Page 82 of Pictures of Him

‘Oh God,’ she says when she sees the portrait.

I shrug. What is there to say? Yes, I still love her. No, I’m not over her. I don’t see that I ever will be.

I watch Liv putting her hand up to her temple.

‘She feels exactly the same about you.’

‘Why are you here, Liv? To tell me that?’

‘No, no. Something else.’

She begins pacing around my studio in tight little circles.

‘Catherine must never know that I’m here,’ she says.

‘Fine. It’s not like we’re talking anyway.’

‘Lucian?’

She stops pacing. She stands a few feet in front of me.

‘I’m going to tell you the truth about Catherine and Jack.’

Liv cries throughout her replay of that night, though the tears don’t interrupt the telling, they just run down her cheeks and occasionally she brushes them away with her hands. She tells me that Jack got into bed with Catherine when she was asleep and started having sex with her. She says that at first Catherine thought it was me; only when she was fully awake did she realise it was him. She didn’t push him off, she didn’t stop him, she didn’t say no. She just wanted it to be over.

There is in me an anger that burns and consumes and suffocates. I’m grateful to Liv for telling me the truth, but I also want her gone. The magnitude of my former friend’s treachery has fallen upon me, a heavy, dark blanket of hate. There is nothing else.

‘Why didn’t she tell me? I would have understood.’

‘She thought …’ and here Liv hesitates and seems to change her mind about whatever she was about to say.

‘Go on.’

‘She thought if you found out you might do something stupid. You know, like your father.’

Oh Catherine, how well you know me.

‘What will you do?’ Liv asks before she leaves.

I shake my head, barely able to communicate. ‘I’ll talk to him. We’ll have a little chat.’

There are hours of planning before I’m ready to confront Jack. I send a text inviting him over for cakes and fine wine, our standardWithnailjoke, and I ask Mary to make something for supper even though I’m one hundred per cent sure neither of us will be eating. I walk around the ground floor of the house, thinking, obsessing, trying to stay calm. I go down to the cellar, scanning the shelves until I find the wine I know he loves so much – it can only have been a few weeks ago that Jack, Rachel and I sat here drinking my uncle’s Château Lafite. All this preparation, all this care, it feels a little like putting together a last meal: Mary’s famous chicken pie, the Baccarat glasses that Jack always envied, his favourite wine. I want him to feel comfortable and relaxed before I go in for the kill, hitting him with my sickening new knowledge. I want to see the whites of his eyes as he begins to comprehend how much I know, which is everything. I’m not sure yet what I want from him – an apology isn’t going to cover it. What, sorry for all the years of heartache, for the premeditated obstruction to my happiness, for the way he destroyed Catherine, with her tragic, shameful eyes. Hate isn’t strong enough, loathe, despise, none of them quite fit. A new word is needed for the way I feel about Jack.

A fire is laid in the library, the wine is uncorked, decanter and glasses ready, and still there are several hours before he is due to arrive. I’ll spend them on Google Earth, a new habit of mine; late to the party, I know. Thing is, I remember every detail Catherine told me about where shelived: the exact location, last house on the very outskirts of the village, a little thatched cottage with blue-painted windows. ‘A gingerbread house,’ she said, ‘so pretty it’s almost an embarrassment.’ I like to zoom right in on this house, on its roof made of straw, now faded to grey, and its yellowy walls and the bright blue front door, exactly as she described. I like to look at the thin, straggly garden with the band of bright water at its bottom and wonder, was she out there today, was she wading through the stream with her kids, was she sitting at the table drinking tea, was she stooped over the vegetable patch pulling up a lettuce for their supper?

And suddenly looking is no longer enough; now I need to see this little house in the flesh.

My heart is beating faster as I drive to the village and see the cottage for the first time. I park up and sit behind the wheel, watching. Catherine is probably in there. The temptation to knock on the door – a good strong blue; Manganese would be the closest – is intense, but I tell myself no, not yet, not until I’ve seen Jack. When I’ve dealt with him then I’ll come back and I’ll tell her, sorry, sorry for not understanding, not guessing the truth, not forgiving you anyway, you the girl I have always loved.

It’s an addictive thing looking at the embarrassingly pretty house – she’s right, it’s Hansel and Gretel on steroids – and soon enough I find that I want to draw it. I pick up my sketchpad – there’s always at least one in the glove compartment or the back seat of the car – and begin to draw. I hold up my pencil to measure the diameter of the diamond-paned windows and the exact spacing between them, three up, two down just like she said. The roof takeslongest, the detailed shading of straw, the faint hint of its net covering, the pronounced jut above the cottage walls, as thick and prominent as a wodge of icing.

When I’ve finished the drawing, I title itYour Gingerbread Houseand I rip it out of my sketchpad and decide that I will drop it through her letter box and to hell with the consequences. I want her to know that I’ve been here, I hope that she’ll see the drawing and understand what it means: I know what happened to you and I’m dealing with it. It may have taken fifteen years to get here, but we’ll have our vengeance, we’ll free ourselves from the monstrous legacy of our past.

Four months before: Catherine

It is your drawing of the house that snips the final thread. I find it face-up on the doormat, instantly recognisable, as is the title, in your beautiful artist’s script:Your Gingerbread House.I throw open the door like a wild woman, already crying, and search the streets, head swivelling left and right, but you have gone. Now I can look at the drawing more carefully, the tight pencil strokes of our thatch, the diamonds of the windows so exact, as if you’ve counted every one. It is fairy-tale perfection, a house to disappear into, and it reminds me instantly of one of the ink drawings in my favourite book. And of course, you made me one of these drawings before, the seaside restaurant where we had our first lunch, and I still have it, stashed along with the photos and clippings and letters, my hidden keepsakes of you.

There’s no thought as I pull down the staircase to the attic and climb up to retrieve the shoebox. There’s crying and looking and touching and holding as I sit downstairs on the sitting room floor surrounded by you: magazine articles, bits of lined A4, photographs, like an exploding time bomb from our past. Paris. Bristol. The beach. Welook so young and so happy; this time my heart cannot be mended.

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