‘Very fine you’ll look, too,’ Vanessa said, beaming. She let go of Grace and took a step back to admire the painting from slightly further away. ‘I mean, I wouldloveto keep it, I’d love to hang it in the house. I’d love to give it to you, but I’m afraid we need the money.’ She laughed. ‘You know what? Although I can’t give you the portrait, I can give you … this.’ She reached behind her and from the trestle table seized the little wooden bird, holding it out in front of her like an offering.
‘Oh,well,’ Grace said, her smile teasing. ‘I am honoured.’ She took the bird in her hands and held it to her breast. ‘All this makes me feelveryimportant.’ Her face flushed. ‘It connects us, doesn’t it? You and I? We’re linked by it.’
‘We are,’ Vanessa said, taking Grace’s hand again. ‘No matter what happens, there will always be this, the moment I put the brush to the canvas and painted you. Always.’
The next day, Julian arrived.
The following week, after Vanessa’s argument with Julian, after she drove drunk through the village and argued with Grace, too, Vanessa left Grace’s home in the village early to get back to Eris, to pick up the smaller paintings and drive down to Glasgow on the Thursday. That same day, Grace arrived to a full waiting room at the surgery. There was a bug going around and half the kids in the village seemed to be off school with it, so it wasn’t until around 2.30 that she finally managed to take her lunch break. She escaped, as usual, to her bench overlooking the harbour and it was from there that she saw Julian Chapman’s little red sports car come haring over the causeway, throwing spray high into the air. The car came racing up the hill and accelerated through the village and Grace thought,Oh, thankGod,he’s gone.
As soon as she finished work that evening, she drove across to the island.
She took a pair of Marigolds and some cleaning products from beneath the kitchen sink and set about scouring the place, removing all traces of him. She worked methodically through the house, from the kitchen, which was in a foul state – dirty plates and glasses everywhere, ashtrays overflowing on to the counter, pans encrusted with dried-on food – to the living room and the bathroom, and finally into Vanessa’s room. She stripped the bed, shudderingwith disgust as she retrieved a used condom from between the sheets. She loaded the washing machine and was remaking the bed with fresh linens when she spotted Vanessa’s note, which had fallen down between the bed and the nightstand.
J, we can’t keep going round and round and round!
I’m going to be back on the weekend and youmustbe gone.There’s no more money in the pot.
We have loved each other and we have hated each other and now we can be free of each other.
Isn’t that wonderful?
You must find your own way.
Love,
Nessa
Grace could feel herself beaming as she read it.Now we can be free of each other.Hallelujah! She wanted to punch the air. He was banished. Gone! Out of Vanessa’s life, out of her own. Out of their life together.
On the little stool in front of Vanessa’s dressing table, Grace spotted a black wallet. She picked it up and looked through it: four credit cards (no wonder the man was in debt), fifty pounds in cash and a photograph of Julian with a woman who was not Vanessa. Celia Gray, perhaps? Julian looked very happy in the picture. Grace slipped the wallet into the drawer, making a note to herself to tell Vanessa to send it back to him on her return, but then she changed her mind.Sod him, she thought. She retrieved the wallet from the drawer, pocketed the cash, walked across the room and flung the wallet clean out of the window, into the sea.
It must have been around eight o’clock when she finallyfinished cleaning the house. She took the padlock key from the hook in the kitchen and strolled up the hill to the studio. It was a glorious evening, peach clouds scudding over a pale sky, the coconutty scent of gorse in the air. When she got to the door, she saw that there was a note there, too, tucked into the arch of the padlock. She extracted it, slipping it into her pocket with the cash while she unlocked and rolled back the door to allow the soft evening light into the studio.
Everything was in order here. Against the south wall stood a number of large canvases while the ceramic pieces destined for the show were ranged on the trestle table in the centre of the room, along with a giant roll of bubble wrap and two rolls of tape, ready for packing.
Grace took the note from her pocket.
OK, Nessa, you win. I’ll leave you be.
But I worry about you, locking yourself away up here. The work you are doing is beautiful, but so areyou.
Eris is a wonderful retreat – don’t make it your whole world.Come back to the land of the living! You can’t hide away here for ever, knocking around with dreary old butterball – you’ll go mad.
I meant what I said about Morocco. Izzy is taking a riad in Marrakech in October/November – there will be loads of room and I won’t bother you (unless you ask nicely).
No one will bother you! You can work, play, go out into the desert, look at the stars.
Paint the stars.
Think about it.
See you on opening night!
All my love, always,
J
Before she even knew what she was doing, Grace’s hand had closed around the sinuous, flared-lip vase closest to her right hip, and an instant later it was flying through the air, hitting the wall with a satisfying crash. The sound of fine porcelain tinkling to the floor was like music.