My Husband's Wife (27 page)

Carla woke, as she had done now every morning for the last month, in her pretty, cosy bedroom overlooking the back garden. It was so much nicer here than in the hostel! Despite what Lily had said about being overdrawn, she must be earning a lot of money for them to afford a place like this. And it wasn't even rented. They actually owned it – although Ed was always referring to the ‘outrageous mortgage payments'.

That was one of the main topics of the arguments she would hear between Ed and Lily through the wall that divided her bedroom from theirs. ‘You're just pissed off because I don't earn as much as you' was one of his favourite phrases.

‘When are you going to get rid of that chip on your shoulder, Ed?' That was Lily's.

When she'd simply been a dinner guest, Carla had noticed the odd tense remark and jibe. But now she was living here, it was like picking her way across enemy lines. The smallest thing would make either of them tetchy – especially Lily at the moment. ‘Please put the milk back in the fridge,' she had snapped at Carla the
other evening. ‘Otherwise it will go off like it did last week.'

Ed had rolled his eyes to make her feel better. ‘Don't worry – she's working on a big case,' he'd explained after Lily had stomped back to her study. He took off his glasses as if they were suddenly annoying him. ‘She lost the last one, so it's
essential
for her to win this one.'

He had said the word ‘essential' in a slightly mocking tone. Then he put his glasses back on and picked up his brush again. ‘Can you put your hands round that cup of coffee and stare into the distance? As though you're thinking hard about something. Perfect!'

That wasn't difficult. The inquiry into the hostel fire was about to take place. Everyone who had been staying there had been sent an official form asking if they had been smoking in their bedrooms on that night.

Of course, she'd ticked the box that said ‘No'.

‘Would you like a coffee after lectures?'

It was the boy with the floppy hair who kept asking her out to dinner. His auburn eyelashes were unnaturally long for a boy, and his manner of holding himself was uncertain for one so tall and good-looking. It was as though he didn't realize how attractive he was; not just in terms of looks, but in his exquisite manners and the way he listened. Really listened.

Most boys here were loud and arrogant, fond of the sound of their own voice. Rupert was different.

Perhaps it was time to make an exception.

‘I'd love one,' she replied, looking up from her book. ‘Thanks.'

‘Shh,' hissed someone from the other side of the library, and they smiled at each other in complicity.

‘What did you get for your last essay?' he asked over a skinny latte in the students' union cafe.

‘Seventy-five per cent,' she answered proudly.

His eyes widened. ‘Fantastic.'

‘What about you?'

He groaned. ‘Don't ask. Actually, maybe you could help me with this awful essay on contracts! We could talk it through over dinner.'

‘What dinner?'

‘Come on, Carla. I've asked you enough times. I won't bite. Promise!'

He took her to a small Italian restaurant off Soho Square. She'd expected him to falter over the order in the way that the English did when speaking her language. But instead, his accent was flawless.

‘You are familiar with my country?' she asked as the waiter walked away.

He shrugged, pleased. ‘My parents believed it was essential that we spoke both French and Italian fluently. We were always being packed off abroad during the holidays to improve ourselves. Frankly, I think it was to give them some peace, even though we were away at school during term time.'

Just like poor Tom. Somehow, Carla found herself telling this good-looking, intelligent boy about Tom and Lily and Ed.

‘You live with Ed Macdonald? The painter?'

‘Yes. Do you know him?'

‘Isn't he the artist who did
The Italian Girl
? The one which sold for all that money to some anonymous buyer?'

She flushed. ‘You know of that too?'

‘I love art. So does my mother. All my life, she's been dragging me off to some exhibition …' His eyes widened. ‘Don't tell me that the model was … it
was
you, wasn't it?'

She nodded, embarrassed and yet flattered too.

‘I'd love to meet him one day.' Her companion was getting quite flustered. ‘But only if it's not too much trouble.'

‘I'll do what I can,' she promised.

Carla let a few weeks go by, not wanting to bother her hosts. Ed was too busy with her portrait – it seemed to take up all his time, even when she wasn't there to sit for him. And Lily was working so late that sometimes Carla heard her come in long after she had gone to bed. (There was usually a murmur of voices along with the sound of Ed's disapproval.)

But eventually she summoned up courage to talk to her hostess, who was surprisingly enthusiastic.

‘Lily wondered if you'd like to come to dinner one night next week,' said Carla as they sat over their lattes in what had become their favourite coffee shop.

Rupert's face shone. ‘I'd love that. Thanks.'

No. The pleasure was all hers. Rupert could be just what she needed.

When Carla got back that day, there was a letter waiting for her on the hall table. It was a copy of the report on the formal fire investigation. The hostel had sent it to all former inhabitants. The cause of the fire, it informed her,
was probably a cigarette. However, it had been impossible to pinpoint the culprit due to the extent of the damage and the fact that so many inhabitants had admitted to smoking in their rooms.

That was lucky.

Even better, her travel insurance would now pay out for her clothes and books. (She'd exaggerated the value slightly – the company could afford it.)

The letter also informed her that the hostel would remain closed until further notice.

Things were definitely looking up.

‘He's just a friend,' Carla had told Lily, shyly. ‘Someone who's been kind to me at law school.' But from the minute that Carla walked through the door with Rupert at her side, she sensed Ed's hostility.

‘So
you're
the Rupert that our Carla has been talking about?'

Carla flushed at the way Ed had accentuated the ‘you're'. And the ‘talking about' suggested
she
was keen rather than the other way round. What would Rupert think? Suddenly, Carla began to have reservations about the evening.

‘That's good to hear, sir,' said Rupert, shaking Ed's hand with a sideways glance at Lily.

Thankfully, Lily (who'd been quite distant recently) seemed to pick up on Carla's distress. Smoothly, she changed the subject, but all through dinner Ed was difficult. It wasn't just that he was particularly tetchy when it came to his wife. (‘We're lucky to have the pleasure of Lily's company, you know. She's usually working at this
time.') But he also made snide comments about Rupert and his old school. ‘One of my cousins went there when he flunked Eton.'

Ed didn't like their guest, she was beginning to realize. Poor Rupert. He could see that too.

Afterwards, they went downstairs to the basement to see Ed's paintings. ‘Carla tells me that you appreciate paintings.' Ed crossed his arms.

‘I do, sir. These are wonderful.'

‘They're crap.' Ed glanced dismissively at the pictures of old women, young women, the florist, the tobacconist, a mother in the park. ‘None have done anything. The only thing that worked was my painting of our lovely Carla here.'

Ouch! Ed was squeezing her shoulder so hard that it hurt. He stank of wine: at dinner, he'd got through an entire bottle on his own. She knew Lily had noticed too.

‘But now I am painting her again. Has she told you that?'

Ed's face was close to Rupert's. Part of her felt triumphant. Yet she was also crawling with embarrassment.

‘No, sir. She hasn't told me.'

‘So you aren't privy to everything that goes on in our Carla's pretty head then.'

‘That's enough, Ed.' Lily was next to him now, taking his arm. ‘Time to call it a day, don't you think?'

‘Nonsense. I expect you'd like to see the painting, wouldn't you, young man?'

Rupert was as red as she was now. ‘Only if it's not too much trouble, sir.'

‘Well, it is. And you know why? Because I never show my paintings to anyone until they're ready. Never.'

And with that, Ed stomped up the stairs and left them alone in the basement.

‘I am so sorry.' Lily shook her head. ‘He's tired and this is a big time in his career at the moment. He's hoping for a break with his new portrait of Carla. It's in pastels this time. Quite a new departure for him.'

‘I understand.' Rupert appeared to compose himself, showing those beautiful manners. ‘Artistic temperament and all that. Thank you so much for a lovely evening.'

But it hadn't been lovely and they all knew that. That night, Carla listened as Ed and Lily had one of their biggest rows yet.

‘Why were you so rude? Almost as if you were jealous of him for being head-over-heels with Carla.'

‘Rubbish. I just didn't like some pup looking at my paintings and making patronizing comments.'

‘He wasn't. He was being entirely polite.'

‘I know what he was being. Anyway, what would you care? You're never here.'

‘Maybe it's time for Carla to leave. There are other hostels she could stay at. I don't know why you asked her to stay on. It was meant to be temporary.'

‘So now you want to throw out my model just when I've got my inspiration back? It's like you
want
me to fail.'

It's happening, Carla told herself, hugging her knees in bed.

Yet in the morning, it was as though the argument had never taken place. ‘Would you like to come down to Devon this weekend with us?' asked Lily.

Carla shook her head. ‘I'll stay here if you don't mind.'

Ed looked disappointed. ‘Really? Tom will be sad not to see you. He might not say so. But I just know it.'

So will I
, said his eyes.

Good.

‘I'm afraid I need to work on my next assignment.'

‘Sure.' Ed sounded put out. ‘When I'm back, Carla, I'd appreciate some more of your sitting time for the portrait.'

She flushed. ‘Of course.'

Weeks and then months are growing along with the portrait. Easter shoots past with its nodding yellow daffodils. Early summer roses have already, in our little patch of ground at the back, come into bloom. And so too has Carla.

I watch our ‘lodger' take form on Ed's canvas with increasing amazement and respect. My husband's hand, which had been so unsteady over the last few years, partly due to lack of confidence – and sometimes, let's be honest, due to drink – has taken on a sureness of its own.

Carla's beautiful almond-shaped eyes within that elfin face follow me whenever I glance at the easel. She is there now all the time. A living fixture in the studio that faces the garden at the back of the house, where there is more light. A living fixture too in our house, where she takes my coat when I come in from work and announces that dinner is almost ready.

And she's exciting a great deal of interest.

‘You are painting the same Italian girl again?' asked a journalist who came round to interview us for an ‘at home', a gig that Ed's agent had somehow arranged.

I'd been standing by the canvas which Ed had, quite purposefully, left out rather than putting it away as he
usually did with a work in progress. ‘Yes,' my husband said in a casual way, which of course I could see right through. ‘Carla – the little girl whom my wife and I used to look after when we were first married – has come back into our lives. She's in her early twenties now – training to be a lawyer, actually – and has been kind enough to allow me to paint her again.'

Word spread like wildfire when the article came out. The phone began to ring. Of course, it isn't just that the art world (and the media) see this as a good story – a subject who has grown up. It's that my husband's painting is amazing. Carla looks as though she could step out of the canvas any minute. Her sleek haircut – so different from those childhood curls – declares that this is a woman of style. Her lips look like they are about to speak.

Here I am. Back again
.

And sometimes worse.
Why are you such a bad wife? Stop being horrible to Tom.

Yes. That's right. For the last few weeks, I've had a growing feeling that she doesn't like me, despite the careful way she takes my coat and cooks dinner every evening (at her own suggestion). I can tell she disapproves that Tom doesn't live with us full time. ‘Don't you miss him when you leave him on Sunday nights?' she has remarked on more than one occasion.

‘Very much. But he has special needs which his school is better at providing for than we are.' She wasn't the only person who asked that question. Only a parent of a child like ours can understand the excruciating agony of not being able to cope and wanting to do the right thing.

Ed never says anything to back me up, as though he
agrees with Carla. Which, of course, he does. Even though Tom is flourishing at his weekly boarding school, and even though there have been no more incidents of assaulting teachers, my husband doesn't like the idea of his son being in what he calls ‘a military dorm' during the week.

Yet it's not like that. I've seen the cosy room with its comfy beds and teddy bears proudly displayed. (One of his room-mates won't go anywhere without his, even though he's nearly thirteen. He's obsessed with them and has them lined up along the wall. If anyone touches them, he has a full-blown melt-down.) My husband's reaction, I know, is because of his own time at school, when all he wanted was to be at home.

Carla's disapproval is ironic, given how much I am doing for her. ‘Carla needs a training contract now her course is almost over,' Ed announces one night at dinner. ‘I said you'd be able to help.'

We're eating an Italian dish, a delicious mixture of white beans and salad which, if I threw it together, would taste like mush. Carla's hand has transformed it into something different entirely.
You'd be able to help?
I might be one of the partners, but it is still presumptuous of my husband to assume that I can pull strings like that when I have a stack of emails from other hopeful students. ‘We've had lots of applications,' I begin. ‘But I'll see what I can do.'

It won't be easy, because my own record at work has not been so good recently. So far this year, I've lost over a third of my cases. These include the ones I argued myself and also those where I used a barrister. It's tempting to blame the latter but it wouldn't be true. If I don't give
counsel the right information or enough details about the case, he or she can't strut their stuff in court.

I tell myself that my poor performance has nothing to do with the anonymous tips I've received in the post and ignored. I try not to even look at them, but I can't help checking to see if they're from him. How would I know? Because they're always accompanied by a final line:
How is Tom?

Useful as these tips might be, I force myself to put them into the shredder, telling myself that I can do without Joe Thomas's help. I don't even want to think about how hard he must be working to get these pieces of ‘evidence'. But I do wonder how he has got them. Which secretary is he dating? Or maybe he was lying. Perhaps he's getting his information somewhere else. Either way, the idea that Joe is watching me from somewhere makes my skin crawl.

So when Ed invites Carla to Devon for the weekend, and she turns him down, I can't help but feel a wave of relief. A chance to be on our own. For me to get Ed onside again.