But Opal had made a promise to herself a very very long time ago that she would be nothing like her own mother. Saffie had only ever lived life for herself, despite her complaints aboutcurtailed adventures. She’d been married five times and none of those men were Opal’s father.
According to Saffie, her father was a ‘particularly charming waiter’ whom she had stumbled into bed with on one of her many ‘recuperative’ jaunts alone somewhere in the South of France. Opal was conceived only six months after Saffie had walked down the aisle for the second time. Suffice to say that husband didn’t last very long.
No, Opal was going to live her lifeproperly.‘Conventionally’ Saffie would say, with no small hint of disdain. Marriage – just the once – house, baby. That had been the plan.
She recalled how she had sat on her dorm bed at Sherborne Girls, and written a list of criteria for her future husband. Martin had met each requirement.
Hismother, Ruth, had been more traditionally outspoken about her desire for grandchildren, and suitably thrilled when they had flown out to see her and announced that they were trying for a baby. Opal hadn’t imagined then how gruelling the constant demand for updates about her ovulation cycle, from a woman halfway across the globe, would become.
And then Emma had been conceived, joyfully, on a fortnight away in Corsica when she and Martin had both agreed to take the pressure off. To stop counting the days between her periods and just enjoy fucking again. Eight weeks later, after a couple of giddying missed monthlies, they’d told Ruth. She almost howled down the receiver, and Opal had left Martin in the kitchen to plan a post-birth trip down under.
Opal had dreaded the thought of doing that journey with a newborn. But when the day came, just over three months later, the day that Martin bundled her into his car and droveat breakneck speed to King Edwards, she would have exchanged a thousand hours on a long-haul flight with a crying baby to not have to bear the sound of silence on the ultrasound. It was a week before her thirtieth birthday. By the time she left the hospital, Martin had already made plans for her to convalesce at Fairfax. And she never moved back into the flat in Marylebone.
That was when the silence had been born, in place of Emma, in place of crying and gurgling, Opal and Martin had created a ghost together. It had lived with them ever since. And it was here now, making its presence felt in the kitchen.
Martin sighed. ‘I’ve actually been having a hard time at work. The new CEO is intent on proving himself by reinventing the wheel. I mean who even asked for new hiring protocols?’ His voice was growing louder and Opal raised her hands, an act of surrender and a plea for him to shut up. She didn’t give a fuck about his office politics, and she couldn’t bear to sit here a moment longer while he insisted on keeping his dirty little secret.
‘I’m going to bed.’ Opal stood up suddenly. ‘In the guest room. I’ve moved some of my things over there.’
Martin raised an eyebrow, but didn’t dare to ask the question of his lips, so she left him with the silence.
Later that night, just as she drifted off to sleep she would hear him exclaim, ‘What the fuck is this?’ as he stumbled up the stairs. She pictured him standing stupefied, gazing up at the painting, and it put a smile on her face.
Chapter 6
Opal woke just before dawn, the light beginning to glow through the white gauze billowing at her windows, unimpeded by the heavy burgundy curtains she had left open. She slipped on one of the dresses she’d hurriedly thrown into the guest room wardrobe. It was full-length black linen, with long petalled sleeves. Debbie had teased that it looked like a wizard’s tunic, but today it felt appropriate, both mournful and mystical. She wound her hair into a bun and adorned it with a deep green silk turban.
Saffie had gifted it to her last Christmas, one of the few times of the year that she set foot outside of Marrakech, where she’d taken up residence since her last, and presumably final, husband had died a decade earlier. Opal had politely thanked her mother, thinking at the time that she would never wear such a thing. But then she’d woken up that morning somehow a different woman, one who slept alone and enjoyed it, and who painted large naked portraits of men with huge phalluses.
She tiptoed down the stairs, the thought of bumping into Martin in this outfit driving her out the door in a flash. She had decided last night, as she mixed those gruesome purples and slathered them on the canvas, that she was quite doneexplaining herself, or rather excusing herself. Fuck Ruth, she was never going to have her grandchild, and fuck Martin, for everything.
Opal slid into the front seat of her Datsun Cherry. It was only about a two-hour drive to Gareth’s but she reckoned he might just be getting out of bed by the time she got to Mayfair. She checked her watch: 6.08. It was a Saturday morning, so on second thoughts, probably not. If she turned up with a smile and a turban, though, he couldn’t be too angry with her for disturbing his beauty sleep.
It turned out he could be. Gareth answered the door after the fifth ring. Just as Opal had resigned herself to settling in the car and reading the paper until he awoke, his face appeared in the slim crack between door and frame.
‘Opal, what the fuck? I thought it was a Jehovah’s Witness or something. I had half a mind to call the Old Bill.’ Only he and her mother called her by her full name, both out of stubbornness. He was wearing a long deep Klein blue silk robe, and leather slippers the colour of a coconut husk. His dark brown beard had started to reveal flecks of grey, and his hair was thinning. He still looked gorgeous, though, with those deep brown eyes set atop his angular jaw, even with the shadow of sleep clouding his face.
‘Lovely to see you too, my darling.’ She leant in for a hug and after a second’s bewildered pause he relaxed into the embrace.
‘My love, are you OK?’ he whispered into her hair. They rarely hugged, so the question was warranted. In the almost twenty years they’d known each other, Opal could only remember them doing so a handful of times. At his graduationmaybe? The one that should have also been hers. Or her wedding? He’d come down to be with her for a week or so after Emma went away; they must have embraced then.
He gently pushed her away, examining her face carefully. A smile cracked through the concern. ‘May I say that you are looking sensational today? This is quite the look, and dare I say, a little bohemian for you?’
Opal began with a chuckle, but it melted into something more like a sob. She brought her hand to her face quickly, as though maybe that would stop the flow of tears.
Inside, Gareth hurriedly cleared the kitchen counter of the assortment of empty glasses and began searching through the cupboards. Opal sat herself down on the sofa, dabbing sporadically at the cascade running down her cheeks.
‘Let me make you some tea. Oh, darling, what’s wrong?’ Gareth spoke to the inside of his cupboards, closing each one in turn when he couldn’t locate a mug.
‘It’s OK. Actually, if it’s not too much trouble, maybe something stronger than tea?’ Opal tried to keep the sniffle from her voice.
Gareth turned to her with a singular, perfectly plucked eyebrow raised. ‘Opal Fairfax, drinking before noon? The world really has turned on its head.’
She giggled. Gareth was a master in the art of compassion laced with levity.
‘I tell you what, why don’t I get changed, and then maybe we can go to the Rivoli for breakfast?’
Opal couldn’t imagine that the Ritz bar would be open at 8.30 in the morning, but she nodded anyway. She was in the mood to be influenced, preferably for the worse.
