Other People's Husbands (29 page)

Conrad turned for home, feeling very confused. This scuppered rather a lot of plans. He could hardly book that one-way ride to the next world leaving Sara in the hands of a loser and user. Dilemma.

Pandora climbed out of bed and looked at the clock. Ten thirty. A bit late by most people's standards, but then Most People didn't work till midnight serving drinks to mad Goths and then clearing up a grubby bar. The girls left great smears of purple and violet lipstick on the glasses that were almost impossible to shift in the usual dish-washer, so they had to be washed by hand first. Complete pain.

She went down the spiral staircase to the little kitchen under the sleeping platform and switched on the kettle.

‘Tea or coffee?' she called up the stairs to Xavier.

‘Tea please,' he yelled back. ‘One sugar, tiny bit of milk.'

It was like playing house; Pandora felt very contented as she padded around in her T-shirt and knickers, sorting a couple of mugs of tea for the two of them. There were two possibilities here that she was trying hard not to think about. The first was that this would all go terribly wrong, horribly soon, and that she and Xav would be over and finished before they got any further. She hoped very much that this wouldn't be the case. She liked him more than she felt comfortable with. In her experience, as soon as you got to the comfortable bit someone threw nails in the path of love's car and all your hopes were punctured. The second possibility was that this was going to last. That it was going to work out, be a good long-term thing. She hardly dared think about that. It was important, like with giving up drugs or drink, to take one day at a time, wasn't it?

While the kettle was boiling, she shoved a couple of slices of bread into Conrad's Dualit and switched it on. She wandered across the studio's dark wood floor, thinking about paint and how she hadn't so much as sniffed oil paint for a guilt-inducing long time.

Idly, she opened the huge cupboard and slid out the massive canvas that Conrad had abandoned. She had the beginnings of an idea for it. It would be about three times the size of anything she'd tried before, but it would be a good and necessary challenge. If her dad wasn't going to paint any more, it would be sinful to waste this wonderful space, the opportunity, the fabulous light from the huge roof windows. If she had to, she could easily share the space with her mother.

‘Toast's burning,' came Xavier's voice from the kitchen. He switched off the toaster and took a plate out of the cupboard. She smiled at him, thrilled with her new and lovely boyfriend. And such a bonus: no way would he have put that toast down on the worktop without finding a plate first. He wasn't going to scatter crumbs.

‘Over there, Will – they've put cones out so we can unload right outside.' Will steered his van through the traffic and pulled up outside the gallery. It was very early morning in Notting Hill. Shopfronts were mostly shuttered, apart from the convenience stores that were doing good trade with hordes of passing schoolchildren who ambled along the pavements with fizzy drinks and chocolate bars. The gallery was the only real sign of life among the more chic end of the businesses, and was looking good from the outside now: the windows were sparkling, the sign ‘Picture This!' was in place above a pink striped awning and inside, the walls had had their final coat of white paint.

‘Ooh good on them, they've used Trade White, not Brilliant,' Will commented as they opened the door. ‘Makes all the difference because you don't get the glare. But then it's Art with a capital A, I guess they'd know that. Not that everyone does. Brilliant White has such a nasty blue-grey glow. Very cold.'

‘Sara! Hi – how are you?' Mindy greeted them and hugged Sara. ‘Can't wait to see your pictures in real life! They're going to look wonderful in here.'

‘Hello, Mindy – and this is Will. His company has a van so he drove the paintings over here with me. There were rather a lot to cram into my Golf. Hey, the place is looking fantastic now! Oh and the tables – they're exactly right, aren't they?'

She ran her fingers along the glass on one of the four tables that she and Ben had bought from Ikea, trying not to think about lying crushed against him on that bed. And how sad was she, that she'd actually looked it up in the Ikea catalogue at home? It was the Heimdal bed, simple metal-framed. She'd found herself considering buying one to replace the old one in Cassandra's room.

Mindy was exhibiting jewellery as well. The tops of the tables were two-layered, with a useful display-space gap between the glass and the white board beneath. Inside one of these, Mindy had arranged a selection of necklaces made from tiny misshapen pebbles.

‘These are pretty,' Sara commented. ‘I might get one of them.'

‘I was just trying them out in there, seeing if they looked right. I think it works, doesn't it? You can have one at staff discount, obviously,' Mindy told her. ‘Though I promise I won't be offering your paintings around at cut price!'

‘You might be glad to give them away when they've hung around unsold for a couple of weeks!'

‘Now don't be so pessimistic!' Will told her off. ‘You always used to do OK, didn't you?'

‘These things go in and out of style. We'll see,' Sara told him.

‘Anyway,' Mindy said, ‘let's start unloading, shall we? Have a look at the full-size pics? I've only seen the photos. I know it's not the most usual way to go about organizing an exhibition, but yours are rather exceptional, Sara. And they'll look fantastic with the other artists' work we've got. It's just you and two others. Did Ben tell you?'

‘Um . . . actually, he didn't say much at all about it,' Sara admitted as they went out to the van. Will unlocked the back doors. Sara looked at her rows of paintings and hoped very much that she wouldn't be loading them up again for a return journey. ‘He just said it was your new project and that he was merely helping out.'

Mindy picked up the first two pictures and carried them across the pavement. ‘Well it's not
just
my project, of course. It's Caro's as well, obviously.'

Oh yes, the ‘other investor'.

Mindy propped the first paintings up against the wall. Somewhere in the background was the sound of a power drill. ‘Still putting up shelving in the loo,' she explained. ‘I'd say it was all a bit last-minute but there's still a week to go to the opening, so really it's not that fine a line. I've had worse. I once went to a restaurant first night where the paint on the walls was still wet and they'd had to move all the tables and chairs into the centre of the room. Cosy was the word. Right, let's see . . .' She pulled the bubble wrap off the first picture and stepped back to have a good look. It was a scene of a market in Provence, naive, colourful, crowded with people.

‘Nice choice! I bet half the people round here spend weeks at a time in the area, playing at being rustic
Français
. I hope you've got Tuscany covered as well, sweetie!'

‘Oh I have!' Sara laughed.

‘It's fabulous – I love it. But . . . er . . . oh! That's a surprise!' Mindy's smile faded a little. ‘Um . . . I thought . . . the signature?' She looked at Sara, questioning.

‘My
signature
? What's wrong with it?' Sara was puzzled. Of all the aspects of her work to pick on for criticism, the way she'd signed the painting wouldn't be a top priority. It was discreet enough, surely, tucked away in the bottom right-hand corner as usual.

‘ Sara McKinley?' Mindy looked at Sara, then at the back of the painting, as if she was expecting something different there.

‘Well, that's my name,' Sara told her. ‘What's the problem? Would you rather they were only signed on the back? That's not usual.'

‘Artist's choice, surely?' Will chipped in, looking as mystified as Sara felt.

‘But . . . aren't you Sara
Blythe-Hamilton
?' Mindy eventually asked.

‘Ah,' Sara said. ‘Who told you that?'

‘Oh Lordy, so you
aren't
? Oh God! We've printed up the flyers! I'll show you!' She dashed to a cupboard at the back of the gallery and pulled out a file.

‘Look!' Sara saw her name, top of the billing, above another pair of painters, also both women. She didn't recognize one name, but the other she'd heard of . . . or rather she'd heard of her brother. He was a pretty well-known sculptor. Well, who wouldn't want to open a new gallery with someone recognizable? She tried to tell herself it was only good business sense.

‘I didn't say I wasn't.' Sara felt cold inside. Her heart started to beat too fast and she breathed deeply to calm it. ‘I asked who told you I was?' As if she couldn't guess. She tried to persuade herself this wasn't going to matter. But she could see Conrad's face and Lizzie's, both asking if Ben knew who her husband was. And what had she told them, in her stupid ignorance? A stupid, confident, no.

‘Oh phew! Well as you
are
a Blythe-Hamilton, then it's fine, isn't it? No harm done!'

‘It was Ben, wasn't it?' Sara persisted.

‘Actually it wasn't Ben.' Mindy put the wrapping back over the painting. ‘It was Caro. Shall we go and collect the rest from the van?' she said, smiling. ‘Because all's well, isn't it?'

‘Who's Caro?' Will asked.

‘I think she's Ben's ex-wife,' Sara said, trying to stop her voice from shaking. She remembered the photo on Ben's piano, the tall, slender woman with the bones and the hyper-straight teeth. The woman on the boat, managing to look sexy in a high wind. Sara needed to decide who to accuse of using her, and to be very sure of her facts when she did. Mindy seemed fairly upfront. Ben . . . well she'd like to strangle him right now. How dare he let her think he didn't know who her connections were? And that it wouldn't make any difference to the exhibition? How right Conrad could be sometimes. Or not . . . how to be sure?

Mindy, opening the gallery door, turned back looking hugely surprised. ‘
Ex
-wife? When did “ex” come into it? Caro's been spending a lot of time in their place in Brighton and everyone knows they each had a huge affair a few years ago, but that seemed to make their relationship stronger. She's even been talking about going in for a late baby! I'd love to be an auntie again!'

‘Oh God. I've been royally stuffed here,' Sara muttered to Will. ‘The lousy, lying bastard.' She picked up the pair of paintings and carried them to the door, pushing past Mindy. ‘Sorry, Mindy. I hate to let you down like this. Just tell your brother . . . all he had to do was ask. If he'd been honest with me this still might have worked out. I'm sorry it's got to be like this.'

‘Well now. Tell me to mind my own business, sweetie, but what was all
that
about?' Will asked her as he drove the van as fast down Holland Park Avenue as the traffic would allow.

‘I've been totally conned, that's what. And the worst thing is, it's all my own fault,' Sara admitted. ‘Vanity and . . . OK, just stupid, ridiculous vanity. It got in the way of common sense.'

‘Doesn't it always!' Will chuckled. ‘There's not one of us could swear that a bit of flattery doesn't make the heart beat faster. What did you do? Do you want to tell me about it? And what's all that about the name thing?'

Sara felt bad. She'd probably overreacted but she couldn't help it. Mindy was quite a fun woman – they could have been good friends if this had worked out, and now she'd let her down badly by pulling out of the exhibition in a complete strop and taking her paintings back home. A little bit of her felt she'd behaved really childishly, like a small boy who takes his football home because the other kids won't let him be in goal. If Ben had only been honest, she might well be in the gallery now, possibly even with Conrad to help her, talking about the best way to hang the exhibition. Why did all the seductive stuff have to happen? What kind of silly, girly idiot had he taken her for? She didn't quite like to dwell on that, because when push came to shove, a silly, girly idiot was exactly what she'd been.

‘I've been a total fool. An absolute mug. The simple awful truth is, I met someone. I liked him. He liked me. Correction, I
thought
he liked me. I liked it that he didn't know me as
wife of
. It made a difference, you know? I felt . . . that it was about
me
, for once. It felt good not to have him asking about what Conrad was like to live with, stuff about the celebrity portraits and so on, because people always do in the end. However much they start off as
my
friend, there's always that curiosity. It's usually fine; it settles once people work out that he's just a normal bloke who likes to drink beer and watch Manchester United, but with artists, it's a bit like rock stars but somehow more extreme. People think they're
other
, as if they know some secret meanings to life that the rest of the population don't, secrets that only come out in their work but must be lurking in their heads. It doesn't occur to them that a painter just might be a bit fond of colour and brushes and the smell of turps, and that if their stuff sells then they might know perfectly well that they've got away with finding a fun way to make a living. It isn't always about some mysterious “soul” thing.'

‘Oh darling, that was quite a rant!' Will was laughing at her. ‘You've been building up to that one for a while, haven't you? You barely drew breath!' He squeezed the van past a bus on the Chiswick roundabout and swore under his breath at a motorcyclist plaiting his way too fast through the traffic. ‘So who was he, this man who liked you for
you
? I'm intrigued. Are you telling me you've been having a
thing
?' He stopped the van at the lights and turned to her. He looked, she thought, rather as if she'd told him Santa wasn't real. Shocked, maybe (am I so goody-goody, she wondered); but also rather excited.