He hadn’t spent much time in Dean Village since returning to Edinburgh, although he knew its picture postcard prettiness had made the area an Instagram sensation and a must-visit for tourists. Certainly, he’d seen plenty of fashionably dressed teenagers posing for pictures on the bridges that spanned the canal on his journey from the eastern side of the city.
Leith, the part of the city where he now lived, was a world away from the old-world quaintness of the village – new developments seemed to be springing up every day and the docks were surrounded by glitzy new shops that felt slightly at odds with the traditional, centuries-old tenement buildings that had been home to the dockers and their families. On one hand, Fraser could see the developers were trying to appeal to a different demographic, with fancy penthouse apartments and enviable views over the Firth of Forth, but they had also created family-friendly homes and the area was very sought-after. For the time being, he and Naomi were renting, but he could imagine himself living there full time, if they decided to make the break from London permanent. Although Naomi was going to take some persuading. Her work as a model hadn’t suffered with the move but her social life had. As she’d observed on more than one occasion, Fraser had a ready-made network of old friends to fall back on in Edinburgh whereas she was starting over. He couldn’t really argue with that but he was quietly confident she would come round, in time.
Parking on the narrow cobbled street, Fraser took a moment to study the property before him. It was one of several terraced houses, all dressed in the distinctive red sandstone that graced the nearby splendour of Well Court. Each property had a garage on the ground floor and a front door to the right, which Fraser guessed led up to an apartment. Number 6 had vibrant green double doors on the garage that matched the front door and a cluster of terracotta pots that suggested flowers in the warmer months.
Maura’s instructions told him to ring the bell beside the garage and wait for her to answer. After a few moments, a smaller door cut into the middle of the left-hand side of the garage opened and Maura’s glossy black head appeared. She had her hair tied back today, although several strands had escaped the ponytail and were coated with white. ‘Hello,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘Come on in.’
She pushed the door wide and Fraser climbed through. The studio was long and narrow, which made sense considering it was situated in a garage. The walls had been lined with board – presumably for insulation in the colder months – and a number of strip lights were attached to the ceiling. Two electric heaters stood sentry at either end of the workbench and he spotted three or four portable heat guns dotted around. But it was the shelves along the right-hand wall that caught his eye the most. The range of pots was surprising – everything from slightly misshapen mugs to jugs and vases, small pottery animals to soap dishes, and one or two items that Fraser was at a loss to describe.
One set of shelves stood out from the general mismatch and clutter of items, however, and Fraser immediately understood that this where Maura stored her own pieces. It wasn’t that the work on the other shelves was bad; on the contrary, much of it looked very accomplished and it was certainly better than anything Fraser could have produced. He’d seen some of Maura’s creations on Artsy, had found more when he’d searched further online, but he felt he would have recognized the supreme technical and artistic skill involved in producing these elegant pieces as belonging to a master potter even if he hadn’t known who made them.
‘I must say, your order came as a huge surprise,’ Maura said, heading to the sink to wash her hands. ‘To be perfectly honest, I didn’t realize I’d made quite such an impression. Or did you just feel sorry for me after Archie kindly redecorated my shoes?’
Fraser grinned. ‘I thought you could do with the cash to replace them,’ he said. ‘But seriously, I was intrigued. Who wouldn’t be, upon discovering they went to school with someone so talented?’
She turned round, rubbing her hands on a faded scrap of towel, and he saw she was blushing. ‘You’re very kind,’ she replied. ‘I haven’t wrapped the bowl yet – thought I’d let you see it up close and give you the opportunity to change your mind.’
He raised both eyebrows. ‘I’m not going to change my mind. If anything, I’ll be lucky to get out of here without buying more.’ His eyes flickered back to the shelves and came to rest on an oversized pale green platter carved with swirling fronds of seaweed. ‘How much is that?’
She threw him an apologetic look. ‘That one’s not for sale, I’m afraid. At least, not at the moment – it’s for a gallery show I’m doing next month.’
Fraser’s gaze lingered on the dish. ‘It’s a real beauty,’ he said. ‘But perhaps no bad thing that it’s not available. Naomi would kill me if I came home laden with pottery, no matter how amazing it was.’
Maura watched him curiously. ‘She doesn’t like pots?’
‘She doesn’t likestuff,’ he explained, looking rueful. ‘Which makes life a bit tricky sometimes because I do like stuff. Especially beautiful stuff.’
‘Ah,’ Maura said with understanding. ‘I can see how that might be a problem. Have you been together a long time?’
Fraser considered. How long had it been since he’d been at the TV Soapstars awards and met Naomi at the crowded afterparty? Two years? Three? ‘A while,’ he said. ‘Long enough to appreciate we’re fundamentally unsuited to each other.’
Maura laughed, as he’d meant her to. It wasn’t until he’d said the words that he realized how they might sound to someone who didn’t know him very well. He and Naomi had got along fine back in London, spending time at each other’s flats without actually living together. It was only now that they were occupying the same space twenty-four seven that their differences were coming to the fore. But that was relationships for you, he thought. Differences in taste and opinions were to be expected. No one wanted to date themselves, did they? ‘Does she know you’ve bought this piece?’ Maura asked. ‘It’s not small.’
‘I showed her the pictures on Artsy,’ he said, and decided not to mention Naomi’s arched eyebrows when he’d told her who had made the bowl. ‘She loves it.’
‘That’s good,’ Maura said, moving towards a large box stashed beneath the workbench. ‘I’d hate to think of you buying it only to keep it in a cupboard or under the bed.’ She paused to throw him a mischievous look. ‘Or worse still, the loft. I think there’s probably a mountain of my efforts from school and college in my parents’ attic, gathering dust and wondering what they did wrong.’
He smiled at the thought of a cluster of abandoned pots holding a meeting about how they could improve their languishing fortunes. ‘We don’t have a loft. We’re renting a brand-new apartment over by Leith Docks – they don’t come with much storage space. But don’t worry, I already know where your bowl is going to go. It’s going to have pride of place in the living room.’
Maura lifted the box and placed it on the bench. ‘There you go. Take a look, check you’re happy and then I can wrap it for you, to make sure it survives the journey.’
Reaching into the layers of cushioning newspaper, Fraser carefully lifted the bowl free so that the glaze caught the light. If anything, it was more beautiful in real life than it had looked on the website. The rim had been carved to represent the rise and fall of waves, smooth but somehow hinting at texture. It seemed to his uneducated eye that more than one glaze had been used; a dark, almost midnight blue had mingled with its azure and forget-me-not siblings to settle in the dimples of the inlaid sea-inspired design. They looked like tiny puddles of liquid but, when he tilted the bowl, they did not move. He brushed a wondering finger across the surface, half-expecting his skin to come away wet. ‘How did you do this?’
‘Trial and error, mostly,’ she admitted, without embarrassment. ‘I have an idea of what I want to achieve, obviously, but I’ve found it doesn’t do to get too attached to an outcome in pottery. This one turned out well.’
The implication was that there were other pieces that hadn’t passed muster – he wondered what she did with them. ‘Recycle them, if they’ve cracked or warped,’ she said when he voiced the question. ‘Or give them to my mother.’
Fraser laughed. ‘If I had to present my mother with every project I’ve starred in that didn’t turn out the way I expected, she wouldn’t be able to move for evidence.’ He stared at the bowl in rapt admiration. ‘Thank you for this. Will you wrap it for me?’
‘Of course,’ she said, lifting the bowl back into its box. After a moment or two of rustling paper, she glanced up at him. ‘I should probably admit I looked you up too. You’ve been in some really successful shows.’
He supposed he should have expected as much – his on-screen murder at the hands of national treasure Penelope Keith was enough to tempt anyone into a Google search – but the idea that Maura had been as curious about him as he’d been about her came as a pleasant surprise. ‘With more than a few I’d rather forget,’ he said, even as he processed the fact of her interest. ‘But I learned something from all of them, so I can’t complain.’
‘Even the chicken advert?’
‘Especially the chicken advert,’ he replied gravely. ‘What I learned from that was to ask for more details when my agent said she had a juicy audition for me.’
She snorted then, which pleased him more. Naomi disapproved of his tendency to laugh at himself, although his time as Louis the Chicken had been long before he met her and he knew she pretended not to know about his less illustrious roles. She had suggested more than once that casting directors would take him more seriously if he took himself more seriously and Fraser had to admit that she might have a point. But Maura wasn’t someone he needed to impress with his acting credits. He could be himself around her.
