I’m hardly surprised that, when he gets home, Patch is distracted and edgy. He is sitting at the huge table in the dining room drawing, hunched over his sketchpad.
Leo is trying to get us both to help him cook and there is no space for Patch and me to unravel this morning, to pour oil on the troubled waters.
‘May I?’ I gesture to the pile of paper.
Patch nods and I pick the first picture up. It is a close-up drawing of one of the netsuke. A tiny but perfect hare, his back legs hunched and his back rounded, long ivory fangs sticking out of his mouth. On the sheet behind him, the tiny junk – crammed with chicken cages and traders in wide hats – sails down a paper river. The third is a beautiful dragon, tearing across the page like fire, scales so lifelike I could touch them.
‘Patch, these are beautiful. Amazing. You could sell these.’
‘I can’t sell them. That’s why I live on grants. I sell barely anything. That’s how being an artist works.’ He puts the pencil down and the anger still in him is evident. ‘They don’t tell you at art school that you’re going to feel like this every day of your life.’
Leo, who has been running up and down the stairs with queries and comments for the last two hours, makes a noisy entrance. ‘I’m nearly ready. I’m not going to cook the pasta till Sophie gets here. But I don’t know what to wear.’ He’s flapping and anxious, his palms are tapping on his thighs.
‘You said you were going to wear what you wore this morning, for the photoshoot.’ He looked dapper for the pictures: skinny black jeans, and old band T-shirt – a classic – and a blazer. He dressed like Patch. ‘What was wrong with what you showed me? You looked great.’
‘I had the T-shirt on and I was cooking and I got tomato on it.’ He rubs his forehead with his hands, his soft black fringe falls through his fingers. ‘I can’t wear it.’
‘I’ll come and help you choose another.’ I reach out towards him to take his hand.
‘Uhuh,’ Patch says. ‘You’re on your own with this, buddy. You can do it, you can choose a T-shirt. Clothes are your best thing.’ He looks up at Leo for a little longer than he looked at me. ‘It’s your best thing, after cooking.’
I’m surprised when Leo nods and leaves the room. ‘You shouldn’t have said that,’ I say to Patch. ‘He’s nervous. We need to support him.’
Patch narrows his eyes at me. ‘Is that the sound of a man going off to search through his T-shirt drawer I can hear? Oh, I believe it is.’ He is relaxing out of the tension. I see it leave his shoulders.
He’s right, Leo is sorting himself out. Leo is coping. But I feel a loss: I want to help Leo get ready for his first proper dinner date; it’s my job to help him choose what to wear; to solve his problems.
Patch stretches a hand out towards me. ‘He’s fine. He’s sorting it. He can.’
I don’t take his hand. ‘I don’t want him to sort it. I want to be part of it. I’m here to help him.’
Patch raises his eyebrows at me and his silence says, But you won’t always be.
Chapter Twenty-One
Sophie is as beautiful as I remember. Her skin is smooth, brown and perfect and her cheeks, kissed with the barest of make-up, make her look timeless, as if she could drift straight into the role of lady of this house.
‘Sophie and I are going to have a drink in the garden before dinner,’ Leo tells me in a very formal manner. ‘She likes white wine.’
Out of the kitchen window to the front I catch a glimpse of a woman walking towards a car. It can only be Sophie’s mum: the long black hair and the tall narrow frame are almost exactly the same. ‘Excuse me a second,’ I say to Leo and Sophie. I rush back into the corridor and out of the front door.
‘Hi . . . hello!’ I call out to her. The gravel is crunching over my trainers and she has her hand on her car door. ‘Are you Sophie’s mum?’
She turns and smiles. It’s the same smile that Sophie has: slow to spread but warm with it. Behind her our tall oaks bow and sweep, whispering their greetings over the rusty fence rails. ‘I’m Helen,’ she says and walks towards me, her hand outstretched.
‘Cate. Leo’s mum.’
‘You look alike,’ she says, her smile deepening at the corners of her mouth.
I shake my head. ‘No, Leo’s the image of my husband. Absolute double.’ And then I add, although I wouldn’t have before, in our old life, ‘My late husband.’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ she says and it’s done: Richard is mentioned, he passes between us – he is there and then he is gone. There is no drama, there are no tears. ‘It was very kind of Leo to invite Sophie: your house looks incredible. Sophie told me about it after the clean-up: I’ve never been before – to my shame.’
‘You’re not the only one.’ I smile at her. ‘But we’re working on that.’ I look back at the porticoed front and sigh. ‘Actually, I was just checking that it’s okay for Sophie to have a drink. Leo’s about to head out to the garden with nibbles and a bottle of wine.’
‘It’s very kind of you to check . . .’ Her face tells me that she’s not comfortable with my checking. ‘Sophie’s twenty-two years old, she’ll let you know what she can and can’t cope with. She’s a very independent woman.’ Helen puts her hand on her car door. ‘Sophie’s very firm about her decisions. To a fault sometimes.’
‘Leo has very little self-control.’ I make eye contact with her and can see she isn’t offended. ‘But his father was exactly the same so I don’t think it’s a consequence of Down’s.’
On the way back through the kitchen, I have a quiet word with Leo and advise him, if he wants to be on top cooking game, to stick to a beer or two rather than join Sophie with the wine.
*
Patch has folded up the sketchbook when I come back into the dining room, and tidied the rest of the sheets into a neat pile. He is standing by the window.
‘Sorry I was snappy,’ he says. ‘I’m really tired.’
I’m mellowed by love’s young dream in the kitchen and reach my arms out to him. ‘It’s all right. I should have known when to quit.’
He holds my hand and pulls me towards the window seat. ‘Come on.’ He pats his knee for me to sit on his lap.
‘I’ll squash you.’
‘You will not.’ When I’ve made myself comfortable he winds his long arms round me and holds me tight. His breath warms my face. ‘I didn’t want to look like an ambulance chaser. Which, probably, is what I am.’
‘You wouldn’t. Of course you wouldn’t.’ I lean my head on his shoulder. ‘And you’re not.’
‘It made me uncomfortable: and I know it shouldn’t. The idea of Richard in the first picture and then me – who doesn’t belong here at all, who’s just an interloper, in the second. Sorry. I shouldn’t have felt like that – but I did.’
‘It’s okay, I get it. I feel like that sometimes too.’
‘Look at them,’ he says, and I uncurl slightly to look through the window at Leo and Sophie.
‘Sweet, aren’t they?’
‘They’re sweet, and they’re totally preoccupied with each other and not with us. That gives us – goodness knows how long – all alone and uninterrupted.’ He starts kissing my cheek with tiny butterfly breaths.
‘I thought you were tired.’
‘I am, but I’d rather drop from exhaustion than miss this – daring – daylight opportunity.’ He moves his kisses to my mouth and he has his hands under my shirt before I open my eyes and see Leo stamping across the lawn, his hands banging his thighs in fury.
*
We scramble up, buttoning up shirts and tucking in tops as we go. We meet Leo thundering through the hallway, on his way upstairs.
‘What on earth’s the matter?’
Leo is beyond words. He’s making a low, grumbling sound in his throat and his breath is coming in short rasps. He is furious.
‘I’ll go and find Sophie. Or do you think you should? As a woman, I mean?’ Patch is standing in the corridor, his arms out at his sides, waiting for my instructio
ns.
‘You’re right. I’ll do that. Get Leo to come back downstairs, if you can.’
Leo is already barrelling up the stairs, tripping on the carpet runner, banging his knees and his hands on the edge of the steps. His voice is getting louder and louder but without any comprehensible words. I leave Patch to it and run down and outside to see where Sophie is.
She’s still sitting by the lake, serene, smiling, and certainly not in any distress.
‘Leo wants me to go home now.’
The peacocks are nibbling the grass by her feet, searching for crumbs left over from the supper. Sophie’s shoes are strappy sandals, low-heeled and silver, and her toenails are a bright red: the hen peacock pauses by her big toe, wondering whether to try a bite.
‘Shoo.’ I say to the peacocks and they look at me with contempt before walking away, their heads bobbing together and their scratchy feet flattening the lawn. ‘Did you text your mum?’
‘I did. She’s on her way. Or my dad. One of them will be here. My mum will come in her car: a red BMW. My dad has a white Skoda. I prefer my mum’s because it has Bluetooth for music.’
I look up at the upstairs windows but there is no sign of Patch or Leo. ‘Did something go wrong, Sophie?’ I sit down on the picnic bench, one leg either side of the seat, and look Sophie right in the eye. ‘Didn’t you have a good time?’
‘It was very nice, thank you. Leo is a very good cook. He makes excellent pasta and sauce.’ She smiles, a little absently, and looks into the distance over my shoulder.
‘And then did you argue?’ I am wearing denim shorts, they don’t feel grown-up enough to have this conversation. I push my hands into the pockets then regret that and take them out again. ‘Why does he want you to go home?’
‘Leo asked me about Martin.’ She nods her head. I think it means she’s cross but I have already worked out that her body language is hard to read: her deep round eyes give nothing away. ‘Martin from the art group. The one Leo had a fight with.’
‘I remember.’ I put my hands on the table in front of me and my stomach knots.
‘And Leo thinks I want to go out with Martin, that I want him to be my boyfriend.’ She is still staring over my shoulder and I look behind me to check there’s no one there.
‘And do you?’
She sits up straight and tucks her chin into her chest – it is a clearly readable gesture of indignation. ‘It’s very annoying that he keeps on talking about it. It makes me cross. I wouldn’t come for dinner with Leo if I wanted to be Martin’s girlfriend, would I? I would have dinner with Martin.’ And then she turns her gaze to the pond and the statues as if to say, this conversation is over. Atalanta meets her gaze with her cold gold eyes: Hippomenes stares over towards the house.
The beep of a car horn carries across the still lawn and, almost simultaneously, Sophie’s mobile pings to say she has a message. She reads it quietly for a second or two then stands up. ‘My mum’s here now. Thank you very much for having me.’
‘Shall I walk you back out through the house?’
‘No, thank you,’ she says and brushes imaginary creases from the front of her dress. ‘I’m going to go round that corner there – by the hedge – that leads to the drive, doesn’t it?’
‘I’ll walk you round anyway.’ The last thing I want is Sophie’s mum thinking I’ve abandoned her.
Sophie walks quickly, although she doesn’t seem to be particularly distressed. When we get round to the front of the house, I see her mum’s red BMW, exactly as she said.
‘I’m so sorry,’ I start to say. ‘I don’t know what’s gone wrong but . . .’
‘Sophie can be very forthright.’ Helen narrows her eyes and looks at her daughter. ‘Can’t you?’
‘Thank you for having me, Cate.’ Sophie opens the car door and gets into the passenger seat. Her movements are calm and smooth and the door shuts quietly behind her. ‘I had a very nice time, thank you.’
‘I’ll get to the bottom of it. Has she upset Leo?’ Helen’s smile is kind.
‘I don’t know that she has – something has. But Leo is as sensitive as Sophie is forthright. It doesn’t take much to get him to fly off the handle. Just the wrong thing.’
‘I’ll find out,’ Helen says. ‘And I’ll give you a call if there’s anything to it. But, do you know what? I doubt it very much.’
‘Sorry you had to come out so much earlier than we thought. It was nice to meet you.’ I wait for a moment as Helen reverses out of the parking space and half-heartedly wave at the back of the car as she leaves.
It’s been a long and busy day and our tiny family has been fractious and peculiar. I let myself back in through the front door of the house and pause at the bottom of the grand staircase, holding my breath while I check for noise. I wonder for a moment if it was fair – on either of them – to leave Patch to sort out Leo, but then I remember that I’m trying to trust them both, trying to let go a little.
Richard’s ancestors stare down at me from the walls as I mount the curved staircase, my feet heavy as lead. Not one of them smiles or lends encouragement and yet – around the mouth and eyes – they all clearly belong to the same tribe as Richard and Leo. At the very top of the stairs, a wide buffalo head looms over me, its tongue made of plaster and painted red, its eyes staring and unhelpful.
*
There’s a note on my bed, written in thick marker pen on a sheet of A4 to make it noticeable. ‘Gone for walk. Kitchen garden. X.’ The kiss is wide and dark, its marks extravagant and firm. Down in the gardens, I can see the wall of the kitchen garden in the distance, just about make out the green of the ivy clinging to the sandy gold bricks. The peacocks have got over their sulk and are back by the picnic table, pecking up the remains of Leo’s supper. I remember with a pang that Patch and I haven’t eaten.
The window is open and the evening still and quiet. If Leo were in any real trouble, Patch could shout and I would hear him. It allows me a moment of peace. I sink onto the bed, imagining a glass of cold white wine in my hand and, not for the first time, regretting how far away we are from the fridge.
Patch’s sketchbook is in front of me. His sketches are beautiful. Each of the netsuke is detailed, one after the other, the intricacies of them so much easier to see now that they fill a whole page.
His pictures of the individual animals in the dioramas are amazing: tigers tense, ready to devour him as he draws them; an elephant raises his foot, big enough to trample Patch as he stands in front of it armed with his keen eye and pencil. A fruit bat hangs upside down from a lichened branch, I turn the pad sideways to see if he should be the other way up.
A sheet of paper slides out, floats to the floor.
It is a drawing of me. Not the me I see, the me I understand when I look in the mirror. This is another me: flawless and glowing; peaceful and smiling. This is a version of my face I don’t think I’ve ever really noticed, not even when I was young. This is the light inside of me – the one I have never taken time to kindle, to stoke. In this picture, I radiate. It is an incredible picture to see: an enchanted version of me; an image that must be – is, I hope – the way I exist for Patch.
My default setting is the tight ball of fear inside me: as hard as I try to accept the changes; the house; Patch’s kindness; these bonkers living arrangements. No moment of armistice lasts long enough – or is convincing enough – for the ball to fully unwind. It’s turned into a stone I carry in my core, it’s been there for four years and I’m not sure who I’d be without it. Would I be this woman: the bright, open, beauty that Patch has sketched? This is the me I found as I recovered from the fire, the phoenix days. I need to remember that I have this version inside myself.
I trace the lines of my own jaw on the paper, the clear strokes that make up my eyebrows, my lips. My mouth involuntarily makes the tiny, parted gap it holds in the drawing.
I lean my head back on the floral fabric of the coverlet and, despite its odd smell of horses and soil, I close my eye
s.
*
‘Get into bed, babe.’ Patch is gently shaking my arm. ‘Leo’s all tucked up.’
My sleep was thick, foggy. ‘What time is it?’
‘Only nine, you haven’t been asleep that long.’
I start to surface. I am still holding Patch’s drawing of me. ‘I’m sorry.’ I feel as though I’ve read his diary, gone through his private things. ‘This fell out of your sketchbook.’
‘Do you like it?’ He blushes slightly, looks down at the floor.
‘It’s beautiful.’
Patch kisses my forehead. ‘A picture says a thousand words.’ He stands up, exhales and shakes off the moment. ‘Go and see Leo if you’re not ready for bed. He could do with a hug.’
I sniff. There is a faint smell, familiar and from the past. ‘Have you been smoking?’ It makes me laugh, I’d forgotten that anyone still smoked: I certainly didn’t think Patch did.
‘The odd rollie from time to time. Especially on sunny evenings, ones with a bit of stress in.’ He kisses me again and the taste of him brings back memories.
*
Leo is sitting up in bed, his headphones so loud I can hear the tinny beat from the door. His eyes are tight shut and he is dancing. Every few seconds he adds in a word or two of the song, painful and tuneless.
I tap his leg and he opens his eyes. He’s obviously been crying, it’s made his cheeks pink and has left wrinkled grey bags under his eyes. I put my arms around his shoulders and pull him tight into me; part-man and, in moments like this, still a boy. ‘What went wrong, darling? You were having such a good time.’
He talks in short chippy sentences, almost baby talk. ‘Martin. Martin’s job. And getting Sophie to be my girlfriend.’ He stops here, hums an unidentifiable tune, closes his eyes again and screws his face up with the stress of his thoughts.
‘It’s hard, making relationships. It’s hard for everyone. Even for Patch and me. Even for Curtis.’
‘And Araminta. She doesn’t have a boyfriend. Or a mummy or daddy.’
‘Exactly. Everyone struggles.’ My heart aches, partly for him but – against its will – with a little sympathy for Araminta’s silent life, all the people she has lost.
Where We Belong Page 21
