‘It was the colour of oatmeal with a lavender silk pocket square,’ Ruby continued. She had fabricated that last detailbut she knew Hortense appreciated a man who took suit dressing seriously.
‘And there will be others there too? Or just you and this man?’
‘There will be others, other artists.’ Hortense seemed caught up with the idea that Gareth might pose some sort of threat. She wondered if she should mention that he was almost definitely gay. But she didn’t need to – Hortense relaxed.
‘And when does this retreat start? I will need some days to ask around about a lodger …’
‘It starts on the 14th, so …’ Ruby counted the days ‘… that’s next Saturday. You’ll have a week to find someone.’
Ruby was so eager to escape the ire of her mother that what she’d set herself up for didn’t really sink in until Monday morning. First, she dug out the card and called Gareth, who sounded smugly unsurprised when he picked up. And then, partly to spite him, she spent the whole day dropping into local pubs and restaurants, hoping someone had a vacancy and she could tell Hortense to call off the search for the new inhabitant of her childhood bedroom.
By the time the sun began to set, late, at around eight o’clock, she had accepted the futility of the search. On her walk home she slipped the letter she had already written and addressed to Opal Fairfax into the post box and resigned herself, reluctantly, to her fate.
Chapter 12
It wasn’t until Ruby’s letter arrived, on the 10th of June, that Opal decided it was time to tell Martin about the tournament.
For the past fortnight, she had kept her distance but less obviously than she had in the immediate aftermath of her discovery. The morning after he’d seen the painting, he had left before she’d come downstairs. A note on the kitchen table announced that he was at the golf course with Patrick all day. She was both relieved and disappointed that he was not there to confront her about his distorted portrait in the hall.
It was only after she’d finished it in the orangery, no longer sitting in front of the male model from the class, that she realised the monstrous figure on her canvas resembled her husband. Same grey eyes, same angular jaw, same dark quiff of hair.
And so she decided to play him at his own game. He was going to keep calm and carry on as normal; she was going to keep calmer. Suddenly her schedule was packed. There were more mornings spent at the club. More afternoons in town, more evenings at Debbie’s. They got into a routine of increasingly passive-aggressive notes left on the kitchen table. Each more nonchalant and scant on information than the last.
On this particular morning, Opal had come down to find a scrap of paper with only the words ‘out ’til later’ scribbled on it.
When Noah’s arrival details, written on paper that smelt equally but differently captivating to the first, had landed on the welcome mat a few days prior, Opal had compartmentalised this secret scheme of hers to the back of her mind.
When Gareth called, she would diligently discuss all the necessary arrangements and preparations needed. He had been sceptical that Ruby would come round – ‘but we can still go ahead with the ones we’ve got so far,’ he’d said.
Opal had been unsure. In her mind there needed to be the five of them, and the girl with the gemstone name completed the vision. When she thought these thoughts, though, she worried that it sounded like the kind of logic her mother might engage in, and so she had kept them to herself. Reassuring Gareth that nothing was going to change her mind and all the while conducting her real life as though the tournament was a sort of abstract thought experiment and not something that was days away from landing on her doorstep.
It was that last letter that dragged her out of the daze. The final piece of the puzzle, the girl who had inspired the whole mad idea was actually on board and now she was going to have to tell Martin, the other person who lived in this house, that five strangers were arriving in a few days … To stay for six weeks.
Opal figured that ‘later’ would at least imply after midday and so she decided that maybe it was finally time to christen the pool for the summer. In other, less turbulent years, Opal and Martin had created a tradition. One of them would push the other into the water in order to ‘open the swimming season’. It wasn’t as simple as it sounded. The pusher would need tosneak out undetected and remove the tarpaulin and then coax the pushee outside, whilst they remained unsuspecting.
That hadn’t happened this summer. May had passed without any hint of that kind of playfulness and so Opal changed into her simple black bathing suit and made her way out through the orangery and over to the pool. In the mid-morning sunshine, the pale green tiles seemed to glow as she wound the cover off. The water was still.
She left her hair loose and dived in. Unexposed to the sun, the water was cool enough to take her breath away. After a few lengths her limbs numbed to the cold and she felt that familiar exhilaration of being submerged. Growing up, this pool had been her happy place. Saffie hated getting wet. Most often she would sit in the orangery and chain-smoke as she watched her daughter splash around.
Opal thought fondly of those memories – she and her mother peacefully co-existing but buffered by a pane of glass. She had felt watched over but not smothered. Free but safe. It was a welcome pang of nostalgia, a reminder that she had been in troubled waters before and survived.
‘Took the plunge did you, Pol?’
Opal was coming up to the end of her lap. She turned to see Martin, standing on the steps of the orangery. His bag of golf clubs were slung over his shoulder and he was wearing one of those argyll vests that Opal hated. This particular specimen was a bright yellow, pink and turquoise combo. The matching socks peeked out below the hem of his sand-coloured trousers.
‘Seemed like a waste, sitting here covered up all summer.’ Opal scraped her hair back. She hadn’t expected him home this early.
‘Can I join you?’ Martin was already pulling his shoes off. The question surprised her.
‘Of course.’ Her reply was automatic and on second thought, she realised that she’d rather he didn’t.
He undressed as he walked towards her, finally shedding his boxer shorts as he reached the fanned steps into the pool. Opal averted her eyes. The sight of her husband’s naked body now only reminded her of his indiscretions, driving her to imagine looking at it through Agnes’s eyes. It was the same feeling as seeing your home through the eyes of a visitor, the backdrop of your life suddenly thrust into sharp, scrutinised focus.
Martin winced as the water lapped around his calves. He took a quick breath and then launched himself fully into the pool. He resurfaced by her side, his dark hair dripping. He smiled at her and she must have smiled back because before she knew it, his lips were on hers and his hands were grasping at her arse.
She pulled back, jerking out of his grip. She caught a flash of hurt on his face.
The silence was magnified by the gentle lapping of water against the tiles.
