Chapter 6
Opal woke just before dawn, the light beginning to glow through the white gauze billowing at her windows, unimpeded by the heavy burgundy curtains she had left open.
She slipped on one of the dresses she’d hurriedly thrown into the guest room wardrobe.
It was full-length black linen, with long petalled sleeves.
Debbie had teased that it looked like a wizard’s tunic, but today it felt appropriate, both mournful and mystical.
She wound her hair into a bun and adorned it with a deep green silk turban.
Saffie had gifted it to her last Christmas, one of the few times of the year that she set foot outside of Marrakech, where she’d taken up residence since her last, and presumably final, husband had died a decade earlier.
Opal had politely thanked her mother, thinking at the time that she would never wear such a thing.
But then she’d woken up that morning somehow a different woman, one who slept alone and enjoyed it, and who painted large naked portraits of men with huge phalluses.
She tiptoed down the stairs, the thought of bumping into Martin in this outfit driving her out the door in a flash.
She had decided last night, as she mixed those gruesome purples and slathered them on the canvas, that she was quite done explaining herself, or rather excusing herself.
Fuck Ruth, she was never going to have her grandchild, and fuck Martin, for everything.
It turned out he could be. Gareth answered the door after the fifth ring. Just as Opal had resigned herself to settling in the car and reading the paper until he awoke, his face appeared in the slim crack between door and frame.
‘Opal, what the fuck? I thought it was a Jehovah’s Witness or something.
I had half a mind to call the Old Bill.’ Only he and her mother called her by her full name, both out of stubbornness.
He was wearing a long deep Klein blue silk robe, and leather slippers the colour of a coconut husk.
His dark brown beard had started to reveal flecks of grey, and his hair was thinning.
He still looked gorgeous, though, with those deep brown eyes set atop his angular jaw, even with the shadow of sleep clouding his face.
‘Lovely to see you too, my darling.’ She leant in for a hug and after a second’s bewildered pause he relaxed into the embrace.
‘My love, are you OK?’ he whispered into her hair.
They rarely hugged, so the question was warranted.
In the almost twenty years they’d known each other, Opal could only remember them doing so a handful of times.
At his graduation maybe? The one that should have also been hers.
Or her wedding? He’d come down to be with her for a week or so after Emma went away; they must have embraced then.
He gently pushed her away, examining her face carefully. A smile cracked through the concern. ‘May I say that you are looking sensational today? This is quite the look, and dare I say, a little bohemian for you?’
Opal began with a chuckle, but it melted into something more like a sob. She brought her hand to her face quickly, as though maybe that would stop the flow of tears.
Inside, Gareth hurriedly cleared the kitchen counter of the assortment of empty glasses and began searching through the cupboards. Opal sat herself down on the sofa, dabbing sporadically at the cascade running down her cheeks.
‘Let me make you some tea. Oh, darling, what’s wrong?’ Gareth spoke to the inside of his cupboards, closing each one in turn when he couldn’t locate a mug.
‘It’s OK. Actually, if it’s not too much trouble, maybe something stronger than tea?’ Opal tried to keep the sniffle from her voice.
Gareth turned to her with a singular, perfectly plucked eyebrow raised. ‘Opal Fairfax, drinking before noon? The world really has turned on its head.’
She giggled. Gareth was a master in the art of compassion laced with levity.
‘I tell you what, why don’t I get changed, and then maybe we can go to the Rivoli for breakfast?’
Opal couldn’t imagine that the Ritz bar would be open at 8.30 in the morning, but she nodded anyway. She was in the mood to be influenced, preferably for the worse.
She listened as Gareth bounded up the stairs, any remnants of last night’s hangover gamely tossed aside at the prospect of hair of the dog.
She heard voices above her head. It hadn’t occurred to her on her drive down that Gareth might have company, but of course he did.
She hoped she might catch a glimpse of the young man before he scampered out the door, but even as she positioned herself against the counter opposite the doorway she only saw a flash of blonde hair and what looked like an exceedingly turquoise shirt dash into the view through the doorway into the hall.
‘Just a minute, Opal,’ Gareth called as he raced after the man.
More murmurs at the door and then a silence that sounded like a kiss.
The door slammed. Opal waited for Gareth to get ready.
When he came down the stairs in a deep green velvet shirt, she smiled, even though it was deeply inappropriate for the early summer weather.
‘How could a man not colour-match his ensemble to his accompanying lady’s turban?
’ He gave Opal a twirl and again she found herself giggling.
The pair linked arms. ‘To the Ritz!’ Gareth exclaimed as he locked his front door.