I watch our ‘lodger’ take form on Ed’s canvas with increasing amazement and respect. My husband’s hand, which had been so unsteady over the last few years, partly due to lack of confidence – and sometimes, let’s be honest, due to drink – has taken on a sureness of its own.
Carla’s beautiful almond-shaped eyes within that elfin face follow me whenever I glance at the easel. She is there now all the time. A living fixture in the studio that faces the garden at the back of the house, where there is more light. A living fixture too in our house, where she takes my coat when I come in from work and announces that dinner is almost ready.
And she’s exciting a great deal of interest.
‘You are painting the same Italian girl again?’ asked a journalist who came round to interview us for an ‘at home’, a gig that Ed’s agent had somehow arranged.
I’d been standing by the canvas which Ed had, quite purposefully, left out rather than putting it away as he usually did with a work in progress. ‘Yes,’ my husband said in a casual way, which of course I could see right through. ‘Carla – the little girl whom my wife and I used to look after when we were first married – has come back into our lives. She’s in her early twenties now – training to be a lawyer, actually – and has been kind enough to allow me to paint her again.’
Word spread like wildfire when the article came out. The phone began to ring. Of course, it isn’t just that the art world (and the media) see this as a good story – a subject who has grown up. It’s that my husband’s painting is amazing. Carla looks as though she could step out of the canvas any minute. Her sleek haircut – so different from those childhood curls – declares that this is a woman of style. Her lips look like they are about to speak.
Here I am. Back again.
And sometimes worse. Why are you such a bad wife? Stop being horrible to Tom.
Yes. That’s right. For the last few weeks, I’ve had a growing feeling that she doesn’t like me, despite the careful way she takes my coat and cooks dinner every evening (at her own suggestion). I can tell she disapproves that Tom doesn’t live with us full time. ‘Don’t you miss him when you leave him on Sunday nights?’ she has remarked on more than one occasion.
‘Very much. But he has special needs which his school is better at providing for than we are.’ She wasn’t the only person who asked that question. Only a parent of a child like ours can understand the excruciating agony of not being able to cope and wanting to do the right thing.
Ed never says anything to back me up, as though he agrees with Carla. Which, of course, he does. Even though Tom is flourishing at his weekly boarding school, and even though there have been no more incidents of assaulting teachers, my husband doesn’t like the idea of his son being in what he calls ‘a military dorm’ during the week.
Yet it’s not like that. I’ve seen the cosy room with its comfy beds and teddy bears proudly displayed. (One of his room-mates won’t go anywhere without his, even though he’s nearly thirteen. He’s obsessed with them and has them lined up along the wall. If anyone touches them, he has a full-blown melt-down.) My husband’s reaction, I know, is because of his own time at school, when all he wanted was to be at home.
Carla’s disapproval is ironic, given how much I am doing for her. ‘Carla needs a training contract now her course is almost over,’ Ed announces one night at dinner. ‘I said you’d be able to help.’
We’re eating an Italian dish, a delicious mixture of white beans and salad which, if I threw it together, would taste like mush. Carla’s hand has transformed it into something different entirely. You’d be able to help? I might be one of the partners, but it is still presumptuous of my husband to assume that I can pull strings like that when I have a stack of emails from other hopeful students. ‘We’ve had lots of applications,’ I begin. ‘But I’ll see what I can do.’
It won’t be easy, because my own record at work has not been so good recently. So far this year, I’ve lost over a third of my cases. These include the ones I argued myself and also those where I used a barrister. It’s tempting to blame the latter but it wouldn’t be true. If I don’t give counsel the right information or enough details about the case, he or she can’t strut their stuff in court.
I tell myself that my poor performance has nothing to do with the anonymous tips I’ve received in the post and ignored. I try not to even look at them, but I can’t help checking to see if they’re from him. How would I know? Because they’re always accompanied by a final line: How is Tom?
Useful as these tips might be, I force myself to put them into the shredder, telling myself that I can do without Joe Thomas’s help. I don’t even want to think about how hard he must be working to get these pieces of ‘evidence’. But I do wonder how he has got them. Which secretary is he dating? Or maybe he was lying. Perhaps he’s getting his information somewhere else. Either way, the idea that Joe is watching me from somewhere makes my skin crawl.
So when Ed invites Carla to Devon for the weekend, and she turns him down, I can’t help but feel a wave of relief. A chance to be on our own. For me to get Ed onside again.
42
Carla
May 2014
‘What are you doing at the weekend?’ Rupert asked.
‘Working.’
Ever since the embarrassing dinner at Ed and Lily’s, she’d been avoiding her college friend. But here he was, waiting for her outside the lecture hall.
‘All weekend?’
She looked up at him. ‘All weekend.’
‘That’s a shame.’ He fell into step with her. ‘Your friends were … unusual.’
‘Lily can be a bit tetchy but she isn’t too bad. I’m afraid Ed was rude. I’m sorry.’
‘Don’t be.’ Gently he touched her arm as they rounded a corner. ‘Like I said, it’s his artistic temperament. To be honest though … well, I thought you were trying to keep out of my way. So I thought I’d just take the bull by the horns, as it were, and hang around for you, to check everything is all right with us.’
Carla couldn’t help being flattered. But she also felt the need to make things clear. ‘Of course it is. You’re a very good friend.’
‘ “Friend”?’ He was looking at her quizzically, as if hoping for more. ‘Then may I take you out to dinner over the weekend?’
It was tempting. But wasn’t life complicated enough as it was? ‘Sorry but I’ve got two essays to do. Ed and Lily are away until Sunday night, so I was planning on some quiet time.’
Carla was as good as her word. She spent the entire Saturday poring over her books. Yet on Sunday lunchtime there was a knock at the front door. Lily and Ed hadn’t told her they were expecting anyone. Maybe it was one of those cold callers or a neighbour perhaps.
But Rupert was standing on the step. ‘I was just passing.’ He handed her a bunch of flowers, prettily wrapped with an artful straw bow. Freesias. One of her favourites. It was incredible how such a powerful fragrance could come from such small blooms. ‘That’s very kind.’
‘How about a walk? Come on, it’ll be good for your brain to have a break.’
‘Well …’ It was a beautiful day. Why not? ‘Just to the park and back.’
It was surprisingly good to have the company. There were lots of other couples out too. Laughing. Holding hands. With a strange feeling in her chest, Carla realized she’d never gone for a walk in the park with a man she liked before.
‘I love being with you, Carla.’ Rupert’s hand reached out for hers.
No.
Deftly she put her hand in her pocket. ‘I like being with you too, Rupert.’ There was a brief pause while she counted to five. ‘But as I said before, I like you as a friend.’
Either he didn’t notice the rebuff or else he chose not to. ‘You’re different from the others, Carla. You’re focused. As though you have a purpose. Most of the other girls I know just want to have fun.’
Carla thought fleetingly of the flightier female students who were always chasing Rupert and others like him. ‘I don’t have time for fun.’