‘Of course we didn’t imagine something like that.’ Ed sounded indignant. ‘That’s unfair, darling. All I’m saying is that a court case won’t stop it having happened.’
She couldn’t be bothered to discuss justice with him. It was evidently a waste of time to explain her rationale to someone who had lived out the same ‘liberated’ times with such indulgence. After saying goodbye to her father and wishing him bon voyage back to France, she smoked a soothing cigarette perched on the window ledge, carefully blowing the smoke outside so Libby wouldn’t smell anything – she had such a finely-tuned nose that Daphne’s ploys to hide her bad habit were often in vain.
Almost immediately, her mobile rang again. Jane this time, still outraged.
‘He’s completely shameless!’ she said. ‘How could he just barge in there like that? I should’ve called the police. I regretted that later. They’d have locked him up again. He’s just revolting, trying to justify himself in front of everyone, ruining the party. I must say, it was a shock to see him again after all these years.’
‘You sound more annoyed than me,’ said Daphne, realising suddenly that this was true. It was Jane who had demonstrated the way to loathing Ralph, who hated and resented him as much as she did.
‘Oh, I doubt it.’ Jane laughed without mirth. ‘You’re the child he raped.’ It sounded horrible, almost accusatory. ‘I just don’t want him to knock you off track with his games. He’s so cunning. And you never know with someone who is utterly lacking a moral compass. I only want to support you. You know I’m there for you all the way. I’m so proud of how well you’re doing.’
The following weekend, Libby went to stay with Sam. He was over from Greece for a week and took her to some friends in Dorset.
The prospect of being alone was the perfect antidote to the mayhem in Daphne’s life. All week she had felt tightly wound, pressed on every side by people who had become part of her private story – or what she’d believed was her private story. Now, in twisted, awkward ways she hadn’t imagined, it involved her daughter, her father and her friend. Gareth Medlar had also become an instrument of pressure, pushing her towards the successful case he wanted to win. Anybody who read the papers or saw the news was now privy to something that had lain concealed and undisturbed since she was a girl.
She only had a couple of days before she needed to deliver her latest work to Adrian for an exhibition. The finished pieces were hung on the walls of the sitting room – she’d taken down two of Connie’s paintings and an African mask to make space. Putney would not be submitted for the show – it skulked out of sight in its plastic sack – but she had completed Gingerbread House and a full-length, life-size portrait of Connie. Her aunt had been nearly six foot tall, so the result was imposing. Like Ed, Connie had an elongated, El Greco physique with pale colouring and a saintly aspect but, in both siblings, the physical hints of gentleness were misleading. Connie was steely, not just in the steadfast dedication to her work, but in rejecting marriage and children. Daphne had admired her spirited, self-sufficient approach to life, her refusal to follow convention. ‘Oh, there were plenty of lovers,’ she once said proudly to her niece. ‘But why would I want to cook them dinner every day or darn their socks?’
Daphne had used the clothes she’d found in Connie’s wardrobe to dress the collage figure. Even in the days when her contemporaries chose orange miniskirts and white patent-leather boots, she wore pencil skirts and cashmere jerseys in moss green, heather mauve and mouse grey. Over the next decades, she stuck to the same outfits and, although her brown hair went white, she always wound it into the same French plait. Daphne found the perfect wig and was so pleased with the result it was almost like having her aunt return to life. There was still lots to be done, attaching all the book covers and pages, which she’d printed on to fabric. Her aunt had spent an entire professional life in publishing and handled books with the same knowledgeable affection and confidence that a midwife shows to babies.
She worked almost all day, apart from a short walk before it got dark. Then she continued through the night, drinking coffee to stay awake. It was enjoyable to be alone and she concentrated so deeply that she hardly noticed the sounds punctuating the low-level city grumble – distant sirens, shouting from some drunks walking home from a party and, at about 5 a.m., the first Tube trains reverberating with the familiar rumble and rattle that had lulled her to sleep as a child. As the sky showed its first hints of light, she went to bed and slipped straight into a dreamless sleep.
It was around midday when she woke refreshed and happy. She showered, ate two fried eggs, drank coffee and went back to work. Inspired by putting the finishing touches to Connie’s portrait, she played some of her aunt’s old records, laying them carefully on the elderly but functioning turntable. There was a wonderfully varied collection of jazz, masses of Mozart and an overload of Wagner. Flicking through them, she paused briefly on noticing Ralph’s Songs of Innocence and Experience. The sleeve had the deep familiarity of objects known when young. She’d spent so many hours as a girl staring at the William Blake watercolour and listening to the recording, checking her name amongst the credited singers. She had listened to the disc so much, it often felt as though the music ran through her and was embedded physically. But this was not the moment to replay these songs. Instead, she pulled out a Miles Davis LP and gently lowered the needle on to the vinyl, enjoying the slight crackle of anticipatory scratches. Then, standing by the open window, she lit a cigarette, exhaling carelessly into the glistening autumn day and watching small waves ripple prettily across the river.
She worked for the rest of the day, finishing Aunt Connie and turning her attention to tidying the unsatisfactory or straggly areas that remained on the other piece. In the early evening, she ordered some Indian food from a local restaurant and ate from the foil containers, pacing around the room with the unsettling, if exhilarating feeling of straddling the ground between madness and inspiration. When she continued with her work, the needle sped its way through material as though her fingers were mechanised, scissors snipping and cutting with precision.
Coffee kept her going through that night too and she listened to more of the old records, the volume turned down low. She found one she remembered Connie playing by a French singer called Barbara, whose dark eyes stared out from the sleeve. Daphne still didn’t understand most of the words, but felt the sadness in the voice that she had recognised as a child, when it made her imagine Paris and her mother’s trips there. As she stitched details on to the largest of her works, she was overcome by something like time vertigo. It had been only six months ago that she’d conceived of Putney, with its affectionate images of herself as a child and Ralph as her benevolently amorous friend, flying and dancing, sitting and talking – depictions of harmony and happiness in the landscape of her youth. The question of why she had made such a turnaround to seeing Ralph as an abuser was difficult to answer, but she doubted she could ever go back to seeing it the other way. On the other hand, she felt weary of the process, of the public dimension to something so private. What was she going to gain from these revelations, from crushing Ralph as he died?
Sunday’s sunrise turned the sky into stripes of candy pink and powder blue and the river slid from darkness to gilded mauve. The grandeur of the sight increased the unaccustomed high she already felt from being awake all night for two days in a row. It reminded her of the times when she didn’t need to distinguish between night and day – before Libby, before she started her steady work at Hell. She realised she was not her normal self, but she also felt an unusual clarity.