Other People's Husbands (20 page)

‘I'm out of practice at
women
.' He sighed, stopping in the middle of the path. ‘At how to be complimentary. I'm doing it wrong, aren't I? I sound like a sleazebag.'

‘You do, a bit,' she admitted. ‘Sorry, but to be honest you were getting a bit alarming there. What's going on?'

‘Well I hoped you might tell me, but I know you won't. You girls all confide and keep your secrets, and a mere mortal man doesn't get a chance. I
know
Marie's up to something. I can't compete with whatever it is she's getting somewhere else that's making her smile like a crazy woman, because we stopped all that lovey-dovey stuff years ago. You do stop, don't you? I mean you can't keep it up year after year. And you'd look silly, holding hands in the street like kids.'

Sara thought about Conrad stroking her leg under the table in restaurants, about how he never walked past her without leaving a light touch on her body somewhere. It was like a cat, leaving a gentle scent, a hint of territory-claiming. On some occasions, such as when she was in the middle of a good party conversation, it had distracted and annoyed her a little; now she just thought how lucky she was; no wonder Marie was delighted to have so much attention. It was obviously sadly lacking at home.

‘What's so silly about holding someone's hand? Most women like that sort of thing. You could just start it up again, give it a go,' Sara suggested, heading down the shaded route. Mike wasn't going to pounce on her. She wouldn't have to fight it out with him in the nettles, knee him somewhere painful and go home covered in scratches and an itchy rash. How could the thought have ever crossed her mind?

‘She'd wonder what I was up to.' Mike sounded very pessimistic. He was annoying her, anticipating defeat before the fight began.

‘Mike – if you really think there's something wrong, then just
make the effort
. There's honestly nothing I can tell you.' (This was true, because what, exactly,
could
she tell him that didn't add up to a heap of hurt? Of course she wouldn't. And one day it would be over and all would be well.) ‘But I really think that you shouldn't just
give up
. That's defeatist. The more you act like a sad doormat, the more Marie will walk all over you.'

‘Sara, you know last time in this park, you said you might come out for lunch with me?' Mike brightened up suddenly, taking hold of her wrist. The path was narrow here, and muddy. She was surefooted, used to the parts where it went slidey. She wriggled her arm out of his grip. Maybe this path hadn't been such a good idea after all.

‘Actually, I didn't say I would, Mike. I just thanked you for the thought, that's all,' she told him, trying to keep her voice soft and calm. ‘What I
did
say was why don't you take Marie out somewhere lovely?
Woo
her, for heaven's sake! Make her feel loved! Give her the benefit of your wildest fantasies!' The end of the undergrowth was in sight, where the path opened up into broad grassland again. There were plenty of people around and Sara felt slightly foolish to have even considered Mike a mauling menace. Poor guy, she thought, he just wanted to be loved. Didn't everyone?

Conrad's journalist must have been warned that he was elusive and slippery and arrived at least half an hour early. As Sara got back to the house with Floss, a pink VW Beetle pulled up outside the front door and out clambered a small, harassed-looking girl clutching a white iBook, a notebook and a handbag, all of which she dropped on the ground while she was trying to manipulate her key to operate her car lock.

‘Ohhhhh! I keep doing that!' she squealed as Sara opened the front door. ‘And it's not my computer! Oh God, if it's broken . . .' She scrabbled about on the ground, trying to pick everything up. A wallet, two Tampax and a lipstick fell out of her bag. She leaned under the car to retrieve her pen, showing far too much exposed bum at the top of her low-cut jeans.

‘Let me help you,' Sara said, pushing Floss into the house before the dog could add to the chaos by trying to eat the scattered possessions. The girl looked as if she was going to cry. Sara handed her her wallet and a couple of crumpled receipts and wondered why Conrad hadn't phoned to cancel her visit. So much for going out.

‘And I'm late!' the girl wailed. ‘I hate being late! I'm
always
late!'

‘No you're not. Actually, you're half an hour early.' Conrad would be furious, having hoped to do a runner. Possibly not phoning her was yet another aspect of him being flaky: had he simply forgotten? He had never been one of those people who could barely get out of bed without looking in his diary to see what time he was scheduled to clean his teeth. And to be fair, although her scheduled visit had been written on the kitchen blackboard, someone had half-rubbed it out and overwritten it with a shopping list that requested beer and chocolate. Who, exactly, were they asking? Three guesses, she thought. There were sounds overhead: footsteps, water running. The house was gradually coming to life. Lizzie hadn't come home the night before and Cassandra's car had gone. She must have left while Sara had been in the park and taken Charlie to college with her, so it must be Jasper upstairs. Had he moved in for good? Perhaps she could suggest he job-share the cleaning with Xavier.

The journalist, realizing she hadn't completely screwed up, immediately became so still and calm, apparently stunned by this statement, that Sara was reminded of a squawking parrot that suddenly has a cloth thrown over its cage. Then she perked up again.

‘I'm
not
late? The bastards! They did that on purpose so I'd get here on time! I'm Nicky, by the way. So Conrad's expecting me. That's good, good. I haven't got the day wrong, then!'

‘Er . . . no.' Though Sara suspected from her tone that she had got a day wrong before. ‘Tea? Coffee? Do excuse the mess in here.' Sara led her into the kitchen and cursed her idle family for leaving the entire house unfit for public view. How lucky that this wasn't also a photo shoot. She could see Conrad on the pool terrace and managed to steer the girl out through the glass door. ‘Conrad?' She called. ‘Your interviewer. Nicky.' She gave him a be-nice-to-her look.

‘Shit! I was intending to go out and avoid you!' he told her bluntly. ‘I wanted to cancel. In fact I still do. Why don't you go home and just make something up?'

‘Oh!' The girl looked stricken. ‘But . . . I . . . it wouldn't be honest!'

‘Honest?
Honest?
' Are you
sure
you're a journalist? Haven't you heard of Google?'

Sara left them to it, went back into the kitchen, quickly made coffee and took it out to them, then went upstairs to the little office room, stepping over Jasper's big wet footprints on the carpet. Music blared from his room . . . some rap thing. She switched on the computer, quickly looked through a few emails, then slotted in the CD-ROM which had photos of her paintings. She looked through them carefully, copying the ones she liked best into a new folder, all the ones she thought made up a good cross-section of colour and style. Then she burned them on to a new disk and closed down the computer. Conrad would be occupied for a while. This was as good a chance as any to drop the photos in to Ben. Stupidly, she didn't have a phone number for him, or he for her, so she'd have to take a chance, though whether the chance was on him being home or not she couldn't quite decide. In a way, it would be a good thing if he was out, then she could just slide them through the letter box and not look as if she'd been hoping to see him. Because that, she thought as she glissed on a bit of eyeliner and brushed her hair, really wasn't the plan at all.

She was perfect for the job, this journalist. Natalie? Nicola? Nicky. She knew nothing about him, was as ignorant of the art world as you could get. Conrad ran a few names past her, trying her out. Dinos and Jake Chapman, Sarah Lucas, Gilbert and George. Blank. Nothing registered but increasing panic in those big green eyes. Mention of Tracey Emin raised a tiny glint of recognition but nothing more.

He made a decision. ‘Thing is, Nicky,' he told her, ‘I'm not actually going to do the being-seventy thing.'

‘Oh.' She slumped over the table, looking defeated, and closed her notebook. ‘I've got the wrong person, haven't I? You're not the artist with the big birthday, the one who paints famous people looking all odd. You're the one who's given that big tree picture thing to the Tate, aren't you? God, I'm so
hopeless
!'

‘No, no – that's David Hockney. Big blond bloke. Glasses? Yorkshire?' Nicky's eyes flickered a bit, brain cogs were almost visibly creaking.

‘It's OK, I
am
the one with the birthday. It's just that . . .' ‘Oh! Oh God you're ill! I'm like,
so
sorry!' Her eyes filled with easy tears. Conrad felt rather touched, but then realized she'd probably be just as tear-struck if a stray cat walked through the garden clutching a slaughtered rat. She was very pretty, very sweet. In the days pre-Sara he might well have bedded this girl before the interview was half over. He considered the idea in a purely intellectual, distant way. Lovely slender legs, slightly gangly. Her feet were arranged untidily beneath the table, shoes off and her toes pointing inwards. She, of course, would be horrified that he was picturing the feel of her smooth pale skin, imagining her making a lot of ecstatic noise while wrapped round him on a bed. If she had any clue about what was in his mind, he could picture her back home later with her flatmates (there were sure to be flatmates – she was the type to share. All shoes and handbags and a jumble of make-up and diet books) telling them, ‘There this like
old
man, like
seriously
old? And he was like
coming on
to me?' He hadn't thought like this for a long, long while, and it crossed his mind that she was probably Pandora's age, if that. Wrong.

‘It's all right. I'm not ill,' he told her. ‘I just . . .' No, this was wrong, too. He absolutely couldn't say he intended to die. But something about not-painting had to be said. Unlike ninety per cent of the population, Gerry would never believe anything that
wasn't
written in the press. If she wrote this down, there'd be no going back. ‘I won't be working any more. That's all. There's no point, you see, writing your piece. There will be no more Conrad Blythe-Hamilton exhibitions, no more commissioned work, just . . . nothing for you to write about, really.' She stared at him for a long, thoughtful moment.

‘But you're really famous,' she said, accusing him of an unknown something.

‘Not that famous, obviously, or you wouldn't have confused me with Hockney!' he teased.

‘No, no I'm just no good with faces,' she laughed. ‘Or names, for that matter. I'm working on it. But . . . does anyone else know you're not working any more?'

Good, she'd swallowed it. ‘No, my dear.' Conrad tried to look confiding. ‘I'm only telling you. This is just between ourselves, all right?'

‘Oh, absolutely!' she murmured. ‘So now, tell me about your early life.'

Good, he thought, that was the no-more-work bit successfully sorted. Job done – he looked forward to a ritual burning of brushes. He would never need them again; unless you were Take That or Frank Sinatra, you really looked a twat if you then went for the big comeback option.

Ben wasn't home. Sara felt strangely sneaky, approaching the pink front door with her envelope and ringing the bell. She could already tell there was no one there – houses keep a kind of protective guard when their owners are absent. From inside the cottage she could hear the sound of a washing machine on a fast spin, so he'd been in till recently, anyway. She pushed the envelope carefully through the letter box and heard it thud softly on the doormat. Her mobile number was on an enclosed card. As if he'd already got it in his possession, she took her phone out of her pocket and made sure it was switched on. Just in case.

‘This is mad. You could have talked to Cass at the college she's there today
and
she's got Charlie with her. What do you think I can tell you that you can't find out from her?' Pandora sipped her Rioja and studied Paul across the wooden table. The bar was busy with lunchtime office workers, mostly female. They were all very tidily dressed – lots of sleek black trousers and slinky-neat wrap dresses. There were power earrings and vein-blood nail polish and big, big handbags, all the trappings of women who knew just how to play the full feminine game. She felt an out-of-place scruff in her long turquoise T-shirt, beads and silver bangles and old jeans. Her pink Converse shoes had paint splashes on them, and stains from the restaurant's eternally leaking grease. The wooden floors made the place very echoey. It reminded her of school: there were so many girls in here talking – no –
twittering
at once. She half expected her old maths teacher to come in, clap her hands and boom ‘Silence!'

To cut across the racket of chatter, she'd almost shouted to Paul, and what she'd said seemed pretty aggressive, too. She tried smiling at him but it didn't feel right – from his side of the table she probably resembled an ape baring her teeth. In fact this whole situation felt wrong, to be here sitting opposite her sister's boyfriend having a secret meet-up. The motives were good, though. That was something she must remember. She kept picturing how Cass and Paul had been, that day in the hospital with their new baby. If she could help them to hang on to that, she'd do what she could.

‘She doesn't want to have anything to do with me. That's why I can't talk to her,' Paul told her, sounding defeated. ‘She just won't. End of. I don't know why.'

Pandora was silent for a while. Did he really not know? He was an intelligent bloke, supposedly. Well, didn't you have to be to take on a maths MA? He was very good-looking, if you liked the sporty type. He played rugby, mad keenly. She didn't really go for hefty muscles but Paul was lucky – he hadn't (yet?) acquired that thick neck and meaty-shoulder look that she'd seen in occasional international matches on TV. Perhaps that came later, then when they gave up the game the next stage was their whole body mass turning to blubber. How unattractive. Pandora was conscious, suddenly, that her expression was possibly registering dislike. It was terribly inconvenient, this way she had of revealing all over her face what she was thinking. More than one person, on the receiving end, had said she'd make a good actor. She said she wouldn't, because it was always what she
really
thought that showed not what she was pretending. If she could do the pretending, she wouldn't upset people.