Rowan kept a close eye on Marianne who at no point in the afternoon, as far as she saw, was separated from her glass. Twice she begged her to slow down, have some water, but Marianne just rolled her eyes and walked away. In the early evening, as the light began to mellow, Rowan was caught in conversation with Angela Dawson – their daughter had just finished at Durham; she had a place on the management training programme at BP – when she realised that Marianne had disappeared.
Excusing herself, she ran through the house flinging open doors until she discovered her lying on the floor in the top bathroom, her sweating white forehead pressed against the cold tile. The bath was splattered with vomit, the smell of ethanol in the windowless room almost overwhelming. Every few seconds, Marianne retched so physically it shook her whole body, as if she was trying to bring up not liquid but something bulky, enormous. She was too weak to stand or even to kneel so Rowan propped her against the wall with the cleaner’s mop bucket between her knees.
After a particularly vicious bout of sickness, she started crying, silent tears rolling down her cheeks. There were footsteps on the stairs and, looking up, Rowan saw Adam standing in the doorway. He dropped to his knees and put his arms around Marianne and she wept against the side of his neck. Despite herself, Rowan had felt a pang of envy at the unthinking way Marianne could wrap herself around him, that physical closeness.
‘I hate him, Ad,’ she said. ‘I hate him.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I do.’ A burst of ferocity. ‘How could he do that?’ Sobbing became retching again and she pulled away and threw up another gust of white wine. Pulling a tissue from the box, she swiped ineffectually at her mouth. ‘He can’t do anything without Mum. He can’t even fucking leave her without getting her approval of the tart. That was why he brought her here, wasn’t it? Wasn’t it?’
Twenty-four
The call itself had come as no surprise. She’d expected Greenwood to ring the moment Bryony got home from school yesterday, if not before, and last night while she’d been trying to read, she’d been primed for his name to appear on her phone at any moment. When he’d finally called this morning, however, he hadn’t mentioned her visit to St Helena’s but asked instead if he could come and look at the new paintings.
‘Apologies again for the short notice,’ he said when she opened the door. ‘As I said on the phone, I thought I was going to Birmingham for a studio visit this morning but the artist’s had a family emergency and called to put me off.’
‘It’s no problem. Really.’
‘It felt like a sign that I should stop prevaricating. Get it over with.’
For all his social skills and familiarity with the house, he seemed ill at ease. She’d expected him to sit on Jacqueline’s sofa or pull out a chair at the table while she made the coffee but he paced around, going to the window to look out at the garden and then turning quickly away as if he’d just remembered what had happened there. He’d arrived with a burgundy leather portfolio and held on to it as if it were anchoring him in reality. Rowan remembered Cory’s self-assurance the first time he’d come here, how casually he’d picked up her book, slung his jacket over the back of a chair.
‘Are you managing to get any work done?’ Greenwood asked, glancing at her laptop, but that was it, none of the usual follow-up questions about her thesis or when she expected to finish. To spare them both the awkwardness of another exchange, she busied around decanting milk into a jug and filling the sugar bowl the Glasses had never used. Was it possible Bryony hadn’t told him she’d been to the school, that the timing of his visit was a coincidence? She glanced round to see what he was doing and was startled to find him staring at her. In the unguarded moment before he composed his face, his expression was hard. She turned away, feeling unsettled.
The kettle boiled at last. Before the coffee had a chance to brew properly, she plunged the filter and poured him a cup. He’d returned to absent mode and seemed only to come back to full awareness as she handed it to him. His smile did little more than lift the corners of his mouth. ‘Thank you. Do you mind if I go straight up?’
‘No, of course not.’ Please.
He’d said he needed to see the paintings again to write catalogue copy but she wondered how well he already knew the work. Had he seen the paintings as they developed and discussed them with Marianne, or had she waited, shown him only when they were finished? When it came to her work, was he her boyfriend first or her dealer? Rowan thought of the remittance advices among her paperwork, the six-figure sums.