Page 31 of His Best Mistake

“Why not?”

“It’s a completely different skill. I mainly use pencils and pastels. Sometimes charcoal, occasionally chalk. It’s, I don’t know, as if they’re an extension of my fingers or something, if that makes any sense. Paint, though, I just can’t seem to get to grips with. There’s something about the paintbrush. The length of it and the distance that creates. It’s a shame as I find it incredibly therapeutic, and a bit odd really, when you think about it, but there you go.”

“Therapeutic?” said Jack, frowning slightly and fixing her with a quizzical look.

“Yes.”

“In what way?”

For a second Stella hesitated, her heart beginning to thump as it occurred to her that she’d suddenly hit a crossroads. She could either shrug and deflect Jack’s question or in an attempt to make a proper go of this she could open up and tell him things she’d never told another living soul.

Taking a deep breath, and reminding herself it was for the good of the baby, she leapt off the cliff. “I discovered that painting was a good way to vent.”

“Do you need to vent?”

“I have done.”

“When?”

“Initially, during my childhood,” she said. “My parents aren’t the best.” Which had to be the understatement of the century. “Their relationship has always been pretty volatile. From as early as I can remember there were rows and slamming of doors and then endless horrible silences. None of that was as bad as when they were making up though,” she added, cringing inside at the memories of how happily ravished her parents had looked emerging from an afternoon in their room. “I guess painting was a form of escapism. I’d shut myself in my room, put on my iPod and block it all out while venting my feelings at the easel. At one point when things were really bad I was painting two canvases a day. It’s a pity they weren’t any good. I could have made a fortune.”

“The painting on the easel in your spare room wasn’t bad.”

Oh? She’d forgotten about that. “Did you see the others?”

“What others?”

“Just as well,” said Stella with a wry smile. “There were twenty-five in total, one for every day I was at the cottage. They were rather gruesome. I was in a pretty bad state, although they did get progressively less angsty. I burned them all before heading home.”

“Do you have siblings?”

She shook her head. “Only child.”

“That must have made it harder.”

“Possibly. I wouldn’t know.”

But it would have been nice to have someone to share everything with, she thought, turning her head to look out of the window at the buildings and people flashing by. She’d used to long for it, in fact, because if she’d had a brother or sister she wouldn’t have felt so excluded, so worthless, so constantly at fault. She’d have had an ally and been part of a team, instead of feeling like an outsider, an unwanted extra.

But she’d realised early on that she’d been an accident and one that wasn’t going to be repeated. Her parents had been so wrapped up in each other they’d never had much time for her, and although the neglect had been benign, it had had long-term consequences that she was only just beginning to get over. “My maternal grandmother made up for things a bit,” she said. “She came to the odd play and sports event and she sometimes scooped me up in the holidays. She did her best but it wasn’t quite the same. When she died she left me the cottage in Scotland. I think she knew I’d need somewhere to escape and make sense of things whenever life went pear-shaped.”

“Does it work?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Lucky you. Are your parents still together?” he asked, and Stella snapped out of it because she’d accepted that that was just the way her family was years ago and there was still zero point in wishing things had been different.

“Astonishingly and mystifyingly, yes,” she said. “They’ve been married for thirty-one years. They’re self-centred and dysfunctional and the drama is never-ending, and you know what? I think they thrive on it. I think they love it. Which, to be honest, I find kind of tiring. It’s pretty excluding, so I don’t see that much of them.” Or anything at all if she could help it. “What are yours like?”

“Together. Happy. In comparison, incredibly boring.”

“Boring is good,” said Stella, stamping down on the familiar envy that surged whenever she heard about other people’s relatively normal families and functional relationships. “I’d be more than happy with boring. Melodrama is very overrated.”

“I agree.”

Her eyebrows lifted. What would he know about melodrama? He didn’t seem the sort to tolerate it. “Oh?”

“Cora. New Year. Not pretty.”

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