‘We can’t afford to,’ she says simply. ‘We won’t be able to pay you very much, but you’d be living here free. You’d have your meals. And we wouldn’t expect you to start straight away. You can wait until you’re stronger and then work at your own pace. Whatever you feel you can do.’
I pass my hand across my face, trying to think. ‘What about your father?’
‘Don’t worry about him.’
Right. ‘He does know about this, doesn’t he?’
The grey eyes are unreadable. ‘I wouldn’t ask you if not. My father can be stubborn but he’s a realist. The work needs doing and since Providence has brought you here … It would be good for all of us.’
Providence. Nothing to do with her father’s traps, then. ‘I don’t know …’
‘You don’t have to decide now. Take your time. I just wanted you to know that you don’t have to leave tomorrow.’
She rises gracefully to her feet. In the dusk her features are solemn and more indecipherable than ever.
‘Goodnight. I’ll see you in the morning.’
I watch her walk out of sight around the corner of the barn. Stunned, I take a drink of wine and grimace.
‘God …’
It won’t win any prizes but it’s strong. I risk another sip, trying to collect my thoughts. Even though I’ve no idea what I’ll do or where I’ll go, I’ve been psyching myself up to leave because I didn’t think I had a choice. Now I have. Staying here won’t solve anything, but it’ll give me breathing space to think things through. I can at least wait until my foot’s healed before making any major decisions.
God knows, the last thing I need is to rush into anything else.
The sun has almost set, leaving only its last golden shout to echo on the horizon. I fork up some of the pork. It’s strong and gamy, cooked with garlic and so tender it falls apart. I take another drink of wine and refill my glass. Mathilde’s right: it is better with food, though that isn’t saying much. Still, the alcohol and powerful flavours give me a pleasant buzz.
At some point I realize that the depression that’s been hanging over me has lifted. I pour myself another glass of wine and look out over the wood to the distant fields. The only sound is the evening chorus of crickets. There are no cars, no people. The peace is absolute.
It’s a perfect place to hide.
We go to Brighton on the money Chloe gets for a painting. The buyer is an art dealer who’s opening a gallery in Notting Hill. He wants the painting, a cold still life of blues and purples that I privately find too sombre, for himself, and commissions another six to hang in the gallery when it opens.
‘It’s happening!’ Chloe whoops after she’s taken his call. She throws herself on me, arms and legs wrapping around mine. ‘At last, it’s really happening!’
That night we celebrate at the Domino. Chloe’s working but finishes early, bringing over a couple of bottles of cava she says are from the manager.
‘Tight bastard,’ Yasmin grumbles. ‘It wouldn’t hurt him to have given you champagne.’
Chloe’s high even without the alcohol, fizzing with plans and excitement.
‘God, I can’t believe it! He’s got contacts in Paris and New York that he says are coming for the opening! And the art critic for the Daily Mail is going to be there!’
‘I didn’t know the Daily Mail had an art critic,’ Jez mutters. Yasmin elbows him and gives him a look.
Chloe either doesn’t hear or doesn’t care. She’s swigging cava like water. ‘God, I’ll finally be able to leave this place! Paint full time and tell all the ad agencies to shove it!’
Callum has brought a gram of coke as his contribution to the party. At our table in a darkened booth, he chops out lines on the back of a magazine with the edge of a credit card.
‘What the fuck are you doing?’ Yasmin hisses.
‘It’s all right, it’s only a bit of blow. No one can see. Sean, you want some?’
‘No, thanks.’
I’ve never been into coke. As far as I know, neither has Chloe, so I expect her to decline as well. To my surprise, she doesn’t.
‘You sure?’ I ask.
‘Why not?’ She grins. ‘It’s a celebration, isn’t it?’
‘Chloe …’ Yasmin warns.
‘It’s OK, don’t worry,’ she says, accepting Callum’s offer of a second line. ‘It’s just this once.’
Yasmin leans over to me as I refill my glass from the bottle. ‘Don’t let her have any more.’
‘She’s just enjoying herself,’ I tell her. Yasmin is OK but sometimes she can be too intense. ‘Why shouldn’t she? She deserves this.’
‘And what if it doesn’t work out? She doesn’t deal well with disappointment.’
‘Oh, come on, Yasmin. Lighten up.’
She glares at me. ‘Are you really this stupid?’
I stare after her, surprised and stung, as she pushes back her chair and walks away. Well, somebody’s jealous, I think.
Brighton is Chloe’s idea. She’s so on edge the week before the gallery opening that her fingernails are bitten to the quick. She works at her paintings all day, literally until she has to run out of the door to take her shift at the Dom.
‘Let’s go away,’ she says, when they’ve been delivered to the gallery.
‘Suits me. After the opening we can—’
‘No, now. The waiting’s driving me mad. I need to get away now.’
The resort town is dazzling white, all sunshine and brightness after the dour sprawl of London. We hitch down rather than trust Chloe’s car, which is only good now for increasingly short distances. Buying a new one is a priority if all goes well with her paintings. She’s full of plans and ideas, convinced that the turning point in her career has been reached. In some of the wilder moments I remember Yasmin’s warning, but Chloe’s new optimism is so contagious it sweeps aside any doubts.
We stop in a seafront pub and pay a ridiculous price for beers, reckless on the promise of Chloe’s success and being on holiday. Afterwards we trawl charity and second-hand shops for picture frames that she can re-use for her own work. We don’t find any, but buy an old instant camera that comes with half a dozen peel-apart films. We use them all on the seafront, counting down out loud as we wait for them to develop, only to find blank squares of emulsion underneath. Just one picture takes, of Chloe standing in front of the pier grinning as she poses like a model. She hates it but I hold it out of her reach when she laughingly tries to snatch it away. At her insistence, we book into a B&B that’s well above our budget and eat a garlic-laden dinner in an Italian restaurant. We’re more than a little drunk when we go back to the hotel, shushing each other in a fit of giggles as we unlock our room, and then make even more noise making love.
After three days we catch the train back to London, an indulgence Chloe grandly insists we can now afford. We arrive back in the late afternoon, to the news that the gallery owner has been declared bankrupt, the gallery’s opening cancelled and all its assets seized. Including Chloe’s paintings.
‘They can’t do that! The bastards, they can’t just do that!’
I try to tell her she’ll get the paintings back eventually, but I know it isn’t just them. It’s the opportunity they represented.
‘Leave me alone,’ she says flatly when I try to console her.
‘Chloe …’
‘I mean it! Just leave me alone!’
So I do. I’m glad for the excuse to go out. I want some time to come to terms with this myself, not so much the disappointment as the shameful sense of relief I felt when I heard. Nothing is going to change after all.