Elodie sat in the window of her flat, wearing her mother’s veil and watching the river heave silently towards the sea. It was one of those rare, perfect afternoons when the air is infused with the scent of clean cotton and clipped grass, and a thousand childhood memories glint in the lingering light. But Elodie wasn’t thinking about childhood.
There was still no sign of Pippa on the High Street. It had been an hour since her call and Elodie had been unable to settle to anything since. Her friend had refused to go into detail on the phone, saying only that it was important, that there was something she had to give to Elodie. She’d sounded urgent, almost breathless, which was nearly as unusual as her suggestion that she come down to Barnes on a Saturday evening.
But then, it seemed that nothing was normal this weekend. Nothing had been normal since Elodie found the archive box at work and unearthed the sketchbook and photograph.
The woman in the white dress. Tip had continued to deny all knowledge of her that morning, clamming up when Elodie pressed him further. He’d bundled her out of the studio as quickly as he could, muttering that he was late opening his shop and that, yes, yes, of course he’d see her at the wedding. But his reaction had been unmistakable. He had recognised the woman in the photo. And, crucially, although Elodie still wasn’t sure how, his recognition tied the two items together, for Tip had known the house in the sketch, too. He had stayed there with his family as a boy.
After her ejection, Elodie had headed straight back to the Strand and into work. She’d typed in the weekend door code and let herself inside. It had been dark and even colder than usual in the basement, but Elodie hadn’t stayed long. She’d retrieved the framed photograph from the box beneath her desk and the sketchbook from the archives and then left again. This time she hadn’t felt one bit guilty. In some way that she couldn’t yet explain, the photograph and sketchbook belonged with her. She had been meant to find them.
Now she picked up the photograph, cupping it in her palm, and the woman met her gaze, that look of defiance, which was almost a challenge. Find me, it seemed to say. Find out who I am. Elodie turned the frame over in her hands, running her fingertip along the spider-web fine scratches in the silver. They were on both sides, close to matching, as if a pin or something similarly sharp had been used to etch the marks on purpose.
Elodie propped the frame on the sill in front of her, the way she imagined James Stratton must once have displayed it.
Stratton, Radcliffe, the woman in white … all were connected, but how?
Elodie’s mother, Tip’s childhood evacuation, the friend who told him the tale of the house on the Thames …
Elodie’s gaze drifted out of the window again to her bend of the river. She was aware, faintly, of the layers of previous occasions on which she’d done the same thing. It was a great silent carrier of wishes and hopes, of old boots and pieces of silver, of memories. One came to her now suddenly: a warm day when she was still a little girl, the breeze brushing against her skin, her mother and father and a picnic on the riverbank …
She traced the ivory scallops of the veil, smooth beneath her fingertips. She supposed her mother might have done the very same thing thirty years before, perhaps as she stood outside the front of the church and prepared to walk towards Elodie’s father. What song had played as Lauren Adler made her way down the aisle? Elodie didn’t know; she’d never thought to ask.
She had been watching the videos all afternoon, stopping only when Pippa called, and her thoughts swam now with cello melodies. ‘It will be as if she’s there,’ Penelope had said. ‘The next best thing to having your mother by your side.’ But it wasn’t like that at all. Elodie saw that now.
Had her mother lived, she would have been a woman approaching sixty. She would not have been young and dewy, with a girlish smile and laugh. Her hair would have been silvering, her skin relaxing. Life would have left its marks on her, body and soul, and the ebullience and emotion that leapt out from the videos would have calmed. People would still have whispered words like genius and extraordinary when they saw her, but they would not have then lowered their voices to add that great magnifier, tragedy.
That’s what Pippa had been thinking when she’d asked whether Elodie agreed that they should play videos of Lauren Adler at the wedding. She hadn’t been jealous and she wasn’t being unkind. She’d been thinking of her friend, aware before Elodie was that it would be less like having her mother beside her down the aisle and more like having Lauren Adler walk on stage first, cello in hand, casting a great long shadow for Elodie to follow in.
The intercom buzzed and Elodie jumped up to answer it. ‘Hello?’ she said.
‘Hey, it’s me.’
She pressed the button to release the security door below and opened the door to her flat. Familiar Saturday afternoon street sounds and the faint aroma of fish and chips wafted in on the breeze as she waited for Pippa, who was running up the stairs towards her.
Pippa was out of breath when she reached the top. ‘Lord, this stairwell makes me hungry. Gorgeous veil.’
‘Thanks. I’m still deciding. Cup of something?’
‘Glass, please.’ Pippa thrust a bottle of wine into Elodie’s hands.
Elodie slipped the veil from her head and draped it over the end of the sofa. She poured two tumblers of pinot noir and brought them to where Pippa was perched now in the window. She’d picked up the framed photograph and was studying it. Elodie handed her a drink. ‘So?’ Anticipation had burned up any small talk.
‘So –’ Pippa set down the photo and focused on Elodie – ‘I saw Caroline last night at the party. I showed her the photo on my phone and she thought the woman looked familiar. She couldn’t immediately place her, but she confirmed that the styling in the photo was definitely suggestive of the 1860s; more specifically, as we thought, the photographers associated with the Pre-Raphaelites and the Magenta Brotherhood. She said she’d need to see the original to date it with any degree of accuracy, but that the photographic paper might give some clue as to the photographer’s identity. Then I mentioned Radcliffe – at that stage I was thinking of the sketchbook you said you’d found with the photo, the possibility that it might give us a hint as to a lost painting – and Caroline said she had a number of books about the Magenta Brotherhood; that I was welcome to come over and pick them up.’
‘And?’
Pippa dug into her backpack and pulled out an old book in a tattered dust jacket. Elodie tried not to wince as her friend cracked open the spine and flicked rapidly through the powdery, yellowed pages. ‘Elodie, look,’ she said, arriving at an illustrated plate in the centre and stabbing it with her fingertip. ‘It’s her. The woman from the photo.’
The plate was foxed around the edges, but the painting at its centre was still intact. The annotation beneath gave the title as Sleeping Beauty and the artist’s name, Edward Radcliffe. The woman in the painting was lying in a fantastical treetop bower of leaves and flower buds, all of which were waiting in stasis for the chance to bloom. Birds and insects were interspersed amongst the woven branches; long red hair flowed in waves around her sleeping face, which was glorious in repose. Her eyes were closed, but the features of her face – the elegant cheekbones and bow lips – were unmistakable.
‘She was his model,’ Elodie whispered.
‘His model, his muse, and according to this book –’ Pippa turned the pages eagerly to reach a later chapter – ‘his lover.’
‘Radcliffe’s lover? What was her name?’
‘From what I could glean this morning, there seems to have been some mystery about it. She used a false name to model. It says here that she was known as Lily Millington.’
‘Why would she have used a false name?’
Pippa shrugged. ‘She might’ve come from a respectable family who didn’t approve; or maybe she was an actress with a stage name. A lot of actresses modelled as well.’