The Colour of Mermaids

by Catherine Curzon

  “Call us if anything else happens,” they told her. Eva nodded.

  Just as she was showing them to the door, the noise of a car engine in the courtyard heralded the arrival of Lyndsey and Miles. Lyndsey trotted across the yard in her ballet flats, her arms outstretched to Eva as she stood in the door.

  “Lovely, are you all right?” She caught Eva in a hug, then asked, “Will you find whoever’s been in here?”

  One of the constables, a young man with a square jaw and a no-nonsense buzzcut, smiled at Lyndsey. “We’ll look into it, madam,” he told her, and they headed off to their patrol car.

  Eva hugged Lyndsey back. “I’m sure they don’t believe me, and now I’m even doubting my sanity. Am I imagining things, Lyndsey?”

  “You can come back with me tonight.” Lyndsey put her arm around Eva’s shoulders and steered her back into the house. “Thank God you weren’t in! Did they break a window, or force the door? Have they left a terrible mess?”

  Miles appeared, locking his car with one press of his key ring. He nodded hello to Eva, and Eva raised her hand in a small wave. It was awkward, but not as awkward as it could have been.

  “No, I don’t know how they got in.” Eva rotated the door handle as if that would somehow issue an answer. “The only explanation, other than me losing the plot, is that they had a key. But that can’t be it. They must’ve picked the lock.”

  “You’ll want to change the locks, then,” the ever-cautious Miles suggested. He was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt, which was just like him. He’d wear it on a hot day with the sleeves rolled up, ready to roll down the moment there was a chill in the air.

  “If Eva and I head back to mine, will you sort all of that out?” Lyndsey asked her new beau. “New locks and a chain and all of that sensible boyish stuff?”

  “I’d be happy to.” Miles ran his hand through his short, dark blond hair, his gaze fixed on Lyndsey’s. With an effort, he glanced up at Eva. “I’ll drop the new key over to Lynd’s for you. We used a lock-fitting company at work recently, I’ve still got their number, so I’ll give them a bell. Don’t worry, girls, I’ve got this in hand.”

  So efficient, so helpful. Regret stabbed at Eva that she couldn’t find a man like him attractive, but was drawn instead to someone as impossible as Daniel.

  “That’s so kind of you, thanks. I really appreciate it.”

  “Pack up a bag and you can drive us back to my place,” Lyndsey instructed. “Leave the man’s work to the man, whilst we girls demolish a bottle of Prosecco and have a good old chinwag?”

  “Thanks, Lyndsey, you’re such a good friend.”

  “The sister I never had.” She grinned, squeezing Eva’s shoulder. “Now go and get your bits together. Prosecco awaits!”

  Chapter Eight

  Miles phoned to tell them that the locksmiths were still at Eva’s house. It was nine o’clock at night, and tears of gratitude rose in Eva’s eyes at the effort that people were making to ensure she was safe.

  Eva tucked her feet up under her as she and Lyndsey poured another prosecco. Snuggled in a pair of pale pink pyjamas covered with a collage of smiling teddy bears, Lyndsey had settled for the night as easily as a girl having a sleepover. She took a sip from her glass and asked, “Now, I’ve deliberately not asked for a bit but…what happened with Mr Sunglasses?”

  “I don’t know how much I can say, really…” Eva shook her head. “His childhood must’ve been unbelievably bleak, and it’s left a horrible scar. Not a visible one, but… Well, it’s obvious from all those paintings of his, isn’t it?”

  “So you’ve split? Properly?” She pouted. “Before my double date?”

  “I wouldn’t say split, exactly. We’d never really been a thing to split.” As Eva spoke, she was washed with a sense of loss for something that could have been. “And no, to be quite honest, you wouldn’t want to him on a double date. He can’t go out in public without all that rude nonsense. It’s messing him up, it’s like he keeps forgetting who he is. Does that sound weird?”

  “Massively so,” her friend admitted with a comical grimace. “Is he on something? Or just a bit mad? Artists can be a bit mad sometimes, you know.”

  Mad enough to think they’d been broken into when they had just moved their own shampoo?

  But Lyndsey wouldn’t mean that, Eva knew.

  “I shouldn’t say this, really, but it’ll hardly come as a surprise.” Eva sighed. “He does coke. Somewhere in Columbia there’s an entire hillside dedicated to churning out the stuff just for his personal use.”

  “Don’t they all?” Lyndsey frowned. “I just think it’s a shame, because you seemed so happy when I saw you the other day. He probably won’t make old bones, that one, but what a legacy to leave behind.”

  “I hate myself for walking away from him, but I just didn’t know what to do. He really scared me. All this business about—” Eva put her glass down on the table. “He blames himself for what happened to his family. It’s a child’s logic and he can’t see around it.”

  “Go on, tell me.” Her eyes grew wide. “He doesn’t have a family, does he? All that secretive stuff about being in care, did he tell you more than that?”

  Eva clasped her hands in her lap. The burden of what she knew weighed heavily. She needed to speak to someone, and Lyndsey was surely one of the only people she could trust. “You must promise, you must swear to me on your mother’s life, that you won’t repeat this to anyone. If the media found out… It could destroy him, Lyndsey, and he’s already so fragile.”

  “I swear on my dear old nutty mum!” She pressed her hand to her breast. “And I can keep a secret.”

  Eva snuggled against her friend, resting her head on Lyndsey’s shoulder. “He told me that his mother committed suicide.”

  “Poor lamb! Is that why they put him in care?” Lyndsey hugged her with one arm. “I think we all just assumed he had no parents from the off!”

  “He said he was such a bad child, such a naughty child, rotten, he said, that his mother took her own life. So I assume that was why he was in care, because there was no one left to look after him, but the way he described it, it sounded like more than that. As if”—Eva sat up again, and drummed her fingertips on her thigh. She knew it sounded melodramatic, and she wondered what on earth Lyndsey would make of it—“as if he’d been put away. I don’t know, in an asylum, or a prison.”

  “Oh my God, how awful!” Lyndsey shuddered theatrically. “But some of those homes were the worst, weren’t they? All those scary nuns and what have you! It was probably just some hellhole place. You don’t go to prison because your mum tops herself!”

  “There’s certainly horror stories around about what went on.” Eva felt nauseated. She really shouldn’t have left him, but what could she have done? He hadn’t wanted her there a moment longer, hadn’t wanted her to help him. She would’ve made everything worse just staying there. “I have no idea if he really was bad, or if he blames himself in that way children do. If she was struggling emotionally, a child could do anything and it would set her off crying. It’s not a huge leap for a child to go from that to I made my mother kill herself.”

  “No wonder he’s a bit of a loon then,” Lyndsey decided. “Do you think—might he do something to himself? It might be bad blood.”

  Bad blood… Tops herself… Eva was relieved that Lyndsey had gone into arts management rather than counselling.

  “I hope not. I should ring him, really, and see how he is, but the thought went out of my mind with all that business at home.” Eva let the bubbles in her prosecco burst on her tongue before she swallowed. “I can try, can’t I? And if he doesn’t want to speak to me, he doesn’t have to answer. I’ll feel like shit, to be fair, but I’ll have tried. And I am worried about him.”

  “Are you still bringing your little monsters to the gallery? Rupe’ll be rubbing his hands!” She sniffed, then shook her head. “But action plan, sis I never had. What to do if Sunglasses doesn’t answer? He might b
e sleeping it off. Maybe leave it for the morning?”

  “You’re probably right. In fact, I should probably leave it until midday, because he’s going to have one hell of a headache when he wakes up!” Eva was almost able to smile. “Do you have his agent’s number, or his manager’s, or someone like that? His people, whoever they are? I might have a word with them, just in case. They must know what he’s like.”

  “Here’s an idea. Why don’t you not ring him at all, let him stew, and I’ll ring his people tomorrow?” That was why she needed Lyndsey in her life, Eva was reminded. The voice of excitable common sense. “And when it’s all calmed down in a few weeks, you can just give him a friendly little call and say hello?”

  “Yes, that sounds like a plan.” Eva grinned now. “I’m so tempted to just delete his number off my phone, in case I have one glass too many one night and do one of those horrible ugly-cry phone calls. How embarrassing would that be?”

  “Why would you make a call like that?” Lyndsey frowned, as though she couldn’t wrap her head around the concept. “Do people really do those? It’s like people who get drunk and embarrass themselves, or like Mr Scott, I suppose. Drugs are for losers, as I’ve always said.”

  Eva laughed. “Are you seriously telling me that you never get upset? What if Miles scooted off with another woman, wouldn’t you get drunk and ring him up and cry down the phone and tell him he’s a horrible bastard? Would you really never do that?”

  “Would I humiliate myself?” She grimaced. “Never. I’d find other ways to make his life miserable, but I wouldn’t make myself look pathetic in the process. Even unicorns have nasty sharp horns, lovely!”

  “How would you deal with it, then?” Eva hugged one of the cushions to her chest, laughing at the thought of what Lyndsey would do in the name of vengeance. “Are you a prawns-in-the-curtain-lining sort, then?”

  “Trust me, you don’t want to know.” Lyndsey laughed. “Let’s have a cupcake!”

  Chapter Nine

  Eva ticked off her list. “So we’re okay for squash and biscuits for the kids, and if the weather’s nice, we can go out on the terrace for some hands-on. As long as there’s plastic down, we shouldn’t make a mess.”

  Rupert winced and leaned back in his seat, knitting his hands on the desk in front of him. “I suppose you need a prayer room? One-legged single parent transsexual on hand? Someone with a skinny dog on a string to make them feel at home as well?”

  Eva slapped her notebook down on the desk. She hadn’t slept very well, because the thought that whoever had been in her house had got back in competed in her mind with an image of Daniel, wild-eyed and tragic. “What the hell is wrong with you, Rupert? I thought your grants depended on community work, and here you are sneering about it!”

  “I love my community. My community is wonderful old dears and young families where Dad works in the city. My community isn’t chav rats and council house scallies.” He shrugged one shoulder. “And Daniel bloody Scott acts as though he’s got me by the balls. Which he has, annoyingly, and tells me that your work is valuable, he was once a boy from the tenements and all this Dickensian guff! Children are trouble. They’re messy and light-fingered, so you watch them!”

  At least Daniel admired her work with the kids. That was something, even if she hadn’t heard from him and wouldn’t ever again. Talking the children through his paintings was not going to be easy, but Eva would do her best. She couldn’t disappoint them by denying them their rare day out.

  “Think of the local media. Haven’t you got someone from the paper coming down to get some pics? The altruistic Rupert Hawley grinning with some paint-covered kids might make the second page.”

  “Well, that’s true.” He reached out to throw his gold-plated fountain pen onto the table. “On an entirely unrelated note, Lynds mentioned you’d had a break-in. Bad business for a girl on her own.”

  Eva rolled her eyes. “It’s great fun being a woman. If you’re not feeling threatened in your own home, there’s always some chap just waiting to mansplain it for you. Thanks a lot, Rupert. Yes, it is a bad business for a woman on her own, but I’m not going to be scared into living in some sort of fortified women’s-only commune.”

  “Bit of an overreaction!” He blinked. “I didn’t hear anyone mansplaining anything, just a friendly fellow offering support to a girl in a spot of bother! I hope you’re not going to start biting the heads off those little borstalites of yours.”

  “I’m not biting off anyone’s head. It’s just that I…” Could it have been Rupert? Eva met his steely gaze. Would he have taken a photo through the window and somehow got inside her house, solely to mess with her head because she’d turned him down? “I don’t really want to discuss it, but thank you for your concern.”

  “I’m only a short drive away in the Jag,” Rupert told her smoothly. “If there’s any more trouble, you give old Rupe a shout. It’ll be no problem to dash over and sort it out. A knight in pinstripes aiding his swooning damsel and asking nought but a kiss!”

  Eva raised an eyebrow. Did he not understand the word no? “I’ll pass on that, thanks all the same. Erm… So… I think we’ve covered everything for the visit, haven’t we?”

  “Pass the kiss, go straight to go and collect two hundred pounds!” He narrowed his eyes and swept his gaze over her. “Or collect something even tastier. I shall see you and your chavs anon. Remember, though, be a good girl and keep their sticky fingers off the paintings!”

  Eva held up her hand. “Rupert, you need to stop this. It’s so unprofessional for you to talk to me like that.”

  “You can’t reconstruct me, I’m afraid.” He laughed, slapping his thigh. “I’m entirely unreconstructable. What’s wrong with some old-fashioned chivalry?”

  “I don’t remember Sir Lancelot being a perv, Rupert.” Eva picked up her notebook and went to the door. “Goodbye!”

  “Cheerio!” he called. “Culture Minister’s up for lunch to discuss my community work. I’ll mention you and your chavs!”

  Eva didn’t comment as she couldn’t trust herself to be polite. She went along the corridor, fanning herself with the notepad, only now realising that she’d managed to stand in Rupert’s office and not think about what had gone on there between herself and Daniel.

  But now that it was in her mind, she was aware of a blush rising to her face, and every abandoned moment with him came back to her. Those thoughts would have to rest, though, would have to be scrubbed away, because Eva needed to speak to Lyndsey before she headed home.

  She knocked on the door of Lyndsey’s office and from within heard the friendly, “Hello! Come in!”

  Eva was relieved to see her friend again. She hurried round behind Lyndsey’s desk to give her a hug. “We’re all set for the kids coming tomorrow!”

  “How fantastic! Squash and buns at the ready, Captain Catesby!” Lyndsey gave a Brownie salute. “Have you given Rupe a list of what you need? I’ll make sure it’s all done and ready.”

  “Yes, it’s all here. You may as well have this, actually.” Eva tore the top sheet from her notepad and passed it to Lyndsey. Her friend glanced down at it with a nod and put it atop her keyboard.

  “Consider it done.”

  “Great.” Eva should really leave, but she was hovering, wanting to ask but not wanting to know the answer. “Did you—you know, ring up Daniel Scott’s…y’know…?”

  “I did indeed. I was tactful, I said he’d been taken unwell and someone should look in on him.” She held out a paper bag of chocolates. “And they didn’t seem at all surprised.”

  “Hardly comes as a shock, does it?” Eva spiralled a length of hair around her finger, as if she was a little girl again, then took one of the chocolates. “Erm…and have they been to see him? Has anyone even heard from him?”

  “I haven’t heard back and, to be honest, I don’t expect to.” Lyndsey shrugged and popped a chocolate into her mouth. “They’ll get him back up to speed, marbles all regained, and off he�
�ll go until the next time. Poor lamb.”

  “It’s as if he doesn’t want any help.” Eva bit into the chocolate. It was so light that it disappeared in seconds. “I said I’d call an ambulance, that I’d get him to hospital somehow, and do you know what he said? He didn’t want it getting in the media again!”

  “He’s never been in the media for anything other than making tons of money and hanging about with obnoxious rockers and airhead—” She pressed her hand to her mouth. “Well, you know. Enfant terrible and what have you. In the media again?”

  “I haven’t followed his every move, so I really wouldn’t know.” Eva wafted her notepad back and forth in the warm air. She didn’t want to know about his airhead anything. He’d been with so many women before, but had any of them tried to help him?

  “Well, I don’t mind admitting that I had a good old Google when I found out about him coming to Brighton.” She took another chocolate. “Give him some space then send him a little message. I still want my double date!”

  “Oh, Lyndsey!” Eva laughed. “It’s not going to happen. A double date or even…or even he and I even speaking to each other. It’s over, and it was fun, and in the end it was awful, and I have to move on.”

  Chapter Ten

  Like a cheesecloth-clad incarnation of the Pied Piper, Eva led her outreach kids into the Hawley gallery. The large automatic doors glided open and she and her group left the warm summer’s day for Rupert’s state-of-the-art air conditioning. Eva rounded them up in the foyer and a hush tried to descend over them. The surly children at least were quiet, but the excitable ones, the motormouths who couldn’t keep still, fidgeted as Eva addressed them.