But she didn’t, she didn’t feel that way at all.
Maybe, Sophie thought reluctantly as she let the girls into the flat, it’s because I’m afraid of what I will feel when my “perfect” life is fully reinstated. Perhaps I’m afraid of being something I have always been but never allowed myself to think about before the girls came. Perhaps it’s because I’m afraid of being alone—again.
This was probably why she called Jake, even though she had hardly thought of him since the last time they had spoken. He had told her to call him when she figured out what she wanted. Well, she knew one thing, she didn’t want her life to go back to the empty, impersonal routine it had been. She was loath to admit that her mother could be right about anything, but maybe she was right about this—Sophie did need someone in her life.
“I thought I wasn’t going to hear from you again,” Jake said, his voice neutrally pleasant. “I thought I’d blown it. I’m glad you called, Sophie, unless it’s to tell me it’s over!” He chuckled nervously.
“We haven’t even begun yet, Jake,” she said tentatively.
“Are we going to?”
“You know,” Sophie said with a smile, “you really should ask me what I think about the weather first and then something else general and meaningless before you plunge into all this important stuff.”
Jake laughed. “I just want to see you,” he said.
Sophie pushed the threatening echoes of loneliness firmly out of her mind and thought about the handsome, kind, thoughtful man who really seemed to care about her. She was sure he would fill the gap that would be left when the girls were gone. She was sure, if she put her mind to it, she could really care about him too. “I want to see you too,” she said.
“When?” Jake asked, all trace of neutrality gone.
“This evening?” Sophie said, wanting to see him suddenly quite badly.
“I’ll be there.”
“Three tickets to see…” Louis drew out the suspense to such an extent the Sophie thought Izzy might actually pop. “The Little Mermaid on Ice—this afternoon!” Izzy screamed and danced around the coffee table. Louis grinned at Sophie, so pleased with himself that he forgot to be frosty. “Although I’ve got to say that somehow sounds like animal cruelty to me, but still….”
Sophie found herself laughing and then stopped when she caught Bella’s expression. The six-year-old glared at her and then looked down at the three tickets Louis had fanned out on the coffee table. “No, thank you,” she said.
Sophie bent down a little and put an arm around her shoulders. “But it’s The Little Mermaid. You love The Little Mermaid!”
“There’s only three tickets,” Bella said.
Louis caught Izzy as she danced by and hoisted her onto his hip in one fluid movement.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Look, Bella, I’m sorry. I didn’t want to leave Sophie out, it’s just, well, there were only three tickets left…”
Bella stared at him. “I’m not going unless Sophie can come.”
Sophie sighed and remembered what Tess had told her. “Well, perhaps I could buy another ticket at the door?” she suggested. Louis’s face fell, and she realized that he had just hoped if he suggested something he knew Bella would love, she might actually want to go with him and Izzy. But mainly him—without Sophie. He had been trying to move out of what he must have seen as an implacable stalemate.
“You won’t. It’s sold out now. I got those three from a scalper. Can you believe there are scalpers selling tickets to see Mermaids on Ice? What kind of world are we living in?” he said glumly. He sat down heavily on the sofa, and Izzy landed on his lap with a giggle. “Look,” he said. “You three take them and go, I’ll see you all tomorrow.”
Before Bella could react, Izzy launched her protest. “Nooooooooo,” she wailed. “I want to go with Daddy, not Sophie! Bella, please come with us! Please!”
Bella looked at the tickets again, and at her sister in Louis’s arms. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I can’t.” She turned on her heel and walked steadily out of the room.
Sophie sat down next to Louis. “She really wants to go, you know,” she said. “The Little Mermaid is her favorite.”
“I know,” he said, clearly uncertain where Sophie was coming from. “Just not with me.”
“I don’t know. I think she wants to go with you. I think there’s something stopping her. It’s like she just said. She just can’t.”
Izzy climbed off Louis’s lap and fluffed her fairy skirt. “I need a poo,” she told them matter-of-factly and skipped out of the room.
Sophie thought for a moment and then looked at Louis. “I saw Tess today,” she said. “She told me you’re more or less up for father of the year.”
Louis look surprised, delighted, and then wary. “You mean—?”
Sophie nodded. “She says she thinks things will go your way as long as her report supports you. And I’m fairly sure she’s in love with you, so I don’t think you’re going to have to worry on that score.” Sophie thought of Tess’s advice. “Look, Louis—we have to clear the air between us. Carrie was my best friend. Even though I didn’t see her that much, I never thought there’d be a day when I’d never be able to see her again. I loved her, and I suppose I’ve been trying to defend her still, which means sometimes I’ve been a bit out of order with you. I wanted to know what went wrong and why she didn’t tell me.” Louis began to talk, but Sophie stopped him. “I wanted to know for Carrie’s sake, and Bella’s, but mainly—for me. I thought I was her best friend. But when it came to the crunch, she didn’t talk to me, she didn’t tell me anything. Maybe just because I didn’t ask her and because I didn’t care enough to notice. I want to be a friend to the girls and…and you. I’m sorry I was so prickly to begin with. I’ve been feeling bad myself, but I’m trying to look at the big picture now. So.” Sophie offered him a tentative smile. “Can we start again?”
Louis’s face relaxed and opened into a smile. “Of course,” he said, with a rush of warmth. “God, I’d love that.” There was a moment’s silence as each of them tried to work out how to adjust their tenuous relationship to a more friendly one.
“I miss her too, you know,” Louis said after a while, and it took Sophie a second to realize he was talking about Carrie. “I can’t believe that she’s dead. She was so…” He paused, struggling to find the right words. “She was such a force of nature, she seemed invincible. And I still cared about her, you know, I still hoped that she finally got what she wanted, that everything worked out as she’d planned.” He looked down. “I really wish she was here now.”
For the first time Sophie got an inkling that perhaps it wasn’t Louis who had walked out on Carrie. Perhaps, just perhaps, Carrie had sent him away. But why, when she had told Sophie often enough that he was the love of her life? There were so many questions Sophie wanted to ask him, but she had no intention of making the same mistake twice. Instead she would let her truce with Louis hold and strengthen. There were other, more important things to think about now.
“You go to The Little Mermaid,” she told Louis. “Go and take Izzy with you. I’ll stay with Bella. Perhaps I can try to talk her round.”
“Don’t you think I might kidnap Izzy or something? What about having to stay with us?” Louis asked, looking up at her with that effortlessly intense gaze that he managed so well.
It took Sophie a moment to find her voice. “No,” she said, finally managing to speak. “If you’d been taking both of them, I might have worried, but I know you wouldn’t go without Bella.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I wouldn’t leave my Bellarina—not again anyway.” He gave a mirthless laugh and glanced out the window at the afternoon sky glowering darkly over the rooftops. “I used to take her for a walk every day after work. I worked the early shift at the printer’s so I’d be home by five. Every day we’d go for a walk except if it was snowing or really cold. When she was a tiny baby, it was to give Carrie a break, and then as she got bi
gger, just because we wanted to.
“In the summer I’d wheel her in her pram along the cliff walk and we’d look at the birds and the sun on the sea. In the winter I’d take her past the beach up the hill opposite the town and we’d watch the light glittering against the sky and try to count the stars. When we got back, she’d draw what we’d seen for Carrie while I made her tea. She never got to bed till well past seven, but it didn’t matter. Carrie said it didn’t matter, because it was more important that we had our special time together, that we had a chance to be friends.”
Louis paused and swallowed. “Bella was my best friend. We learned something new together every day.” He slumped back in the chair. “I blew it, didn’t I? I didn’t really stop to think about anyone but myself, I know that now. I’ve known it for a long time. I just wish I could make her understand how much I’ve missed her. How sorry I am.”
Sophie nodded. “I know.”
“Really?” Louis asked.
“I think I’m beginning to,” she said.
They watched each other for a moment in the half-light, and Sophie wondered if Louis was seeing her in the same way she was seeing him. As someone she had really only met about four or five minutes ago.
“Right.” Izzy reappeared with her raincoat on over her fairy dress. “I’ve finished my poo, and I did most of it in the toilet!”
Twenty
After they had gone, Sophie sat in the shadows and listened to the silence of her home. It was a sound she had grown used to in her years in the flat, the sound of her private life, her very own bubble—a contented background hum. But somewhere lost in the silence was Bella, and suddenly Sophie wished with all her heart for noise and plenty of it.
She thought about Louis describing his daily walks with Bella, their exploration of the coast of St. Ives, the ideas and the stories they’d created as they walked. Either he was an excellent actor and a consummate con man or Tess was right—he was basically a good man who’d done some very stupid things. But how do you explain all that to a girl who once idolized her father and had found out that he was only human?
It seemed as if Bella was holding too tightly to herself and her sister to be able to consider letting anyone else, even her father, in. She was trying, with all her might, to hold on to Carrie and to love her in exactly the same way that she had when she had been dropped off for school on the day Carrie had died. No one knew better than Sophie how hard that was and how such an effort could wear you out.
Poking out from under the corner of Artemis’s chair was one of Bella’s many drawings. Sophie bent over and scooped it up. As usual it was a picture of the sea, drawn with bold swirls of gray, green, and blue felt-tips, leaving intentional gaps of white paper that did make it look as if it were a body of water rising and falling with the tide. In the midst of the sea were the mermaids, ten or so little curly, brown-haired girls garlanded with flowers, laughing and playing. They reminded Sophie of someone—Carrie, of course. In the background Bella had drawn the shore, always the same in each picture, a hill rising out of the sea with little box-shaped houses on its crest, carefully colored around so that they remained white.
Sophie looked at the drawing for a long time, and then she realized. The houses weren’t a fantasy, another construct of Bella’s fertile imagination—they were the houses in St. Ives. Bella had been drawing home.
Sophie placed the drawing on the coffee table and looked at her watch as she made her way to the bedroom. It was just after two—they had plenty of time before Izzy and Louis would be back from the show. Time to show Bella something that, for some reason, Sophie thought might be really important.
Sophie walked into the room and switched on the light. “We’re going out,” she said, throwing Bella’s coat at her.
Offended by the sudden glare, Artemis scampered out the window with an angry yowl, and Bella sat up, rubbing her eyes as her vision adjusted to the brightness. “I don’t want to go out,” she said bluntly.
“Yes you do,” Sophie said, “Come on, no arguments, just you and me. I’m taking you to see something really special.” Sophie did her best to sound enticing and keep her apprehension out of her voice.
“I’m not going to The Little Mermaid, am I?” Bella asked with a heartbreaking mixture of belligerence and hope.
Sophie shook her head. “No,” she said. “This trip is just for you and me. Come on.”
Bella’s second trip on the Tube was much less eventful than the first and much quieter. She sat next to Sophie, her hand, still in its glove, slotted into Sophie’s. As Sophie counted the stops, Bella stared at everyone else on the train with open curiosity until they coughed and raised their books or magazines a little higher. The train rattled down the Victoria line, through Pimlico to Vauxhall, where finally they got off at Blackfriars.
“Where are we going?” Bella asked again as Sophie marched her briskly through the wet streets, the pavements streaked with reflections of colored light.
“We’re going to see a painting,” Sophie told her, taking a corner at such a high speed that Bella’s feet almost didn’t touch the ground as she struggled to keep up.
“A painting?” Bella said, clearly disappointed that it wasn’t a musical extravaganza on ice. “Where?”
Sophie stopped at the slope that led down to the entrance of the Tate Modern. “Here,” she said.
Bella looked up at the huge bulk of the converted power station standing stalwart against the silvered sky. “Wow.”
“Exactly. Come on.”
They were lucky. The rain, the season, the day of the week, and the hour had all conspired to keep the gallery relatively unclogged, so for once a visitor could enjoy the functional majesty of the building as well as the exhibits it contained.
“Ooooh,” Bella exclaimed, gawking at the huge sculpture that filled the foyer. “It’s gigantic!”
Sophie paused and looked up at Antony Gormley’s work.
“It is,” she agreed, flicking open the folded map. “According to this, I think the painting I want to show you is quite far up the escalators. Let’s go and look at it first, and then afterward we can have a look at anything else you want, okay?”
Bella nodded and hopped readily onto the escalator next to Sophie. Sophie felt a knot in the pit of her stomach. She had no idea if what she was about to show the child would mean anything to her. But also she worried that it might mean too much, and if it did, Sophie realized she didn’t know what she would do next. But she knew, whatever happened, she had to go forward because there was nowhere else to go. And anyway she had a feeling it would turn out all right, a feeling her mother would call intuition.
With another quick look at her map, Sophie led Bella, whose head was generally pointed in the opposite direction from which they were walking, to the modern British painters’ wing and then to a small room at the back of a network of galleries that overlooked the river. She pointed at a sign on the left of the entrance to the room. “What does that say?” Sophie asked.
Bella looked at the sign for a moment and smiled. “The St. Ives School of Art!” she exclaimed. “Are Mrs. Benson’s sunflower paintings in there?” she said, hopping toward the door in anticipation.
“No,” Sophie said. “At least I don’t think so. I think these paintings are a bit older.” As they entered, Sophie scanned the room, hoping and praying that the canvas she was looking for was here, that it hadn’t been placed in storage when the collection was moved from Tate Britain some years ago. And then she saw it, smaller than a painting should be, she had thought the first time she saw it, almost inconsequential. In fact, when Carrie had brought her to see it in its old home across the river, her first words had been, “A child could do better than that. I could do better than that!” But then Sophie’s appreciation of art had always been much less sophisticated than Carrie’s.
Sophie took Bella over and showed her the painting.
“St. Ives, Version Two, 1940,” Sophie read out the label for Bella, who stu
died the painting closely. “It’s by a man called Ben—”
“Nicholson,” Bella finished. “I know. Mum used to take us to the Tate St. Ives all the time. Some of his pictures are there too.” She looked at the painting. “Home,” she said, pointing to the top right-hand corner, where Nicholson had painted the beach and part of the town of St. Ives.
Sophie stood behind Bella and rested her hands lightly on her shoulders. She took a deep breath and began to say what she had brought Bella all this way to hear. “They had this big exhibition of St. Ives artists years and years ago, when your mum still lived near me in London. We were doing our A levels at the time. We were supposed to be revising—practicing—for our test. But your mum didn’t really like practicing. She said we needed to get out, get some sunshine and fresh air before we went bonkers.” Bella smiled. “She brought me to see this painting. Well, not just this painting, she made me see the whole exhibition. But it was this painting especially that really got to her. I don’t know why this one, but the minute she saw it she loved it.” Sophie paused and moistened her dry lips, realizing she was nervous. Bella stood perfectly still, looking at the picture, but Sophie sensed she was listening very closely.
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