Page 18 of Healing Hearts on Thistledown Lane: Part 3
Leaning back against the cushions, she sighed. ‘I thought you’d say that.’ Draining her coffee, she put the cup on the table and got to her feet. ‘I’ll never understand why you’re so determined to waste your talents telling stories to tourists when your star could be on the rise. You’re a bloody fool, Fraser Bell. Has anyone ever told you that?’
‘Plenty of people,’ he said, resisting the urge to point out that his star’s failure to rise above the occasional recurring role in UK TV dramas was a big part of the reason he’d turned his back on acting. ‘You’re in great company.’
Her eyes flashed but he didn’t think she was annoyed. Not by her usual standards, anyway. ‘You’ll change your mind,’ she said with a confident toss of her head. ‘Just don’t leave it too long. I won’t wait forever and nor will your agent.’
He nodded, relieved that she hadn’t thrown the cup. ‘Noted,’ he said gravely. ‘Now, do you want some help to fill that case or will I just get in your way?’
Chapter Six
‘Oh no. No, no, no!’
Maura stared in dismay at the cluster of ghosts on the top shelf of her kiln. They’d been perfect when she closed the lid twenty-four hours earlier, delicately laced with fronds of green seaweed and dipped in a clear glaze to fix them. Now there was an unmistakeable pink tinge to each of their rounded heads and she knew without looking that the taint would have spread across the glaze. Sensing the attention of her students in the studio behind her, she resisted the urge to swear, but it was a hard-fought battle. She didn’t have time to lose a whole batch of ghosts to a rogue pink tinge. She was behind enough as it was.
‘Something wrong?’ Nina asked.
Maura didn’t turn around. This was her Thursday group, a frequently shifting selection of women who came in and out as their interest waxed and waned. They were not regulars, which resulted in a much less cosy teacher– student relationship than with Effie, Sharon and Cordelia on Tuesday mornings.
Nina had already complained that her dog sculpture from the week before had not been fired, despite Maura warning her that its size meant it might take longer to dry out. ‘What about my plate, then?’ she’d asked upon scanning the shelves. ‘Surely that’s not too big.’
‘No,’ Maura replied, ‘but the kiln was full. I’m sorry, Nina. I’ll try to run a stoneware firing before next week’s session.’
Nina’s mouth had turned down but she hadn’t said anything further. Jude was similarly disgruntled at having to wait for her soap dish and tea light holder, and it had led to a rather sour start to the session. The atmosphere hadn’t lightened much as the morning progressed and it did not encourage Maura to reveal the disaster that had occurred in the kiln overnight, but they had all heard her exclamations. She had no choice but to explain, especially as she had the sinking feeling Lisa had a cup on the bottom shelf that might very well have been affected. Nothing was guaranteed with pottery – the kiln could be an unpredictable mistress – but that didn’t mean Lisa would accept the loss of her work with equanimity. Maura feared it was not going to go down well.
‘Everything is pink,’ she said, reaching down to pick up one of the ghosts. ‘One of the glazes must have reacted badly with the heat and created a colour flash.’
Nina came to peer over her shoulder. ‘I see what you mean. I’m quite glad I didn’t have anything in there now.’
Maura refrained from pointing out that Nina hadn’t had anything glazed to fire and turned the ghost over in her hands. The pink was delicate but unmistakeable, an uneven bloom that made Agnes look as though she had spent too much time in the sun. The next was the same, although the blush was less pronounced. As Maura removed each ghost in turn, she saw that every single one had been tainted. All fifteen were pink. She wanted to cry.
‘Do you know what causes it?’ Jude asked, arriving to inspect the damage.
‘It could be something organic in the clay that has oxidized, but usually it’s down to a chrome glaze,’ Maura said. Her brow furrowed in confusion. ‘The worst culprit is the tortured steel glaze but I put that away in the cupboard so no one would use it.’
‘Oh.’
Maura turned to see Lisa staring at her in consternation, one hand over her mouth.
Her voice was small and uncertain. ‘I think I might have used that on my cup. I did wonder why it wasn’t with all the other glazes…’ She trailed off, her expression sheepish.
Maura wanted to groan. She thought she’d added a label to the tub, warning her students to check with her before using it, but perhaps it had fallen off. Putting the last flamingo-tinted ghost down, she removed the now empty shelf from the kiln and peered down at the pottery below. And there, nestled among a further ten rosy ghosts, was Lisa’s cup, beautifully shimmering in its metallic silver coat. Maura gazed at it for a long time before she sighed and picked it up. ‘Well, the good news is that the glaze looks great.’
Lisa was beside her now, squinting into the kiln. ‘I’m really sorry, Maura. I had no idea it would ruin your work.’
Maura pressed the heel of her hand hard against her head, willing a sudden swirl of anxiety to settle down. It would be okay – she had fifteen ghosts from an earlier batch and she could remake this batch in four or five days – but it would throw out her schedule and make her even later with delivery than she already was. It would also affect the plates commission she was working on, and mean juggling her students work to accommodate the additional firings. But the ghosts had to take priority; Fraser had been patient enough, even though she knew he had orders to fulfil, and he was expecting another batch of forty in – she did a rapid calculation in her head – twelve days.
She would have to work harder, spend more evenings in the studio to get everything made and then hope she could somehow manage the kiln time. Her hand pressed harder against her forehead as she tried to mentally reschedule her workload. It was going to be very tight. But it wasn’t as though she had anything else to occupy her time.
Jamie had moved out permanently, waiting until she had gone to her parents’ for the weekend to come in and empty his wardrobe and drawers, gather up the dusty trophies and medals from his sporting achievements. The bathroom was devoid of shaving equipment, the shower no longer cluttered with various gels and shampoo bottles. He’d also emptied the wine rack and taken all the expensive whisky from the cupboard, leaving her with a crusty bottle of Glenmorangie that looked as though it hadn’t been sampled for years. She didn’t begrudge him any of it, with the possible exception of vintage Taittinger he’d presented as a gift for her thirty-fifth birthday. Clearly he didn’t expect her to have anything to celebrate in the immediate future.
Communication had been short and practical. There were no recriminations, no painful salvos back and forth in which they sought to hurt each other more. She carefully didn’t ask where he was living, after establishing he’d arranged for his mail to be forwarded. It was as though someone had taken a sharp pair of scissors and neatly cut everything that bound them together. He’d signed off his last message a week ago with ‘Take care of yourself’ and she did not expect to hear from him again.
Kirsty had been predictably incandescent. ‘That toe-rag,’ she had howled, when Maura broke the news. ‘I never bloody liked him – he always had far too high an opinion of himself – but I thought at least he cared about you. And what kind of friend is this Zoe person, to go behind your back and steal your boyfriend?’
‘She hardly stole him,’ Maura had felt compelled to point out. ‘He’s not a car. It takes two to cheat and Jamie is just as guilty as Zoe.’
Kirsty stared at her. ‘How can you be so reasonable? He’s a toerag and she’s a bitch, and I won’t have it any other way. I’d be sewing prawns into the hem of his trousers, if I were you, and signing her up to every junk mail list I could find.’
Maura had almost managed a smile then. The prawn idea wasn’t half bad. But what would be the point? Jamie had put his finger squarely on the problem when he’d asked her how long it had been since she’d loved him, and although her heart was still cut to ribbons by the betrayal, she was beginning to accept that breaking up was an inevitability. It just would have taken longer and worn them both down with a slow drip of misery instead of a deluge. ‘I’m not being reasonable,’ she’d told Kirsty. ‘I’ve just got nothing left to spend on revenge.’
