‘Like I say, she was just living with us for a few months. I never really had any contact with her. She lived up in Georgia.’
‘Morning, girls,’ Mum says, coming into the room. She smiles broadly and gives Chloe a kiss and rests her hand on my shoulder momentarily. ‘Ooh, look, we’re being spoiled today, Alice is making breakfast.’
Alice comes over and kisses Mum on the cheek. ‘It’s the least I can do after y’all looking after me so well.’
I glance over at the calendar and scan the dates. ‘You’re over halfway through your stay already, just another couple of weeks before you have to go,’ I say, without missing the feeling of relief that flicks through me. I catch Mum and Alice exchanging a look between themselves. ‘What?’
‘About that,’ says Mum. ‘I’ve asked Alice to stay. Not to go back to America.’
‘You have? When? I didn’t realise.’ I’m flummoxed. I hadn’t seen that coming and I’m supposed to be an unflappable solicitor who is ready for anything.
‘I asked Alice yesterday.’ Mum puts her arm through Alice’s. ‘And, she said yes!’ Her smile couldn’t be any wider. She scrunches up her shoulders as if hugging herself. It reminds me of Hannah when I took her Disneyland Paris and she saw a real-life Cinderella. That’s how Mum looks now, thrilled. She has her own Disney princess, Cinderella. I feel like one of the ugly sisters, both inside and out. I can’t compete and the jealousy is eating me up inside, but as if on autopilot, I go over to Alice and hug her. ‘That’s great.’
Hannah comes in and sits at the table, so I’m able to distract myself getting her breakfast ready.
‘Is Daddy up?’ I ask. I know Luke is not a morning person, but he never misses breakfast.
‘He’s just walked by,’ says Alice, before Hannah can answer. ‘I assume he’s heading for his studio.’
‘I’ll take him through a coffee,’ I say, deciding there and then, that I’ll make up with him properly tonight. We’ll go out and have a spontaneous date night. I’ll apologise for getting so cross about Alice. Perhaps she’s right, the stress of work is getting to me and not only am I overreacting, I’m starting to bloody imagine things too.
Suddenly, Luke appears in the doorway. His face is like thunder and any notion that we might patch things up disappears in a second.
‘Clare.’ He says it with such controlled anger that it frightens me. ‘A word.’ He waits to make sure I’m getting up and then disappears back down the hallway.
Mum looks apprehensive. Both the girls have stopped eating. Even Chloe seems to have picked up on his black mood. Only Alice seems disaffected. She smiles at me. I can’t work out what sort of smile it is, but I don’t have the inclination to analyse it. I need to see what’s up with Luke.
The atmosphere in the studio is tense. It feels as though the whole room is being tasered. Luke is at the back of the studio, his back to me. I walk over and stand beside him, taking in what is before me.
The portrait of Alice has been slashed. Not just once, not twice, not even three times. It must have at least a dozen slashes through it. The centre, her face, is in absolute tatters. It is beyond recognition. It looks like one of those door streamers from the seventies that your gran would hang up to stop the flies coming in. A silver-handled Stanley knife sticks out from the top right-hand corner of the canvas frame.
‘Jesus Christ,’ is all I can manage to say.
‘You fucking idiot!’ says Luke. ‘What the fuck did you do this for?’ Now I’m used to Luke spouting the f-word now and again. I’m not averse to it myself, but I have never heard such rage in him before. He grabs my shoulders and spins me to him. His face is an inch from mine. ‘You’re demented. You’ve got a screw loose.’ He hammers his own head with his finger. ‘You’re fucking nuts!’
He pushes me away and I stumble backwards. ‘I didn’t do it,’ I say. Even to me, my voice sounds unconvincing and pathetic.
‘Bollocks, you didn’t! You’re a solicitor. Let’s look at the evidence, shall we? We had an argument last night. You told me you didn’t want me to do this painting. You disappear downstairs. Next thing, I find this. Now you tell me, what does the evidence suggest to you, Mrs Big-Shot-Solicitor-Tennison?’
I resist the urge to say that technically it’s all circumstantial. I get the point he’s making. ‘Luke, I swear to you, I did not do this.’ At least, I don’t think I did. I can’t deny the thought didn’t go through my head. What if I had some sort of jealous rage? What if I got the red mist that I’ve heard some clients refer to, where they actually have no control whatsoever over their actions? I’ve always been a bit dismissive of those lines of defence, but now I’m not so sure.