Chapter 17
TARA
Anastasia had been a customer at The Chocolate Pot for about a year but our conversations had always been snatched, typically revolving around the weather and how busy or slow business was.
I’d always liked her and had suspected we’d be friends if we had more time to chat, but the opportunity had never arisen.
I was therefore really looking forward to spending some quality time with her this evening and loved that Jed had suggested it.
Having spent so many years on my own, feeling lonely and ignoring my birthday, I hated the thought of somebody else doing the same.
‘If her watercolours are as good as the photos suggested, will you stock them in the gallery?’ I asked Jed as we drove towards Little Sandby, the smell of a takeaway from The Bombay Palace making my stomach rumble.
‘Yes, if she’ll let me. I always wanted Yorkshire’s Best to be a celebration of local talent.
The crafts were the starting point and the plan was to find a couple of artists with different styles to me but whose work would complement mine.
Anastasia’s watercolours would be perfect – locally set, different medium, different style but still with that warm and cosy feeling. ’
Anastasia’s cottage overlooked the village church and, even in the darkness, I could tell how pretty it was. Jed retrieved the bag of food while I reached for a bouquet of flowers, a box of chocolates from Charlee’s Chocolates, a large card and a ‘forty’ helium balloon.
‘Happy birthday!’ I declared when Anastasia opened the door.
She led us into her lounge and her eyes glistened as I handed over her gifts. When she opened the card and spotted the signatures and messages from a stack of the Castle Street traders which one of my full-timers, Sue, had gathered for me across the afternoon, she burst into tears.
‘Nobody’s ever done anything like this for me,’ she said. ‘I can’t thank you both enough.’
While Jed headed into the kitchen to warm up the food in the oven, Anastasia displayed the card on a shelving unit in her lounge. There were only two others, conveying a sense of loneliness which I recognised all too well.
‘They’re from my mum in Cyprus and my best friend in Inverness,’ she said.
‘How long has your mum lived in Cyprus?’ I asked.
‘About a decade now. My parents loved going there on holiday and it was their dream to retire there. Dad passed away three years ago but they’d made so many friends there that Mum decided to stay.’
‘You never fancied joining her?’
‘I fly out a couple of times a year and I can see why she loves it but somewhere sunny all year round isn’t for me. I love the changing seasons.’
‘And your best friend?’
‘Fiona and I were at school together in London but she didn’t get on well with her parents so, when it came to choosing a university, she went for Aberdeen – as far away from them as possible.
She met her husband there and they run a hotel together in Inverness.
We haven’t seen each other for years but we have a video chat occasionally, which is nice, although…
’ A couple of tears spilled down her cheeks.
‘What have you done to me tonight? I’m a blubbering wreck. ’
‘You’re among friends so feel free to cry as much as you like.’ I gave her a gentle smile. ‘What was the end of that sentence?’
She wiped her tears and blew her nose. ‘I was about to say that it’s been about three years since the last time we talked. There’s always so much for Fiona to do with the hotel and she has four kids so they take a lot of her time and I don’t have kids or a demanding career…’
‘And you feel like you don’t have so much in common with her anymore?’ I suggested after she tailed off.
‘Exactly. Our lives went in different directions. Neither of us ever wanted kids but then she met Angus and he came from this big loving family and she realised that was what she wanted. She kept saying I’d change my mind when I met the right person but I didn’t want kids because I don’t like children.
They’re loud and sticky and needy and… I’m going to stop talking because you must think I’m a terrible person. ’
‘Not at all. Children aren’t for everyone.’
‘Do you have kids?’ she asked.
‘The opportunity never arose. Should we see how Jed’s getting on and put those flowers in some water?’ It was a deflection but it would be disrespectful to have that conversation with Anastasia when I hadn’t yet discussed it with Jed.
I’d never seen Jed eat so quickly, but I knew why. He was desperate to get into Anastasia’s studio.
‘I’m stupidly nervous about showing you my watercolours,’ she said as she cleared the plates away. ‘But I guess we’d better get it over with. Follow me.’
She put an outside light on, unlocked the kitchen door and led us along some flagstones to a large outbuilding.
‘I came down earlier and spread some of them around so it looks pretty haphazard,’ she warned as she opened the door and switched on the lights.
I wasn’t an expert like Jed but I could recognise talent when I saw it.
Jed and I both moved around Anastasia’s studio, studying the canvases she’d displayed on easels, hung from the walls and dispersed around the room.
Many of her settings were instantly recognisable and she explained that others were intended to give a sense of the area.
All featured beautiful wildflowers and grasses.
‘I love gardening,’ she explained, ‘so I can’t resist including flowers in my paintings, even if they’re not there in the real settings.’
Jed peered more closely at one of the larger watercolours on an easel, shaking his head. ‘These are superb,’ he said as he straightened up and looked at Anastasia. ‘I’m so frustrated for you that you’ve spent years believing you couldn’t paint when you have so much talent.’
‘You really think they’re good?’ she asked, her eyes filling with tears once more.
‘Way more than good.’
‘You liked the photos but I thought you’d be disappointed when you saw the real thing.’
‘I can see the movement in the originals, hear the sounds of the sea, the swaying of the flowers, the cries of the birds.’
‘Me too,’ I added. ‘I feel like I’m there. I’m glad you didn’t let your ex’s stupid comments stop you from painting.’
‘I did at first but, a couple of years after we split up, I went for a walk through the woods just outside the village. The bluebells were out and looking spectacular and I had this sudden compulsion to paint them.’
At the back of the studio were several rows of canvases of varying sizes propped up against the wall. Anastasia rummaged through them and pulled one out.
‘This was the result.’ She held up the most stunning watercolour showing a carpet of bluebells trailing down to a lake surrounded by trees.
‘Breathtaking,’ I said. ‘This is a real place?’
‘Yes, a mile north of here.’
‘I’ll have to visit. It’s beautiful.’
‘Mum and Dad often took me to those woods when I was a kid,’ Jed said, ‘so I’m way overdue a visit. I’ll take you.’
Jed wanted to rummage through the rows of watercolours and, while Anastasia had no problem with him doing that, she said it felt weird watching him so we left him in the studio and returned to the house for a hot drink.
‘When did you split up with your husband?’ I asked.
‘Seven years gone September. He left me but, looking back at our marriage now, I realise I should have left him long before that. If I’d had any inkling of what he was really like, I’d never have married him in the first place but he was so charming and I was at the point in my life when everyone I knew seemed to be settling down. I wanted the fairy tale too.’
Sensing she wanted to talk, I asked her how she’d met Calvin.
‘On holiday in Ibiza. I was twenty-eight at the time and working at the gallery in London. One of my work colleagues was meant to be going away with her boyfriend but they’d split up and she was looking for someone to take his place.
We didn’t know each other very well but I felt sorry for her so I said I’d go.
The first night we were there, she hooked up with this guy and I barely saw her for the rest of the holiday.
One day I went on a coach trip on my own and sat next to Calvin.
We got talking and spent the rest of the holiday together.
Saying goodbye broke my heart and we both promised to make the distance thing work but it wasn’t easy.
I missed him like crazy so, in the New Year, I left the job I loved and moved to Whitsborough Bay to be with him.
We got married that summer, a year after meeting, and it was all so exciting and romantic until the real Calvin emerged – the man who was controlling, opinionated, misogynistic. ’
She paused to take a sip of her tea and my heart went out to her because I could completely relate to marrying a man you believed to be charming and loving only to discover it was a facade and the person behind the mask was someone you wouldn’t touch with a bargepole.
‘Calvin didn’t want me to get a job,’ she said.
‘I was okay with that at first. I’d given my heart and soul to the gallery and it was nice being able to recharge my batteries.
The problem was, he worked full time and I was soon bored.
His house was dated so I offered to make that my project but he wouldn’t invest in anything more than a few tins of paint.
I did what I could but it didn’t take long to paint a few rooms. His garden was overgrown and he’d had a few complaints from the neighbours about it so he gave me a bigger budget to sort that out which is what got me into gardening but, once that was done, I was bored again.
I’d dabbled with watercolours in the past but, when I started working at the gallery, I didn’t have time to do them.
Now I had all the time in the world so I got back into that and I was really proud of my work… at first.’
‘Until Calvin criticised it?’ I asked.