by Clare Naylor
“Would it have made a difference?” he asked, and then looked away, knowing that she was going to say that it probably wouldn’t have.
“I have no idea.” She tried to see him objectively but she couldn’t. He was Louis, he was indistinguishable from herself. “Hand on heart I have never, ever thought of you in that way.”
“So all the times I thought you were undressing me with your eyes . . .” He laughed, and the tension between them vanished.
“You probably just had a bit of fluff on your sweater,” Kate confirmed.
“Poor me.” He was about to turn and walk off in a pretend tantrum, but Kate caught his arm and made him look at her.
“But now I come to think of it . . .” She blinked and then lowered her eyelashes, wondering what it would be like to kiss him, “I wish you would . . .”
“Would what?” They stood on Waterloo Bridge with the traffic trailing by and the odd tourist or commuter pushing past them. She thought about what she wanted him to do but felt too confused to ask.
“I wish you’d take me home.” She bit her lip and felt the goose pimples rise on her arms as the breeze got up. “I’m freezing.”
Chapter Seventeen
Kate was awakened the next morning not by Mirri hammering or by a naked man kissing her but by the sound of rain on the shed roof. It was drumming incessantly on the shingle and then sloshing into the gutter. She cast her mind over the previous evening to see what she’d said that she shouldn’t, drunk that she wished she hadn’t, or not done that she ought to have. Claridge’s. Waterloo Bridge. Louis being in love with her. That was enough to make her open her eyes. Oh hell. Louis loved her. The thought made her want to run. And not because it suddenly made the whole thing incredibly awkward between them—she saw now that it had always been awkward for that very reason. Mirri had been right that day that she’d said sexual tension was the problem. Kate couldn’t comprehend how someone as out of her league as Louis might feel that way about her. She thought about the hothouse girls and the sweetpea girl and how he’d strode through the Tate with her tripping along at his heel. Louis had it. Kate could hold her own as his pal but never in anything more than a tomboyish way. He made her feel nineteen—as if she’d still die of embarrassment if he so much as asked her for a slow dance.
She got up out of bed and put on the kettle, feeling overwhelmingly tired from all the champagne and cocktails, and then trailed back to her duvet without making a cup of tea. The air in the shed was damp and smelled of mildew. Today she was going to go to the estate agents and look for somewhere to live, there was nothing else for it.
“Got to get real,” she said, and dashed over to the boiling kettle.
“Two sugars for me.” She turned around to see Louis peering through a crack in the door.
“Am I disturbing you?” he asked. His hair was still wet and hung about his eyes in shiny, licorice-colored strands; his white T-shirt matched his grin. It wasn’t often that Kate saw Louis’s teeth, but they were unexpectedly perfect for such a laid-back man with a fondness for looking shabby. Kate was flustered. She hadn’t even gotten around to recalling what had happened when he’d brought her home last night. Though she knew that they hadn’t had sex, because that memory would have hit her like a sledgehammer to the head the instant she woke up if they had. In fact, all she could recollect was that they’d finished the champagne in the cab home and he’d seen her to her door. And that was it. No lingering looks, no kiss, no nothing.
“Did you sleep outside my door?” she asked, mentally computing what she was wearing. First for decency and then . . . and this was new for her . . . for attractiveness.
“I’m not that crazy about you,” he said.
“Right. So we’re obviously not going to pretend that the whole thing never happened then?” Kate glanced at him and was impressed by how relaxed he appeared.
“You’re kidding. I’ve been wanting to say that for ten years. You’ve no idea how great I feel this morning.” He took the cups out of her hand and put them on the counter.
“Are you going to kiss me?” Kate took a step back so that she could better assess the situation.
“No, I’m going to make myself a cup of tea. Since you’re about as much use as a wet weekend at the seaside.”
“I feel like I was taken out by a sniper’s bullet and then had my brain sucked out through the hole.” Kate shuffled back over to her bed.
“Caipirinhas. I ought to have warned you.” He sniffed the carton of milk before sloshing it into the cups.
“What are you doing here anyway?” She flicked the heater on with her foot, pulled on a cardigan, and sat on the end of her bed as she watched him make tea. “Apart from the fact that you look good in my kitchen.”
“I’m not staying.” He handed her the tea. “I just came around to see if you wanted a lift into work?”
“Oh hell. I forgot.” Kate moaned and flopped backward on the bed. “You’re my boss.” He sat down in the armchair and reached out to touch the zebra with his free hand.
“I also wanted to say that you don’t have to worry about what we talked about last night. I didn’t mean for anything to happen and it’s not going to change anything.”
Kate looked at him and suddenly felt shy in her old nightdress. “It’s not?”
“I promise. Though occasionally you have to know that I’ll be checking out your legs or thinking that your eyes are a pretty color.”
“Really?” Kate sat up and pondered Louis—who for all his confessions and flattery didn’t actually seem to her as if he gave a damn about her. In fact, he looked positively indifferent to her as she lay there in her practically invisible old cotton nightdress, which you could definitely see her nipples through. He nodded and took a sip of his tea.
“Are you sure?” She knelt up on the bed and noticed how long his legs seemed in her shed. They stretched practically all the way over to the bed.
“Only occasionally,” he reassured her.
“Louis?” she asked, trying to get him to notice the see-throughness of her nightie. “What is it that you like about me?”
“Oh, I don’t know. Everything. You’re cute.” He shrugged.
“Cute?” She scowled at him. “Like a puppy?”
“You’re funny.”
“Big deal.”
“I like your nose.”
“Louis.” Kate sprang off the bed indignantly and stood up with her hands on her hips looking down at him.
“What?” He was clearly surprised at how feisty she’d suddenly become and looked faintly bewildered.
“I don’t think you fancy me at all.”
“Don’t I?” He couldn’t help but smile at her now.
“No. You think I’m cute. Like little-sister cute. You probably had a crush on me the first time we met because I looked after you when I maimed you but really I don’t think you’re in love with me at all.” She was completely put out by the idea. As if Louis had somehow cheated her.
“Don’t you?” He was enjoying himself now. And he could see her nipples through her nightdress.
“No. I don’t.” Kate’s hands dropped from her hips to her side in defeat.
“Oh, well.”
“What do you mean ‘Oh, well’? Louis, are you or are you not in love with me?” she demanded.
“I’m in love with you.” He could barely keep a straight face anymore. She was like an outraged child.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Well, I am.”
“Prove it.” She put her hands back on her hips and waited.
“Are you expecting me to die for you or something?” He sat forward in his chair as if thinking of his next chess move.
“I don’t know. I’m not the one who’s supposed to be in love.” She frowned.
“Okay then.” With which Louis stood up. He placed his hands on either side of her face, looked at her for a moment, and then leaned toward her and kissed her on the lips. It wasn’t a long kiss but it
lasted just long enough for Kate to know that she didn’t want it to end. “Now do you believe me?”
“Perhaps,” Kate said quietly, and this time she kissed him. Of all the things that had surprised her about Louis lately this kiss surprised her the least. Because for some reason she realized that she had always known exactly how it would feel to kiss him. She knew how he would taste, how he would smell, and how soft his neck would feel beneath his hair. She also knew that it had been worth waiting for.
Nick waited for the dogs to follow him through the kitchen door before closing it behind him.
“Shut up, you heathens,” he yelled, and pushed one of his hefty black Labradors out of the way with his leg. It was eleven o’clock and he’d just made it back through the woods before the downpour had begun. Which meant that he and the dogs had to run across only one field in the rain. His housekeeper had lit a fire and he stood by the inglenook and dried his trousers out. The dogs barked furiously until he gave in and fed them.
“Okay, okay,” he mumbled impatiently as he poured biscuits on top of their meat. Then he began to think about his own breakfast. He was supposed to be cutting back on the bacon sandwiches, but when it came down to it, he just never felt like eating the rabbit food that the girls tried to force on him.
“It’s for your own good, Daddy. We just don’t want you to die,” Jasmine said whenever he looked like he might be weakening.
“Well, since you put it that way, sweetheart,” he’d respond, and cram in another mouthful. At least there was someone to care about him, he supposed, but the lot of a single father was not an easy one. Neither was it a guilt-free one. Every time he had a cigar, one of the girls would mention throat cancer. Every time he had a second glass of wine, they practically checked him into The Priory.
“Somebody’s got to look after you,” Ella would say as if she were a hospital matron from the 1940s.
“And what about your mother. Are you as bossy with her as you are with me?”
“No, Daddy, she’s got Simon to look after her.” Jasmine wasn’t as diplomatic as her sister, who always ended up elbowing her sharply in the ribs when she said things like that. Not that Nick minded. He was relieved that his ex-wife was happy. Everything she’d said was true after all—he was emotionally shut down, didn’t know how to show affection, and would be happier on his own. She was much better off with Simon. The girls were the only thing in the world he really cared about anyway. As long as he had them he was happy.
He waited for the kettle to boil and looked at the front of the Evening Standard that someone had left on the table. And there she was. It was strange, he’d looked for her picture every day since he’d known she was back in the country, but it had begun to seem as if she’d vanished. Or at least as if he’d dreamed it last time. He’d glance at all the papers in the newsagents when he went in, he’d scan the red tops in the petrol station—but nothing. Until now. He dripped HP Sauce onto a picture of Tony Blair and stared at the photo of Mirabelle Moncur—walking arm in arm with a man young enough to be her son. But definitely handsome enough to be her lover—lest he try to deceive himself. It was the story he’d been waiting for:
MIRABELLE MONCUR STEPS
OUT WITH TOYBOY
God, they were so unoriginal, he thought as he wiped the goblet of sauce from the page and let the dog lick his finger. He didn’t read any further. But what he did do was finish his sandwich and then go straight to his office, where he pulled a half-written letter from his top drawer. He glanced at it once, before screwing it up and throwing it into the bin.
“So what happened with Jonah the other night?” Kate asked as she added the finishing touches to Bébé’s ears. The portrait was coming along much better than she’d expected. She’d been worried that he might end up looking kind of cheesy—but he didn’t. He looked ruffled and beautiful. At least so far. There was still a long way to go before she was home and dry. She always tried to resist the temptation to do a few strokes of paint too many, as there was a fine line between finishing a painting and messing one up. Still, right now it was good.
“I love him,” Mirri said as she came around the back of Kate’s easel and stood beside her.
“So are you going to let him leave his wife?”
“I mean your painting of Bébé. I love him.” She touched a corner of the canvas where the background paint was dry.
“And Jonah?”
“He’ll be fine,” she said lightly. “I told him that there was no point in leaving his wife. We can continue to have an affair. Although now she has found out so I’m not sure whether he’ll be allowed out for a while. Still, I can amuse myself.”
“Did she see it in the newspaper?” Kate asked. She had picked up an Evening Standard yesterday when she and Louis had been driving home from their slightly surreal day in the studio. A day when Louis was so cool and professional that she had begun to wonder if “the kiss” had been a figment of her imagination—until six o’clock, when Louis had dropped Kate home at her gate and asked her for dinner on Friday at his place. If it hadn’t been for that, she would have been convinced she’d dreamed the whole thing. Though as dreams went it was a pretty good one—and when he brought her a latte and stood over her drawings and helped her to assemble the vast canvas, she was looking at his arms in a very unprofessional way and thinking of them doing far more exceptional things than hammering in nails. “It was on the front page,” Kate reminded her. She’d thought that Mirri looked fabulous next to Jonah, holding his hand lightly with her head slightly lowered, her hair buffeted by the evening breeze, with her devastatingly photogenic young lover by her side. They looked iconic and enviable.
“I don’t see how she couldn’t have seen it.” Mirri sighed. “Though to be honest she can probably make herself feel better that it’s me and not some perfect twenty-two-year-old. And he won’t be leaving her. So as far as these things go she’s not going to suffer too badly. I’ve experienced far worse ways of finding out that a man was cheating.”
“Still, not much fun.” Kate winced. “So have worse things really happened to you?” Kate wondered whether she might be referring to the mystery Nicholas. Though that was a long shot.
“Of course,” Mirri said. “Now, how are your sketches of me coming along?”
“Fine.” Kate mixed her paints and squinted at Bébé’s markings as he lay on the bed, deep in sleep. She was deliberating whether she ought to come clean about the portrait she’d been working on. She decided to take a leaf out of Mirri’s book and embrace honesty. “Actually, there’s something I wanted to ask you.”
“Hmmm,” Mirri said as she lay back on the bed next to Bébé and picked up a book. This was the new pattern for the sessions now—Kate brought her paints and easel up to the house, spread newspapers over Mirri’s carpet, and worked on Bébé. On these days she would sketch Mirri as she read and then they’d break for chats and tea and sometimes they’d get a rush of excitement about something—laughing either about old boyfriends, the oft-mooted idea of Kate coming out to Africa to visit Mirri at Christmas, or simply a cute way that Bébé was sitting—then Mirri would race down to the kitchen and bring up a couple of glasses of champagne. They’d clink to something meaningless and then feel the crisp, appley bubbles at the back of their tongues as they sat back in the sunshine flooding through the vast open windows. It was the most enjoyable work Kate had ever done, relaxed and stimulating, and every day she learned something about life or history or people from Mirri.
Though Kate had to admit that yesterday had come pretty close in the enjoyment stakes, too. Despite Louis’s business-like demeanor, there was still a feeling of mutual support between them. Perhaps it had always been there, but she was only just becoming aware of it, that feeling of warmth that could exist between two people. And even though the idea of Kate and Louis hadn’t yet registered on her consciousness, she didn’t feel pressured into having to make a decision about Louis and whether she wanted to “be” with him, just stunne
d by the passion of their kiss and thrilled at the feeling of two people wanting the best for one another. Rather than being engaged in a constantly vacillating power struggle as she had with Jake, who incidentally, only this morning, had sent Kate another CD in a brown envelope. This time it was Ronnie Lane’s “How Come.” Kate had hesitated to play it, feeling somehow guilty that she might be encouraging Jake by listening. But again it was a song she loved, and she did take the note that came with it and put it in the wastepaper basket. It had read,
How come I ain’t a superstitious fella but I love you so?
Kate had ignored the lyrics in a determined way and played the song as she got dressed. Poor Jake. If anyone was a day late and a dollar short it was him, she’d thought.
“So you wanted to ask me what?” Mirri said again as Kate tried to get “How Come” out of her head, from where it was melodiously refusing to shift.
“Well.” Kate stopped painting and put down her brush on the ledge of the easel. “I wondered whether you would mind if I did a portrait of you rather than just a sketch. It’s okay if you say no. I won’t take it personally, because I know that if you’d wanted one you’d have someone else do it—but this would just be one for me, to remember you and the summer by and to see if I could actually draw people and not just animals and—”
“Yes,” Mirri said plainly.
“Yes you’d mind?” Kate asked cautiously. “Or yes I can?”
“Yes, you can paint me.”
“Oh my God, Mirri, thank you thank you. That’s so cool. I was so nervous about asking, I was sure you’d say no and I promise I’ll make it my best work.” Kate wanted to hug Mirri but instead she stood by the easel and shuffled about excitedly. She didn’t want to seem ridiculous.
“There’s one condition, though.” Mirri sat up on the bed and put her book to one side. Oh, here it comes; Kate half closed her eyes in dread. The rules: No wrinkles, only smooth-like-an-egg skin; the neck has to look as if it belongs to a twenty-year-old; the pensive, faraway look will have to be a sultry pout instead. Well, if that was the case, then Kate supposed she had to comply with Mirri’s wishes.