He spots Roberta tiptoeing through the hallway, making her way like a shadow to the private library where she has worked for the past five years.
‘Roberta!’ His daredevil is unleashed; disobeys the ‘no shouting in the halls’ rule, and his voice echoes and rebounds off the walls and high ceilings, deafening the ears of all in the portraits, loud enough to wilt van Gogh’s sunflowers and to crack the mirror in the Arnolfini portrait.
It’s also enough for Roberta to freeze and turn slowly, her eyes wide and terrified like a deer caught in the headlights. She blushes as the half-dozen members of the public turn to stare at her. Her gulp is visible from where he stands and Justin’s immediately sorry for breaking her code, for pointing her out when she wanted to be invisible. He stops his power-walking and tries to walk quietly along the floors, glide as she does, in an attempt to retract the noise he had made. She stands, stiff as a board and as close to the wall as possible like an elegant climber, clinging to the walls and fences, preferring shelter and not noticing its own beauty. Justin wonders if her behaviour is as a consequence of her career, or if being a librarian in the National Gallery had seemed attractive to her because of her way. He thinks the latter.
‘Yes,’ she whispers, wide-eyed and frightened.
‘Sorry for shouting your name,’ he says as quietly as he can.
Her face softens and her shoulders relax a little.
‘Where did you get this hamper?’ He holds it out to her.
‘At reception. I was returning from my break when Charlie asked me to give it to you. Is there something wrong?’
‘Charlie.’ He thinks hard. ‘He’s at the Sir Paul Getty Entrance?’
She nods.
‘OK, thank you, Roberta, I apologise for shouting.’ He dashes off to the East Wing, his daredevil and good side clashing again in a remarkably confused half-run, half-walk combination, while the basket swings from his hand.
‘Finished for the day, Little Red Riding Hood?’ He hears a croaky chuckle.
Justin, noticing he was skipping along with the basket, stops abruptly and spins around to face Charlie, a security guard, over six foot tall.
‘My, Grandmother, what an ugly head you have.’
‘What do you want?’
‘I was wondering who gave you this basket?’
‘A delivery guy from …’ Charlie moves over to behind his small desk and riffles through some papers. He retrieves a clipboard. ‘Harrods. Zhang Wei,’ he reads. ‘Why? Something wrong with the muffins?’ He runs his tongue over his teeth and clears his throat.
Justin’s eyes narrow. ‘How did you know they were muffins?’
Charlie refuses to meet his stare. ‘Had to check, didn’t I? This is the National Gallery. You can’t expect me to accept a package without knowing what’s in it.’
Justin studies Charlie, whose face has pinked. He spies crumbs stuck to the crevices at the corners of his mouth and slight traces down his uniform. He removes the chequered cloth from his hamper and counts. Eleven muffins.
‘Don’t you think it’s odd to send a person eleven muffins?’
‘Odd?’ Eyes wander, shoulders fidget. ‘Dunno, mate. Never sent muffins to anyone in my life.’
‘Wouldn’t it seem more obvious to send a dozen muffins?’
Shoulders shrug. Fingers fidget. His eyes study everybody that enters the gallery, far more intently than usual. His body language tells Justin that he’s finished with the conversation.
Justin whips out his cellphone as he exits to Trafalgar Square.
‘Hello?’
‘Bea, it’s Dad.’
‘I’m not talking to you.’
‘Why not?’
‘Peter told me what you said to him at the ballet last night,’ she snaps.
‘What did I do?’
‘You interrogated him on his intentions all night.’
‘I’m your father, that’s my job.’
‘No, what you did is the job of the Gestapo,’ she fumes. ‘I swear, I’m not speaking to you until you apologise to him.’
‘Apologise?’ he laughs. ‘What for? I merely made a few enquiries into his past, in order to ascertain his agenda.’
‘Agenda? He doesn’t have an agenda!’
‘So I asked him a few questions, so what? Bea, he’s not good enough for you.’
‘No, he’s not good enough for you. Well, I don’t care what you think of him, it’s me that’s supposed to be happy.’
‘He picks strawberries for a living.’
‘He is an IT consultant!’
‘Then, who picks strawberries?’ Somebody picks strawberries. ‘Well, honey, you know how I feel about consultants. If they are so amazing at something why don’t they do it themselves, instead of just making money telling people?’
‘You’re a lecturer, curator, reviewer, whatever. If you know so much why don’t you just build a building or paint a damn picture yourself?’ she shouts. ‘Instead of just bragging to everybody about how much you know about them!’
Hmm.
‘Sweetheart, let’s not get out of control now.’
‘No, you are the one out of control. You will apologise to Peter and if you do not, I will not answer your phone calls and you can deal with your little dramas all by yourself.’
‘Wait, wait, wait. Just one question.’
‘Dad, I—’
‘Did-you-send-me-a-hamper-of-a-dozen-cinnamon-muffins?’ he rushes out with.
‘What? No!’
‘No?’
‘No muffins! No conversations, no nothing—’
‘Now, now, sweetheart, there’s no need for double negatives.’
‘I’ll have no more contact with you until you apologise,’ she finishes.
‘OK,’ he sighs. ‘Sorry.’
‘Not to me. To Peter.’
‘OK, but does that mean you won’t be collecting my dry cleaning on your way over tomorrow? You know where it is, it’s the one beside the tube station—’
The phone clicks. He stares at it in confusion. My own daughter hung up on me? I knew this Peter was trouble.
He thinks again about the muffins and dials again. He clears his throat.
‘Hello.’
‘Jennifer, it’s Justin.’
‘Hello, Justin.’ Her voice is cold.
Used to be warm. Like honey. No, like hot caramel. It used to bounce from octave to octave when she heard his name, just like the piano music he’d wake on Sunday mornings to hear her play from the conservatory. But now?
He listens to the silence on the other end.
Ice.
‘I’m just calling to see whether you’d sent me a hamper of muffins.’ As soon as he’s said it, he realises how ridiculous this call is. Of course she didn’t send him anything. Why would she?
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I received a basket of muffins to my office today along with a thank you note, but the note failed to reveal the sender’s identity. I was wondering if it was you.’
Her voice is amused now. No, not amused, mocking. ‘What would I have to thank you for, Justin?’
It’s a simple question, but knowing her as he knows her, it has implications far beyond the words, and so Justin jumps up and snaps at the bait. The hook cuts through his lip and bitter Justin is back, the voice he grew so accustomed to during the demise of their … well, during their demise. She has reeled him right in.
‘Oh, I don’t know, twenty years of marriage, perhaps. A daughter. A good living. A roof over your head.’ He knows it’s a stupid statement. That before him, after him and even without him, she had and always would have a roof, of all things, over her head, but it’s spurting out of him now and he can’t stop and won’t stop, for he is right and she is wrong and anger is spurring on every word, like a jockey whipping his horse as they near the finish line. ‘Travel all over the world.’ Whip-crack-away! ‘Clothes, clothes and more clothes.’ Whip-crack-away! ‘A new kitchen when we didn’t need one, a cons
ervatory, for Christsake …’ And he goes on, like a man from the nineteenth century who’d been keeping his wife accustomed to a good life she would otherwise have been without, ignoring the fact that she had made a good living herself, playing in an orchestra that travelled the world, making several trips that he had accompanied her on.
At the beginning of their married life they had no choice but to live with Justin’s mother. They were young and had a baby to rear, the reason for their hasty marriage, and as Justin was still attending college by day, bar tending at night and working at an art museum at the weekend, Jennifer had made money playing the piano at an upmarket restaurant in Chicago. At the weekends, she would return home in the early hours of the morning, her back sore and tendonitis in her middle finger, but that all went out of his mind when she’d dangled the line with that seemingly innocent question. She had known that this tirade would come and he gobbles, gobbles, gobbles, munches on the bait that fills his mouth. Finally running out of things they have spent the last twenty years doing together, and out of steam, he stops.
Jennifer is silent.
‘Jennifer?’
‘Yes, Justin.’ Icy.
Justin sighs with exhaustion. ‘So, was it you?’
‘It must have been one of your other women, because it most certainly wasn’t me.’
Click and she’s gone.
Rage bubbles inside him. Other women. Other women! One affair when he was twenty years old, a fumble in the dark with Mary-Beth Dursoa at college, before he and Jennifer were even married, and she carries on as though he was Don Juan. In their bedroom, he’d even put a print of A Satyr Mourning over a Nymph by Piero di Cosimo, which Jennifer had always loathed but he had always hoped would send her subliminal messages. In the painting there is a young girl semi-clothed who on first glance seems asleep but on further viewing has blood seeping from her throat. A satyr is mourning her. Justin’s interpretation of the painting is that the woman, mistrusting her husband’s fidelity, followed him into the woods. He was hunting, not going astray as she thought, and shot her by accident, thinking her rustling in the trees was an animal. Sometimes during his and Jennifer’s darkest moments, when their hate raged during their toughest arguments, when their throats were red raw, their eyes stinging with tears, their hearts breaking from the pain, their heads pounding from the analysis, Justin would study the painting and envy the satyr.
Fuming, he charges down the North Terrace steps, sits down by one of the fountains, places the basket by his feet and bites into a muffin, scoffing it down so quickly he barely has time to taste it. Crumbs fall at his feet, attracting a flock of pigeons with intent in their beady black eyes. He goes to reach for another muffin but he is swarmed by overenthusiastic pigeons pecking at the contents of his basket, greedily. Peck, peck, peck – he watches dozens more flock towards him, coming in to land like fighter jets. Afraid of falling missiles from those that circle his head, he picks up his basket and shoos them away with all the butchness of an eleven-year-old.
He breezes in the front door of his home, leaving it open behind him, and is immediately greeted by Doris, with a paint palette in her hand.
‘OK, so I’ve narrowed it down,’ she begins, thrusting dozens of colours in his face.
Her long leopard-print nails are each decorated with a diamanté jewel. She wears an all-in-one snakeskin jumpsuit, and her feet wobble dangerously in patent lace-up ankle stilettos. Her hair is still its usual shock of red, her eyes catlike with inky eyeliner sweeping up from her corners of her eyes, her painted lips to match her hair remind him of Ronald McDonald. He watches them with severe irritation as they open and close.
The random words he hears are, ‘Gooseberry Fool, Celtic Forest, English Mist and Woodland Pearl, all calm tones, would look so good in this room or Wild Mushroom, Nomadic Glow and Sultana Spice. The Cappuccino Candy is one of my faves but I don’t think it’ll work next to that curtain, what do you think?’
She waves a fabric in front of his face and it tickles his nose, which tingles with such intensity it senses the fight that is about to brew. He doesn’t respond but takes deep breaths and counts to ten in his mind. And when that doesn’t work and she keeps listing paint colours, he keeps on going to twenty.
‘Hello? Justin?’ She snaps her fingers in his face. ‘Hel-lo?’
‘Maybe you should give Justin a break, Doris. He looks tired.’ Al looks nervously at his brother.
‘But—’
‘Get your sultana spice behind over here,’ he teases and she whoops.
‘OK, but just one more thing. Bea will love her room done in Ivory Lace. And Petey too. Imagine how romantic this will be for—’
‘ENOUGH!’ Justin screams at the top of his lungs, not wanting his daughter’s name and the word romantic to share the same sentence.
Doris jumps and stops talking immediately. Her hand flies to her chest. Al stops drinking, his bottle freezes just below his lips, his heavy breathing above the rim making ivory pipe music. Other than that, there’s absolute silence.
‘Doris,’ Justin takes a deep breath and tries to speak as calmly as possible, ‘enough of this please. Enough of this Cappuccino Nights—’
‘Candy,’ she interrupts, and quickly silences again.
‘Whatever. This is a Victorian house, from the nineteenth century, not some painted lady from an episode of Changing Rooms.’ He tries to restrain his emotions, his feelings insulted on behalf of the building. ‘If you had mentioned Cappuccino Chocolate—’
‘Candy,’ she whispers.
‘Whatever! To anyone during that time, you would have been instantly burned at the stake!’
She squeaks, insulted.
‘It needs sophistication, it needs to be researched, it needs furniture of the period, colours of the period, not a room that sounds like Al’s dinner menu.’
‘Hey!’ Al speaks up.
‘I think it needs,’ Justin takes a deep breath and says gently, ‘somebody else for the job. Maybe it’s just bigger than you thought it was going to be but I appreciate your help, really I do. Please tell me you understand.’
She nods slowly and he breathes a sigh of relief.
Suddenly the paint palettes go flying across the room as Doris lets rip, ‘You pretentious little bastaaaaard!’
‘Doris!’ Al leaps up out of his armchair, or at least, makes a great attempt to.
Justin immediately takes steps back as she walks aggressively towards him, pointing her sparkly animal-print nail at him, like a weapon.
‘Listen here, you silly little man. I have spent the last two weeks researching this dump of a basement in the kinds of libraries and places you wouldn’t even think exist. I’ve been to dark, dingy dungeons where people smell of old … things.’ Her nostrils flare and her voice deepens, threateningly. ‘I purchased every historic period paint brochure that I could get my hands on and applied the colours in accordance with the colour rules at the end of the nineteenth century. I’ve shaken hands with people you don’t even wanna know about, I’ve seen parts of London I didn’t even wanna know about. I’ve looked through books so old, the dust mites were big enough to hand them to me from the shelves. I have matched the Dulux colours as closely as I possibly could to your historic period paint and I’ve been to second-hand, third-hand, even antique stores and seen furniture in such disgusting derelict conditions, I almost set up the ISPCF. I’ve seen things crawling around dining-room tables and sat in such rickety chairs I could smell the black death that killed the last person who died sitting right in it. I have sanded down so much pine, I have splinters in places you don’t wanna see. So.’ She prods him in the chest with her dagger nail as she emphasises each word that finally backs him up against the wall. ‘Don’t. Tell. Me. That this is too big for me.’
She clears her throat and stands up straight. The anger in her voice is replaced with a vulnerable ‘poor me’ tremble. ‘But despite what you said, I will finish this project. I will go on undeterred. I will do it in s
pite of you and I will do it for your brother, who might be dead next month and you don’t even care.’
‘Dead?’ Justin’s eyes widen.
With that, she turns on her heel and storms off into her bedroom.
She sticks her head out of the doorway. ‘By the way, just so you know, I would have banged the door behind me VERY LOUDLY to show just how angry I am but it’s currently out in the backyard ready for sanding and priming, before I paint it …’ and this she spits out rebelliously, ‘Ivory Lace.’
Then she disappears again, without a bang.
I shift from foot to foot nervously outside the open door of Justin’s home. Should I press the bell now? Simply call his name into the room? Would he call the police and have me arrested for trespassing? Oh, this was such a bad decision. Frankie and Kate had persuaded me to come here, to present myself to him. They had pumped me up to such a point I had hopped in the first taxi that came my way to Trafalgar Square, to catch him at the National Gallery before he left. I’d been so close to him as he’d been on the phone, heard his calls to people as he asked them about the basket. I’d felt oddly comfortable just watching him, without his knowing, unable to take my eyes off him, revelling in the secret thrill of being able to see him for who he is instead of viewing his life from his own memories.
His anger at whoever was on the phone – most likely his ex-wife, the woman with the red hair and freckles – convinced me it was the wrong time to approach him and so I’d followed him. Followed, not stalked. I’d taken my time while trying to build up the courage to talk to him. Would I mention the transfusion or not? Would he think I was crazy or be open to listening or, even better, open to believing?
But once on the tube, the timing again wasn’t right. It was overcrowded, people were pushing and shoving, avoiding eye contact, never mind first-time introductions or conversations about studies into the possible intelligence of blood. And so after pacing up and down his road, feeling like both a schoolgirl with a crush and a stalker at the same time, I now find myself standing outside the door, with a plan. But my plan is once again being compromised as Justin and his brother Al begin to talk about something I know I shouldn’t be hearing, about a family secret I am more than familiar with already.
Cecelia Ahern 2-book Bundle Page 47
