I got out of the car and approached the front door. There was a hand-painted plaque announcing that this was “The Tree House Gallery” and more realistically, in small lettering, “Under Construction.”
There was no doorbell and actually no door, just a sheet of plywood shielding an unlit space. I shouted hello, but there was no reply. So I walked around the edge of the house and was surprised to find that the garden at the rear, while wild, was pleasant. Pleasant enough, indeed, that it was inhabited.
I could see a woman sitting in a deck chair, her head thrown back so that her face was warmed by the sun. Her hands lay in her lap, her fingers touching the edges of what looked like a blue airmail letter. Her long black hair twisted in heavy curls over her shoulders. I knew her from Justin’s description: Anita, her skin the color of wheat, the inheritance of a Sri Lankan mother. She had a soft fullness to her, no longer the lean lines of youth, but she was beautiful.
Cross-legged in a yoga pose, the soles of her feet facing upward, her head bent over a book, was the girl I had last seen on the stage as Finney dozed beside me. Jacqui, the twenty-year-old dancer, Mike and Anita’s daughter. She was tickling Christopher, her baby brother, who crawled around on a blanket on the grass next to her. He was one of those babies who would have the same face at forty that he had at ten months. There was no baby fat on him. He scarcely seemed to notice his sister’s attempts to make him laugh. But he kept butting her with his head, and crawling onto her, and curling up against her as though he craved contact.
Jacqui looked up and watched as I approached Anita, who opened her eyes but made no attempt to emerge from the deck chair. I wasn’t sure that her eyes were focusing.
“I’m Robin Ballantyne. I came to see Justin.”
Anita nodded at me, her eyelids barely lifting. Then she seemed to doze off again. Her face was sad even in sleep. She looked fragile, as though if we woke her again, she would burst into tears.
Jacqui scrambled to her bare feet and came over, and immediately the baby boy crawled over after her and wrapped his arms around her leg.
“I saw you dance last week,” I told her.
“Yeah?” She smiled. “It went okay, or so I was told.”
I told her that I had enjoyed the evening, which was true up to a point.
“Christopher was in the wings,” she told me, bending to touch the baby’s nose with the tip of her finger. “We snuck him in in his pushchair, and he was good as gold. He loves to have music around him.”
Jacqui’s hair was plaited and beaded, and there were flashes of metal at her nose and at her belly, which was bare between low-slung trousers and a high-cut sweatshirt. She had her mother’s bone structure, and it was that which made her more than pretty. There was something about the set of the jaw and the cheekbone that would, for the rest of her life, send men like Justin to the ends of the earth for her. Her eyes were her father’s, observant and restless, never still.
I glanced back at Anita, and her eyes followed mine.
“Mum’s a bit strung-out,” she said defensively. As she spoke, she stroked Christopher’s head. “She’s not sleeping at night, so she dozes off during the day.”
“I was hoping to see Justin.”
“He’s still at the hospital, his physio got delayed. He asked me to look after you until he got back. I don’t know . . .” Her voice trailed off, and her eyes went to her mother again. “Do you want to look around?”
I bit back what I felt like saying, which was that I was happy to wait in the car, and instead followed her as she picked her way through the long grass in bare feet. Her toenails were painted a deep gold. She had swept Christopher up into her arms, and he was clinging to her like a koala bear. I glanced back, but Anita was still sound asleep, and her mouth had fallen open. She looked twenty years older, like the grandmother rather than the mother of this child who sat so comfortably on his big sister’s hip.
“Is your dad back from Cambodia yet?” I asked.
She shook her head and looked sideways at me. “He’s keeping out of the way,” she said. “It’s what he does best.”
So much, I thought, for a man trained to face any enemy.
“He’s good at schedules and equipment and expeditions and orienteering, and all that stuff, but he’s crap when it comes to his wife being pissed off at him. Or his friend. Or me, actually.”
“So you’re all pissed off with him?”
Mike’s daughter gave me a hard look that, had she but known it, mirrored her father’s almost exactly. I found myself wishing that I had a camera with me now. The rules about the use of hidden filming are strict—there’s got to be a clearly demonstrable reason to invade people’s privacy. But it’s the only way to truly be a fly on the wall. As soon as you lug a full-size news camera into any situation, you might as well be directing a Broadway musical for all the reality you’re going to get on film.
“I mean hypothetically,” she said.
“Has your father spoken about me?” I knew I was pushing her on the subject of Mike, and it didn’t surprise me when she just gave me a cool glance and shook her head.
There were more building materials piled outside the back door, including a heap of bricks. Jacqui pushed open the glass door and we stepped into a large, light space that had been opened up so that there were no longer rooms, but a series of spaces defined by partitions.
I saw that the alcoves that would eventually be exhibition galleries were doubling for now as living space.
“Mum’s flat isn’t ready yet,” Jacqui explained. “Sheryl and Kes have moved into theirs, but Justin can’t do stairs yet. Mum and Christopher have been using this area downstairs anyway, so Justin’s got a bed down here, too.”
At Jacqui’s invitation I peered into one of the spaces, which was transformed by its only furniture, a bed, long and low and beautiful, with a tan leather headboard that curved in elegant Italian lines. The white sheets were twisted, tumbled to the floor. There was something about the careless beauty of that bed that arrested my eyes.
“They’ve knocked down lots of the original internal walls, as you can see. Not all of them, though, so the place feels open, but there are lots of alcoves, which means lots of wall space to hang pictures. And they’ve enlarged the windows to let more natural light in. They haven’t painted yet, so it still looks a bit rough.
“These are Mum’s,” Jacqui went on with pride in her voice, and I dragged my eyes from the beautiful bed and looked where she pointed, at a row of tiny oils hung on the unplastered brick walls, each a miniature explosion of color. I stepped up to look at the pictures more carefully and saw on examination that each was an exquisitely rendered still life, a classic arrangement, vase and flowers, fruit. There was another canvas on an easel, the painting scarcely begun, no more than a few tentative strokes. I went over to look at it. Even in these early stages, it was clear that this was to be a painting of the bed, the twist of the sheet already outlined in brown ink.
“The paintings are beautiful,” I told Jacqui. I bent to pick up a brush where it had fallen on the floor. I handed it to Jacqui, and she smiled.
“Do you know what this brush is made from?” she asked me.
I shook my head. I knew nothing about painting.
“It’s called Kolinsky,” she told me. “It’s mink. This one isn’t so romantic.” She held up a second brush. “It’s weasel hair.”
There were bottles of turpentine and linseed oil and tubes of oil, their names as gorgeous as their colors: burnt umber, Chinese vermilion. “Luckily Mum does big ones, too,” she said, smiling wryly and nodding at a stack of canvases in the corner, “or we’d never fill all the wall space.”
“Is the bed your mum’s, too?” I couldn’t help asking.
She nodded. “Whatever else you say about her, you can’t say she doesn’t have a good eye. And that’s Christopher’s room”—she gestured at the neighboring space, with a baby’s crib and a camp bed—“mine too at the moment.”
; “You live here, then?”
Jacqui pulled a face. “No. Definitely not. I share a house with friends off the Caledonian Road. I’m just here temporarily. That’s the theory, anyway.” She broke off and gave a shake of her head, then considered me. I had the strong impression that she really wanted to talk, and when she spoke again, it was as though she were sharing a confidence. “For years, Mum’s been worried sick about Dad and all the places he goes to, and the things he has to do. She’s not the world’s most independent person. So without him she’s like a shadow of herself. She was so happy when he said he’d leave the army and come and be at home, and he wouldn’t go away again. There’s plenty of security work not too far from here. So Mum started painting again, and then she got pregnant right away, which they said was an accident, and they decided to go in together with Sheryl and Kes on this place. And then Christopher was born, and Mum got postpartum depression, and Dad buggered off to the other side of the world, and she’s like a zombie all over again.”
“Is your mum on medication?”
“I don’t know. She went to see the doctor, but I don’t know if he did anything for her. She must be taking something, she’s not herself.”
“So you’ve been left holding the baby,” I said.
“I don’t mind that,” she said. “Well, I do. That sounds terrible. I love him. But I can’t be his mother. And to tell you the truth, that’s what I’m doing right now, being his Mum because his own mum isn’t up to it.”
“How can you look after Christopher and rehearse for a show?”
“Yeah, well, that’s the question.”
Jacqui turned and led me around the rest of the space. In the corner, as far as it was possible to be from Anita’s bedroom, Justin had set up camp in another alcove.
Justin’s lodgings seemed to consist of a mattress on the floor, with a duvet crumpled into a mound on top of it. The bedding looked too hot and heavy for summer nights. Jacqui stared at Justin’s bed.
“He’s been saying he might as well have died,” she said.
“I think I’d be pretty depressed, too,” I told her. “It doesn’t mean it will last.”
“He doesn’t think he’s going to be able to do anything,” she said quietly, “like walk and run and have a job and a girlfriend.”
Confusion clouded her face.
“He’ll do all those things,” I told her. “Justin doesn’t strike me as the gung ho type. It’ll take him a while, but he’ll get there.”
“If he can do one of those things, he’ll believe he can do the others.” She sounded as though she were thinking aloud.
“It’s going to take him a while to find his way through it.”
“Yes, but other people can help him,” she said with determination, and I thought that in that moment she had reached a decision.
We heard movement from the staircase, and from the shadows first a woman and then a man emerged. The woman extended a large-boned hand. She had a disconcerting smile that turned her mouth down, not up. She was of indeterminate age, with long, uniformly black hair. She wore a Lycra T-shirt and leather trousers that followed exactly the line of her too thin legs, rising to a large, flat bottom and a layer of thickening waist. Her fingernails were glossed. She looked down a narrow nose at me as I told her my name. Her face, I felt, would once have been pretty and responsive, but it had hardened and become aloof, every feature coated in foundation, powder, the mascara at the eyes grating onto the loose skin beneath. Her eyes had a skimming, quick-moving quality to them that suggested she did not want to dwell too long or look too deep.
“Sheryl,” Justin’s stepmother gave me her name. “Who are you?”
The man who had followed her, elderly, with pronounced cheekbones and thin white hair, pushed past her and extended toward me a hand that was covered in age spots.
“I know who you are, Miss Ballantyne.” He spoke slowly and smiled an enormously friendly smile. “I’m Ronald Evans. I recognize your face from the television.”
I smiled tightly. People who saw my face in the newspaper and on television at the time of Adam’s death do sometimes recognize me. I never react well.
Sheryl’s eyes went to Justin’s mattress. “I didn’t know we were having press here. We’re not usually in this state.”
She looked around her impatiently, wanting to tidy us all up. But Ronald was talking enthusiastically, his head nodding slightly, beyond his control.
“I’m Sheryl’s next-door neighbor. Don’t you find it impressive what they are doing? My dear”—and here he turned to her and seized her hand in his—“you won’t regret it, despite the temporary difficulties. Discomfort is a little thing weighed against the success of your project.”
“Ronald,” Sheryl told me, “says that our surroundings are expressions of our inner landscape. He’s a man of great vision.”
Ronald Evans made an embarrassed noise and turned away slightly. “Sheryl’s too kind,” he said. “She asked my opinion about one or two things, and I gave it. I don’t think I’ve quite reached the status of a visionary. Has anyone offered Miss Ballantyne a cup of tea?”
Nobody answered him. Sheryl had started straightening Justin’s bed, and Jacqui was watching her, scowling. Ronald took me by the hand and led me into another alcove, where a kettle, a toaster, and a microwave seemed to constitute the kitchen. He looked around, then hissed at me, “I don’t know how long they can all camp like this. Let’s go up to Sheryl’s, it’s much more comfortable. Sheryl”—he turned and spoke over his shoulder—“I’m going to take Miss Ballantyne upstairs, if you don’t mind.”
She waved her hand in a gesture of agreement and went on gathering up Justin’s dirty clothes from the floor. Ronald led the way upstairs slowly and shakily, speaking as he went. “It’s a terrible strain to have everyone on top of each other like this. I don’t mean . . . oh no, I don’t mean it like that at all.”
We got to the top of the stairs, and Ronald came to a halt and gathered breath. I looked around me and found it difficult to believe that I was in the same house. The overwhelming style was what I believe some magazines would describe as “contemporary.” A sofa was covered in leopard-print fabric, and the curtains were draped gauze, the dining chairs molded metal against a glass table. A great deal of effort—never mind money—had clearly gone into all this, but the overall effect was unfortunate. There were incongruous touches that suggested flounces rather than molded metal formed the landscape of Sheryl’s soul. There were embroidered cushions on the leopard-skin sofa, and the fabric at the windows was secured with vast pink bows. I followed Ronald to a small but well-equipped kitchen. He filled the kettle with water and turned to me. “It’s been such a stressful time. The news of Justin’s injury. You can imagine, it was devastating for Kes.”
He said the name Kes with a certain amount of awkwardness, as though it required some concentration to pronounce.
“I haven’t met Kes.”
“Ah, well.” He stopped for a moment, a teabag between finger and thumb. “Mike and Kes are very good friends.”
“So I’ve heard.”
“But Justin is Kes’s son. He blamed Mike, of course; it should never have been allowed to happen.”
I made a noncommittal noise.
“I was here for dinner the night they heard—I do so admire Sheryl.” He paused, and his voice dropped to a whisper. “Sheryl’s the only cheerful thing around here at the moment. She often comes over to me in the evening to watch television, just for the company, her husband’s away so much. Anyway, as I was saying, we were all having dinner in the garden. Sheryl is a wonderful cook, and she always wants to look after people, so she’d cooked a pheasant casserole. But Kes was desperately rude about Mike, after a drink or two, you know. And Anita, the poor sweet girl, she’s not very with it these days, but she so wanted to defend Mike, and she did her best, but Kes was very cruel to her. I couldn’t blame him, his son had been so horribly hurt. Anyway, Anita left the table in tears and rushed of
f inside, and Kes had to go after her and apologize. It was awful, quite awful.”
At that moment, a man appeared at the entrance to the kitchen. He was tall and thin, and his blond hair had faded and receded from his long face, and it was not hard to identify him as Justin’s father, Kes. He looked white with exhaustion. I was not sure how much of Ronald Evans’s gossip he could have heard.
“Kes,” Ronald said, looking embarrassed, “I’m sorry, I asked Sheryl if we might make ourselves some tea.”
Kes ignored him. His eyes were on me.
“Hello,” I said, holding out my hand, “I’m Robin Ballantyne.”
“And why are you in my kitchen?” The directness of the question was softened by the fact that he took my hand briefly.
“I came to see Justin,” I said, smiling. “I did ring, but I understand you were delayed.”
“You came to see Justin,” Kes echoed with a note of sarcasm. “You don’t happen to have a hidden camera on you?”
“Excuse me?”
“Mike told me all about you,” Kes said, his tone more mocking than aggressive. “How you pitched up in Pursat, how you started asking Mike questions about the woman who’d disappeared. What’s your game?”
“There’s no game,” I said, no longer smiling. “I came to see Justin.”
Kes looked from me to Ronald, then back again. But as he opened his mouth to respond, he was interrupted by the arrival of Anita and Sheryl. Anita’s eyes were still puffy from sleep. It was Sheryl who looked excited, but as she spoke I realized that she was reporting Anita’s news.
“Mike just rang Anita,” she said. “He’s coming back. Isn’t that wonderful?” She held a mobile phone in her hand, and she waved it high, like a victory flag.
Anita looked from Sheryl to Kes and then to me, in growing confusion. Her eyes welled with tears, and she sat down hard on a kitchen chair and started to sob. Sheryl bent solicitously over her friend.
“Perhaps you could have your cup of tea another time,” Kes said in a tone of polite apology.
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