London Tides: A Novel (The MacDonald Family Trilogy Book 2) (3 page)

“What did you think?” Marjorie asked when he said his farewells.

“She’s practically a child, Mum.”

Marjorie fixed him with a reproving look. “I’m trying to help.”

“I know you are. But this is the sort of thing a man needs to work out for himself. Right?”

She didn’t answer, a sure sign the subject was far from dropped, but she made him bend so she could kiss his cheek. “Don’t work too hard.”

“I won’t,” he promised, aware it was somewhat of a lie. Besides rowing, what else was there?

He turned the Healey back to Southwest London, but he couldn’t even take his usual pleasure in the trip. By the time he let himself into the first-floor flat of his historic Gloucester Road building, his resigned mood had turned downright foul.

It was completely irrational, of course. The brunch at Leaf Hill had been fine. His mother’s meddling had resulted in a rather pleasant conversation, even if Rachel hadn’t sparked the least bit of interest besides the acknowledgment that she was a very pretty girl.

Why exactly was that? Age aside, she was one of the more interesting women he’d met recently. And yet it hadn’t even crossed his mind to get her phone number.

The beginnings of a headache throbbed in his temples as he crossed the modest reception room into the kitchen. He poured himself a glass of orange juice from the refrigerator and stood in the wash of cold air, his fingers clenched around the tumbler. Blast Grace. He’d been doing fine before she showed up on the bank this morning with her camera, looking …

… like Grace. The mere sight of her was enough to bring up long-buried memories—the smell of her skin, the taste of her mouth, the way her body fit against his. The brogue that her years away from Ireland hadn’t completely eradicated, a lilt that surfaced whenever she was angry or upset. Those last months, her eyes had lost their haunted look. She had smiled more freely, laughed more often. And then she had simply disappeared without a word. How could he have been so wrong about her?

Let her go.

As if he had any choice. No matter how hard he’d tried to move on, the past still held him by the throat.

Ian went to the shallow drawer by the sink and lifted out a stack of publications. Ten years of newspapers and magazines, Grace’s career documented in print. Photos from
the
Times
and
the
Guardian
that had been picked up from the AP wire. Beautifully composed essays on African farmers or bush hospitals from the magazines of humanitarian organizations. The
National Geographic
story about Ugandan child-soldiers being treated in trauma counseling centers, an essay as powerful as it was heartbreaking.

Grace possessed the rare ability to capture the humanity in any subject, whether it was the unemployed worker angry with the establishment or a hollow-eyed boy wielding an automatic weapon. In the last several years, her work had gotten more daring, the settings progressively more dangerous. Only someone who had endured her own share of tragedy could see past the surface of the story to the hurting souls beneath.

Now she was back—not in Los Angeles, where she’d begun her career, or Dublin, where she’d been raised, but London, where she’d once intended to make a life with him. That had to mean something.

Jake would know where Grace was staying, especially now that he was dating her friend, Asha. Ian had his mobile phone out of his pocket and the number on the dialer before he realized what he was doing, then slammed the phone back down on the counter.

No. He wasn’t going to run after Grace and beg her for an explanation. If she wanted to talk to him, she obviously knew where to find him.

Chapter Three

Asha lived on the third floor of a typical red brick mansion block in Earl’s Court, a transitional neighborhood in Southwest London not far from the museums and Hyde Park. Or it had been transitional once. As Grace hefted her cases and bag out of the black cab at the curb, it was clear more things had changed in ten years than just her. This little neighborhood was no longer a haven for broke students and immigrants, if the shiny new Jaguar parked a block down was any indication.

Grace paid the driver through the open front window and palmed the key Asha had given her, the pile of belongings in front of the stairs making her wish she had packed more lightly. Even so, she’d brought hardly any personal items. The stack of black hard cases held her camera bodies and lenses, her lighting setups, and most importantly, her film archives.

Four trips up and down three flights of stairs later, Grace collapsed against the door marked 14, shoved the key into the lock, and pushed. Nothing happened. She held down the latch and threw her shoulder into the door until it opened with a crack. Grace grinned. The door had stuck for as long as she could remember—only worsened with every coat of new paint—but Asha refused to have it shaved down. An extra layer of security for a woman living alone, she’d said.

The interior of the flat, however, had changed, the warm jewel tones that her friend had once favored now painted over in shades of cream and white and gray. There was a new pullout sofa in the living room, which would serve as Grace’s bed while she stayed, and photography on the walls. Grace didn’t need to look to know they were the framed shots of India she had sent Asha for her last birthday. Their prominent positions warmed her.

It took nearly as much work to get her things into the flat, where she stacked the cases neatly in the corner, taking up as little of the tiny space as possible. Then she wandered into the kitchen, which featured a table and four chairs, a two-burner hob, and a small refrigerator. Grace opened the door and smiled when she saw the fridge was empty but for a bowl of fruit and a half-finished carton of milk. So maybe Asha’s quick offer of hospitality hadn’t been completely unselfish. They’d once lived together, and Grace had quickly discovered that Asha’s idea of cooking was heating up takeaway.

Tandoori chicken for dinner, it was.

Grace double-checked the pantry and freezer to see what ingredients she would need to buy—all of them—and then plopped down on Asha’s sofa with a notepad. This was one of her favorite dishes, learned on the trip to India in which she’d first met Asha. It also happened to be one of Ian’s favorites. She and Ian’s brother, James, had tinkered with the recipe in Ian’s kitchen, arguing over the right proportions of cinnamon and black pepper and ginger. The memory, fond as it was, made her insides clench. When she’d left Ian, she hadn’t just abandoned the man she loved; she’d abandoned her adopted London family as well. James, Ian’s sister Serena, all their mutual friends. Naturally, when it was clear Grace wasn’t coming back, everyone but Asha had rallied around him and shut her out. She’d been arrogant to think it didn’t matter, naive to think they’d come around.

She sighed and tossed the pad onto the sofa next to her. Thinking about the past was pointless. Ian’s reaction had told her all she needed to know: her return was an unwelcome surprise. If she really wanted to make a life for herself in London, she would have to do it without him. It had been only nostalgia and grief that had made her believe she could change things.

Grace’s mobile pulled her out of her introspection. She fished the phone from her jacket pocket and pressed it to her ear. “Grace Brennan.”

“Grace! You’re here!”

The clipped London accent of her friend and gallery owner Melvin Colville brought a smile back to her lips. “You got my message.”

“I did. Are you free to come by the gallery today?”

“Of course. What time?”

“Four this afternoon? And bring your slides if you have them.”

“I do. See you then.” Grace clicked off the phone, her spirits rising, then glanced at her watch. It was barely eleven, which gave her plenty of time to buy groceries and get the chicken marinating for dinner, then dig out the slide negatives that corresponded to the scans she had emailed Melvin before she left Paris.

At least there were still some people in London happy to have her back.

Grace climbed the stairs from the Underground platform and emerged to a street-level cloud of diesel fumes over musty river water. Her stomach immediately began to do backflips. It was one thing to have her photos printed in magazines, picked up on the AP wire. That was her job, her calling even. But this collection of portraiture, taken as a personal mission and the fulfillment of a promise—that was something entirely different. Her job as war photographer was to show other people’s tragedies, but this collection hit far too close to her own.

She’d never been a coward, though, and if she could trust anyone with her work, it would be Melvin.

Her steps slowed before a glass storefront beside a corner pub, an elegant black sign with gilt letters proclaiming Putney Bank Gallery. Kraft paper obscured the view through the windows, but a brick propped open the door to let in air and let out the sound of hammering.

Grace stepped inside, pausing by the door so she could watch the activity unnoticed. Several men with tool belts were securing false walls faced with plasterboard to chains from the ceiling joists, and a ginger-haired woman rolled a layer of new white paint on the permanent walls.

“Grace!”

She turned from the preparations to the man striding across the polished concrete floor toward her. Midsixties and trim, with a shaved head and neatly trimmed beard, he seemed far more comfortable in his prestigious London gallery than he ever had in an editorial office. Even then, his taste had been impeccable and his influence wide.

Grace accepted his hug and quick kiss on the cheek. “Melvin, this looks amazing! Who is it?”

“Gordon Wright. Abstract oils. We’ll be cutting it close for Friday, but we’ll make it. We always do. How about you? How does it feel to be back in London?”

“Like home, surprisingly. It’s changed a bit since I spent any real time here.”

“It always does. Come, I’ve something to show you in my office.”

Grace followed him around piles of tools and paint buckets into a small office at the back of the gallery, sparsely furnished with a desk and two inexpensive chairs, its walls covered with whiteboards and pin boards and light boxes. It was a nod to his former life as a photo editor at
Londinium Monthly
, one of the first publications to print Grace’s photography. Her long and eccentric friendship with Melvin had spanned years and multiple changes of career direction, but it was the only reason she had considered his request to open her archives.

He unbuttoned his blazer as he settled behind the desk and gestured for Grace to take one of the chairs. “I have to admit, Grace, you shocked me. What you sent me was not at all what I expected.”

Grace’s stomach immediately took a nosedive into the soles of her green Doc Martens. “I told you, Melvin, it’s a personal project. I didn’t shoot them to be exhibited—”

“No, you misunderstand me.” He leaned forward and folded his hands on top of the desk. “They’re fantastic. I’ve only seen your editorial work, your war photography, which is very good. Poignant, painful, often shocking. But these …” He stood, then slid a whiteboard out of the way of a wall-mounted corkboard. “These are incredible.”

Grace twisted around and then rose, amazement swelling in her chest. He had printed two dozen of the photos she’d sent him as black-and-white four-by-sixes and pinned them out in what she assumed was the order he’d want to display them in the gallery. She’d taken the photos, scanned the slides, viewed them on a screen, but somehow seeing them this way gave them heft. Importance even.

“See what I mean? These are art, Grace. I can’t believe you’ve never shared them before.”

She stepped forward to view each of the photos close up. Men, women, children from around the world, captured in the midst of their normal activities. Mourning. Celebrating. Living. Even she could admit there was a melancholy beauty to them, a common thread between composition and style that seemed to unite people across cultures and countries.

“Hope,” Melvin said softly. “Even in the ones that show someone’s worst moments, you somehow captured hope.”

Grace flicked her gaze to his face, then away, too embarrassed to see the admiration in his expression. “Are these your final selections?”

“No. But I thought we’d start here. Which of them must you absolutely have exhibited?”

“I trust your editorial vision.”

Melvin rubbed his bearded chin thoughtfully. “You did these on an M3, yes? Thirty-five millimeter?”

“You know I did.”

Melvin’s expression softened then. “How are you doing? I heard about Brian. It must be very difficult for you, especially coming on the anniversary of Aidan’s death.”

Grace swallowed hard and bit her lip in a vain attempt to stem the swell of tears. Each time she thought she’d made peace with the incident, the grief came back in full force. The timing had seemed like the universe’s sick joke. Every year she commemorated the day her photojournalist brother had been killed during a Northern Irish nationalist riot, and every year the grief rushed back as keen and sharp as the day it happened. To lose another young man on that day—especially one close to Aidan’s age—had felt as if God was trying to tell her something.

Maybe he was.

She forced a watery smile. “Let’s just say it will never be my favorite day.”

“I can understand that.” Melvin seated himself behind the desk again and slipped on a pair of black-rimmed glasses. “Did you bring me the slides?”

Grace fished a small box from her rucksack and pushed it across the desk to him. He lifted the top and thumbed through the mounted negatives, then placed the box in his drawer. “I’ll take good care of these, Grace. I’ll start on some tests this week, and then we can fine-tune the final prints. Eight weeks feels like a long time, but I can guarantee you we’ll be working up until the last minute. What are you doing with the photos once the exhibit is over?”

“I hadn’t thought that far ahead. I’m still trying not to hyperventilate over the thought of people viewing work I’ve hoarded for the last decade or two.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry about that.” A peculiar glint in Melvin’s eyes raised warning flags. “You should sell them. Especially if you never plan on exhibiting or printing these again.”

“I’m not interested in selling them. Besides, who would want something like this hanging in their home?”

He stared at her in disbelief. “I don’t think you understand quite how well known you’ve become. A one-off print from the renowned Grace Brennan could bring in a fair bit of money.”

“I’m not interested in the money.”

“Who says you have to keep it?”

That stopped Grace’s next protest before it could form.

“I know you, Grace. You’ve never been about the money. As long as you could afford a bed, food, and film, you were happy. I also know that you’re not exactly hurting for funds these days, despite the fact you’ve been wearing those same blasted steel-toed boots for the last ten years. But can you think of what one of those charities could do with, say, two hundred thousand pounds?”

“No one would pay ten thousand pounds for one of my photographs,” she said, but she knew Melvin caught the doubt in her words. Even after Melvin’s commission for the showing and the cost of production, that was a massive amount of money that could be put to good use. “May I think about it?”

“Of course. I know what these mean to you, and I’m honored you’d trust me with them. You’ve become quite an artist. Aidan would be proud.”

It felt like a dismissal, so she pushed her chair back from the desk. But Melvin’s eyes traveled instead to a spot over her shoulder. “Ah! You got my message. You’re just in time.”

Grace twisted in her chair and blinked in surprise at the tall, blond man standing in the doorway. “Henry? What are you doing here? When did you get back to London?” She looked between the two men, scowling halfheartedly at Melvin. “Did you set this up?”

Henry laughed and pressed Grace into a friendly squeeze. “Hey, Grace. In answer to your questions: I heard you were here, I moved back to London a year ago, and yes, of course he set this up.”

Melvin was grinning at both of them, evidently pleased at her reaction to the impromptu reunion. She took a seat in the far chair, leaving room for Henry to sit in the one she’d just vacated. “I don’t understand. I didn’t even know you two knew each other.”

“Melvin knows everyone,” Henry said. “But it was actually one of my old editors who called me. Melvin told him you might be moving back to England; he gave me a call; I got in touch with Melvin.
Et voilà
, here I am.”

“So, you quit too. You’re out.”

“Seemed like a good time. Ella is having a baby in the fall, and these days conflict isn’t the safest place to make a living when you have a family to support. Not that it ever was.”