CHAPTER TWENTY
THE GALLERY WAS crowded, so Michael saw Josh only when he’d already been at Samantha’s private view for more than an hour. He was standing in a far corner, talking animatedly to a younger couple, occasionally pointing at the framed print beside them. He was tanned and had lost weight, but still looked much older than when Michael had last seen him at close quarters. The grey that had always seeded his hair had spread, and his face was more lined than Michael remembered. The collar of his shirt was worn on one side, its sleeves rolled. His forearms, Michael noticed, were crosshatched with cuts and scratches.
―
The gallery was owned by a friend of Sebastian’s, the director for whom Samantha worked as a PA. It was a small, two-roomed space on a mostly residential street beyond Flask Walk. Originally a florist’s, it now housed four or five temporary exhibitions a year. It was Michael who’d persuaded Samantha to show her employer some of her prints, but Sebastian who’d done the rest. A week later the gallery owner, Emmanuel, had written to her. Could he exhibit Samantha’s work? Only for a couple of weeks at first, but if it sold, then maybe longer.
With the arrival of Emmanuel’s email, Samantha’s previous confidence in her work evaporated. She told Michael it was too soon, that she still had over a year to go with her MA. That the work wasn’t good enough.
“What happened to the only-half-cooked idea?” Michael asked her.
“Very funny,” she’d said, a spread of her prints covering the dining table. Their family portrait still hung above it, and as she slid the photographs over one another her younger self looked over her shoulder, Lucy on her knee, Rachel sitting on Josh’s lap beside her.
“Seriously, though,” she’d said, running a hand through her hair. “How am I meant to choose? He said he could hang twenty-five at most. Maybe thirty at a push.”
She’d been taking her pond photos for over eight months by then. Over 240 images, all from the same position, at the same time of day.
Michael, who’d been leaning against the kitchen island, came to sit opposite her. “I’ll help,” he said, spreading the prints and turning them round so he could see them.
“Really?” she said. “God, that would be amazing.”
“I wouldn’t get too excited,” Michael said. “I’m no expert.”
“Yes, you are,” she countered, as Michael placed a winter scene next to a morning in March. “It’s meant to be what you’re good at, isn’t it? Finding the story?”
Since that evening, Michael had assisted Samantha with other elements of the exhibition, too. Bringing the framed prints back to her house, choosing their positions in the gallery, suggesting a title for the show: And Again. Earlier that evening, forgoing his fencing-club night, he’d shared a cab over to the gallery with her and Rachel, its floor filled with boxes of wine, glasses, and fruit juice. Samantha had been quiet on the journey, her nerves drying up her talk. “Don’t worry, Mummy,” Rachel had said as they’d driven up alongside the Heath, the boxed glasses chattering at their feet. “They’ll like you, I know they will.”
―
Moving away from the drinks table where he’d been serving, Michael began edging through the crowd towards Josh. He’d barely seen him since the night they’d spoken over the hedge. After moving out, Josh had remained on the periphery of Samantha and Rachel’s lives. He saw his daughter regularly, and he kept in touch with Samantha. But it was one of Michael’s most persistent regrets that Josh had chosen to keep him at a greater distance. Twice now, Michael had seen him on the Heath as he’d walked back from his fencing lesson. Too far away to call, but close enough to make each other out. Neither time had Josh made any attempt to approach him. And somehow Michael had known Josh hadn’t wanted him to go towards him, either. So he’d walked on instead, along his usual route, aware of Josh’s eyes following him.
Samantha, when Michael asked her, couldn’t say why Josh had retreated from him. “Who knows?” she’d said, when he pressed her on it one night. “It’s his way, I guess, of coping.” She was stacking plates into a cupboard, reaching on tiptoe to complete the pile. “But it isn’t just you, you know? He’s become more solitary in general. He hardly ever sees anyone.” She turned round to rest against the counter. “I don’t know,” she said and sighed. “He’ll come round. He just needs time, I suppose.” She picked up another stack of plates. “We all do.”
If Samantha had surprised Michael with the keeping of her promises, with her growth after Lucy’s death, then she, in turn, had been wrong-footed by Josh’s reaction to losing his job. At first, he’d done nothing; rarely leaving his flat as if he’d given himself completely to inertia. The only times Samantha had seen him was when he’d come to take Rachel for the day. Michael would occasionally glimpse him coming up the street for these appointments, unshaven, wearing tracksuit bottoms or creased jeans, like the forgotten father of the man Michael had first met when he’d moved in. Samantha became worried about his state of mind. She began to wonder if she should let Rachel go with him alone.
But then, within a few weeks, he’d changed. He’d asked to meet Samantha for a coffee. When they did, he’d told her he’d decided not to reenter banking for a while, but to take a break and do something different. “The whole thing’s going downhill fast, anyway,” he’d said. “And it’s only going to carry on, too, before it ever picks up. There’s enough money, for a while, at least. So don’t worry, nothing will change on that front. But, yeah, I thought I’d stay out of it for a bit. Get some space.” He’d looked down at his cup, then spread his hands, palms up. “I just wanted you to know,” he’d said, as if admitting a new relationship.
Before they left the café, he’d asked Samantha not to file for a divorce. The subject had crossed her mind, but only in the abstract. It was all too soon. She was still processing so much of what had happened. She was still grieving. “Of course not, Josh,” she’d said. “What makes you think I would?”
“I don’t know. Moving out. Everything that’s…”
She’d taken his hand. “You know what we said. Let’s give it time. All of it.”
He’d looked her in the eye, and she’d seen he was scared. Either of what she might do or of what he might say. “Just get yourself together,” she’d said, squeezing his fingers. “For Rachel, at least.”
Josh had seen the advert in the local newsagents, between the rooms for rent and the mother and baby yoga sessions. Three mornings a week, volunteering with a National Trust gardener at two of their properties in Hampstead: Number Two Willow Road, a 1930s modernist home, and Fenton House, a seventeenth-century merchant’s house crowning the hill above Hampstead Village.