Chapter 16
Noah couldn’t get to sleep. Part of the reason was because the mattress was too soft.
At home his mother insisted that for a healthy back, you needed a plank of wood covering the bed slats and only a thin foam mattress over the top.
He’d grown used to it. Here, though, in Opal Fairfax’s guest bedroom, he felt as though he was floating in just not salty enough water, and his limbs were sinking away from the rest of his body.
The other reason he couldn’t sleep? The thrill.
He’d done it; one of his harebrained schemes had actually worked out.
Not only that but once he’d arrived he had felt as though this was exactly where he was meant to be.
Seeing Gareth standing in the kitchen had startled him.
He hadn’t game-planned for that. Gareth was only supposed to be the fixer.
Noah hadn’t banked on him popping up at the retreat itself.
But it had only taken the shortest of walks from the front door for Opal to fall under his spell.
He chuckled to himself now in the dark. A spell that made him sound like a sorcerer, a nefarious one, but really he was just making the most of the one God-given skill set he had to get ahead, as most people did.
He could only have dreamed how responsive Opal would be to his latest concoction.
He’d dabbed it behind his ears and in the crooks of his elbows as he sat in the rattling train toilet he’d holed up in to avoid paying the train fare.
And Gareth was already so drunk that Opal had taken his protestations about ‘having no idea who this man was’ as some sort of perverse joke.
‘So you mean to say this complete stranger has made up knowing you and your gallery and then risked a journey from Birmingham to turn up at my door and take part in an artists’ retreat that’s never been publicised?
’ Gareth shrugged and replied, ‘Well it seems you refuse to take my word for it, so I’ll stop wasting my breath.
’ That was a stroke of luck. Especially considering how close Opal unwittingly was to the truth.
What both she and Gareth were wrong about, though, was that Noah had never met Gareth before.
In fact Noah had been to Toad on almost every visit he had made to London over the past year.
Gareth was usually there, although more often than not he was sharing a glass of champagne with a prospective buyer rather than paying attention to the scruffy riff-raff coming in to ‘just have a look around’.
Noah obviously fell into the latter category.
In his fraying stonewash jeans paired with those pastel polo tops his mother still insisted on buying him, he did not scream ‘looking to expand my private collection’.
And so to Gareth he was essentially invisible.
Maybe that wasn’t quite fair, though, because there was another type of person that Gareth noticed, and that was artists.
Or rather his artists. It had been just another stroke of luck on that particular Saturday afternoon that Johan had come in to discuss his next exhibition at Toad, at the same time as Noah was hanging around.
He hadn’t intended to eavesdrop, but he’d always been a nosy person, and there was something about the hushing of their voices that drew him in, instinctively.
He’d heard Gareth make the proposition: six weeks, Fairfax Manor, an artists’ retreat run by his dear friend Opal and the chance to win 75k at the end of it. ‘By invite only’. It was all Noah needed. On the train back home he’d written that letter and sent it first class the next morning.
This is exactly why he had to come to London.
His parents didn’t understand. ‘Birmingham,’ they said.
‘It’s the second city. There’s nothing you can get in London that you can’t get here.
’ But that afternoon, standing within earshot of that particularly important conversation in Toad, Noah felt vindicated.
London was where the opportunity was, where the money was. Where being an artist meant something.
He hadn’t had the heart to tell his mum that he’d wangled this chance through illegitimate means.
As far as she knew, her son’s exceptional talents had been so glaring that a single conversation with the right person had culminated in this offer of a lifetime.
She’d been proud of him, even more than usual.
His father had needed more convincing. They had given him the money for the train all the way down but he’d used all of it to buy himself a silk shirt in Camden Market on the stopover.
He needed to look the part, to get away with the final stage of his plan.
It had been a gamble to jump into a taxi at Cambridge station with not a penny to his name, but by that point he felt that the gods were somehow on his side.
He’d gotten this far; how much of a stretch would it be to assume that Opal would offer to pay the cab fare once he was already standing on her doorstep?
And she had done, without question; though Noah had been ready with some hammed-up tale about getting his wallet stolen at King’s Cross.
So here he was, sleeping, or at least trying to, in the manor.
He’d made it. Now all he had to do was win, and then he could finally move out of his parents’ place, and get himself a studio in London.
He’d actually get invited to all the parties, instead of having to blag his way in and then stand in the corner and hope he could make small talk with enough of the guests to look like he actually knew someone there.
A light knock at the door made Noah sit up. That was the problem with always ending up in places that you weren’t technically invited to; it was hard not to feel constantly on edge.
‘Hello?’ Noah called out warily.
The crack of light from the hallway widened and revealed Opal standing in the doorway. She was wearing a sage green silk kimono. Noah could make out the outline of her breast. She leant against the frame and crossed her arms, but not before he spotted her nipples hardened under the fine fabric.
‘I just wanted to check if … you had settled in OK?’ Opal sounded unsure of herself.
‘Yes, fine thank you.’ It felt strange speaking in the dark so Noah leant over to turn on the bedside lamp. Now, though, he was aware that his bare chest was on show. It was his turn to cross his arms protectively.
‘I’m sorry to bother you. I hope you weren’t asleep.’ Opal’s hair was wound into curlers, but one rebellious strand tumbled down the nape of her neck and onto her collarbone. Noah wondered what it would smell like to rest his face there.
‘I wasn’t, don’t worry; I was just thinking about what a beautiful home you have.
’ It was true, but Noah was also on the charm offensive.
At some point it was bound to become obvious that Gareth had not invited him.
Maybe Johan would remember him? Although his assumption that men like Johan did not notice men like Noah had been proved right so far.
‘Thank you, Noah, it’s kind of you to say. Most of it is to my mother’s taste rather than my own.’
‘Oh I’m sorry. Has your mother passed?’
‘Oh no! No! She’s just taken against this sort of life. She lives in Marrakech most of the year, doing God knows what …’ Opal trailed off, as though suddenly becoming aware that she was saying too much.
‘What’s not to like about this life!?’ Noah was genuinely perplexed.
Opal sighed heavily. ‘You’d be surprised …
’ Opal looked straight at him, and he saw a kind of sorrow that startled him.
‘Houses like this, old houses, generational homes, they carry history in their walls, the good times, but also the bad times. There’s no such thing as writing your own story in a place like this, only trying not to repeat the worst mistakes of the past.’
Noah had no idea what to say. He thought about his own past, and how much the generations of his family had longed for the kind of belonging that Opal thought of as oppressive.
If he could have been honest he would have told her that her feelings were that of a person who’d never had to face the prospect of being thrown out of their home.
‘You don’t know what you have until it’s gone.
’ But this was not a scenario that called for honesty, especially not from him.
‘Well maybe this tournament will be a different kind of chapter at least.’ It was a corny thing to say, but Opal smiled.
‘I hope so, but anyway, I’ll let you get to sleep. Sweet dreams.’ Opal didn’t wait for a response before closing the door. Noah wondered if she had gone around to anyone else’s room to wish them ‘sweet dreams’.
He was inexperienced when it came to women and sex, a mixture of his odd and at times obsessive personality and his mother’s overbearingness.
Or at least that’s what he suspected. Women had found him attractive, and he’d slept with his neighbour, Priyanka, a couple of times, but he’d often find himself thinking about other things during ‘the act’.
Now he found himself lifting the covers and considering his hard-on; maybe the spell binding wasn’t only a one-way thing.