Good, solid, dependable Gordon, sometimes infuriatingly laid-back with his slow, pedantic deliberations — but always intuitive. The voice of reason in a storm. Probably why now his support was so important to her.
Her second attempt had too much contrast between the darkness of the chine and the harsh light of the sea horizon beyond — this time she was trying to capture some warmth and texture; some detail and depth to the trees and foliage, the faint chinks of light reflecting off the brook trickling through. She’d taken three photos in the summer as a guide, but she knew the chine so well she could practically paint it blindfold.
Her style of painting was conventional landscape with a hint of impressionist, but became unconventional through its use of layering — the habit of building the oils in layers employed by the Old Masters. It had derived originally due to the expense of canvass, so therefore the need to re-paint over old paintings or the false starts of works in progress. For Elena, she enjoyed the luxury of being able to paint over her errors until she reached perfection. She considered herself not that good an artist — despite now two local exhibitions and one at a small Notting Hill gallery when they were in London — and so for her the layering became in part a device behind which she could shield her lack of ability. Nobody would ever know.
The one thing she shared with the Old Masters was the rich texture and depth gained through the many layers. But as now she carefully dabbed and stroked, she found herself becoming increasingly agitated rather than relaxed. Her hand started to shake on the brush. The therapy this time wasn’t working.
Elena could only catch a glimpse of sea beyond the far ridge of the chine, a heavy grey-blue almost merging with the mist and cloud. Far different to the Ryall’s broad sea panorama seven miles up the coast — but Elena couldn’t help contemplating if Lorena was looking from her bedroom window at the same dull, brooding sea, wondering if anything was happening or whether she’d been left alone and forgotten.
‘You don’t think I should pursue it, do you?’ Elena looked at Gordon directly as she toyed with the last of her dessert.
She’d tried to broach the subject twice earlier: the first time Shelley McGurran, her boss at the agency, had phoned; the second time her daughter, Katine, walked into the kitchen halfway through them talking while preparing dinner.
They’d let the children leave the table early to watch TV with their desserts; they were now out of earshot in the adjoining lounge.
‘It’s not that I think you’re wrong. Your suspicions may very well be right — something is happening.’ Gordon gave a small shrug. ‘After all, you know Lorena better than most. It’s just that from your position there’s little you can do — you’re out of the loop now. And if, as you say, Social Services can’t do anything, you’re just going to get frustrated trying to pursue it.’
Elena held Gordon’s gaze for a second. Obviously her two false starts earlier had given him time to prepare: he’d chosen the route of lesser confrontation, not wanting a heated debate over whether or not her suspicions might be right.
‘But if Social Services can’t or won’t help her — who else is there to help her? Who else does she know in this town?’
‘I know, I know.’ Gordon held one hand up, sighing, as if exasperated that despite his efforts he’d still hit a confrontational wall. ‘I think you’re right to try. But unless you budge Social Services to your way of thinking, how far are you going to get? Even if you convince them something is happening — regardless that it’s based only on a hunch over a worried look from Lorena — they’ll still need something concrete to be able to pursue it.’
As always, the voice of reason. But as much as she knew that, annoyingly, Gordon was probably right — what hit her strongest, like the many times he’d been right before, was his smug, know-it-all overtone, which would usually draw out her instinctive rebelliousness. Though through twelve years of marriage she’d learnt to curb her worst traits, so all that resulted now was her lightly chewing her bottom lip as she looked back down at her dessert.
Sudden awkwardness with the silence; when she lifted her head she glanced through the open archway to the lounge. Christos, twelve, their eldest by four years, was pointing to something on the TV and making a comment to Katine, who was just out of view.
Elena shook her head. ‘I mean, my God, she’s only eighteen months older than our Katine. If anything is happening, she must feel so… so helpless. And vulnerable.’
Gordon reached across the table and clasped her hand. ‘Maybe they’ll hit on something through her school or GP.’
Elena smiled back tightly. Gordon had aimed to re-assure, but it had back-fired as a sharp reminder that those were their only hopes. If nothing came to light, Lorena would be quickly forgotten, consigned to some Social Services ‘dead-file’ cabinet — no doubt larger than any others.
After a second, Gordon asked, ‘What was it with Shelley?’
Elena faltered slightly with the shift in topic before re-focusing. ‘Oh… it was about the next supply consignment. It’s almost ready — five or six days. I’ll ride with it to Bucharest, stay maybe a week between the two orphanages, then catch a flight to Sarajevo.’
Gordon nodded. Europe’s child-neglect hot-spots that had been Elena’s roster the past four years: Romania, Bosnia, Chechenya — where they’d adopted Katine eighteen months before Elena joined the agency. In fact, the main driving force behind her joining: ‘We were able to help Katine. But she’s just one child out of thousands in the same position. If I can, I’d like to be able to help more children like Katine.’ Anything from two to four weeks away on each round-trip tour, then two or three weeks back in the UK helping Shelley McGurran organize the next aid consignment.
‘How are things now at the Cerneit?’ Gordon asked. He knew from Elena’s recent conversations that the Cerneit was one of their most troubled orphanages.
‘We’ve managed to cut down on the two or three to a bed sharing — but now every inch of floor space is littered with mattresses. You can hardly get a foot between. And just when we got the hepatitis under control, there was an outbreak of scurvy.’
‘What from?’
‘We sent over a large consignment of oats porridge last time. But they went mad with it, gave it to the children for breakfast, lunch and dinner — weren’t sensible enough to balance it out with fresh fruit and veg.’ She shook her head, half smiling in disbelief. ‘The said they didn’t realize and, besides, they claimed to be short the last couple of months on cash for food: a problem with the heating boiler had forced them to spend more on building maintenance and take it out of the food budget.’
Gordon looked down for a second — the point he’d been circling towards was now within grasp — before looking back up meaningfully. ‘That’s the other thing with this now. If there is a problem with Lorena — what do you do? Just turn your back on all those hundreds of other children who need your help?’
‘That’s unfair, and you know it,’ Elena protested. ‘This is just a one-off. It’s not as if it’s the sort of thing that happens every day.’
‘The point I’m trying to make, Elena, is where do you draw the line? You’ve become a surrogate mother to a lot of these children, and it’s great that you’ve become so close to so many of them. But you can’t be a mother to the world. At some stage you’ve got to let go, let someone else take the responsibility. You can only stretch yourself so far.’