He did remember that it had felt a more gradual change than what he would eventually read about. A year was a long time for a seven-year-old, but that summer, when it was coming to the end of the dry season and the rains began to loom, it had happened quickly. He’d run home, from where he wouldn’t recall, but he had been eager to recount the day’s adventures, the way that he always did when the hours hadn’t been interrupted by school. His parents had been huddled arounda radio, his mother heavily pregnant then with his long-wished-for younger sister. His older brother was sat cross-legged at their feet, the book he was usually engrossed in lying open in his lap.
The moment he’d walked into the parlour – and it was still strange to think that he used to call a room in their home a parlour – he’d known it wasn’t the time to regale his mother with the day’s activities. Her face was glum, scared even. His father had told him to go to his room. He’d tried to protest that Ishmail was allowed to stay but only feebly. He’d sat on the edge of his bed trying to make out the burble from the radio. He must have fallen asleep because when his mother came in to explain, it was dark outside.
They would need to leave. His childish mind had not been able to understand the word. Leave? The house? The street? The town? No, his mother said, leave the country. Where would they go? England, she’d said, and he’d been excited. But then the packing had started, almost immediately – the next morning in fact. And his father would be out often, leaving before Noah woke up and coming home after he went to bed. He was sorting their passports, his mother said, and he hadn’t known then what those were. The journey itself was a blur of busy train stations, full of families that looked like his, carrying too many bags. And then the airport, and an aeroplane, which had at first also been exciting until the flight dragged on.
When they’d landed at Heathrow, the only thing he could think about was the cold.
Now he knew what his mother and father had heard that day on the radio: that Asians were no longer welcome in Uganda. That they had ninety days to get out, carryingeverything they could on their backs and leaving everything else behind.
Standing here now. Noah felt something like resentment, that someone like Opal Fairfax would never be asked to leave her home like that. Because unlike him, and his parents, she would always belong. If his plan came together, though, and he could work his magic, she might at least be able to feel what that might be like. He turned to his own ‘studio’ and opened the door.
Chapter 20
Opal was at a bit of a loss. She’d planned for this so meticulously, setting up each artist’s space so they had everything they needed. Shipping in the chemicals and sound synthesiser for Noah’s lab, the materials for Heather’s studio, clearing out the reception room and installing a long panel of standing mirrors for Adam and blacking out the light coming into the converted barn attic for a makeshift darkroom for Johan. Now, though, what was she going to do with herself?
She’d sent Gareth away on that first afternoon; he needed to get back to work anyway, and his familiarity with Martin’s wine cellar was beginning to stoke a splinter of worry. Better to get him back to the gallery, where he could nurse his ever more fervent drinking habit out of sight.
The first few days, she’d busied herself in the kitchen, helping Hetty lay out elaborate lunch spreads that went mostly untouched, and then sit-down dinners where the conversations veered between superficial and terse. She’d hoped for flowing discussion between her guests about the specificities of their practice and musings on their inspiration. But everyone remained tight-lipped. Maybe the competition element had been a bad idea.
Johan and Ruby would always sit together, sniggering atwhatever whispered observations they insisted on only sharing with each other. Heather was not the chatty type and Adam was exceedingly polite but immune to her persistent questions, often answering monosyllabically. The only one of them who seemed eager to talk to her was Noah. And he made her nervous.
He’d sat next to her every night so far. His eyes, which were grey-green and rimmed with amber, fixated on her whenever she spoke. She found it unsettling, his comfort with eye contact, but maybe that was because of how it made her feel. Unsteady and a bit giggly. She’d never thought of herself as a person who would lust over a younger man. Even when she’d been a younger woman, she’d always found maturity more attractive. And yet, now she caught herself gazing at his face, smooth with youth, and framed by glossy dark thick curls, and wondering what it would feel like to have him take her face in his smooth palms. His full lips planting a soft kiss on hers, and then hearing him draw a ragged breath before he pulled her in again, this time his mouth searching with something more ravenous.
The first night after she’d visited his room, she’d sworn she couldn’t, wouldn’t, do it again, and yet instead she’d made a habit of knocking on his door on the way to her own, ‘to check in’. She was both disgusted and a little thrilled by her lechery. Her eyes trained over his bare chest as they exchanged pleasantries. At times she could convince herself that she had a sweet spot for him only because he was the only one who showed any warmth towards her.
In the moments when she walked away from his room, though, pulling whatever slinky nightwear she’d opted for that evening tighter around herself, and burning with the wet ache of desire, she could accept that her fascination with Noah was far from innocent. The other undesirable realisation? That perhaps she and Martin were not that different; seemingly neither were immune to the lure of plumper flesh.
She was washing up the coffee cups from breakfast when she heard the sound of footsteps behind her. Martin had been holed up in the London flat since the morning after that first night, and yet she was still expecting to see him when she turned around. But it was Johan standing by the kitchen table, helping himself to a bunch of grapes from the fruit bowl.
‘Oh.’ Opal still hadn’t accustomed herself to the presence of strangers in her home. ‘Hi, Johan, um Jojo … can I help you with anything? I have to admit that it’s been a while since I developed any of my own pictures; maybe you haven’t got everything you need? I can call into the arts supply store in Cambridge and see …’
He held his arms up in surrender, and she became painfully aware that she was babbling. She was beginning to make a habit of it, a far cry from her previously impervious, poised self.
‘The darkroom is fine – great even. Got everything I could possibly need.’ Johan pulled out a chair and angled it towards her before sitting down. He had the confidence of youth and sex appeal, laying his hands calmly in his lap as hers twisted awkwardly around the tea towel she was holding.
‘What I need is a little more personal.’ Johan’s tone was suggestive. Opal found herself noticing the bulge of his Adam’s apple, and the way it bobbed gently beneath his fair, short stubble. She put the tea towel down and took off her apron. She suddenly had the sense that she did not want to appear matronly. As if sensing this he asked, ‘Are you a mother, Opal?’
She was startled by the directness of the question, and thenreasoned with herself. How was he to know that it was a touchy subject? Women were asked all the time about their children; there was no way for this young man to have guessed that he was asking about the worst thing that had ever happened to her.
He did seem to pick up on the shift in atmosphere, though. He studied her reaction and then sat up straighter, but he didn’t apologise, or elaborate. They stood in that loaded silence for a beat too long, and then Opal felt compelled to answer him, truthfully.
‘I’m not sure,’ she said, holding his gaze and expecting him to look away. He didn’t. If anything he looked more intensely, cocking his head slightly to one side.
‘How would you feel about explaining that more?’ His tone had shifted; it was more earnest.
Opal looked down at her feet. She thought about how the grouting between the terracotta tiles probably needed replacing, and as she did so, she also heard herself explain. She told him about Emma, at first speaking quietly. She was buried nearby, she told Johan, in the village church grounds, right next to her grandfather and her uncles. Her plot was the same size as theirs, which had always seemed so sad. The potential of what her life might have been, portioned out for her, but never fulfilled.
When she was done, she felt the hot sting of tears, and watched one, then two, then three drops land on the tiles below her. Johan didn’t say sorry, as most people did, on the rare occasions that she would open up about Emma.
‘Would you let me take your photograph?’ he said instead. For the second time in about twenty minutes, Opal was startled.
‘Why?’
‘I want to try and capture what it means to have birthed a mother, but not a child.’
Opal looked up then.
‘I’m not like the others. I need a subject, and they’re all busy …’
