Cuckoo (aka Claire, Darling)

Chapter Ten

Chapter Ten

Inside the drawer are hundreds of paper animals, swans and turtles, butterflies and squirrels. Tiny, carefully folded pieces of paper, each carrying a message for me. They’re the notes that Noah leaves for me, dotted around the flat at random.

You look beautiful!

I’d found that one beneath the bathroom mirror one morning, on a small origami bird.

Happy wife, happy life!

That one had been a tiny fox, placed on top of a box of chocolates I’d returned home to one day when I was on my period, shortly after our engagement.

I love you!

An origami rabbit I’d found left on my bedside table. So many messages of affection, of kindness and caring, all kept lovingly in this drawer.

Have an amazing day!

Good luck with your work presentation– you’re a star!

Popped out for a pint, home soon– can’t wait to cuddle!

Date night tomorrow? X

I stare at them, trying to work out how these beautiful little relationship receipts can come from the same man who lies about going to work every day. But I can’t connect the two. There must be a rational explanation for why he hid the news about his job from me. Perhaps he was having problems at work that he didn’t want to worry me about. Maybe he’d even been fired and that was why he was on gardening leave. But then why would he not just reply to my calls and texts, let me know the reason why?

With a sigh, I scoop all the notes up and out of the drawer, dumping them onto the kitchen table.

Another piece of paper in there catches my eye. It’s the ad for my job, which Noah had found and printed out for me, left unsubtly on the kitchen table all those months ago. I scrunch the ad up in my hands and throw it towards the bin, not checking if it meets its target.

Peering into the drawer to check it’s totally empty, I see a little figurine stuck right at the back. I reach in and carefully prise it out, realising that something must have spilt onto it at some point, because it’s all tacky and sticky to the touch. It’s a lizard made out of clay, all wonky and out of shape, with cracks in the surface and bits of fluff stuck to it.

I smile and put it by the sink so I’ll remember to try and get it clean again later.

I was twelve years old when I made that silly little figurine. While Mother was going through a real Frida Kahlo phase, she decided that I had ‘artistic flair’ and found me a private art tutor. It was one of the best things she ever did for me. I adored going to this bizarre, flamboyant woman’s home once a week, ogling her collections of jewels and trinkets with amazement. Her name was Katya, and she was both wondrous and inspiring to my shy, pre-teen self.

‘What bold use of lines, Claire! Bravo!’ she exclaimed one day when I took a stab at acrylic paints for the first time, swooping my brush across the canvas with a newfound confidence nurtured by her encouragement.

‘You have a fantastic eye, Claire. Many other students don’t have this natural skill, it’s something very special,’ she said another time, sipping on her lemon tea with a pleased smile.

These brief words of praise I held close to my heart. They warmed me from the inside out. Katya’s home felt like a magical safe haven for me, a place where I could laugh and express myself, drink tea and play grown-ups with this amazing woman who taught me more about happiness than she did about art.

We’d have tea and biscuits and she’d show me how to mix watercolours, then teach me how to set up a still-life scene using a variety of her bizarre and curious artefacts. Ammonites and quartz crystal pendants, scratched old pocket-watches and paper flowers; Katya’s home was full of creativity and imagination, innovation and originality. ‘Fruit bowls are overdone and unwelcome here,’ she would announce with a smoker’s laugh, waving around an African mask she’d sourced from a junk shop in Notting Hill before adding it carefully to our mise en scène .

Never one for convention, Katya had a pet lizard. It was a bearded dragon called Caitlyn, and I had initially been afraid of the strange, scaly creature. But after several weeks of having Caitlyn’s beady little eyes watching me from her glass tank, I eventually came to find comfort in her presence.

I’d turned up to Katya’s one day to find the lizard lounging lazily on the kitchen table, a mixing bowl of flour in front of her.

‘Today, Claire, we are going to be trying our hand at the art of sculpture,’ Katya announced.

I eyed Caitlyn warily, but the lizard lay there peacefully, occasionally blinking but all in all looking as though she had absolutely no intention of moving anywhere at all.

‘It’s like mixing up a magical potion– all you need is a little salted flour and water… and poof!’ Katya liberally splashed some water into the mixing bowl at that point. ‘Home-made clay!’

I watched in fascination as the flour turned into a sticky then smooth clay, which Katya kneaded on the table with quick, expert hands beside the very unimpressed lizard.

‘I don’t know what to make,’ I told her when she dropped a ball in front of me, several little picks and instruments laid out for me to use.

‘Well, Caitlyn’s not here on vacation, Claire! She’s here to be your model and muse! Every sculptor needs a good muse, after all,’ she told me with a smile.

And so we spent that afternoon sitting at her kitchen table, rolling and kneading and poking and prodding at our clay until I had a very lumpy-looking rendition of a lizard, which Katya praised to the skies. Her sculpture, on the other hand, looked like something that a museum might display in the reptile section, though she assured me that mine was ‘an astounding use of technique for a first try’.

The next week I returned to my Caitlyn sculpture, by then fully dried and ready to paint. I’d gone for bright pink with yellow spots and spikes, which Katya assured me was an ‘inspired decision’. We laughed together, music playing, and she taught me how to stipple with a brush for texture, and to paint tiny scales using the edge of a brush for a realistic effect. It was wonderful.

The following week was the last time I saw Katya. Mother had driven me there as usual, but when we knocked on the door, there was no response. I stiffened, immediately concerned. Katya was always home. Mother sighed impatiently, knocking on the door several more times before tapping her toe histrionically.

‘Let’s wait in the car,’ she eventually suggested. The air around us had turned cold and brittle. Katya’s car was not in the drive.

Five agonisingly slow minutes passed before we heard the crunch of tyres on gravel and Katya’s car turned in to her driveway. She had her window rolled down. Mother lowered hers to match.

‘I’m so, so sorry! I was caught in traffic and—’

‘You have wasted my time,’ Mother interrupted, her face dark with anger. ‘How dare you not be here on time for us when we are paying good money? You’ve let my daughter down!’

‘I’m sorry, it won’t happen again… the roads were so icy.’

‘Too right it won’t happen again. We won’t be coming back, you can be sure of that!’ Mother shouted, spittle flying from her mouth as she rolled up her window and pulled away from Katya’s house.

I turned to look back at Katya, clutching my painted lizard in my hands as we drove away from the one house where I’d felt at home.

I never did learn how to glaze my sculpture.