How dared she expect confirmation from me? Rage began to blister inside me, but I tried to nod as if I felt fine. My natural reaction to anger: bury it before it’s used against me. Deny it an outlet. It was practically the first thing I learned as a child in my parents’ house: I wasn’t entitled to my natural responses, especially the more ‘un-Christian’ ones. I was allowed to manifest only those states of mind that would please my mother and father, make them proud of me. Anger, particularly anger directed at them, didn’t qualify.
‘Why
does
it still bother you?’ Mary waited for an answer I had no intention of giving her. ‘Do you blame yourself, is that it? Why do we do that? Human beings, I mean. Why do we take each mishap that strikes us, and twist it until it loses its randomness and becomes a big black arrow pointing at us, proving our worthlessness?’
Her words, so unexpected, went all the way through me. I knew I wouldn’t forget them for a long time.
‘When I lost it with you, it reminded you of something else, didn’t it? You’ve been attacked before. I’m right, aren’t I? Your reaction that day was pretty extreme—I can’t believe that was all down to me. Don’t tell me if you don’t want to.’
I stood rooted to the spot, my eyes fixed on the smear of blood on my shirt.
‘The way I behaved that day had nothing to do with you, what you said or did,’ said Mary. ‘No attack is ever really an attack on the victim. It’s the perpetrator attacking an aspect of himself that he loathes. He or she.’
Try telling that to the victim, I thought.
‘I don’t sell my work. I never do. I don’t even like people seeing it, unless they’re people I trust, and I trust nobody. I’m a coward. You were a strange woman demanding to buy my painting—I felt threatened. Exposed.’ She lit a cigarette.
‘Why?’ I asked. My turn to wait for an answer.
Mary didn’t seem bothered by the long silence. It was a while before she said, ‘Is there anything in your life that’s . . . in your past, I mean, anything that’s too painful to talk about?’
How could she know? I told myself she couldn’t.
‘I think there is.’ She pointed to my stomach. ‘The scar. The story that goes with it. It’s all right, I’m not asking you to tell me.’
The moment for denial came and went. I’d as good as admitted she was right.
‘Has it ever occurred to you to write it down? Your story, I mean. I saw a therapist for years. I stopped when I realised there was no fixing the broken bits. That’s okay—I can live with it, if you can call my half-life in this shit-hole living. Because that’s what it’s like, isn’t it? I know you
know
, Ruth. When your world falls apart and everything’s ruined, you lose part of yourself. Not all, inconveniently. One half, the best half, dies. The other half lives.’
I tried hard to hide the effect her words were having on me.
‘This therapist—she said I wouldn’t be able to move on for as long as I was determined to apportion blame. She told me to write it like a story in the third person, describe how all the characters felt, not only me. It’s a way of showing that everyone involved has a point of view, or some such crap.’ Mary stubbed her cigarette out on the wall. Immediately, she lit another. ‘I didn’t do it. Didn’t want to see anything from anyone else’s point of view. You know?’
I watched the pain rampaging across her face as she spoke, and wondered if my face sometimes looked like that.
Mary laughed quietly. ‘I digress,’ she said. ‘That’s what happens when you don’t talk to a soul from one week to the next. Can I paint you?’
‘No,’ I said, hating the idea, not sure if she was serious.
‘Why not? Your face is perfect—like a fairy’s or an angel’s. Not that I’ve seen either.’ A cunning look came into her eyes. ‘I won’t forget what you look like. You can’t stop me painting you if I want to.’
‘Please don’t.’
‘Some people get no say in the matter.’ She gestured at the pictures on the walls.
‘I don’t want to be painted,’ I told her. ‘If I did, you’d be the person I’d choose to paint me.’ I was pleased with this answer: firm but generous. She couldn’t fault me.
‘Why’s that, then?’ she asked.
‘Of all the artists whose work I’ve seen, you’re the best.’
She rattled off a list of names in a bored voice. ‘Rembrandt, Picasso, Klimt, Kandinsky, Hockney, Hirst—better than all of them?’
‘I’ve never seen their work,’ I said. ‘Only pictures of it.’
Some emotion—triumph?—flared in Mary’s eyes. When she next spoke, her voice was hoarse. ‘Ruth,’ she said. I looked up in time to see her mouthing my name several more times, soundlessly. ‘Wait.’ She stood up.
I was waiting already, to see what she would say next. She’d said my name for the sake of saying it, it seemed, not as the precursor to anything. She went upstairs again. When she came down she was holding
Abberton
. My heart started to race when I saw it. In my mind, all this time, it had represented that terrible day at Saul’s gallery; I tried not to think about it, but when I did it made me feel disorientated, out of control. Now that I had faced Mary, now that she’d apologised to me, it was different. Something had shifted.
‘If you still want it, it’s yours,’ said Mary. ‘Gratis.’
‘What? But . . .’
‘I didn’t trust you before. I do now.’ She looked embarrassed, tried to smile. ‘Anyone who knows they haven’t seen a painting unless they’ve seen the original is all right in my book. You’d be amazed how many people put a poster of Botticelli’s
The Birth of Venus
on their wall and imagine they’ve got Botticelli’s
The Birth of Venus
on their wall.’
I felt terrible, as if I was cheating her somehow. I’d come here to get
Abberton
for Aidan, not for myself. His proof: Mary’s name and the date at the bottom. She knew nothing of my ulterior motive. I tried to persuade myself I was doing nothing wrong, imagined opening my mouth and saying Aidan’s name to see how she would react.
Impossible.
I didn’t want her to know his name, or that he was my boyfriend. I wanted her to know nothing about us. I despised myself, knowing that no matter what Mary said or did, I would never trust her.
She held up her hands and made a frame shape in front of my face with her fingers and thumbs. ‘What’s your story, Ruth Bussey? Before I paint a person, I need to know their story. What happened to you? How did you get that scar?’ This time she didn’t say that I didn’t have to tell her if I didn’t want to, so I said it to myself. ‘You think it makes you strong, suffering in silence, bearing the burden alone? So what if it does? What’s the advantage of being strong? Do you know what happens to strong people? I do. Weak people attack them. Why do you think I went for you in the gallery that day?’
I stiffened. How long before I could escape?
‘You seemed so strong, and I felt so weak. Weak people always attack strong people—it’s safer. It’s weak people who are dangerous, who lash out uncontrollably and hurt you back. Strong people can walk away—no repercussions, you see, if you attack a strong person. Want to know how I ended up so weak?’
‘No, I . . . no.’ I picked up
Abberton
, afraid she’d change her mind and take it back. ‘I’ve got to go.’
Mary grabbed my hand. ‘Tell me your story and I’ll tell you mine.’
I tried not to panic, said again that I needed to leave. I’d opened the front door and was almost out, with
Abberton
under my arm. ‘You’ll tell me one day,’ she said as she released her grip.
I ran to my car, gulping in fresh air as if I’d been trapped underwater. I didn’t look back at the house. I knew I would see Mary in the doorway, watching, waiting. As I drove away, uncertain as I was about everything else, I became convinced of one thing: Aidan’s insane belief centred around a woman who was every bit as insane as the things he’d said about her.
I didn’t know what that meant, but it had to mean something.
10
4/3/08
‘It isn’t a
relationship
,’ Olivia said indignantly. ‘I’m not sure you’ve noticed, but I don’t have those. That suits you fine, doesn’t it? Me having no one, being on tap whenever you want me.’
‘Don’t twist this! I don’t want you to be lonely, or . . .’
‘Terrified of telling any man I fall for that I lost my womb and ovaries to cancer and can’t have children?’
‘You always fucking do this! You throw the c-word at me for the sympathy vote and expect me to back down!’ Charlie wished her sister would stand up to argue. Olivia sat curled on the sofa in her tiny, designer-fabric-swathed Fulham flat, still in her cream satin pyjamas and dressing-gown though it was getting on for early evening. She wasn’t fond of physical exertion. Apart from sex with Dominic Lund, as it turned out.
Charlie felt like a bully shouting down at her. She also knew she had no plans to stop shouting any time soon. ‘How do you think I felt? After I’ve poured my heart out to him, begged him for help, and had to sit there like an idiot with him telling me what a loser I am.
Enjoying
trashing my confidence, revelling in his wisdom and my helplessness. Do you know what he called me? A psychopath’s ex-girlfriend. Quite a gentleman you’ve got there. When I told him to fuck off, he dropped his bombshell: “By the way, not only am I not going to lift a finger for you, but I’m fucking your sister and we’re both laughing at you behind your back.” It didn’t occur to you that I might have appreciated having that information in advance?’
‘Your self-absorption knows no bounds,’ said Olivia, her face pink with outrage. ‘I’ll throw another c-word at you in a minute. Will you listen to yourself?’
Charlie was in no state to listen. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
‘I don’t see what the problem is. You needed legal advice, I recommended Dommie. It wasn’t as if—’
‘
Dommie?
This is a bad dream,’ Charlie muttered. ‘I’ll wake up in a minute.’
‘I didn’t tell you because you’ve got a long history of thinking every decision I make is—’
‘Is he the best you can do? A semi-autistic cheapskate who can’t even look at people when he speaks to them and forgets his wallet on purpose when he goes out to lunch, who plays with his BlackBerry compulsively the way teenage boys play with their dicks, who looks like a buzzard . . .’
‘A
buzzard
?’
‘He looks like a big bird of prey—don’t tell me you hadn’t noticed! Acts like one too.’
‘All right!’ Olivia held up her hands. ‘Yes, he’s the best I can do. Is that what you want me to say? Somehow he’s managed to upset you, so you decided to come here and upset me, and you’ve succeeded. Job done. Happy now?’
‘Go on,’ Charlie taunted her. ‘Use that word you threatened me with.’
‘It’s only a casual thing, Char. It hasn’t been going on for very long. I wanted to—’
‘How long’s not very long?’
‘I don’t know, about six months.’
‘Six
months
! I told you Simon and I were engaged three fucking seconds after I knew myself! Since when you’ve been prancing around sanctimoniously, exuding disapproval, loudly dooming us to failure at every opportunity . . .’
‘Prance? I don’t prance.’
‘All I’m doing’s trying to be happy for a change. You keep saying you’ve said your piece and from now on you’ll keep your mouth shut, but it never works, does it? You can’t restrain yourself from pointing out that Simon’s weird and frigid and socially inept, and he’s never said he loves me . . .’ Charlie had to pause as a tide of rage swept through her, pushing all coherent thought aside.
In its wake, she found her voice again. ‘Socially inept,’ she repeated quietly. ‘And all the time, you’re bedding
Dominic Lund
? Coward—that’s another word that begins with “c”. Fucking hypocrite—that begins with “f”. You sneak around in secret to protect yourself, at the same time as showering me with condemnation. All those times you’ve laid into Simon . . .’
‘I’ve got nothing against Simon! I like him. All right, I think you’re mad to—’
‘And I think you’re mad.
Insane
. Off your trolley!’
‘Dominic’s got a brilliant mind. He’s a brilliant—’
‘Please, call him Dommie if that’s your special name for him. Don’t let me stop you.’ Charlie was starting to enjoy herself. Sometimes the only way to get rid of your own pain was to cause someone else’s. ‘Now you know how it feels when someone rips the man you love to shreds,’ she said.
‘I’m not sure if I love him. It’s a complicated . . .’
‘You know what else he said to me? That I never listen to anyone. This is a man who’s met me all of once.’
‘Perceptive of him,’ said Olivia.
‘He was quoting you!’
‘He’s got an amazing memory. He’s cleverer than Simon.’
‘Oh, grow up!’
‘I didn’t mean it like that. I only meant . . . you of all people should understand the appeal of a clever man.’
The part of Charlie that was capable of feeling normal human emotions had shut down. At moments like this, she usually tried to make things worse because that was something she knew she could do and do well. ‘Let’s make a pact, okay? You don’t come to my wedding and I won’t come to yours. As for Mum and Dad, they can choose. One or the other, whichever of us they think has made the least shit choice of partner. They’ll pick you, of course, because you put in the hours pandering to them and I don’t. Come to think of it, I can’t see Dad missing a day’s golf to come to either of our weddings.’
‘Say it to his face if you’ve got a problem! You’d never dare, would you? You try to turn me against them hoping I’ll start trouble with them so that, if and when I do, you can stand back and look all innocent—
you’re
the coward, not me! And I don’t pander to them, I consider their feelings—it’s not the same thing.’ Olivia wiped her eyes with one hand and sighed. With the flat of her other hand, she slammed shut the lid of the laptop that was sitting beside her on the sofa. ‘I guess that’s my working day over,’ she said, each syllable dripping with sacrifice.