The Very Picture of You (16 page)

I decided that Mum had been right. I would now make the deliberate and rational choice
not
to fall in love with my sister’s husband-to-be. For the remaining sittings Nate and I would have a pleasant but purely professional relationship, after which we’d default to the friendly rapport expected of us as in-laws.

‘Good.’ I swung my legs out of bed. ‘Got that sorted.’

I quickly showered and dressed. As I picked up my mobile I saw that another message had come in overnight from my father. With a sinking heart, I opened it.

Dear Ella, I hope you received my message of a fortnight ago.

‘I did.’

I realise that you may not wish to respond.

‘I don’t.’

But this is to let you know the dates that I’m going to be in London in case you do decide that you’d like to meet up. I’ll be there for four days from 23 May.

I felt my pulse quicken.

It would mean so much to me if I could see you.

A wave of anger ran through me. ‘It would have meant so much to
me
if I could have seen
you
anytime in the last thirty years!’

In the meantime here’s my mobile phone number – and a photo.

Sincerely,
Your father

‘My
ex
-father,’ I muttered. At least he hadn’t signed off as ‘Daddy’ or ‘Dad’.

I read the message six or seven times. Then, with a shaking hand, I opened the attachment.

I felt a sudden ‘thud’ in my ribcage as I saw myself,
aged about four, standing hand in hand on a beach somewhere with a man I knew instantly was my father. I was wearing a blue-and-white striped dress and was squinting into the late afternoon sun, my short brown hair whipped by the breeze. My father, barefoot, in knee-length shorts and a casual shirt, was dark-haired and powerfully built with broad shoulders – a big, handsome man. In the hand that wasn’t holding mine, he held a red spade while, behind us, on a yellow towel were a picnic basket and a white sunhat. I had no idea where we were, but knew that the photo had been taken by my mother because in the foreground I could see her shadow stretching towards us across the pale sand.

I realised with a shock that this was the only photograph of my father that I’d ever seen. I consoled myself with the thought that he’d loved me enough to keep it; but sending it to me now was just an act of manipulation. I scrolled down to ‘options’.
Delete message?

I hesitated: then on his left hand I spotted his wedding ring gleaming in the sunshine. I exhaled, closed my eyes, then touched
Yes
…

I thought I’d feel relieved; instead I felt upset – so much so that I then tried to retrieve the photo but couldn’t. With a rising sense of panic I ran up to the studio and yanked open the bottom drawer of my desk. From the back of it I pulled out a large white envelope, the edges of which were yellowed with age. I lifted the flap and slid out the drawing of my father – the one that I’d never been able to throw away. It was very much like him, I now saw. I must have been pleased with it because I’d signed it. And I was just trying to work out how old I would have been when I’d sketched it – nine
or ten – when I heard a car pulling up. I looked out of the window and saw Mike parking his BMW. I quickly put the drawing back in its envelope, returned it to my desk then ran down and opened the door.

‘Hi, Mike.’ I was glad to have the distraction of the sitting.

‘Morning, Ella.’ He locked his car then came in.

‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’

‘No. Thanks. I’m fine.’

As he took off his jacket I grimaced. ‘You forgot to wear the blue jumper.’

He groaned. ‘Sorry – but I’ve got
so
much on my mind.’

‘Of course, but the next sitting will be the last one, so I’ll text you the day before to remind you about it, okay?’

‘Sure…’

We went up to the studio and I got Mike’s canvas out of the rack and put it on the easel. As I mixed the colours we chatted about the election, the date of which had at last been announced. ‘That must be a relief.’

‘It is,’ he answered wearily. He sat in the chair. ‘But it’s going to be tough.’

I squeezed a little Prussian blue on to the palette. ‘But you have a big majority, haven’t you?’

‘I do, but I can’t take anything for granted.’

Now Mike talked about the opinion polls and about how hard he found the door-to-door canvassing, having to persuade and cajole. ‘I feel like a Jehovah’s Witness,’ he said ruefully. ‘Only less welcome.’

‘I don’t know.’ I thought of Celine. ‘Some people are quite pleased to have the Jehovah’s Witnesses turn up.’

‘Maybe… and who else are you painting at the moment?’

‘A beautiful French woman – but it’s been a battle as she doesn’t
want
to be painted.’ I imagined Celine and I locked in combat over the canvas.

Mike looked puzzled. ‘Why doesn’t she?’

‘She says she finds sitting frustrating, which in some ways it
is
, but…’ I shrugged, not wanting to add that I believed that there was more to it than that. ‘Then I’m painting a very elegant Englishwoman who’s in her eighties.’ I thought about how much I was looking forward to seeing Iris again, but it wouldn’t be for at least another week as Sophia had phoned me to say that her mother had a bad cold. ‘I’m also painting my sister’s fiancé.’ I felt my face flush. ‘And I’m still working on the portrait of my mum.’ I nodded at her canvas, leaning against the wall. ‘It’s almost finished now.’

Mike turned to it. ‘She’s beautiful.’ He cocked his head to one side. ‘Her expression’s interesting.’

‘What do you see?’ I asked, out of curiosity.

‘She looks… guarded.’

‘She does look a bit guarded, that’s true.’ I dipped the brush in the turps.

‘I mean secretive,’ he mused. ‘As though she’s hiding something.’

‘Oh….’ I looked at the painting again. ‘Well… I don’t see that.’ Now I regretted having asked Mike for his opinion – what did
he
know? ‘I don’t do proper sittings with her,’ I explained. ‘She usually pops in for half an hour after she’s been teaching at the English National Ballet School. She’s going to be there tomorrow, so we’ll do a bit more.’

‘So you’re busy,’ Mike remarked.

‘Yes, pleasantly so.’ I studied the tip of his nose, then added a highlight to its painted counterpart. ‘And I’ve just been commissioned to do a posthumous portrait.’

‘Really? They must be… strange.’

I picked up a smaller brush. ‘I’m about to find out. I’ve never done one before – I’ve always avoided them because they’re rather sad and probably quite tricky, technically. In fact, when I was first approached I said no.’

‘What made you change your mind?’

‘Because I read a tribute to the person who’d died – her friends had each contributed one word that they felt encapsulated this girl. It… touched me and for some reason I don’t seem able to stop thinking about her.’

I felt the tension in the room tighten. ‘So who… was she?’

As I told Mike he closed his eyes for a moment, as though he’d just been given bad news.

‘There’s been quite a bit about her death in the press,’ I said. ‘You must have seen it.’

The chair creaked as Mike turned away. ‘Yes…’

‘It’s so hard for her family, not least because they still don’t know how it happened – or why she was cycling through Fulham Broadway at that time of day, given that she didn’t live or work anywhere near there.’

Now I thought of my meeting with Grace’s uncle. A quiet man in his late fifties, he’d come to the studio the day before and had talked to me about Grace for a couple of hours. He told me that she’d lived in Chiswick and had taught at a primary school in Bedford Park. He’d brought with him four photo albums – two that had been hers and two that belonged to her parents.

I’d looked at pictures of Grace on the swings aged three, smiling gappily at five, riding her new bike at six, on a brown pony at eight, starting secondary school at eleven, atop Mount Snowdon at fourteen, arm in arm with friends in her graduation robes, and on a sunny day last September on the steps of her school, surrounded by the children she’d taught.

‘It was a hit-and-run,’ I said to Mike.

The corners of his mouth clenched. ‘They don’t know that. The driver might have had no idea what had happened.’

‘Surely he would have realised what he’d done.’

‘Why do you say “he”?’ Mike snapped.

‘Well…’ Mike’s tone had taken me aback.

‘How do you
know
it was a “he”?’

‘I…
don’t.
’ I conceded. My heart was thudding.

‘Whoever it was…’ Mike’s sudden anger had vanished and now he just looked distressed, ‘…they might very well
not
have known.’ He was blinking rapidly, as though trying to work something out. ‘Especially as it happened in the dark.’

I exhaled. ‘That’s true. The wing mirror might have just clipped her, and helmets don’t always offer enough protection in a bad fall.’ Mike nodded, dismally. ‘But they’re trying to enhance the CCTV: apparently the images were very grainy and they don’t have the registration number, but there are things that they can do …to… anyway.’ I dipped the brush in the white spirit. ‘That’s my latest commission – Grace.’

A mournful look came into Mike’s eyes as silence fell.

I had no idea what to make of Mike’s intensity. He was clearly already on edge, but he also seemed… defensive.
As I continued painting him, a shiver ran through me. Perhaps he
did
know what had happened to Grace. After all, he often drove through Fulham Broadway, and he had a black BMW. I’d thought about that, but had dismissed it as coincidence; but perhaps it had been
his
car that had struck her, and he’d had no idea at the time, only realising afterwards from the media coverage…

That would explain his turmoil. He’d be horrified at what he’d done, and he’d be dreading what the enhanced CCTV tape might reveal. He’d be in terror, too, at the thought of the newspaper headlines, given that he was an MP – and on a transport committee – a protector of cyclists. He’d be vilified for failing to stop. He might face criminal charges. This would destroy his career; if not his life…

As my mind raced through this scenario I remembered that Mike had abruptly cancelled his sittings at the end of January, a couple of days after Grace had died. The e-mail he’d sent me saying that he’d ‘suddenly got very busy’ had been so incoherent that when I’d read it I’d thought that he must have been drunk. Now he was a shadow of the big, happy, self-confident man whom I’d started to paint less than four months ago. And he’d cried at a sad song on the radio. He was clearly under huge emotional strain. Perhaps that was why he’d seen what he had in my mother’s face – because of what he himself was desperately trying to conceal.

He exhaled, painfully. ‘So… have you started the painting?’

‘Erm, no, not yet.’ I felt awkward now, discussing the commission with Mike, but he seemed to want to know about it. ‘First I need to get some feeling for who Grace
was. I have photos of her.’ Mike flinched. ‘But I want the portrait to be more than just a likeness: I want it to capture Grace’s spirit. But as I never met her, that isn’t going to be easy.’

‘No,’ Mike agreed quietly. ‘It’s going to be hard.’

‘I can only stay for half an hour,’ Mum announced when she arrived that afternoon. ‘I’ve
so
much to do. It’s unending,’ she added, with a curious blend of satisfaction and annoyance. She slipped off her coat and handed it to me. ‘The invitations have gone off to be printed,’ she said as I hung it up. ‘I’ve decided to enclose RSVP cards; people can be shockingly casual, even about weddings. Will you help me write them?’ she added as we went upstairs.

‘Sure. I’ll come over with my calligraphy pen.’ I pushed on the studio door. ‘So how many people are you inviting?’

‘Two hundred and ten.’

‘Good God!’

‘Well, there are people who’ve invited us to
their
children’s weddings, and of course Nate has a very large family.’ I imagined his sisters, lined up like Russian dolls. ‘Chloë has a lot of friends,’ Mum went on, ‘plus she wants to invite some of her colleagues, so it’s not hard to get up to that kind of figure.’ She went over to the wall mirror and checked her appearance. ‘Luckily, we
can
accommodate that number as the garden’s so big.’ She opened her bag and took out her gold compact. ‘But it’s nice to make a bit of a statement.’

‘Is it?’ I asked as she reapplied her lipstick.

‘Yes.’ She snapped the compact shut. ‘It is.’ She put
it back in her bag then glanced around the studio. ‘It’s looking nice up here, Ella – less of a jumble.’

‘I’ve tidied up.’ I unhooked my apron and put it on. ‘Oh, well done,’ I added as Mum took off her cardigan. ‘You remembered to wear the silk shirt.’

‘I’m amazed that I did as I’ve
so
much to think about.’ She shook her head as if to stop it spinning, then she sat down, lifted her chin, and laid her left hand on her chest.

My mother was still every inch the prima ballerina. She didn’t just ‘sit’ in a chair – she folded herself into it, ensuring that there was a graceful ‘line’ to her body, that her limbs were positioned harmoniously and that her head was at an elegant angle to her neck.

‘I’m
very
upset with the organist,’ she confided.

I adjusted the blind. ‘Why’s that?’

‘He’s trying to insist that we have Purcell’s “Trumpet Tune”, but I’ve heard it at
so
many weddings.’

I returned to the easel. ‘It’s joyful though.’

Mum inclined her head. ‘That’s true. And Chloë’s wedding is going to be
very
joyful.’

I felt the skewer turn in my heart. ‘It is.’ For everyone except me, I reflected, then felt ashamed at the thought.

‘But I’m putting my foot down about the Widor Toccata.’

I picked up my palette. ‘That
is
over-used. Could you look this way?’