Page 78 of Pictures of Him

I seem to have acquired this coating, this superhuman shell, a calmness and poise that makes me capable of almost anything. I can hear this without changing my expression, I can offer a non-committal shrug, ‘So it would seem.’ But his twisted words of comfort are harder to ignore: ‘I’m sorry to hear that, but look what happened last time. Girls like her never change.’

I look at the man sitting opposite me, I take time to scrutinise his blue eyes (cornflower, the colour of insincerity?),and I find no gap, however infinitesimal, in his armour.

I take a little risk, just for fun, just to see how far this liar will go.

‘You’ve never liked Catherine much, have you?’

Earnest cornflower now.

‘Mate, I didn’t like what she did to you. Running out on you for no reason, leaving you in bits.’

What Jack does here – he’s been doing it for most of my life – is to remind me of the depth, the length of our friendship.

‘We go back a long way, you and me,’ he says, with another satisfied sip of his expensive wine. In days gone by, to me this meant a mini clip of our best bits: the reassurance to my father that he’d look after me on my first day at school, the actual looking after when the rows with my mother became too much, the replacement with his wholehearted parents. And all along, Jack’s action was the thing that effectively wrecked my life and stopped me being with the one person who made me happy. The only question I have is why, but I’m not ready to ask it. More time watching and looking and absorbing the small everyday betrayals of the man I once considered my closest friend.

Everything he says and does now fascinates. When he smiles at a pretty blonde girl walking past our table – she probably smiled first; they usually do – I think,lecherous bastard, when the old me might have been amused. And when he suggests one more glass of wine – ‘I think they have a good Gigondas by the glass’ – I think of all the wine he has drunk over the years, all the oysters he’s eaten, the champagne, our favourite chateaubriand (how many times has he pushed me into ordering that?). Whatever Ihave, he wants too, wine, food, clothes, even women.

Towards the end of lunch, we get to money, as I had known we would.

‘This is awkward,’ Jack says, ‘but Celia’s parents have frozen our bank account. There will be a settlement, apparently, but until then I’m basically brassic.’

‘How much? I’ll transfer it this afternoon.’

‘I hate asking, when you’ve always been so generous. Always helping me out.’

‘Not a problem,’ I say, signalling for the bill, impersonating, as best I can, the man I used to be.

On the way home, I stop off at Harry’s, expecting to find him wrapped up in his winter clothes in the orangery, an old man in a bath chair. Instead I’m shocked to find the house packed up, the furniture shrouded in sheets and Harry heading imminently to Thailand, this time with Nat, the Thai translator from Bristol, in tow.

‘You should have told me. I’d have come with you. I still would if you wanted me to.’

‘I know you would. But it feels like something I need to do on my own. I didn’t know Ling for very long, but there was something about her that got under my skin, instantaneously. And I’m not ready to let that go. I’m not ready to let her go.’

‘Isn’t it just going to make it worse being reminded of her all the time? Being back in her country, with her language, her food?’

‘I’ve thought about that. I’ve thought about it a lot. And what I’ve realised is that the pain isn’t going anywhere, so I might as well embrace it, indulge it even. I’ve decided I’ll go to Ling’s village, I’ll meet her family and friends andthe lady who taught her to cook, I’ll see the river where she swam as a child and I’ll understand more about who she was. That’s why I’m taking Nat with me.’

‘Ling would like that. You meeting her family.’

‘Well that’s the whole thing really. I need to tell her parents what happened. I want to make them understand how she died. And I need to say sorry to them. You can’t imagine how much I want to say that. It’s just that …’ He breaks off, and laughs, though there is no joy in it, no humour. ‘I’d like them to understand that I loved her and that it should all have been very different.’

With Harry gone, my aloneness is complete. I’ve lost Jack, I’ve lost Catherine, even the memory of her sullied and closed to examination. And both of the girls have gone to ground. Alexa’s absence is explained. When Celia left, Alexa called Jack and offered to come down and keep him company. She was genuinely sad for him, I think, and hopeful that they were free to be together at last. But Jack dismissed her like she was a tired piece of furniture, something of minimal interest anyway.

‘You and I have gone as far as we can, Alexa,’ he said. ‘Let’s call it a day.’

I hated hearing the hurt in her voice, her comprehension of the thing we have known all along: that she meant nothing to Jack, that she was and always has been the stereotypical bit on the side, that the years she spent waiting around, betraying her nature, have been no more than a waste of her time.

‘I’m moving back in with my parents for a while,’ she said, ‘to work on the book.’

A euphemism, I’d say, for mending her broken heart. Iwish I had somewhere I could go to mend mine.

Rachel, bizarrely, seems to have vanished, and no one, not even Alexa, knows where she has gone. She hasn’t returned any of our phone calls or texts. I even messaged Hugo, her ex, to see if he knew where she was, and his response was brief and unconcerned:In a ditch, maybe?

And so I am alone in this stupidly large house, which still bears traces of the girl I loved and lost, and knowing the reason why has done nothing to soothe my heartache. It takes me a while before I can go down to the studio, where my sketch of her is still pinned to the easel. I take it down and hold it between my hands, examining it for flaws (mine, not hers). I look and look at the fine nose, the dark arched brows and traffic-stopping eyes. When I’m painting, I try my hardest not to overemphasise; subtlety is the ambition, though I’m not sure I always manage it. With this sketch I realise I’ve caught Catherine’s sorrow, almost by accident. It’s plain to see in those beautiful eyes; the difference is that now I understand it.

She sent me a text the night after the party, after Ling’s death and her heart-shattering revelation. She told me how sorry she was, that she always had been and always would be; a whole life sentence of being sorry. I read the message and threw my phone across the room. You slept with my best friend. And you told me about it when I was dealing with the death of Harry’s wife. I gave her the response I thought she deserved – silence. Now I stare at my sketch of this sad and lovely girl and I tell her, I’m sorry too, for not being more understanding. For being so rigid in my hatred of infidelity. Give me time and perhaps I can learn to forgive you. But I will never forgive him.

Four months before: Catherine

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