by Rosie Blake
The lovebirds were already at their wheel, discussing something in low voices, their heads bent towards each other. Aisha looked up and gave her a gentle smile; Eve raised a hand in greeting.
Minnie could be heard shouting at something in the distance and Eve guessed either the dogs or Gerald were on the receiving end. She appeared in her usual clash of jewellery, a sequinned kaftan and a turban perched on her head, looking like the Genie of the Lamp. She swept across the room, air-kissing Eve and fluttering around Raj.
‘Good morning, good morning.’
‘Eve, your pot has been fired,’ Raj said, turning to a shelf over the tea table and bringing down a pot, a similar size but lighter in colour with hard, even grooves on its surface. She studied it as closely as if it were a Ming vase, turning it over, feeling her eyes widen in amazement. Scratched into the bottom were her initials. It was strange seeing it in this form, no more a malleable piece of clay but an actual thing. She grew excited about the prospect of painting it, wondering what designs she could create.
Eve settled herself at a table in the front lined with tubes of paint, determined to get going. Raj stood in front of her and explained what she needed to do.
‘I would draw something in pencil first,’ he said. ‘And remember that some of the colours will need two or three coats. It’s like watercolour, you tend to start with the lighter colours. Happy?’ The two white rows of teeth flashed at her again; a perfectly manicured eyebrow was raised.
Eve swallowed, letting out a high, ‘Very.’
‘Ha, good.’ He laughed.
Danny joined her, pulling a stool out from under the table, his pot a little higher and narrower.
‘That’s really good.’ Eve nodded at him and she giggled to herself as he blustered a reply, clearly not used to taking a compliment.
They chatted quietly as they worked, bent over their pieces, carefully drawing shapes onto the surface. Eve thought back to the river, to the boat, and then, shoulders hunched forward, a slow smile spreading over her face, she started to sketch.
‘You’re an artist,’ Raj said, looking over her shoulder.
Eve felt herself burn and she almost dropped the pot. ‘I like cartoons,’ she said in a quiet voice, as if it were something to be ashamed of. She had drawn a goose, waddling around the bottom of it, wings behind him, beak up, eyes wide. She couldn’t wait to fill in the lines with paint, wanted to make the silvery blue of the river the first colour to go on.
Danny was having less luck, muttering at his as he rubbed out another line. After a few more minutes he threw his pencil down on the desk and folded his arms. Eve couldn’t help noticing his biceps as she turned to ask if he was all right. His pink lips were in a pout and he really did look like a cross cherub.
‘Can I help?’ she asked.
‘I just want a wavy line splitting it in half but I can’t make it meet up.’
‘Do you mind?’ she asked, picking up his pencil and holding out a hand for the pot.
He shrugged and unfolded his arms, pushing it across. ‘Be my guest. I like making stuff but I can’t draw to save my life.’
Eve carefully drew a line round the middle of the pot, making smooth waves and joining the line back up as she rotated it.
‘You made that look so easy,’ Danny said, the pout back.
‘Well, your pot is much smoother than mine so it’s easier.’
Danny seemed to sit up straighter at that, jutting his chin out.
They painted in relative silence and Eve loved the industrious atmosphere, the wheels around her rotating, the quiet brushstrokes as Danny covered his pot in layers of blue glaze, Raj’s gentle instructions, Minnie’s occasional puffs of irritation. Mark and Aisha were making small pendants for some of their bridesmaids, and their quiet voices and occasional laughter was like the babble of a stream beneath it all.
She nearly missed it, completely absorbed in her work, but it caused her to turn and frown through the conservatory window. There was movement in a tree in the garden and she craned her neck to the side to see if it was something interesting, expecting a squirrel or a bird, eyes widening when she latched on. It was Gerald, binoculars clamped to his face, looking straight into the conservatory rather than at the sky.
‘Oh,’ Eve said, which was enough to make Danny pause in his glazing. ‘Can you see?’ Eve said, waggling her eyebrows and indicating the tree. ‘We’ve got a bird-watcher,’ she said, lowering her voice and glancing at Minnie, who seemed entirely oblivious.
Danny looked through the window and then frowned, lines appearing between his eyebrows as he took in the twitcher. ‘He gets weirder,’ he said with a small laugh.
‘Shall we say something?’
‘Nah, let him have his fun.’
‘But hasn’t it gone a bit far?’
Danny shrugged, slapping on another layer.
Gerald was still there ten minutes later, scooting down a low branch to lean forward and rest there. Eve worried he might tumble off it at any moment. Minnie still seemed completely engrossed at her wheel, Raj leaning over to show her how to create different effects with the glaze. He had a clay handprint on his white shirt. Eve bit down her question, returning to her painting, adding the fine lines around the picture now in black; her hand had to remain absolutely steady.
She soon forgot too and, as she left the class that day, Raj promised her he would put her pot back in the kiln and she would see it the next day. She wasn’t sure she could wait that long, felt light as a feather as she skipped off through the garden, no one now in the tree as she passed, no one in any of the bushes. The sky was a light blue above her, weak sunlight dancing on the surface of the river, the gentle chug of a long boat as it passed, the ripples slapping the sides of the bank.
Returning to the boat, she was desperate to talk to someone about it all, energised by the lesson, feeling excited about the progress she had already made. She had neglected a large part of herself for years and spending hours focusing on being creative, allowing herself to indulge in something she had always loved doing, was an incredible feeling.
She headed to the kitchen counter, picking up the pieces of her phone and praying that it might work now. She was amazed to see it light up and then listened to continuous beeping as messages and emails popped up. It was a deluge of love and she grinned at the screen.
‘You have eight new messages.’ Granted, most of them would be her mother asking her to come home, but eight was still a lot.
She was wrapped in three jumpers, the sun brighter now but the day still decidedly chilly. She stepped out onto the square wooden platform over the river, careful as the wood was still slippery after last night’s frost. Placing a large cushion on the ground, she sat cross-legged, her hat on, her coat wrapped round her, as she listened to her sister shouting at someone else on another phone. ‘It’s only 11 p.m. in Hong Kong so bloody well wake him up. Hi, Eve, darling,’ she said, her voice impossibly soft.
‘Er, who’s in Hong Kong?’ Eve laughed, always astounded by Harriet’s dual personality.
‘A little prat we are paying too much. Anyway, very boring, how are you, how’s the pirate life?’
Harriet had an incredible knack of focusing on you, blocking everything else out and making you feel at the centre of her universe. She was probably in the middle of dismantling someone’s company, or feeding Poppy lunch, or both, but for that moment it was simply all about you.
‘It is pretty good actually,’ said Eve, telling her sister about the small victories: the pot she’d painted, the meal she had helped make, and then felt a little silly. This was her cool big sister who did million-pound deals.
‘That does sound idyllic.’ Harriet sighed and Eve was buoyed up again.
‘How’s home?’ Eve asked. ‘How’s Mum and Dad?’
‘Fine. I had to take Dad Christmas shopping yesterday as he wanted to buy Mum something for Christmas that she wouldn’t hate. He really does have appalling taste. I had to steer him away fr
om all sorts of things. At one point he was about to buy her a hot-pink onesie because he thought she would like new pyjamas.’
Eve grinned, picturing her dad’s enthusiastic face. ‘So what did you plump for?’
‘A silver locket.’
‘She’ll like that,’ Eve conceded. Harriet was great at buying presents and could wrap anything perfectly. Eve always handed over lumpy gifts with Sellotape everywhere; Harriet found bows and sticker things and ribbon. ‘And Scarlet’s asked to borrow more money so she doesn’t have to make everyone gooseberry jam again.’
‘Oh thank God, lend it to her,’ Eve said, remembering everyone’s faces last year as they clutched their jars to their chest.
‘I will, I will. I gave mine to my highly efficient PA just to freak her out that I had a newborn and was making friggin’ jam at home. She was terrified.’
Eve was laughing as Harriet talked, picturing her back in her kitchen in Clapham, the polished white surfaces, the bar stools and the artful pictures, imagining Harriet move around the space in her high heels.
‘So any other news?’ Eve asked, and she wondered for a moment whether Harriet paused for a little bit too long before answering.
‘Not from me,’ she said. Was her voice a fraction too loud? ‘Look, Eve, I’d better go. I need to sort out this situation in Hong Kong or I’ll get the sack.’
‘I totally understand,’ Eve said, not wanting to distract her.
‘Keep enjoying it all, remember why you’re there,’ Harriet said in a quiet voice. ‘I’m pleased for you, Eve, sounds like you are really embracing it all.’
Eve felt choked as they wished each other goodbye, Harriet back off to shout down the phone at someone on the other side of the world, Eve looking out onto the still river, a heron in the distance preening himself as he bathed in the winter sunshine.
She clicked on the email icon on her phone.
Daisy had sent her a photo of herself in the office doing a sad face, a photocopied picture of Noel Edmonds next to her and a Post-it note as a bubble coming out of his mouth: ‘We Miss You’.
Eve giggled at it.
When she’d finished her emails, she returned to her answerphone messages. Two were simply dropped calls, a momentary sound of someone breathing and them changing their mind. The next, however, made her suck in her breath as the drawling voice of Liam came over the line. He sounded distant, as if he were in a car or on speaker phone.
‘And this is the fifth time I’ve called so stop ignoring them. Your sister won’t tell me where you’ve gone but I want Marmite back by Christmas Eve. It’s not fair.’
She loitered over the keypad, knowing she shouldn’t press ‘Reply’. Why do it to yourself, Eve? But unable to resist, she found her finger moving to the button, the ringtone sounding. It was too late to go back now.
‘Hello.’
‘Liam,’ she said quickly, trying to remain businesslike, trying to channel Harriet as she spoke. Harriet would tell him to effing well get a grip on himself. But she would actually swear. Eve licked her lips. ‘I told you, I’m not giving him back. Marmite is staying.’
‘Where are you?’ Liam asked. ‘You’re not at the flat.’
She felt a little rush of pleasure that he had been there.
‘I’m not, and I’m not telling you,’ she said, feeling strangely powerful, her voice confident.
‘God, Eve, you are being so selfish,’ he said. ‘You don’t even like Marmite.’
‘I do, I really do,’ she said, picturing Marmite’s bewildered face, expectant eyes. She realised with a lurch that she really did love him now.
‘Well, how convenient for you,’ Liam said with a whine, a new tone to his voice. ‘I want him back.’
‘I want never gets,’ Eve said, wondering where that sentence had come from.
‘There’s no need to be a cow about it,’ Liam said, making her bristle with his words.
‘Liam,’ she said slowly, ‘I am not being a cow about it. You cheated on me, remember. You left and it took you a couple of weeks to even remember you left Marmite too…’
‘Yes, but I want him now.’
‘Well, so do I, and I really think it is the least you can do—’
‘Permission to join,’ a voice called from behind her.
Eve frowned, her body twisting round on the cushion. It was Greg, standing on the bank, his hand in a salute that wavered as she turned. He obviously hadn’t seen the mobile clamped to her ear and put a hand over his mouth, a silent ‘Sorry’ mouthed to her as she stared at him.
He looked impossibly awkward standing on the bank as she spoke into the phone quickly, ‘I have to go… there’s nothing I can say anyway… what? It’s no one,’ she said, riled at Liam’s whining questions on the end of the phone.
She pulled the phone away, aware her face was set in a line, and jabbed at the Off button.
‘I’m so sorry. I thought you were just staring out at the river.’
She tried to rouse a smile but felt the weight of the call on her mind, her mouth refusing to lift at the edges.
‘I brought you these,’ Greg said, handing her a Tupperware container.
Her earlier happiness had evaporated like that morning’s mist and she was shivering now despite the three jumpers. Worried that she could feel tears build at the back of her eyes, she tried to look more enthusiastic, shake off the black gloom that wanted to descend.
‘Mince pies.’ She clicked the container closed again. ‘Thank you.’ She knew her smile was strained but she suddenly couldn’t face anyone being kind to her. Maybe she was being a selfish cow? Maybe she should give Marmite back? She hated hearing Liam’s voice, cold, as if the last four years had never happened and they were strangers.
‘I’ll go,’ Greg said, turning to leave. ‘Keep the container. I’ll see you soon.’
Marmite started barking excitedly from the boat, more welcoming than she was being.
‘No, I’m sorry, I… Come in, I’ll put the kettle on.’
‘Are you sure?’ Greg asked, his body half-turned away.
She swallowed, forcing a smile. ‘Yes, absolutely.’
Making mince pies seemed to help. As he stirred the mincemeat together, the raisins and currants sticking to each other, the smell of the brandy coming off it in waves, he felt that soothing release that cooking gave him. The mindless stirring, concentrating on heaping ingredients into a bowl, measuring, stirring, tasting. He could lose himself in it and simply follow the familiar recipe on a notepad in her handwriting.
He’d been over there again this afternoon after work and he had left with this terrible hollow feeling, this hopeless knowledge that they wouldn’t ever get back to where they had once been. They’d sat in the sitting room, him in the armchair he had always sat in, her perched on the end of the sofa. They had talked about Christmas, skirted round it really. He would go there for the day; she couldn’t face coming to the apartment and he agreed hastily.
He had made too many. He was sure he had a Tupperware container. It sat at the back of the bottom shelf, behind flan dishes and a glass stand that he was pretty sure wasn’t his. Running it under the tap, he felt a relief steal over him. He would get out of the flat, take them to her. He didn’t want to head anywhere else. He pictured her face as she saw the mince pies. The image made him smile as he closed the Tupperware container.
It was colder today, his car still covered in a layer of thin ice, the sky a baby blue, the high street full of people wrapped in hats and scarves, slivers of faces peeking out, red noses, hands in pockets. He walked with a purpose, glad of his collar up, his enormous scarf obscuring his face. On the other side of the road he spotted Mr Parker and Lennie, his black Labrador, white whiskers on both their faces. He sped up, not wanting to be spotted. He felt a flash of guilt as he did; he couldn’t keep avoiding the villagers like this.
Once he was under the railway bridge and could see the frost-covered common, he felt his body unclench, his arms swing more freely,
his chin lift a fraction. As he opened the gate he saw the boat in the distance, the portholes seemingly dark. He hoped she was in; he didn’t want to simply leave them at the entrance. Then, as he crossed the grass, he felt like letting out a whoop. She was there, sitting cross-legged, bundled into a hundred layers so that her body was hidden under jumpers, hat on, hair almost touching her shoulders as she looked out across the river. He felt something fall in his stomach as he took her in.
He opened his mouth, raised his hand in a mock salute, already feeling lighter than he had done all day. ‘Permission to join.’
When she turned, he found his hand falling. Her face was set in an expression he had never seen before, her mouth an angry line, her eyes dark, eyebrows knitted together. He mouthed an apology at her. He was encroaching, he could see that immediately.
He could hear her conversation. The words ‘It’s no one’ snapped down the receiver, brittle and certain. He was a no one; they’d only just met. He wasn’t sure why it hurt so much.
As she turned the phone off, the frown still on her face, he started to speak. ‘I’m so sorry, I thought you were just staring out at the river.’ Nothing he said seemed to help; she seemed to be looking through him, her mouth still set. ‘I brought you these.’ He handed her the container, wanting to get out of there quickly. He felt awkward and foolish. She clearly didn’t need him descending on her out of the blue. She didn’t need to get tied up in his problems too. He had been right not to share anything with her.
‘I’ll go.’ He heard her thanks and then, spotting Marmite’s face leaping up in a porthole, a quick flash of face then nothing, a second flash. At least someone was happy to see him.
‘Keep the container. I’ll see you soon.’
He hadn’t expected that look. He had hoped to appear on the common and be swept along in her enthusiasm, hear her light laugh, listen to her stories, watch her hands moving in the air as she told them.
She tucked her hair behind an ear and stood up, the lines between her eyebrows still there. ‘No, I’m sorry, I… Come in, I’ll put the kettle on.’