But she hadn’t told Jenny and Beth that either.
‘I guess he must be a bit of a Rockefeller,’ Lulu had admitted. ‘It’s not like he boasts about it – or not much – but I reckon he must be one of the most successful traders in the city. He’s super-bright.’ To emphasise this point, she’d panned across the floor-to-ceiling cabinet set into one wall, in which his collection of Roman artefacts was displayed, and then across the wall on which hung his genuine, real-life Alma-Tadema, a sumptuous Victorian oil painting depicting a beautiful trio of Roman girls about to be undressed by their slaves, the glassy water of a garden pool in the background. ‘The Swim’ it was called. It should have looked out of place in this ultra-modern setting, but somehow it worked, injecting a bit of soul into the rather impersonal space.
What she hadn’t shown Jenny and Beth was the wall opposite, on which Nick had placed the three big studio portraits of Lulu, one in which she faced right, one straight ahead, and one left. The photographer had flattered her with clever lighting so she didn’t look like herself, she looked like the beautiful woman Nick was always saying she was.
Now, she opened the glass doors to the big balcony that overlooked the Thames. She had gone on and on to Nick about wanting to live on a boat when she was a little girl growing up in the parched, dusty outback. She used to long to sit on a boat, dabbling her feet in the water. And when he’d brought her here, and they’d stood out on this balcony together and she’d turned and looked back through the long room to the marina on the other side, she’d realised that being in this apartment was the next best thing. And he’d read her mind, and murmured, ‘Well, you couldn’t seriously expect me to pump out the bilge every morning, or whatever one has to do on those insanitary things.’
‘It’s perfect!’ And she had broken down and cried.
She needed coffee.
The kitchen area was tucked away in an offshoot of the main space, behind the island with its row of bar stools. It was all reflective surfaces – three oven doors and an array of shiny black cupboards. She laughed out loud when she saw what was stuck, incongruously, to the one in which they kept the breakfast cereals.
A yellow sticky note with a drawing of a comical wombat on it and the question: Why did the wombat cross the road?
She opened the cupboard. Attached to her muesli was another sticky note, this one with the answer: Because it was stapled to the chicken! and another drawing of the goofy wombat being dragged across a road by a giant chook.
That was terrible! He had exactly her silly sense of humour!
The pain between her eyes eased a little.
Nick was up and at ’em two hours before she woke – he needed to be at his desk early so he could get up to speed with developments in the markets – but he always left something for her to find, whether a silly joke or quote or a beautifully arranged fruit salad or, one morning after she’d had a particularly bad case of the runs, a single red rose. But this was Nick and Lulu, so it wasn’t on her pillow or the chaise longue, it was on the toilet seat!
Today, there was another sticky note on the framed montage of photographs by the lift that documented their relationship, from a fuzzy snap of Lulu in a lounger on the terrace of the villa in Ithaca, to a selfie taken on their first night in the apartment, both of them raising a glass of champagne, to their wedding in Leonora (Dad: ‘Well, if you’re sure, love.’ Mum: ‘He’s an absolute dreamboat!’).
Nick had stuck the note on a photo of Lulu paddling in a pond on Hampstead Heath. My gorgeous girl! Love you forever!
The soppy idiot.
On the other side of the lift was a wall of memories of his dad, Duncan. Her favourite was one of the two of them playing football: Nick a tiny, tousle-headed child of three or four, Duncan a tall, dark, handsome man with long legs who looked spookily like Nick. There was another which was almost professional in quality, a candid shot of Duncan’s face in profile, in repose, a slight smile on his lips, his eyes focused on something off camera. A really good-looking man. Completely different in mood was a snap of him being a silly dad, wearing a back-to-front baseball cap and crossing his eyes, one arm slung around teenage Nick. Nick must have been about sixteen in that one, so the photo had probably been taken not long before it happened.
Before they all disappeared.
His father, his stepmother, his baby sister.