. There was more to it though, she felt certain, but catching Andraya fixing Elliot with her brazenly seductive eyes again, she decided to make her way back to Elliot’s side, wanting to remind the Brazilian beauty that this one was already spoken for.
Neela was screaming, but only inside her head. No sounds were coming out. Her body ached with holding it back, her fear was like an evil spirit come to devour her. She felt nothing but dread, like the gnawing beaks of vultures picking over what was left on the bones.
On a mattress nearby Parvati was whimpering, her face turned into Ekta’s soft body, her limbs quaking with fear and despair. The others lay in the darkness and listened. No-one moved. No-one spoke. Parvati’s daughter had been gone for more than a week and there was still no news. Earlier Parvati herself had been taken to the same man who had hurt Daya. Parvati’s injuries were not as bad as Daya’s, but still she must see the doctor. Ekta was insisting. Mota Ben said she would take her tomorrow.
Neela held Shaila close and prayed incessantly to the gods that their turn to go with the men would never come. But it would, as sure as the dawn, for they were the only two who had not yet been chosen, saved so far, Ekta said, by her disfigurement and Shaila’s age. Shaila was so little. Only just six. Neela wanted to run away, to run and run and get them as far from here as she could, but how?
She pressed a fist to her mouth. No-one must hear her crying. She must be as silent as the thoughts in her head, as careful as the rats who came to find food. She was not brave in her heart, or beautiful in her face like Daya, but she was clever in her mind to remember things even when she’d been told to forget them. She remembered the name of the doctor Daya had seen, and the name of the Englishwoman who had given Daya a card.
Feeling Shaila snug in her arms Neela waited for another wave of terror to pass as she thought of what she must do, and how she must do it. If she got hurt, the way Daya and Parvati had been hurt, Mota Ben would take her to the doctor. It was the only way she could think of to get word to someone outside.
Eddie Cribbs rolled off the young body he’d been pounding for the past ten minutes and looked at his watch. He was feeling good, but not as good as he’d hoped before getting her over here. There was always too much to worry about, and sex was only a brief distraction. One he enjoyed, it was true, but as soon as it was over all the problems started coming back.
‘Was that OK for you, Mr Cribbs?’ the girl next to him said.
‘Yeah, now be quiet, I’m thinking.’
They were in the private quarters of his eleventh-floor executive suite in Canary Wharf, which had been done up to act as an independent studio flat complete with kitchen, bathroom and good-sized bedroom. The grand office the other side of the double doors was from where he governed his empire, and beyond that was Perry’s large department of highly skilled and extremely highly paid computer experts. Since the firm had put these kids through university, taking care of every expense and providing the kind of lifestyle anyone but a moron would become addicted to, their loyalty was pretty much bagged. Certainly no-one had failed a security check yet, and since the fate of anyone who did was widely known, failure was unlikely. They didn’t take too many chances though, and things were only revealed on a basis of need-to-know.
Beside him the phone rang.
‘What?’ he grunted into the receiver.
‘You wanted a call after twenty minutes,’ Perry reminded him.
‘Oh, yeah, right.’ He swung his legs over the side of the bed. The girl beside him was forgotten. ‘What’s happened, anything?’ he wanted to know. ‘Anything on Bedford?’
‘Not yet. The interrogations are still going on, we’re told, but so far no awkward connections seem to have been made. The latest cargo is on schedule. I’ve just wired funds through the usual route to cover the next leg of the journey. So everything’s cool there.’
Eddie could feel his headache coming back. There might be no connection, but the on
going interrogations were making him nervous. ‘We’re ready to dump the cargo at a moment’s notice?’ he asked.
‘If it proves necessary, everyone’s primed.’
‘Good. Anything else I need to know?’
‘The results have just come in on the fashion buyer you wanted checked out. Turns out she’s a reporter.’
Eddie’s face darkened. ‘I knew it. I fucking knew it. Has anyone spoken to her yet?’
‘No. We’re waiting for instructions from you.’
‘Reporters are tricky bastards,’ he snarled, ‘you sort one out and you get the whole fucking pack on your ass. Do we know if this one has a connection to Laurie Forbes?’
‘Her flat’s a stone’s throw from Laurie Forbes’s office, so I wouldn’t be surprised.’
‘Shit! The last thing we need is Forbes and her fucking boyfriend sniffing round our affairs,’ Eddie growled fractiously. ‘Have you checked if this reporter … What’s her fucking name?’
‘Sherry MacElvoy.’
‘Do we know if she’s spoken to the doctor?’
‘Not yet.’
‘Then find out. Pay the man another visit, put on a bit more pressure. Has he got kids?’
‘Three.’
‘Then he’s ours. Make sure he forgets he ever heard of our workshop, and if he’s told anyone about the stupid bitch we had to get rid of he’s going to suddenly remember it was a mix-up. Read me? And don’t leave his office without the necessary files. If they’re on computer get them erased. Send the Tomkins boy, he always handles those things right.’
‘No problem. Do you want to relocate the women?’
Eddie thought. ‘If necessary, yes. Remind me how many there are.’
