by Chris Curran
A moment of silence before he said, ‘Right, I’ll send the exchange over now.’ Another pause that brought her close to screaming. ‘Call me any time or come down.’
A mumbled, ‘All right, bye Dad,’ and she cut him off.
She forced herself to finish the soup then poured a glass of water, checking her phone every few seconds. When the emails came through she saw they were between him and James Stone, one of the names she’d written down from the Houghton programme. She scrolled down to the first email from James:
Great to hear from you, David. I still remember how kind you were to me when I was starting out. Of course I can’t forget Stella. Apart from being a lovely person, she was such a talent and it was a tragedy that she died so young. I was devastated when I heard about it. I still think of her.
David had written back to tell him that Stella had a daughter and that he and Jill had adopted her.
Wow, David, I had no idea Stella had a child. From Eve’s DOB I’ve worked out that she must have been born a few months after Stella and I were together. I’m guessing you were too polite to ask if I might be her dad, but all I can say is that it is just about possible, although Stella certainly didn’t tell me about a pregnancy. I’ve since gone on to have three children myself from two relationships that in the end didn’t work out. I wonder what would have happened if Stella and I had met later?
We really cared for each other, but I had the chance go to the States and the relationship hadn’t go on long enough to be really serious. We were both very young and keen on our careers and I don’t think either of us was thinking about kids. I imagine Stella decided on adoption for the best of motives and, although I wish she had felt able to confide in me, it sounds as if she made the right choice.
Please let Eve know that she’s welcome to contact me. I’m resident in America now, but I’ve been hoping to get over early in the New Year to see Stella’s exhibition. I’d love the chance to meet Stella’s daughter then – even if she isn’t mine!
Eve walked away from the table and stood staring out at the darkening garden. A single black leaf floated down from one of the trees. Just about possible. It was an answer of sorts. James Stone certainly fitted the image her parents had given her of a likely father, but he hadn’t known Stella for long and had obviously lost contact with her months before her death. So, even though he was happy to talk, could he tell Eve anything more than her parents had already?
She went back online to search for mentions of James Stone. There was a handsome photograph that must be recent. His hair was grey now and receding a little, but he looked a good deal younger than her parents. He was wearing one earring and had a warm smile. He seemed to be mainly working in theatre design. And he had three children. What would it be like to suddenly have three siblings? Of course it would mean Simon wasn’t her brother, but they could still be friends. And that might be even better.
She fired off a message to James just saying she would be delighted if he was her biological parent and would love to talk by mail or phone. She promised to put no pressure on him or to interfere in his life. She attached her own photograph and added:
What I really want to know is anything at all you can tell me about Stella.
Although she knew he was unlikely to reply for ages, she kept checking her phone, pacing around the house doing mindless little jobs. She almost phoned Alex, but she didn’t want to talk about this with him yet. He would only start worrying again, trying to help. But she desperately wanted someone to talk to. Someone who wouldn’t tell her what to do, who would just listen.
She dug out the purse from her bag on the table inside the front door. Simon Houghton’s card was still there and she added him to her contacts. She should at least thank him for his help.
Hi Simon,
You were so kind the other day that I wanted to say thank you. It was really good to talk to someone who actually knew and liked my mother.
She hesitated, then wrote a bit more.
I’ve been looking into who else might be my biological father and I’ve heard from James Stone. I wonder if you remember him? He says it’s just possible it could be him. So it may be a relief to know that your own dad could be off the hook!
Best wishes
Eve
She wasn’t planning to send the message, but it helped to imagine discussing the whole thing with Simon. Then Alex texted her from the train to say he’d be delayed and wouldn’t be home for another hour and she found herself clicking open the message again and sending it as it was.
Stella
She went home with James after the show, told him she’d had an argument with Maggie over the catalogue and needed to let her cool down for a while. Maggie was nowhere to be seen.
There was no living room in the flat he shared with his two mates, so they took the beers they’d bought on the way and sat on his bed. James was drunk and happy, but Stella, although she’d had too many glasses of champagne herself, felt horribly clear-headed. But she let James talk on and on because it was a relief to sit quietly without thinking about herself.
He was so excited. Just as she’d been earlier in the night.
‘David introduced me to Brock Adams, you know the critic for the Observer. He’s planning an article about the show.’
James squeezed her knee, and she flinched, but then relaxed.
‘And don’t worry, I gave you a namecheck,’ he carried on. ‘Sent him over to talk to you, but that must have been when you were fighting with Maggie.’
‘She said she never wants to talk to me again.’ Unexpectedly her eyes flooded with tears. James moved closer, and she turned to bury her face in his shoulder.
After a while she heard him telling her not to take it to heart. It was just a squabble.
‘Both of you had been drinking and Maggie was jealous, that’s all. She’ll get over it.’
Of course he had no idea what she was really crying about, but she stayed leaning on him until they lay back on the bed and must have slept.
She woke to find him pressing himself against her and kissing the back of her neck.
‘No!’
He let go. ‘Sorry, I’m sorry. I was half asleep.’
But she was off the bed and out of the room in moments. The clock on the kitchen wall said it was four a.m.. She grabbed a jumper from the back of a chair and pulled it over her crumpled dress. It didn’t smell too good, but it helped to warm her enough that she could make herself an instant black coffee and sit in misery until it was light. Then let herself out of the flat and head back to Maggie’s.
Her key wouldn’t open the door. Maggie must have bolted it from inside. It was still early, but she knocked and then went round to do the same at the back door. She felt ridiculous at this time of day in a baggy jumper, short silk dress and stilettos. Needed to get off the street. She had only taken a few pounds to the show, but had enough to buy some tea and toast in the scruffy little café at the end of the road. When she’d finished she stayed stirring her empty cup trying to think what to do.
The café windows were steamed up so she didn’t see Maggie until she came through the door. She smiled at her, but Maggie stayed straight-faced, standing in front of her table with her arms crossed.
‘I’ve decided to go away for a bit. Do some travelling. So I’ll be selling the house.’ Her eyes were cold. ‘Please clear your stuff out by the end of the week. That should give you time to find something else.’
Before Stella could speak she was gone.
Eve
When Eve finally gave up trying to sleep she struggled to lever her large belly out of bed. She stood silently for a moment when she was finally on her feet as Alex turned over, disturbed by the dipping of the mattress.
All she could think of was the note and newspaper cutting about Stella’s death that her mum had brought over.
Alex had begged her not to bring them up to the bedroom, but every time she closed her eyes she saw them lying on the kitchen table.
>
A few minutes later, huddled in her thick dressing gown, fur slippers on her feet, she sat looking at the yellowing scrap of newsprint. It was from the local paper in the little Italian town where Stella had spent her last few weeks. Eve couldn’t read Italian, but it was paperclipped to a folded piece of A4 on which someone had typed a translation.
FIRE KILLS ENGLISH ARTIST
A young woman was declared dead when the garden studio where she was painting burned down. Named as Stella Carr, she was visiting fellow artist and local resident Margo de Santis. The fire caught hold very quickly and the authorities think Miss Carr was overcome before she could escape. Miss de Santis was injured and remains in a serious condition. Police are investigating.
She wasn’t sure what that final line meant. Perhaps it was normal for the police to be involved after a deadly fire, but she wondered what they had discovered.
There was a blurry photograph above the report of the house before the fire – looking as if taken from an estate agent’s brochure. The only thing that could be the studio was a small wooden structure that was more like a garden shed than anything else. It must have burned very fast for anyone be trapped in there.
The note from Maggie was typed, and there was no return address or date.
Dear Mr and Mrs Ballantyne
As you must know by now Stella Carr was killed in a fire at my house in Italy. I’m sorry it has taken me so long to write, but I’ve been in hospital for many months.
Stella had recently come into some money and as neither of us has any family we thought it was sensible to make wills naming each other as beneficiaries. However I know Stella would want me to give her money to the daughter you adopted so I enclose a cheque.
She thought back to that afternoon when her mum had given her the papers as they sat in Eve’s small living room: Eve on the sofa and Jill on the armchair beside the glowing fire. She’d read very quickly while her mum used a poker to clear some ash from under the coals. When she reached the line about the cheque Eve looked up. ‘You never told me about the money.’
Her mother carried on fiddling with the coals. ‘It was the £10,000 we said Aunt Janie left you.’ Jill kept moving the coals about in the grate avoiding Eve’s eye. Eve was tempted to grab the poker and throw it on the floor. They had told her about the savings account in her name when she went to university, but said she shouldn’t spend it on the fees. In the end she had used it when she and Alex bought their house.
A long silence until Jill put down the poker and turned to her, still not meeting her eye. ‘I’m sorry, Eve. It just never seemed the right time to tell you.’
Yet another lie by omission.
Eve couldn’t stay sitting. She hauled herself up and walked over to the window. Across the road was the wide expanse of grass that ran to the cliff edge and in the distance a strip of grey sea. On this gloomy day the grass was empty except for one woman in a heavy coat throwing a ball for a bounding Labrador.
What was the point of saying anything? She already knew they had kept the truth from her for years. And much as she wanted to rage at her mother it wasn’t worth it.
But something didn’t make sense. ‘I thought you said Stella was poor.’
‘That’s what we thought. I mean she sold five paintings at the show and Dad managed to get her another couple of sales later on, but they didn’t make anywhere near that. She obviously painted while she was in Italy, and it sounds as if her pictures survived the fire. I suppose Maggie might have found a buyer for some of them after she died. Or perhaps it was an inheritance. She says in the note that Stella had no family, but I think there was a grandmother.’
Eve said, ‘Yes, the one in her painting. The old lady she called Nana. She would have been my great-grandma.’
Jill looked away, and Eve felt a twist of shame. That had been a cruel thing to say. Her mum cleared her throat. ‘Yes, that was the picture she wouldn’t let them sell. Her grandmother died just before Stella came to us, so maybe she inherited a house.’
‘But if it wasn’t an inheritance, if it was from the sale of paintings, the collector who lent them to the Baltic might have been the buyer.’ She was talking more to herself than to her mother. It didn’t really change anything. She had heard nothing since she had asked the curator to send on her contact details. What she needed was to find the person who had known Stella best. The person who had been with her at the time of her death. And that was Maggie.
When her mum had gone, and Alex arrived home, she showed him the note and newspaper report. He kissed and held her for a few moments, but said nothing. And after that she didn’t feel like telling him about the conversation with her mum. She was almost sure he would tell her again to leave it for now. They didn’t talk much while they ate, and when they finished Eve left Alex filling the dishwasher and went up to the room they’d got ready for the baby.
Sitting on the rocking chair they’d bought from a second-hand shop, and looking at the pale yellow wallpaper with its border of ducks and lambs that they’d chosen and put up together, she felt tears coming and closed the door. Even with it tightly shut she tried to stifle her sobs. Since her breakdown Alex had always been alert to her changes of mood. Too alert. But she’d been stable and happy for ages – until now.
As she rocked back and forth she told herself it was just pregnancy blues, but she knew it was because she felt so alone. She used to tell Alex everything, knowing she could trust him to be totally on her side. But she wasn’t sure that was true anymore.
Now, sitting at the kitchen table in the middle of the night, she felt lonelier than she ever had. If she couldn’t trust her parents and couldn’t tell Alex who could she turn to?
Her phone, which had been lying on the table, chirped as its battery gave out and she got up to rake through a drawer for a charger. When she’d plugged it in she checked the display and saw a message that must have come during the day.
It was from Simon Houghton.
Thanks for getting in touch. It was good meeting you. I’ve been thinking about everything you said and I wondered if you’d be free to meet tomorrow. I have to be in Bexhill-on-Sea first thing to evaluate some pictures and I see it’s only a couple of stops on the train from Hastings. So I could easily come over there afterwards. We could find somewhere for a late lunch before I head back to town. I’ll give you a bell when I’m ready to leave Bexhill. Don’t worry if you can’t make it, but I’d really enjoy chatting with you again.
CHAPTER TEN
Stella
She couldn’t paint. Whenever she’d been unhappy in the past it was work that had saved her, but this was different. The thought that her drawings had been sold as forgeries was allconsuming. And there was no one she could talk to.
When she got back to the house after Maggie told her she was selling up there was a note on the hall table:
Stella,
I’ve organized for someone to come next Monday morning to pack the rest of my stuff and clean the place so you need to be gone by then. I won’t be back.
And that was it.
She had gone into college to check the noticeboard and found a room in a student flat right away; but three days later she still couldn’t bring herself to leave. She’d only been into class once. A few newspapers had featured the Houghton exhibition and all of them made a great fuss of her. And the glances and whispers behind hands as she walked about in college were horribly embarrassing. When the tutor joked that as she was obviously so photogenic she should really take the place of their model, and everyone snickered, she walked out, her face throbbing with heat. It felt just as it had when she’d first arrived as a poor girl from the north-east among all the posh kids. Until Maggie rescued her.
But Maggie was gone now.
She haunted her favourite galleries. And she was in the café at the National Portrait Gallery when Ben Houghton came through the door. It was too late to move away as he headed straight towards her.
‘Just the girl I was looking
for,’ he said, plonking down in front of her. ‘I remembered Maggie telling me you loved to hang out here.’
‘Actually I’m glad to see you,’ she said enjoying the way his eyelids flickered with surprise. She had been planning to go and see him, but saying what she had to say in a neutral space with other people around would be easier. ‘I’ve got the money for the paintings David managed to sell.’ She was determined not to give him any of the credit for the show. ‘So I can pay you for those drawings now.’
He sat back further in his chair. ‘Right,’ he dragged the word out on a long drawl, ‘I don’t think that’s going to be possible.’ He raised his palm in a stop gesture as she went to speak. ‘Look, I know I was out of order the other evening, and I can understand you being angry with me, but I’ve talked to my buyer. He’s reassured me that he sold the drawings to a very reclusive chap who keeps all his art locked away for his eyes only. So there’s nothing at all to worry about. In fact he’s looking for some more of the same and is prepared to pay big bucks for them.’
‘No.’ She put her sketchpad and pencils into her bag and went to stand, but he pushed aside her empty cup and saucer and grabbed her hand, staring hard at her. Two girls in school uniform walking close to their table giggled.
‘Please, Stella, just listen for a minute.’
Something different in his eyes made her sit down again, but she pulled away her hand and crossed her arms tightly over her chest.
‘You see I’m in a bit of trouble, my love,’ he said. ‘And I need those big bucks rather urgently.’
She stifled a bitter laugh. ‘You own an art gallery. And Maggie told me about your house in Mayfair.’
‘Ah, well.’ He rubbed his hand over his mouth. ‘None of it’s mine, you see. Pamela’s the one with the money. And that means I can never be a free man. So I started dabbling on the stock market, hoping to raise some funds of my own. But I made a few bad investments.’