4
Back at the holiday cottage, Alex sat outside on the veranda strumming his guitar, Matt went to the kitchen to make a start on dinner, and Inga and I settled on the sofa with our cups of tea.
“I love Wales,” I said, gazing out the window at the view of the mountains.
“Me too,” Inga said. “Though I’m not sure I could live here. It rains too much. And besides, I’d always be thinking about Morgan Caddick.”
I smiled. Morgan Caddick had been one of our tutors at art college. He’d had a habit of creeping into our studios without us noticing, making us jump out of our skins when he suddenly appeared next to us. How’s it going, Lily?
“Remember how he was always pushing us to work from the life model?” Inga said. She adopted a stern expression, furrowing her eyebrows, attempting a Welsh accent. “Georgia O’Keeffe may have painted flowers because they were cheaper than engaging someone to pose for her, but we provide life classes free of charge for students here.”
“I’ve never believed that’s why O’Keeffe painted flowers,” I said, picturing her huge close-up pictures of irises and petunias. “At least, not the only reason anyway.”
“Hell no,” agreed Inga. “I mean, the woman painted flowers as if they were female anatomy—you know, female genitalia. She’d never have asked a model if she could do a close-up of her you-know-what, would she?”
I laughed. Inga could be such a little Puritan at times, which was hilarious, since, before the advent of Matt, her relationships had rarely lasted more than a few weeks.
I put on an all-purpose American accent, having no idea where Georgia O’Keeffe was from. “Excuse me, life model, would you mind if I painted a close-up of your vulva?”
“See?” said Inga, laughing. “She couldn’t do it, could she? I mean, what excuse would she give? The life model would think she was hitting on her.”
“It’s not that I’m in any way attracted to you, you understand,” I continued in the same accent, “or even that I think you have a particularly impressive vulva, but rather because I want to stand out in the overwhelmingly masculine world of art, and painting vulvas would be the perfect way to do that.”
Inga was laughing so hard she was writhing about on the sofa clutching her belly. “Oh, stop, stop. My tummy hurts.”
But I carried on. “Why, Ms. O’Keeffe, the very idea! I’m not putting my most intimate parts on display for all and sundry! The very idea of it. I suggest you paint flowers like any lady would.”
“She was exploring her sexuality, wasn’t she?” Inga said when she could speak properly again.
“Definitely. If she’d been born now, she’d just have experimented.”
“Which would be a loss to art. Her flower paintings are divine.”
“All her paintings are divine. I’ve always wanted to go and paint in New Mexico the way she did.”
“Well, sometime when we can afford to have more than baked beans on toast for our dinner, we’ll have to go.”
“You never have baked beans for dinner with Matt around. Besides, shouldn’t we be searching for our own messages instead of copying other artists?”
“I already know what my message is, though, don’t I?” said Inga, her exuberance suddenly gone. “Loss. Every bloody time I start something new, I think I’ve moved away from it, and there it is again. Pathetic, really.”
I knew she was thinking about her beloved father, and I squeezed her shoulder. “It’s not pathetic,” I said. “It’s brave.”
I wasn’t sure how brave with my art I was myself.
“You’re such a talent, Lily,” my tutor had told me once at art college. “You have the potential to be really great if you choose to be. But there’s something closed off about your work. It’s as if you’re hiding something. To really get somewhere, I think you have to find the courage to reveal yourself completely.”
She’d been dead right. My work did lack something. But nobody wanted to see my everything. Certainly not me.
“It’s boring to still be churning out work on the same old theme, not brave. I’ve got you lot. Honestly, I’d really like to move on. Sometimes I think ...”
“What?”
“That the only way to break free is to do something drastic.”
“Like what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Oh, don’t listen to me. I’m spouting rubbish, as per usual.” She yawned hugely, stretching her arms upward. “God, I’m bushed. Who thought a holiday in Wales could be so exhausting. I swear it was the strain of trying not to see that guy’s hairy wart on the train.”
I laughed. “It can’t have been that bad.”
“It bloody was! You weren’t there.”
I’d decided not to go on the mountain railway up Yr Wyddfa as we’d planned in case my fear of heights spoiled the experience for everyone else. When Alex heard I wasn’t going, he decided not to, either, and we’d gone boating instead. Inga, apparently, had been seated in a train compartment opposite a man with a huge growth on his chin, and she’d spent the whole time staring fixedly out the window to avoid looking at it.
“Didn’t you want to look out the window, anyway? For the views?”
“Not for a solid hour, no. Besides, there wasn’t much to see. It was really misty up there.”
“Poor guy.”
“Poor guy? He ought to get something done about it. I can’t believe anybody wants to look like that.” She gave a dramatic shudder. “You certainly had the right idea, lazing about in a bloody boat.”
“We weren’t lazing about; we were rowing.”
“I bet you didn’t do too much rowing. I bet you were lying back waiting for Alex to feed you grapes.”
“We got some cheese-and-onion pasties from the shop. Does that count? They were right out of grapes.”
“And that’s another thing that drives me crazy. You and Alex have been gorging yourself on cheese-and-onion pasties all afternoon, and you’ll still eat all your dinner. Neither of you ever puts any weight on. It’s sickening. I only need to look at a pastie to gain five pounds.”
“But you love us really, right?”
“To the bloody moon and back. Anyway, I’m going to have a lie down before we eat. I’m exhausted.”
She left, her bare feet slapping up the stairs. Outside on the veranda, Alex was still playing his guitar. I knew he’d stop if I went out there, so I went into the kitchen to join Matt.
“Was the guy’s wart as bad as Inga’s making out?”
Matt looked up from slicing onions. “I doubt if I’d even have noticed it without Inga pointing it out. I was too busy being wowed by the view.”
“She said it was misty.”
“It was cloud, not mist. And it was actually quite magical being above the clouds. It felt as if you could walk on them. When they parted for those few minutes, it was amazing to look through them to see the valley.”
“It sounds wonderful.”
“It was.”
“What can I do to help?”
“You could fry these onions while I dice the beef, if you like. We’re having stroganoff.”
“Sounds delicious. We can have fish and chips one night, though. Or eat out. You mustn’t think you’ve always got to cook.”
“I like cooking. It relaxes me.”
“You always seem relaxed to me, anyway.”
“Do I?”
I nodded. “You do.” He did. Matt was a constant. Reliable. Dependable. Slow to be riled. Not that he was boring; anything but. You just knew where you were with Matt, and that was important to me. If I were ever to have a problem, I could go to him with it, I knew that. I could go to Alex, too, of course, but Alex was different. Restless, always on the lookout for the next activity, never quite able to sit still. Which was one of the reasons I hadn’t wanted to interrupt his guitar playing. Working tunes out on his guitar was one of the things that did absorb him.
“I’ve been thinking about possibly making some changes, actually,” Matt said suddenly, taking me by surprise.
I looked round at him. “Oh? Like what?”
“I’ve applied for a new job. In London.”
My stomach jolted. I’d only just been thinking about how important our friendship was to me, and now here it was, all about to change. Of course it was. Had I forgotten the lessons from my childhood? You couldn’t depend on anything.
“I’m not sure if I’ll take it if I’m offered it,” he continued, “but I thought I’d keep my options open, you know?”
I didn’t believe he meant that. Maybe he thought he did, but I was pretty sure he’d accept the job if he was offered it.
“Wow. What does Inga think about it?”
“She thinks I should take it. In her mind, it’s already as good as mine. She’s definitely up for coming with me.” He saw my face. “She didn’t mention it to you, then. Sorry. Maybe she was waiting until she had something definite to say. It’s all pie in the sky at the moment.”
“Sure,” I said. “That’ll be it.” I tried not to mind, knowing Inga probably hadn’t wanted to hurt me unnecessarily. She could hardly base her life decisions on whether I’d miss her or not, could she? We weren’t joined at the hip. But suddenly, what she’d just said about needing to do something drastic to break free made perfect sense. She’d been talking about moving to London with Matt. Inga and Matt, both gone. I couldn’t imagine it. Stupid, so stupid to have taken their presence in my life for granted.
“Well, good luck,” I said, as lightly as I could. “I hope you get the job. When will you know?”
“Probably when we get home. The interview was a few days before we came away. They said they’d let me know in a week or so.”
“It’s very exciting,” I said, stirring the onions in the pan, making sure to get all the pieces that were sticking to the sides.
“Daunting, too, I must confess. But it was always going to be the only real way to develop my career, to work in London. We’ll miss you and Alex, though, if we do go.”
“We’ll miss you too.” I turned again, making myself smile, refusing to think about how lonely I’d be without them. “But there are trains, right? We can visit. You can show us round London.”
“You probably know London better than I do. You and Inga are always there taking in exhibitions.”
The door opened, and Alex came in. I glanced at him but saw no signs that he’d overheard my conversation with Matt.
“I think I’ll have a snooze before dinner,” he said to me. “Fancy joining me?”
I looked over at Matt. “Feel free,” he said. “I can manage here.”
Alex and I went upstairs and lay down on the bed. As we kissed, I was thinking about Matt’s news, trying to imagine what it would be like with them gone.
When we started to make love, my mind wasn’t really on it.
“Sorry,” I told Alex. “I guess I’m tired after all that rowing.”
“You hardly did any rowing,” he protested, but he pulled back good humouredly, cradling me against him. “Have you ever thought what it would have been like if you’d ended up with Matt instead of me?” he said next, taking me by complete surprise.
I turned to look at him. “Whyever would you ask that?”
He shrugged. “The two of you have a sort of ease with each other.”
It was true, we did. We always had. “We all love each other, don’t we?”
“Sure. But I love you and Matt the most. Inga’s sort of like an irritating little sister.”
I laughed. “You’re crazy about her. So is Matt.”
“He seems to be. And what about you? Are you crazy about me?”
I wasn’t fooled by his casual, jokey tone of voice. For all his outgoing personality, I’d seen quite early on how fundamentally insecure Alex was. And even if I hadn’t, his mother made sure I knew.
“You won’t break Alex’s heart, will you, Lily?” she’d said one afternoon shortly after our first meeting, when Alex and his dad were in the living room watching football. “I can see how much he cares about you, and, if you don’t mind me saying, I sense a sadness about you. Some secret sorrow you’ve yet to deal with.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. For one thing, I hadn’t realised I was so transparent, and for another, it wasn’t what you’d expect the mother of the boy you’ve only been dating for three months to say. So, I ignored what she’d said about me—because I didn’t know her, and there were limits—and just said casually, “We’re still just getting to know each other, Janice.”
She smiled, squeezing my shoulder. “Sorry, I know this is awkward. Alex would be furious if he knew I’d said anything. Some—his dad in particular—would say I overprotect him. Perhaps he’s right. But old habits die hard. Alex may be a man now, but he’s still my baby.”
I racked my brains for what Alex with his middle-class, happy-family background had needed protecting from and couldn’t think of a thing. “If it helps,” I said, “I don’t have any plans to hurt Alex.”
“You know I adore you,” I said to Alex now, and I suspected that, with Inga and Matt gone, we were about to become even more important to each other. But I still didn’t mention anything about Matt’s news, and it occurred to me that I was doing exactly what his mother had always done—protecting him.
The way I’d always protected my sister. Until the day I hadn’t.