Page 16 of The Blue Hour

She makes a start on the first box of papers: there is no order, everything is jumbled up – notebooks and photographs and sketches and letters and postcards, notes on scraps of paper, shopping lists. Grace begins by arranging everything into preliminary piles: notebooks to one side, letters to another, and so on, and with that done, she moves on to a second box, and then a third. She tries not to let her eye linger, tries not to read. If she starts reading, she will never finish: she will be derailed. But every now and again she cannot help herself, her eye slides over faded blue ink and snags on a capital G, generously looped and rich with promise.

The winds lately are soft, warm – G and I swim when the tide is in, it is heaven.

Her heart feels suddenly tender, her eyes fill with tears. She brushes them away with the back of her hand and lets her eye travel to the top of the page:

G has time off – she chooses to spend it here. I asked would she not like to go away – on holiday, to visit family? She looked at me as though I were mad. I am grateful, in any case. We drink wine in the evenings, picnic on the rock. The winds lately are soft, warm – G and I swim when the tide is in, it is heaven.

13

It has been a hellish summer, uncomfortably hot, pollen and carbon monoxide and recrimination hanging in the air. But finally,finally, J and I have struck a deal. We go our separate ways, he moves in with Celia and we sell the house. He gets three quarters of the proceeds, I get the rest, but I get my moneyup frontso that I can put in a bid for the island.

Celia has signed off on all of this – it’ll be her money, after all.

My heart breaks, but I hardly feel it, because the rest of me vibrates with joy.

I will befree.

Becker is reading when Helena walks into the study. It is early, barely light, wet flakes of snow falling but not sticking. He doesn’t turn around to look at her, but allows himself the anticipation of the feel of her hands resting soft on his shoulders and then the warmth of her lips on his neck.

‘Hello.’ Her morning breath is sugary sweet. She perches on the edge of his desk, burgundy robe loosely belted across her bump, her hands wrapped around a mug of steaming tea. ‘How is she, your Vanessa?’

He pulls a face. ‘Strange,’ he says, and he reads her the paragraph he has just finished. ‘She loves him and she longs to be free of him, shevibrates with joyat the thought of leaving him. She’s a riddle.’

Helena shrugs. ‘Not at all,’ she says. Becker raises his eyebrows at her and she laughs, lifting a foot and placing it in his lap. He obliges her by massaging her sole. ‘You can love someone with your whole heart and be desperate to be rid of them. Some people are just—’ She breaks off, exhaling softly over the surface of her tea. ‘Hard to be around, no matter how much you adore them. And Julian was awful to her, wasn’t he? Notoriously so. Selling her work to pay off his debts, sleeping around. That affair with Celia Gray was so public, so humiliating. She must have hated him for that.’

‘But that’s just it – she didn’t hate him,’ Becker replies. ‘She loved him. Her heart breaks, she says so here.’

‘But that’s just her heart, isn’t it?’ She smiles at him. ‘What about the rest of her?’ She bites her lip, sliding her foot gently up his thigh. ‘Hearts can be overridden, other parts maybe not so much.’

He laughs breathlessly as he reaches for her.

Sex between them lately is intense, verging on brutal. He means to show reverence and respect for her condition, but in the moment he always forgets, and his satisfaction gives way – almost as soon as he’s come – to guilt. This dissolving of boundaries between their bodies, between his self and hers, is a source of joy, but it’s complicated now by something else.Someoneelse.

Afterwards he struggles to look her in the eye and she shoves him so hard that he smacks his head on the foot of the desk. He gets to his knees, rubbing the back of his head. ‘What was that for?’ As if he didn’t know.

‘Don’t Madonna-whore me, James,’ she says sternly, pulling her robe back around her. She allows him to help her to her feet but the second she’s upright, she snatches her hand from his. ‘I invited Sebastian for supper,’ she says, flinging the words out casually, like someone skimming stones across a lake. ‘Can you make sure we’ve got some good wine?NotTesco Finest.’

A delivery van is parked at the back entrance of the big house, which means they’re receiving a new piece. Since no one has informed Becker about this, he imagines it’s something either very old or very new. Four men – two in the van itself and two on the ground – are offloading what appears to be an enormous carpet. Becker steps in to support the central section and they carry it in together.

Sebastian and his mother are waiting in the central hall, their faces lit with anticipation. Lady Emmeline’s mouth twists in distaste when she spies Becker. She shoots him a look to freeze the blood and then turns to her son. ‘Let me know when it’s in place,’ she says. She walks off in the direction of the drawing room, heels clicking briskly on the parquet.

‘Morning, Emmeline!’ Becker calls out loudly to her retreating back.

Sebastian shakes his head. ‘At least give her her due, for Christ’s sake.’

Becker eyeballs Sebastian. ‘It really doesn’t matter how I address her, does it? I’ll always be the filthy, working-class interloper.’

‘You’ll always be the man who broke up her son’s engagement,’ Sebastian says, not quite under his breath. He turns to the delivery men. ‘We’re putting it in the blue room,’ he says brightly, extending his right arm like a tour guide. ‘It’s this way, I’ll show you.’

In his office, Becker scrolls news sites, headlines rolling pastunread as quietly he chastises himself. Why did he say that? There was no call for him to be spiteful.

There was an argument not long after he’d first arrived at Fairburn, over the placement of a sculpture – an unforgivably ugly sculpture – that Sebastian had bought, and for some reason he can’t quite remember now, Becker allowed it to get heated: he raised his voice, used bad language. Later, when he was sitting on the steps to the east lawn, smoking a cigarette, feeling foolish, Helena came to find him. Oh, here we go, he thought, the posh girl with a trust fund and a 2.2 in art history has come to tell me off, to teach me how to behave.

But she didn’t. She asked him to roll her a cigarette and, while he did so, offered a word of advice.Don’t let them ruffle your feathers, she said. Don’t let them get under your skin.You’re too passionate.He remembers how he blushed when she said that, how he stiffened.These people have ice in their veins, she told him. Don’t show your hand. Don’t let them see so easily who you are.

He’s annoyed that he didn’t follow her advice this morning, but annoyed as he is at himself, he is angry with Sebastian, too – irrationally so. He doesn’t want to be reminded of all the wrongs he, Becker, has done to his employer.

He’s still smarting when, an hour or so later, Sebastian puts his head round the door. ‘Beck. Do you want to come and see the Aubussonin situ?’

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