by Clare Boyd
High on the relief, Isla giggled as she pressed her finger into the syrup and licked it, mirroring Sarah’s face, which was in raptures at the sweetness. ‘We never let anything go to waste in this house!’
Unexpectedly, tears sprang into Elizabeth’s eyes. The children were never allowed to be messy at home. Lucas abhorred mess. He had expected Elizabeth to train their housekeepers to become meticulous. Before Agata, they had rarely met the required standard, leading to a fast turnover of staff. When it had been Elizabeth’s responsibility to keep their home tidy, she had never been able to keep up: the pillows weren’t clean enough; the children weren’t quiet enough; the food wasn’t hot enough; the drinks weren’t cool enough; Elizabeth was lazy; Hugo was badly behaved; Isla was a disappointment. The world was wrong. When Agata and Piotr arrived, they excelled in their duties and created equilibrium in the house. Perhaps this was why Elizabeth had failed to question how they were affording to keep them.
She shuddered with anger when she thought about the documents locked in the safe. Apprehension about going home swirled inside her. She was uncertain about how long she could hold out. It had been foolish of her to expect him to roll over. It was in his personality to be unyielding. Submitting to her tough-guy tactics would be his last resort, detestable to him, part of the childhood he had left behind. As an adult, he had worked tirelessly to shed that side of him, to cultivate his new persona of success and power. Never again the victim! Two fingers to the housemaster of Winslow House!
Isla put on a large pair of cherry-patterned oven gloves and carried a tin of chocolate cake mixture to the oven.
‘Careful!’ Elizabeth said, watching her daughter’s attempt to put the cake in the oven.
Isla hesitated and looked up at her.
‘She’ll be fine!’ Sarah said. ‘Go on, sweetie.’
Hugo was next. Just as he placed the tin on the oven shelf, the doorbell rang.
‘Who’s that?’ Sarah asked, frowning, wiping her hands on her apron as she went to the front door.
Elizabeth heard a familiar Polish accent and shot up off her chair, but was then rooted to the spot, unable to go to her.
Sarah led Agata into the kitchen. ‘Agata’s here!’
‘I need to talk to you,’ Agata said.
‘Excuse me for one second, Sarah, will you?’
‘Of course,’ Sarah said. ‘Come on, you two. Part of baking is cleaning up.’
Elizabeth and Agata stood in the narrow hallway, almost nose to nose.
‘What the hell are you doing here? How did you get here?’
‘I get cab. You have to come,’ Agata urged.
‘What’s happened?’
‘Lucas make Heather tell him. I hear it. And Gordon get the van and they go. They GO!’
‘Shush! Shush,’ Elizabeth said, putting her hand over Agata’s mouth in fright.
Agata twisted her head away. ‘You have to get to the paintings first,’ she hissed.
‘Why didn’t you call me?’
‘You not answer your phone. I try and try! They leave half an hour ago.’
When Elizabeth returned to the kitchen, she felt slippery, as though her limbs were melting under the stress. Her arm muscles wobbled as she picked up her handbag.
‘There’s been an emergency,’ she told Sarah with artful calm.
‘Is everyone okay?’ Sarah asked.
‘Everyone is safe and well,’ Elizabeth said, looking at her phone, seeing seven missed calls from Agata. ‘Is it all right if I leave the kids with you for a bit?’
She couldn’t look Isla and Hugo in the eye, but she could feel them looking up at her, could feel their searching gazes penetrate right through her. Neither of them ran to her or begged her to stay or demanded to know why she was leaving. The atmosphere at home had been bad enough for them to understand that it would be dangerous to ask. In the midst of real trauma, they knew not to cause trouble. Instinctively they were keeping themselves safe.
* * *
Agata pressed open the passenger-side window. Elizabeth pressed it up. ‘The air-conditioning won’t work if the windows are down!’ she snapped, stifled by the heat in the car.
‘Twenty minutes. You never catch up,’ Agata said.
Elizabeth dialled Jude’s number on the car phone. As they waited for him to pick up, she asked Agata, ‘Where is Heather?’
Agata shook her head. ‘I not know.’
Jude’s line rang and rang. They tried again, with no luck.
‘I don’t have time to drop you off. You’re going to have to walk back from the high street. Okay? You have to stay at home and keep me informed about what’s going on at the house.’
‘I get the bus,’ Agata said.
‘Good,’ Elizabeth said, speeding up.
But nothing was good. Fear gripped her ribcage, squeezing the air out as she thought of the quickest route to the lock-up. She had to make it there before Lucas and Gordon. It was possible. Yes, it was possible. She prayed that her route through Roehampton would be better than theirs via Putney High Street – the way he always went. She hoped they would get lost – just as she and Heather had – around the complicated industrial estate. And she knew that her BMW was faster than their trundling old van.
* * *
She was ten minutes away, and her heart was pounding. As she ran a red light and overtook an indicating bus, Jude finally called back.
‘Hi, sis,’ he said.
‘Jude. Is it possible to call the lock-up company and tell them to disable the keypad to stop anyone gaining entry?’
‘What’s going on?’
‘I haven’t got time to explain. Can you do it?’
‘I’ll try, and call you back.’
Red light after red light thwarted her journey, but the lunchtime traffic had not been heavy and she had made exceptional time, as though the gods were looking down on her favourably. She was five minutes away. Five-minute journeys in London could turn into half-hour gridlock. She took nothing for granted. But each clear road made her heart sing.
When she pulled around the final corner into the industrial estate, her jaw locked as she braced herself for seeing Gordon’s white van parked outside the storage unit. She punched the air when she saw that the car park was almost empty. A hire van and a saloon car were the only two vehicles there.
As she ran past the lock-up doors, Jude called her back.
‘They can disable it, but it’ll take a day.’
‘That’s too long.’
‘Tell me what’s going on.’
‘Lucas has found out where they are. I can’t let him get hold of them. Can you get here?’
‘I’m in Shoreditch. I’ll jump in a cab now.’
‘Shit. You’re too far away.’ She typed in the code and pushed up the corrugated door, closing it quickly behind her. She wondered what she was going to do when Lucas and Gordon arrived. How would she stop them from taking the paintings? How would she transport the canvases in the BMW? She hadn’t thought anything through. Unable to hide her panic from her brother any longer, she said, with tears in her voice, ‘What can I do? How can I stop them?’
Jude answered her with a plan that sucked her tears back.
At that moment, she heard Gordon and Lucas’s voices.
‘I can’t do that, Jude,’ she whispered.
The voices were getting louder as they moved down the corridor.
‘Yes you can. Trust me, okay? Trust me.’
And she decided, with all her heart, to trust her little brother. She had no choice.
Outside the door, she heard the keypad. Beep – one digit. She searched the lock-up, scrabbling in the first box she saw to find a tool for the job, but it was stacked with Jude’s books. Beep – two digits. Another box, full of IKEA pots and pans from his first flat. Beep – three digits. The third box, full of crockery. Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep. Then muffled swearing, before they started again. They’d typed it in wrong. More time. She found a set of glasses, took one
and smashed it against the wall. With an old teacloth wrapped around its base, she held the sharp shard poised close to the canvases – specifically the right-hand corner of Blue No. 3.
Beep. Beep. Six digits, then one more. The metal door thundered up.
‘Take one more step towards them and I’ll destroy them,’ she said.
Gordon stayed where he was. Lucas moved forward, his eyes trained on her weapon.
‘I’m warning you, Lucas.’
She ripped open one corner of the wrapping, where Jude had suggested.
‘You wouldn’t dare.’
‘This will all be over if you return Agata and Piotr’s documents.’
‘I will not do that.’
And with those words, she pulled the shard of broken glass down through the choppy seascape, leaving a long, straight slice across the canvas.
‘Give those documents back,’ she said, her voice cracking, her body convulsing, ‘and I’ll get Jude to patch it up for you. The Seacarts need never find out. Their condition report already cites damage in this area. This second tear will disappear if Jude’s hand is the one to repair it.’
Venom and savagery destroyed Lucas’s pretty face as he lunged at her.
Through a blur of terror, Elizabeth lost her head. Literally lost her thoughts and her hearing and her sight. In seconds, her consciousness began slipping away. Was there something around her throat? She flopped back, too weak to fight.
Gordon’s arms were around her. ‘Lucas!’ he bellowed. ‘Mrs Huxley, are you okay?’
‘Why, Elizabeth?’ Lucas was crying, heaving sobs, like a boy. ‘Why?’ he yelled.
There was a feeling of release at her neck, and Gordon said, ‘Get out of here, Lucas.’
His step faltered at the door and he turned back to look at the gash in the sea. It had been Elizabeth’s hand that had sliced through Jude’s beautiful brushstrokes, but it had been Lucas who had guided it.
Elizabeth ran to her car and locked the door, watching in her rear-view mirror as Gordon led Lucas towards the van.
There was nothing he could do to her now. She had finally outsmarted him. Jude was the only person in the world who could fix the tear and reproduce those brushstrokes without devaluing the paintings further and delaying the deal.
She wasn’t scared of Lucas’s return home. In fact, she would relish it. By then he would have calmed down and worked out that if he hurt her again, not only would Jude not fix the paintings, she would make sure he denied them, called them out as fakes. The triumph lifted her soul. She felt weightless, as though she were flying through the air above the motorway, safe from the earth’s petty threats.
Thirty-One
I bent hesitantly over my parents’ bed. The flowery pink duvet was pulled high up over my father’s head. The bristles of his face were squashed into the pillow. The cotton was pretty and bright next to his ravaged skin.
‘Do you think you might be able to get up for some breakfast now, Dad?’ I asked quietly.
‘I need to sleep,’ he growled, and turned away from me. The mound of his body under the duvet was large and indeterminate. Even in bed, the power of him scared me. I took a step back, almost expecting him to throw back the duvet and leap up at me.
‘Mum says breakfast is on the table.’
I had been instructed by Mum to be gentle but firm. I didn’t feel firm.
‘I’m too tired.’
I sat down on the bed and waited.
‘Dad, what happened yesterday?’
He was still and unresponsive. He could have been asleep again. I felt my heart speed up as I waited for his response. Nerves fluttered through my stomach. I had sent a text to Lucas yesterday:
Just checking everything at the lock-up was okay. I hope I remembered the code correctly? H x
There had been no reply. I had regretted sending it.
‘Did Lucas get the paintings back?’
‘Get out!’ my father yelled.
The force of his anger propelled me off the bed and I backed out of the room.
In the kitchen, I found Mum pouring boiling water into a cup without a tea bag.
‘Want one?’
I dropped a bag into the cup. ‘Might need one of these, Mum.’
She didn’t smile. ‘He won’t get up, will he?’ she said, dunking the tea bag over and over. I followed her as she drifted out of the kitchen and into the sitting room, sagging into an armchair. The under-eye circles showed through her make-up like dark paint under a wash of white.
I sat down next to her. ‘No.’
‘I can’t miss my train,’ she said, staring at the mantel clock as though challenging its relentless momentum. I didn’t want her to leave for Scotland.
‘Don’t worry, Mum. I’ll deal with him.’
‘He has to go in today.’
‘Would one day off matter?’
‘Absolutely, yes, it would matter.’
‘Why? Because of yesterday?’ I asked. My curiosity felt like a crawling creature inside me scratching for answers.
There was a long silence. She held the tea in front of her, poised to drink it, but she didn’t put it to her lips. ‘How did you get mixed up in all this? What were you thinking?’ she asked.
‘I told you, Elizabeth threatened me. She said she’d fire me, and you and Dad, if I didn’t help her take them. I didn’t know what else to do.’
She laughed and shook her head. ‘That stupid woman has no power over us.’
Never had I heard her speak with such disrespect about anyone, let alone Elizabeth Huxley, the woman I had believed she admired, wished in another life to be like.
‘You know what happened, don’t you, Mum?’
She slammed the mug onto the coffee table, ‘Your dad did nothing but try to help.’
‘Have they fallen out? Lucas and Dad?’
Mum said nothing; tight purple lips. There was no pearly lipstick to soften her face. I saw the lines that crowded around her mouth, spiky and mean in the morning light. ‘To fall out, you have to have been friends in the first place,’ she said with a strange smile.
Unsettled, I said, ‘I’m sure they’ll work it out.’
Her expression hardened. She shot me a look, almost sneering at me. ‘You really believe that, don’t you?’
‘You don’t think they can work it out?’
‘I think you’re distracted by Lucas’s handsome face.’ Her words blew out of her mouth like a hot odour. The leaking of bad feeling, lying in wait underneath her meekness, underneath her agreeable, wholesome nature.
‘It’s not like that,’ I said.
‘What is it like?’
‘I like him, Mum,’ I admitted, hoping this would appeal to her, hoping her softness would return.
‘Well, you mustn’t.’
‘I know it’s complicated with Elizabeth.’
‘You think Elizabeth is the problem?’ she laughed.
‘I know she is. She’s totally crazy.’
‘Ha!’
My father had got to her. She would not be behaving like this if he hadn’t. ‘You think I’m not good enough for him? Is that it?’
‘You’re too good for him, you silly child.’
I stood up. ‘I’m not a child!’
She picked her tea up and swallowed a mouthful. ‘You’re happy to split up a family, are you?’
‘They’re not happy together.’
‘Who told you that? Him?’
After all the years of reverence, I was astounded by her distaste. After all the years of her aspirations for me, she was now pulling back, U-turning. Perhaps it was the prospect of me being with him that somehow diminished him in her eyes, ruined the fantasy she had enjoyed.
‘Nothing will happen between us unless it is over between them,’ I stated calmly.
‘Nothing will ever happen between you two if I have anything to do with it!’
‘This is about Dad, isn’t it?’
My mother would do anything to pacify my fat
her’s temper. Say anything to keep him happy, to make home life easier. My father’s power had grown and his word had become gospel. When I looked at my mother now, I thought she looked wrapped up, as though cellophane had been wound around her face. I wanted to rip it off her and allow her to breathe, but I knew she would just bind her head again herself. She and my father shared a perverse co-dependence, a warped sense of neediness: he needed her, and she needed to be needed; her needs were subsumed by his. Always second in line, she could not live a day without contemplating his contentment first. If he was unhappy, she could not locate her own happiness. If he was sad, she was too. But their love, albeit unhealthy, ran deeper than the more prosaic, run-of-the-mill bonds of mutual respect and equality that the majority of people shared.
‘It’s not about Elizabeth or your dad or the kids or me! It’s about Lucas,’ she shouted.
‘You think he’s not serious about me?’ My voice was small.
The bitter edge to her face melted away. ‘I think he is probably very serious about you. Lucas is all-or-nothing. There is no in-between.’
My mind dived into a warm Mediterranean Sea, where the sun lit up the bubbles around each stroke, turning them silvery, as though I had magic cascading from my fingertips.
‘Why are you so against it, then?’
She stood up and walked to the window, twitching the curtains to look outside, as though someone out there might be listening. ‘Your father has debts,’ she said.
‘What kind of debts?’
‘He owes Lucas money.’
A surge of blood rushed to my head; my face felt burning hot and my extremities freezing cold. ‘How much?’
‘He used to like a flutter in the betting shops. Not like an addiction or anything, but he got himself into trouble, just once.’
‘What kind of trouble?’ I asked, baffled by the idea that my father had been anything but sensible with his money.
‘We lost our van, and we didn’t have the money to replace it.’
I was stunned. All my life I had presumed they had always been thrifty and cautious, and self-righteous.
‘And Lucas lent him the money?’
‘He did. Yes.’