Page 47 of The Blue Hour

Becker laughs and she turns sharply. She’s wearing flats, that’s what it is! That’s why she’s so small and silent – she’s dispensed with her usual heels. Still feeling that fall, perhaps? He’s on the point of feeling sorry for her when she fixes him with a look of such intense loathing that he can almost feel himself wither.

‘Is that really what you believe?’ he manages to stammer. ‘That when Vanessa was dying, she was thinking ofyou?’

He follows her pastMonotone, a moonlit view of the sands, pastWreckandArrivalandTo Me She is a Wolf, all the way around the gallery until finally she comes to a halt in front ofHope is Violent.

‘Thisone I like,’ Emmeline says. ‘The brushwork, it’s different, stilted somehow. You can almost feel her pain. And the sky, that dark line on the horizon, the colour of blood. You can tell she was looking at the end.’ She smiles coldly at him. ‘That nonsense Douglas talked when he was asked about her legacy, do you remember? All that tripe about intimacy, about theirconnection…’ She laughs bitterly. ‘He could be such a fool.’

Emmeline walks on. A cheer goes up outside; they’re burningthe guy. The light from the flames dances on the windowpanes, making their shadows – his and Emmeline’s – leap disturbingly across the walls.

They have almost finished their tour of the gallery when Emmeline pauses again, in front ofBlack V–The Wood for the Trees. She sucks her teeth, tutting disapprovingly.

‘Sometimes you have to take a step back,’ Becker says, ‘to tell what you’re really looking at. If you stand right here, you see, you can tell that—’

‘Do you honestly think I need lessons in art appreciation, Mr Becker?’ Emmeline cuts in. ‘Fromyou?’ Her lip curls. ‘I doubt you have much to teach me about anything, most of all about recognizing what’s going on right in front of me.’

This time, when she walks on, Becker does not follow but lets her go on ahead. He stands there in the middle of the hall, allowing himself a moment to imagine that the little stooped figure in front of him is just some benign old lady taking a stroll around an art gallery, that she’s taken a wrong turn in search of the still lifes.

It takes an age for Emmeline to reach the end of the hall. When she does, she turns around. ‘I need you to do something for me,’ she calls out.

Now lit from one side, her face is a death mask. Suffused with dread, but determined not to show weakness, Becker walks briskly to join her and asks as politely as he can, ‘What’s that, Lady Emmeline?’

‘I need you to settle this thing with that caretaker person on Eris Island and, that done, I want you to hand in your resignation, take your wife and leave.’

Becker shakes his head. ‘I’m not going to do that, you know I’m not going to do that.’

She sighs wearily, raising her eyes to the ceiling while rubbinga gnarled forefinger across her bloodless lips. ‘Mr Becker, this is in your interest as well as mine. Without you, the Chapman expert, Sebastian will lose interest in allthis,’ she waves her hand vaguely in the air, ‘and move on to something else. He just needs a push. He has such trouble moving on, don’t you agree?’

‘No, I don’t actually,’ Becker replies stiffly.

‘Well.’ Emmeline’s smile fails to reach her eyes. ‘We were just talking about how sometimes you need to take a step back to realize what it is you’re looking at, were we not? I’m sure that ifyoudid that, if you took a step back, you would see—’

‘Look.’ Becker cuts her off and her mouth drops open – she’s so astonished at his effrontery he almost wants to laugh. ‘I understand,’ he says instead, ‘why Vanessa Chapman is not your favourite artist, but I’m not about to resign just because you ask me to—’

‘Thendon’t,’ she says sharply. ‘Resign because it’s inyourbest interest. Resign because every time you leave this estate, my son goes running over to see your wife. Doesn’t it bother you? Your car is barely out of the gates and he’s over there, checking on her. Tending to her every need.’ Emmeline’s laugh is low and rasping. ‘Does that not give you pause, Mr Becker? After all, you know what kind of woman she is. You know just how easily she can be—’

‘Idoknow what kind of woman Helena is,’ Becker interrupts again, ‘and the thing I think you fail to understand is thatso does Sebastian. Your son might still love her, but he also accepts her choice, because he respects her. And he respects me, too, so while he might enjoy spending time with Hels – someone he’s known since he was a teenager, someone he was friends with long before they went out – I don’t think that’s something I need to worry about. Because, as you said, I know her.’

Emmeline laughs again, an unforgiving sound. ‘You’re a fool,’ she says. ‘You’re just like Douglas was, you’re blind.’

Becker’s had enough. He starts walking towards the door,glancing up atBlackIIas he goes, the light catching the smile at its centre, that flash of sharp white teeth sending a prickle all the way up his spine.

‘Eight months now, isn’t she?’ Emmeline calls after him. ‘So that would make it … what? Late February? Early March? The end of that first lockdown, around the time you went to Hamburg to look at those Hockneys. Everyone was so keyed up, weren’t they, after being cooped up for so long, everyone just looking for some sort ofrelease…’

Becker wheels around. He thinks for a moment that he will strike her, for a second he can see it in his mind’s eye, this small, frail, elderly woman cowering beneath his fist. He takes a deep breath. ‘I ought to feel sorry for you,’ he says. ‘I really should. You’re old and bitter and I imagine you’re very lonely, you might even be grieving. I ought to feel sorry for you, but I don’t, because I can’t help thinking that you made your bed. And you can carry on, if you like, dripping poison, casting your petty insinuations, but the fact is this: I’ll outlast you. When you’re gone, I’ll still be here, and so will Helena, and so will our child.’

As he walks away, he glances once more atHope is Violentand he thinks of his mother, so tiny in her bed at the hospice, looking at the little landscape on the wall, and he can’t help himself, he turns back to look at Emmeline. She hasn’t moved, she’s standing there, hunched and miserable, her hands at her sides, clenched tightly into fists. ‘My mother left behind a son who loved her,’ he says quietly. ‘What do you imagine your legacy will be?’ She says nothing, but as she turns away from him he thinks, or perhaps imagines, that he can see her hands start to shake.

31

Someone is choking, and she can’t save them. It’s a boy, usually, a young man or a teenager, they’re choking, and Grace is not strong enough, or quick enough, she cannot get to them in time, and when she does, her efforts fail. It’s not a dream, it’s a thought she keeps having, a scenario she imagines, despite herself.

This started a few days ago, after Becker’s visit, this thought, occurring and reoccurring. It first came when she woke: definitely not a dream, though, not so easily dismissed. It occurred on waking and now it comes to her more and more frequently: when she is walking or making coffee, reading or listening to the radio. Without wanting to, she finds herself picturing this man, his desperation.

Grace has been here before: she knows what this is. It’s an intrusive thought, no more than that. Not a memory, not a premonition, just something unpleasant her subconscious keeps offering up to her conscious mind like a cat coughing up a hairball. She needs to dismiss it, butcasually, she needs to ignore it without seeming to try. She needs to take better care of herself. Go for walks, eat well, don’t overdo the caffeine, sleep.

She needs to break out of the bad habits she’s allowed herself to slip into, her tidal-ness, her lunacy. She drives up to Carrachan to see her doctor, gets a prescription for sleeping pills, establishesa strict bedtime regimen. She sets her alarm for six, forces herself to get up and go out for a walk, she eats porridge for breakfast, she drinks her one and only coffee of the day. She starts to feel a little better.

But the doctor would only give her enough pills for ten days. Now they have run out, and she finds herself lying awake for hours. Last night, she was awake until three and so when her alarm goes off at six she reaches out and knocks it to the floor.

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