Now, standing in front of the mirror, Opal noticed a single grey hair and, as she tucked it behind her ear, her ring glinted in the sunlight pouring through the window. Her mother had been right. The ringwasostentatious; all of a sudden Opal felt embarrassed about wearing it. She felt embarrassed by how impressed she’d been with its worth, how she’d shown it off to the girls at her college, and revelled in the glint of jealousy in their eyes. Her mother might have picked a terrible way to do it, but Opal was starting to believe that maybe Saffie had been right in her assessment of this marriage.
‘I just want something more … exciting for you, my dear. I don’t want you to carve out a suffocating existence for yourself, just because you think it’s the respectable thing to do. There are other men out there, ones who won’t expect you to do so, but I don’t think Martin is one of them. It’s beyond me why he can’t just wait another year and let you finish your studies, for one thing.’
At the time Opal had rolled her eyes, believing that her mother was also somehowenviousof her, that Saffie wished deep down that she had managed to make at least one of her marriages work. That in her daughter she saw someone who she could never be: devoted, level-headed, sensible.
Opal laughed out loud at herself now, at the surety of her own twenty-year-old mind. How naive she had been to think that she had a better handle on what a marriage would entail than her mother, who at the time had already burned through three. Opal thought of Martin storming out of the dining roomthe week before, how he had disappeared again after that, not even bothering to lie to her about his whereabouts. She hadn’t seen him since. She twisted the ring off her finger and delighted at the clink it made as it hit the silver bowl of her jewellery box. She already felt lighter.
She stared at the slightly paler sliver of skin that now sat naked above her wedding band. Now she understood the courage it must have taken for her mother not only to leave her unhappy marriages, but to remain a believer in love. She hoped that she might have inherited just a fraction of it.
Opal took a deep breath and reminded herself that today wasn’t about her. Her guests had spent the past fortnight pouring their hearts into rolls of film, notebooks and tap shoes, and now they would finally share their work. It was a big day. The end of the first round.
They all met in the orangery for breakfast as usual, but Opal noticed that everyone was more subdued. Of course it was natural for them to be nervous, but for some reason Opal hadn’t expected it. She thought of them all as so self-assured. Then again hadn’t she been the same in her twenties? As self-conscious as she was sure of herself. For the first time since they’d arrived, as Opal looked out over the long table, she felt the confronting weight of her extra decade of life lived.
She tried to catch Noah’s eye, but he avoided her gaze. He had been a little elusive for the past few days. When she gently knocked on his door, he would either be asleep or make an effort to keep the conversation brief. He’d also taken to wearinga night shirt. Now, he was sitting beside Adam, and they were talking and smiling in hushed tones.
Opal stood. ‘Today is the day, everyone. I’d like to start by thanking everyone for their hard work, and I’m really very excited to see what you’ve all created over the past two weeks.’ She smiled brightly, but was met with mostly impassive expressions.
‘I propose that we start with Adam, and then move on to Heather, and then maybe we could hear from Ruby, and then finish up with Noah?’ Opal had anticipated the question that would come next, and yet still as it was asked her heart began to beat faster.
It was Ruby, of course, who asked it. ‘And when are we seeing Johan’s work?’ Ruby shot a look in his direction, but his eyes were trained on Opal.
‘Um, we’ve decided that I will judge Johan’s work … privately, as it’s … very personal, isn’t that right, Johan?’ Opal tried to keep her voice steady.
Johan nodded calmly. ‘That’s right.’
Ruby’s face became animated with incredulity. She seemed infuriated by Johan’s refusal to look at her. ‘Well in that case I’m not showing my work either. It’s all fuckingpersonal.’
There was a beat, and for a moment Opal held her breath in anticipation of a mutiny, but the others seemed unfazed.
Heather piped up. ‘That seems fair, that we get to choose whether to publicly show our work.’
Opal was frustrated with herself. It had been her idea, her plea really, that Johan not show his picture. She had asked to see it the previous day, having wandered over to his darkroom and seen it developing in its bath of chemicals.
As the image came into focus, she’d heard her own breath catch in her throat, although she hadn’t been able to feel anything at all. A strange numbness had spread over her, and before she knew it, she was doubled over and wheezing.
She could see Johan’s broad hands resting on her shoulder and knee, but she hadn’t been able to register the sensation on her skin. He had walked her over to the bench in the corner and they had sat side by side drenched in the dark red glow of the darkroom while she tried to remember how to draw oxygen into her lungs. When her heart had started to beat normally again, she had grasped at those hands and begged him to destroy the picture.
He refused. ‘I can’t do that, Opal. You agreed to sit for me, and the moment you did I’m afraid you relinquished control over that picture.’
Opal had been angry at first and then he had convinced her to look at it again. A pale nude figure was sat on the edge of the bed, facing away from the camera, her skin bright against the rest of the black and white photograph. You could not see her face, only the expanse of her back, and on her shoulder was perched what could have been a baby, except when you looked closer you could see that it was not; it was a bundle of blanket propped up against her. And then your eye would go to her hand, which was not holding the bundle, but resting, empty and angry in a balled fist at her side. Her head was bowed to one side, as though she were looking away from the bundle, and the light from a window by her side bathed her crown of loose curls in a soft haze.
She was a Madonna. In his photograph Johan had rendered Opal a mother, but it was the absence of a child that was thetrue subject of the picture. Opal hadn’t realised she was crying until the tears dripped down onto the workbench in front of her. She had not expected for him to be able to capture the ghost, to so clearly realise the phantom that Opal carried with her every day. This photo was of Emma as much as it was of her. Opal could hardly bear to look at it, but now that she had, it was just as heartbreaking to look away.
Standing at the top of the table, she couldn’t quite hold her nerve. She looked down at her hands. ‘If that’s how you feel, Ruby, of course you can show me your work in private as well.’ Opal was grateful to Johan for agreeing to pretend it washiswish not to show the photo.
‘Great.’ Ruby’s tone was cool and sarcastic.
Chapter 27
Noah was sure that he felt more nervous than Adam did about this performance. They sat in a single row at the far end of the makeshift studio, the wall of mirrors to one side of them and a length of tall floor-to-ceiling windows on the other. It was a beautiful space. Noah imagined the balls that must have taken place here. Blue bloods in all their finery waltzing beneath the ornate chandeliers. Generation after generation of the well-to-do occupying this room, celebrating their wealth, and now here was Adam standing alone in front of them, dressed in a black leather-look leotard.
Noah felt the glow of something unpleasant unfurl within him. He realised it was embarrassment. It wasn’t that Adam looked bad; in fact he looked strikingly statuesque in his fishnet stockings and patent leather tap shoes. He wore a black baker boy’s hat at a jaunty angle and he held a black horse whip in his left hand.
Rather it was that Noah felt confronted by how …gayAdam looked. It made Noah’s palms sweat to imagine wearing such an outfit in public, to be perceived so blatantly as someone who had rejected the kind of ‘nice life’ they were expected to have.
Over the past week, the two had spent more and more time together. Noah found himself enchanted by Adam’s quiet assuredness. He was not a man who felt compelled to fill a silence, as Noah often did; instead he courted it, and broke it only when he had something considered to say.
Afterthatdinner, everyone had been left to agonise in the loudness of chairs scraping against the polished floor. There had been so many sideways glances and apologetic murmurs that even Ruby seemed uneasy in the lingering mist of hostility. The group had splintered, and as Opal had shown Debbie to the door, Noah was left hovering in the hallway. He didn’t feel like going to bed and he didn’t fancy his nightly catch-up with Opal. Something about that dinner had suddenly made her seem far too real to him. He hadn’t thought very much about their difference in age until then, only that he was drawn to her, and she seemingly to him, and that was exciting. But suddenly the gap between her thirty-six years and his twenty-two felt cavernous.
