The article was broken into several sections, each with its own lurid subheading: Fintan Attacks, Art World Grieves, Tragic Family and, inevitably, Broken Marriage. Four years ago, when it happened, that story had run for days. It was tabloid catnip: Greenwood had been married to Sophie Lawrence, the Channel 4 arts journalist and daughter of Derry Lawrence, the former cabinet minister, who, famously hot-tempered, had seen Greenwood and Marianne having lunch together near the gallery in Mayfair and barged into the restaurant to confront them, eventually sweeping a carafe of water to the floor in dumb fury. It had all been regurgitated last week with the first reports of Marianne’s death but here it was yet again, no detail omitted: the beautiful, intelligent wife – blonde! – traded in for the beautiful, intelligent artist – younger! Bryony, the bewildered daughter; thunderous Old Harrovian Derry. The tone of the piece was one of lip-biting reproof, as if Marianne could only have expected this after luring poor vulnerable James away from his wife of twenty years. There was something almost comforting, Rowan thought, about the Mail’s confidence in cosmic justice being served. Steal a husband and plunge to your death, scarlet woman.
Deadly Fall was the final subheading. There was no question that anyone else was involved, the piece reluctantly admitted: Marianne was alone and the death had been pronounced accidental. Nonetheless – and no doubt the wording had been carefully vetted by the paper’s lawyers – they couldn’t resist including the fact that Marianne had taken antidepressants after Seb’s death. Yes, it was ten years ago, but still, wasn’t this evidence enough of instability, the kind that might lead someone to jump?
But if no one else had been involved, then Marianne had jumped, she must have. Before speaking to Turk, Rowan had permitted herself a cotton-thread of hope that in the years since they’d last seen each other, Marianne had somehow conquered her fear of heights. Vertigo: the terror not of falling but of being compelled to jump. She never went near the edge, she’d told Rowan once, because she was afraid of how it made her feel. It was like a fight within herself, she said: the conscious part of her mind screamed at her to come away while another, darker part held her there, woozily infatuated, reeling, out of control.
Rowan remembered Turk huddling against the shed in the rain, lighting one cigarette after another. He thought she’d jumped, too.
She reached for the Express. The tiny credit printed up the side of the photo was the same. When Fintan had smashed the other paparazzo’s camera, he’d handed this one a pay-cheque. The Lioness Who Lost Her Daughter. She looked at Jacqueline’s desolate face and burst into tears.
On the mantelpiece at Fyfield Road yesterday she’d looked for one photo in particular. It was the smallest, six inches by four, and unlike many of the later ones, its frame was wooden. From a distance, the wood looked like mahogany but when you picked it up, it was too light. Its border of raised beads, though pretty, was clumsily carved.
Many of the silver-framed pictures showed the Glasses on special occasions or foreign holidays: in the Piazza Navona in Rome or on board a ferry in Puget Sound. In one, Seb wore black tie to give a speech at his Goddaughter Emily’s wedding, Jacqueline next to him snorting with laughter, her hair a full-blown dandelion clock. In the wood-framed picture, the major background detail was a revolving washing line.
But in the foreground, Jacqueline held a baby Marianne tight in her arms. She was in profile, her eyes half-closed against a low sun, her nose pressed into the fin of velvety hair on the top of her daughter’s head. Marianne was eight or nine months old; her birthday was in February, and the leaves on the beech hedge just visible were turning golden brown. She was looking at the camera and smiling with her whole face, her mouth a joyous O, her little eyes sparkling. Her hands were pressed against the front of Jacqueline’s plaid shirt. Me and my mummy.
Rowan didn’t have a picture like it taken with her own mother – her father wasn’t very interested in cameras at the time, he’d said. The closest thing was a professional shot taken at her grandmother’s insistence, apparently, at a photographer’s studio in Abingdon, Rowan buried inside a frothy christening frock, her mother – who by all accounts had been near-crippled with shyness – wearing a startled expression and a suit that would have done for a job interview. Six months after it was taken, she’d been dead.
As a child, Rowan had had a collection of scenes that she’d imagined in such detail they felt like memories. In her favourite, she stood on a chair while she and her mother made cakes together. Her mum wore the turquoise ribbed sweater she had on in her honeymoon pictures; the paper cases were red with white polka dots; sun streamed through the kitchen window. Rowan had almost been able to feel the stickiness of the spoon.
In another, it was her mother, not Mrs Roberts, who picked her up from school, chatted to her friend Alison’s mother at the railings, pocketed a letter about swimming lessons. She was wearing a trench coat and had just come from the hairdresser’s; that one was accompanied by the scent of Alison’s mother’s Elnett hairspray. There were scenes for all the major annual events: Rowan’s birthday, Easter, Bonfire Night. At Christmas, they decorated the tree together, unwrapping baubles from the tissue paper in which her mother kept them carefully packed. The scenes had been talismanic, comfort and protection. Whenever she’d felt aggrieved or sad or unfairly accused, Rowan had summoned one up and pulled it around her like a blanket. Mum would have looked after me.