A Trick of the Mind

by Penny Hancock

  A small, dark-haired boy with amazing pale blue eyes.

  Wearing shorts. Just like the boy on the hand-painted bib.

  A boy whose sweet face was so familiar to me that even seeing it here, pre-adolescence, slightly pudgy, sent a bolt of fear through me.

  But the biggest shock was that he was holding crutches.

  One of his legs was missing from the knee downwards.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  I felt numb on the train back to London.

  ‘Who’s that boy?’ I’d asked my mum.

  ‘Oh yes. He’s the little boy who lived in foster care nearby. He was born with his lower leg missing. Look! He is definitely the one she painted here on this bib. I think May tried to foster him once but gave up. He was very troubled. Patrick, his name was. His mother was young, troubled herself, couldn’t cope with his physical disability on top of her own drug problems – she rejected him. No wonder he was so full of anger. He went at Daisy with a knife one day and threatened to pull the tail off her pet mouse. What a thing for a child to do!’

  I got back to East London at five, praying I had beaten Patrick to it. As I walked across Trinity Buoy Wharf, on this balmy summer’s afternoon, people stopped to fuss over Pepper, to throw him the odd titbit as they made their way to and from the café, or sat about on benches chatting. Planes took off and came in to land at City Airport. The cable cars moved in perpetual motion up on their high wires, and far beneath them the river lay, barely moving, lit in places by streaks of reflected sunlight. There was nothing to be afraid of.

  Bright daylight and a perfect blue sky above the heat haze of London. I got to my studio. No sign of Patrick. Yet. The studio walls seemed to have soaked up all the heat of the summer so far, and I had to throw the doors right back to let air in.

  I stood and looked at my painting for some time. It was right, but there was something missing and I couldn’t work out what it might be. I had booked the shipping company for Tuesday – the first day that they could do it – and they would expect it to be packed up and ready to carry to Heathrow. I would already have flown out to New York by then! I only had a day to add the last touches.

  I felt on edge, unable to concentrate. I wanted to get away from Patrick now. He had let me believe, all this time, that I had caused his horrific injury – what else was he prepared to put me through?

  The two days until I was due to fly to New York felt like an eternity. But there was nowhere I could go. I couldn’t go to Aunty May’s. Patrick would find me there – it was, after all, where he wanted to be. He believed, it was quite obvious, that he deserved to live in the house he was denied as a child. He felt my Aunty May owed him something. A life he perceived other children to have had, that had been denied him.

  I knew what I would do. I would phone Chiara. She would let me stay with her and Liam until I got on the flight to New York, and Patrick wouldn’t find me there.

  ‘Hi, Ellie! This is a surprise!’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch lately, Chiara. How are you?’

  ‘Good, I’m good.’ Her tone was distant though, and I couldn’t blame her, I had been a terrible friend.

  ‘Chiara, I need to talk. I’ve things to explain.’

  ‘Now isn’t a very good time, Ellie. I’ve got the midwife here, discussing home birthing options.’

  ‘Oh.’ My heart sank.

  ‘I feel a little hurt too, Ellie, that you’ve taken so little interest in my pregnancy since I asked you to be godmother.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Chiara. It wasn’t intentional.’

  ‘Look, let’s talk another time. I’ve got to go now.’

  She put the phone down. I stared at mine for a few minutes. She was right, I had been far too preoccupied. But who else was there? Ben and Caroline were away. I thought about asking Dad if I could stay with him. Just until I could get on the plane to New York. I knew he couldn’t cope with constant company but I could convince him that I needed him to look after me, and hope he was able to put his own demons aside for me just until I left. But Patrick had found me at Dad’s once, he would find me there again. He would find me wherever I went!

  It would be safer to stay with him, in the Wapping apartment, to continue to play along with him just until I could get away. It was only two days till New York, I told myself, and then I would be gone for good. Somewhere Patrick wouldn’t be able to follow me.

  I hoped.

  There was no choice that night but to go back with him to Wapping.

  Back at his apartment, I behaved as though nothing had changed. I smiled as much as I could at Patrick, and did everything he asked me to do. I acted as if I knew nothing about his childhood and the fact he had been born with his leg missing.

  I tried.

  But I couldn’t sleep that night.

  The picture of the small, lopsided boy on the bib haunted me, and the photos my mum had found, Patrick with a leg missing since birth. Then I remembered Patrick leaning over me hissing, ‘You owe me a whole fucking leg.’

  I owed him nothing!

  Yet here I was, trapped in a relationship I no longer wanted to be in, with someone who had consistently lied to me. Someone who had wanted his previous wife to die when she realised he was dangerous and had tried to get away.

  I couldn’t bear it any more. I lay awake all night, in a state of paralysis. Terrified of the man who slept like a baby next to me.

  I had to get away.

  I got up at dawn, remembering the words that had come to me the evening I’d driven down to May’s when I’d tried to finish with Finn, that loving someone and needing to get away from them was a paradox I couldn’t explain.

  Now the needing to get away had taken on a stronger, more urgent meaning.

  I tore a sheet of paper out of my sketchbook and wrote a note to Patrick telling him I knew all about his leg. That I couldn’t stay because he had let me believe I’d done this to him. Did he have any idea how distressing this had been for me?

  That I wasn’t telling him where I was going.

  It was better this way.

  That we had to split up.

  He was sound asleep, and I tiptoed across the room to prop the note up on his pillow.

  I took one last look round the apartment, picked up my bag, and gathered Pepper in my arms. I made for the door. I opened the main door quietly, and stepped out into the vestibule. Pepper growled.

  I swung round.

  ‘Where are you going?’

  Patrick was in the doorway, in his boxers, no prosthetic, holding onto the doorjamb to steady himself.

  ‘Nowhere, Patrick. Go back to bed.’ I began to back down the stairs.

  ‘You’ve got a bag with you!’ he said. ‘You can’t go. It’s not an option.’

  ‘I can. This isn’t your apartment. I can’t live in someone else’s apartment.’ I kept my voice steady, firm.

  ‘I’m the one to decide that. You’re staying here until we move to your Aunty May’s.’

  ‘It’s not going to happen, Patrick.’

  ‘You owe me! You have to do as I say.’

  ‘I don’t. I don’t owe you anything. I know that now! I’ve left you a note. Read it!’

  ‘I’ll go to the police, I’ll . . .’

  ‘You won’t.’

  I continued to move back down the stairs, talking to him up the stairwell. ‘I know that you were born with one leg. You let me believe I did this to you! I didn’t! And I’ve left my job, abandoned my friends. For you! Because you let me believe I owed you. Well, I can’t take any more.’

  I turned and began to run down the stairs towards the doors, and freedom.

  I turned as I reached them. ‘Please don’t come after me.’

  ‘You might not owe me my leg,’ he shouted, ‘but I can still tell the police you ran me over that night. I can still sue you. I can still demand compensation. I had head injuries! I was unable to walk because I’d sprained my other ankle! No one walks out on me unles
s I let them. No one disobeys Patrick McIntyre. I’ll find you, Ellie.’

  His tone changed as I pushed the button that released the main doors and they slid open.

  ‘Come back, Ellie. Please. Please . . .’

  And he began to sob.

  But I was getting into my car, Pepper in front of me, slamming the door and driving away from him before he could catch me, and stop me for good.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  ‘Finn, it’s me.’

  ‘Where are you?’

  ‘In my studio. I need to see you.’

  ‘You must be ready to ship?’

  ‘Yes. Almost. They’re picking up on Tuesday. I’m flying ahead tomorrow.’

  Tomorrow lay before me like a beacon. My flight to New York was all booked and I’d managed not to tell Patrick that I’d brought it forward. He wouldn’t know that I’d gone! I would be thousands of miles away.

  George Albini had said I could stay with them in their Manhattan apartment, help put the show up. Once I was on that flight I would be safe. Then, in New York, I would have time to plan my future.

  The painting had what I’d intended it to: a sense of things lying beneath the river. The colours and light and shade captured this, and towards the top, where it faded to white to indicate the open space of the sky, I’d crisscrossed it with fine lines to represent the perpetual motion of the cable cars and the trains and the aeroplanes, the rhythm of the human landscape around the natural one.

  The picture was meant to work on many different levels.

  But did it?

  I needed Finn’s objective critical judgement one last time. Only he could help me decide how best to know when to stop, when it was finished, only he had a deep knowledge of my work and would be able to reassure me I had worked on it enough.

  He was in Mile End having coffee, he said. I could go and see him, but could I come quickly?

  ‘You couldn’t come down here?’ I asked. The minutes were closing in on me. ‘I haven’t got long, I need to finish today – this morning preferably.’ As long as I was still in the studio, Patrick would be able to catch me. He’d do something unexpected as he had done to Stef.

  I was sure of it.

  I had to get out. Disappear from his radar. I’d pack the painting and be gone.

  ‘Not just now, no, maybe later,’ Finn was saying.

  ‘I need to ask you for some advice.’

  ‘Come and have a quick coffee with me,’ he said. ‘Take a picture of the painting on your phone and I’ll see what I can suggest.’

  He sounded strange. He was nervous, I realised, his voice had a quake to it.

  ‘It won’t take you long to get here if you hop on the Docklands Light Railway and change at Stratford. There’s something I need to talk to you about in any case. But I need to stay around here.’

  I looked at my mobile. It was ten thirty. It shouldn’t take more than twenty minutes at the most to get to him. And I could be back here in time to complete everything and leave my painting for the couriers. There was no point in driving as the traffic would be heavy. I’d parked my car on the far side of the wharf beyond the lighthouse, where I could leave it all day.

  And so I did as Finn told me, wishing as I hurried away from the studio, Pepper under one arm, that I wasn’t so dependent on his opinion as to let him drag me across London when my deadline was right upon me and my fear of Patrick’s arriving unannounced, to show me I was his, hung over me.

  The DLR came straight away but the Tubes were held up due to some engineering work further down the line. I stood on the platform, praying for the train to arrive. I remembered those nights I had first gone out with Patrick and how he had made me laugh about the announcements and how he had a theory they were tailored according to the social class of the passengers.

  How in love I had thought I was.

  It took me over an hour to get to the cinema coffee bar. But now I was on my way, there was no point in turning back. And something was propelling me, more than the need for his critique of my work, something else. There was unfinished business I had to sort with Finn – and this might be the chance to explain why things had gone so awry between us. To make amends somehow. Perhaps, if we could make up, Finn would let me sleep at his tonight. And I would feel safe.

  I pushed open the doors of the cinema, went into its cool dark interior and looked about the high-ceilinged room with its bare brick walls and enormous film noir posters, its mismatched assortment of vintage furniture, sofas from the Seventies, school chairs from the Eighties or Nineties, Formica tables with metal legs and velvet cushions. I could see the back of Finn’s head, his ruffled dark hair that I had loved for so long, over on the far side, on a bright green Ercol sofa, his back to me. He was with someone and it took me a moment to realise that the closeness of their two heads indicated something more intimate than a working meeting or two friends having a casual coffee. I cursed the Tubes for being late. No wonder Finn wanted me to come quickly, he was obviously meeting a new girlfriend.

  I walked across, hesitated, unsure whether I should interrupt them. Pepper began to growl.

  As I drew nearer, the back of the head of the other person seemed familiar, bleached curls cascading past her shoulders. My stomach plummeted. Finn was with Louise!

  I considered turning around and walking away again. But I had to talk to Finn. I walked around to where they sat, hands intertwined, Finn’s nose buried in Louise’s neck. He was playing with her hair, just the way Guy had done that night at the cottage – what is it with men and curly hair? Pulling it out, letting it spring back into place, as if they regress into children when confronted with natural curls. I was thinking, but Louise doesn’t go for men like Finn. She goes for men with bronzed bodies and long blond hair and big biceps. Finn, though he had a beautiful face, was hardly the type to model underpants in a glossy men’s magazine, as Guy had looked as though he might, and Louise had seemed so proud of Guy. The way she had looked into his eyes as if no one on Earth would ever match up to him!

  I felt awkward, standing there over the two of them as they smooched on the couch, their arms round each other, and wondered if I could make an excuse and leave. Then Finn glanced up and his face flushed. He had seen me.

  He got up, took a step towards me and went to hug me but I shrank from his embrace. I don’t know what it was. Pride, or hurt, or jealousy, but it wasn’t a good thing to do.

  ‘What’s up, Ellie?’ Louise looked up at me, frowning, as if she couldn’t imagine I might be taken aback by their being together.

  ‘You two!’ I said brightly. ‘Hi!’

  I tried to look as if I wasn’t in the least surprised to see them there together, that Chiara had told me, that I was fine with it. I didn’t know what else to say. I ought to congratulate them but the words simply wouldn’t come out of my mouth.

  ‘Oh my God, you didn’t know?’

  Louise laughed, pulled Finn to her, and kissed his floppy hair.

  He flushed again, and squeezed her hand.

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ I said. ‘So! How funny. I had no idea. Well . . .’

  I shouldn’t mind, I told myself. I had no right to mind.

  ‘I’ll get coffees,’ I said. ‘What would you like?’ I needed a few minutes to assimilate this new information, and to deal with the ache that had come to my chest, that had no right to be there.

  ‘We realised,’ Finn told me, catching up with me at the counter as I ordered the coffees, their two lattes and my espresso, ‘and ironically, it was through you, in a way, that we came to realise, that we’d always liked each other.’

  ‘How was it through me?’ I rummaged through memories of the previous few months, unable to identify a moment when I somehow engineered their liaison, but could only remember how wrapped up in Patrick I had been.

  I’d thought I could run around with Patrick, and ask for Finn back the minute things didn’t work out with him. How arrogant of me! How short-sighted.

  I had
to be big about this, grown up.

  Back on the sofa, seeing the two of them together, everything fell into place.

  The subtly exchanged glances, the discreet conversations I’d thought were about me. The time Louise had come when Finn was visiting me at the studio.

  They were all about what was going on between them! Artistic meetings, swapping of paint and canvas and graphite and bitumen and the shared outings to the galleries.

  I’d thought Louise was simply out to win the commission off me – it had never occurred to me that she might be trying to take Finn from me.

  What was I telling myself? Finn wasn’t mine! She hadn’t taken Finn from me, he was free for the taking. I had chosen to end my relationship with him all those weeks ago. And then I had become involved with Patrick.

  My old life, the one I had so determinedly left, but which I thought I could pick up and carry on with whenever I wanted to, had moved on without me.

  ‘So, what’s the problem with the picture, Ellie?’ Louise asked. I didn’t want to talk about it to Louise. Finn’s criticism was the only one I valued and trusted. But I couldn’t tell him in front of her. I felt weak and vulnerable, and helpless, and looked about for some talisman, something to make me feel safe again, failed to find one. I glanced over my shoulder anyway, three times, the urge to do so more pressing than the fear of looking weird.

  ‘Finn said you were bringing a photo?’ she said. ‘Are you pleased with it? Can you show us?’

  ‘I think I’ve finished,’ I said, ‘but it’s at that stage, you know, where you are not quite sure whether to keep working on it, or to stop. To leave it alone.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Finn. ‘Let’s see the photo then, if you’ve got it.’

  ‘I haven’t.’ I said. ‘It needs to be seen in the flesh, so to speak.’

  ‘Do you want us to come later and look at it?’

  ‘Yes. No. I’m not sure, I . . .’

  Louise moved closer to Finn, and spoke into his ear so I could just hear. ‘Don’t forget we’re going to Gavin’s film preview at the ICA this afternoon. Then we’re meeting the others at the Coach & Horses.’