Summer Lies Bleeding (18 page)

He holds out his hand but Kerstin doesn't respond. Instead, she steps out of the lift. The man looks at her quizzically and Kerstin looks down at her white top and black skirt, fearing for a moment that she has blood on her. There is nothing.

‘Well,' says the man. ‘Nice to meet you.' He turns to the woman by his side. ‘Now, if you want to come this way, Mrs Farthing, I'll show you the laundry room.' She is in her mid-forties by the look of it and she smells of lemons. The scent sticks in Kerstin's throat as she squeezes past her.

She watches as they get into the lift; the man smiles, the woman stares straight ahead. As the doors close Kerstin starts to run, she has no idea where she is going and there is no time to return to the flat and collect her things. She must go now, this minute, before they find her.

*

Seb stands in his studio adding the final touches to The Lake: his gift to Yasmine, an oil painting of the lake in Battersea Park that they sat beside after getting married almost seven years ago. Tomorrow he will hang it in the restaurant and maybe it will be a lucky charm, who knows. Not that he believes in all that. Someone once told him that there was no such thing as luck and he agrees to a certain extent; you make your own luck in this life, by working hard and being kind, by opening your heart and loving.

The light in the studio is starting to fade; in the mornings it is filled with bright sunshine, it is one of the reasons he took it, that and the fact that it is pretty much equidistant between home, Maggie's flat and the gallery.

He dabs a silvery dot of paint along the outline of the lake, then stands back and puts his head to one side, squints his eyes and walks towards it again, checking to see if the ripple effect he was aiming for has worked. As he walks back and forth, the painting stands on the easel like a child waiting to be dressed. To anybody else, it would look complete but Seb is exacting when it comes to his work and nothing less than the best is allowed to leave the studio.

Almost six months of work has gone into this piece; snatched moments here and there between his paid commissioned work and the day-to-day demands of the gallery. He hopes she likes it. He thinks she will but he can never be sure. He knows when she really loves something and when she's just pretending, something about the tone of her voice and the presence of a gleam in her eye tells him when it is right. He and Yasmine, though deeply in love, have very different tastes. There are films he adores that she doesn't just ‘not like' but downright despises, same with music – he loves Primal Scream, she says they make her cringe, and writers – she loves Isabella Allende, he can't get past the first page of her novels.

Yet they come together for the important things, the fundamental beliefs that need to be in sync for any partnership to
survive – they have the same values, the same moral compass and they have Cosima, the little ball of flesh and giggles that binds them for ever. Oh, and then there is the physical side: Seb has never felt as connected to someone as he is to Yasmine and, even after all these years, he is still drawn to her body like a thirst that can never be fully quenched. The air in the room changes when she walks into it, becomes fuller and more vital, he can tell she is there without looking up. And despite their punishing work schedules, the exhaustion of parenthood and the pressures of London life, he still has to start and end each day holding her in his arms, he can't ever imagine not being with her, can't imagine a world without her in it.

The music changes as he dabs the paint with the lightest of touches, he's not aware that Rachmaninov has seagued into David Bowie's Heroes, but then he is not really aware of anything but the picture. When he is painting he forgets himself; his body is just a vessel, a machine, his arm an extension of the paintbrush. He feels in perfect sync with the work of art unfolding before him, and yet despite his success, the hours he can dedicate to painting are few and far between; which is why these two hours, from three to five on a late August afternoon as the sun begins to wane in the grey London sky, are so precious.

He is getting better; he can see his line get stronger, more confident as each year passes, he can see maturity seeping into the spaces between canvas and oil. Seven years ago he
painted a huge piece that went on to sell to an anonymous US dealer for the astonishing sum of £100,000. It depicted him and Sophie, the married woman, his long-dead love, on the beach at Rotherhithe; he curled up on the sand holding a gas mask to his face; she standing above him draped in a long scarlet dress and carrying a bundle of rags in her arms. He finished it in the early hours of what would go on to be referred to as 7/7, that strange moonless night when he left Zoe standing in Soho Square and ran like a madman to his office on Shaftesbury Avenue to say goodbye to his dead lover. For months after her death, he had tried to paint her face but it would not come, it was like there was a great blockage standing between him and his memory. Every attempt he made looked wrong. That night as he stood in the office, he had felt a burning sensation, felt her spirit leave him as he painted each delicate feature onto the canvas. By morning she was complete and Zoe was gone.

When he met Yasmine, he didn't want to have the painting around the flat. It seemed wrong, inappropriate somehow, to hold on to it so he let Henry sell it to a business contact in the States and, as always, Henry got the best price. The money allowed him to put down a deposit on the flat in Battersea and gave a significant boost to the fledgling gallery that he had named Asphodel, after the flowers that grow in the Ancient Greek resting place that lies between heaven and earth. That's where he imagined Sophie had gone, and now he could get on with his life, unencumbered by the past while the painting
hangs in a mock-Venetian chapel high in the Hollywood Hills, on the grounds of the vast estate owned by the multi-millionaire record producer who bought it.

Seb knows that if he saw that painting again he would cringe, he would pick it apart and find fault everywhere. He would wince at the clumsy use of colour, the position of the figures, the shading of the sea. He will never be satisfied with his work and that is how it should be. He wants to go on perfecting it until he is so old he can no longer hold the paintbrush. Wasn't it Matisse who said, propped up in his bed as he neared the end of his life, that rather than reaching the end of his painting career, he was only just beginning to see.

Seb stands back and looks at the finished painting. It's okay, he thinks. Everything is as it should be: the evening light glimmers across the water like a swarm of muted fireflies, like it did on the night of their wedding. Seb liked that, it felt like affirmation, as though nature had somehow acknowledged the two of them standing entwined by the lake, it felt like they had become part of the landscape and when they walked away they would leave a part of themselves embedded in the scene. That's what it's all about, thinks Seb, as he runs his hands along the outline of the painted sky, we all hope to leave something behind, some evidence that we were here, that we made an impact. Will his paintings endure after his death? Will they hang alongside his heroes in the great galleries of the world or will they be bundled up and left to gather
dust in some forgotten, airless attic? Is it arrogant, this quest for immortality or is it just human nature? Paintings, books, music, children, ideas, pockets full of lucky charms and rusty trinkets scattered across the earth as you swallow dust and dream of soft meadows.

His phone beeps on the desk. He picks it up and switches off the alarm. It's five p.m.: time to go and collect Cosima from her guinea pig-fest at Gracie Marshall's. Time to step out of this portal and return to real time, to people and cars and food and sugary kisses.

He takes his jacket from the back of the chair and takes one last look at the painting. ‘Yes,' he thinks. ‘It will do.'

‘Are we going to talk about it?'

Stella stands in the doorway of the tiny bathroom in the apartment as Paula lies back in a very hot, bubbly bath. They had eaten ham sandwiches and crisps in the little café in St James's; sitting side by side they had talked about Paula's brother's wife's broken ankle, about whether Carole at the Chelsea Physic Garden had received Paula's email asking if they could visit tomorrow, about the restaurant launch tomorrow night and whether or not the woman sitting three tables along was the one who had married Noel Gallagher. They talked about everything except what they had just experienced in the clinic. After months of incessant baby talk, Paula had suddenly gone quiet.

‘Talk about what?' Paula sits up and turns on the hot tap, adding more scalding water to the already full bath.

‘Come on, Paula,' says Stella, stepping into the room. ‘What's the matter?' She moves Paula's clothes from the lid of the toilet seat and sits down, folding her arms across her chest.

Paula lies down in the steaming water and sighs deeply.

‘It's nothing,' she says, her voice a near whisper. ‘It was just a bit of a shock, I guess.'

Stella nods her head, though there is something about the way Paula is staring into space that makes her think there is more to it than she is letting on.

‘It's a big step,' says Stella. ‘We've always known that and it's your body that has to go through the pregnancy, having people poking and prodding you. It can feel like your body's not your own anymore. I love you. You know that don't you?'

Paula doesn't answer, she just keeps staring straight ahead as though trying to find the answer to whatever is worrying her in the blue flowery pattern on the tiles.

After a couple of minutes of silence, Stella stands up.

‘I know,' she says. ‘Let's have a drink eh? You've been abstaining for months, your body should be in peak condition by now. How about I pop downstairs and get a bottle of champagne, we can toast the baby, the soon-to-be conceived baby. What do you say?'

Paula looks up at her. Her face is red with the heat of the bath and she looks tired.

‘If you want a drink, you have one. I don't feel like champagne,' she says.

Stella walks towards the bath and kneels down on the floor by Paula's face. She runs her fingers through Paula's wet hair and gently kisses her mouth.

‘Come on, angel,' she says. ‘Let's have a night off, eh? A night off worrying about the baby and about work and stuff. We deserve a break, it's been so long since we just relaxed together.'

She kisses Paula again, on her forehead, her nose, the crook of her soft, damp neck and she hears Paula sigh with what sounds like pleasure. ‘It's a beautiful evening out there. I'm going to book us a table in the garden and we can have a long, leisurely dinner. Come on; for old times?'

Paula smiles the ghost of a smile. ‘Okay,' she says. ‘Book it for seven though, won't you? I'll have to dry my hair and get ready and I've got to send a couple of emails first.'

‘Excellent,' says Stella. ‘I'll go and do it now and I'll pick up a bottle of champagne and two glasses, okay?'

Paula rolls her eyes at her playfully. ‘Okay, but get me a packet of Twiglets as well will you? I can't drink on an empty stomach.'

‘Twiglets and champagne,' laughs Stella. ‘You've always been a classy girl.'

She ducks as Paula throws a damp towel at her.

‘Ha,' she cries. ‘Bad shot. Right, I won't be long. And you should get out of that bath now, you're in danger of turning into a prune and that is not a good look.'

She hears Paula snort as she walks across the living room towards the door. If only they could always be as light as that. It seems like happiness and frivolity only come to them in snatched moments.

Why isn't this enough?

Stella turns the question over in her head as she walks down the stairs to the restaurant. She thinks of Dylan O'Brien and all the questions she wants to ask him when they meet. In the car on the way down those questions had been clear and concise; now her brain is fuddled with images of babies and nervous receptionists and at the heart of it all, the feeling deep in her stomach. The guilt that she is deceiving Paula; that she has come here for her own selfish reasons.

Is it wrong to want to be a person in her own right; not simpy an appendage to Paula's world? And if she is capable of deceiving Paula like this, of going behind her back and taking steps to create a whole new future then what hope do they have?

She tries to push her worries to the back of her mind as she opens the door to the tiny, darkened restaurant and heads towards the bar, hoping with all her heart that tonight will be different.

*

Mark sits on the bed holding the black bag on his lap. He had staggered back to the hostel like a drunken man and lain on the bed for half an hour until he got his breath back. He had felt her presence in that alley way, she was there, she was all around him. As he kicked that rubbish he thought he could smell her perfume wafting on the air – Calvin Klein's CK One – the sharp citrusy scent mingling with the rotten
eggs and decaying vegetable peelings. It was there for a split second hovering above the mound of rubbish like a mirage. She was still there, he thought as he navigated the back streets of Soho, sweating in his thick sweatshirt. She was trapped in that manky alley way. His father used to talk about the dead soldiers, the ones who had been killed in battle and how you could feel their presence, their energy all around you. Restless spirits he used to call them, unable to find peace, trapped in the places where they had died. His father said that because they had been struck down in the height of battle, all that energy, all that adrenalin just got sucked into the ether and remained in the atmosphere like some opaque gas. Zoe is a restless spirit, he knows it, she's trying to tell him something. All those weird dreams he's been having lately, it's a sign, a message from her. It's not about that druggie bastard, he's dead now, no, it's a sign that he has to act, act now.

He slowly unzips the bag and takes out the long, thin canvas package. Putting the black bag to one side, he carefully removes the shotgun from its slip and holds it in his hands. He strokes the cool metal tip, runs his fingers along the wooden stock and smiles to himself as he thinks about the first time he held a gun in his hands.

It was his granddad, Ernie Bradshaw, who taught him how to shoot. When Mark's dad died Ernie had moved in with them, thinking that the children would benefit from having a man around. His wife Sadie had died when Mark's mother
was a little girl and Ernie had brought his daughter up single-handedly in their tiny terrace house in Redcar. He was still a relatively young man when he moved in, fifty-five and as lithe and fit as he had been in his twenties. He soon settled into the ground floor flat with its tiny patch of garden and neat, pretty hanging baskets, lovingly tended to by Mark's mother.

Mark was twelve years old when his grandfather took him out to the moors to watch his first grouse shoot. In the three years since his father's death, Mark had grown inward; barely speaking, communicating only in grunts and shrugs of his shoulders, emerging from his bedroom to go to school and eat his meals then retreating when both were finished. Ernie thought the lad could do with some fresh air, or at least that was what he told his daughter when she waved them off.

They drove in Ernie's ancient Ford Escort up to the Cleveland Hills and the wild expanse of the Ferensby Estate. Ernie's father had been a gamekeeper on the estate in the thirties right up until the outbreak of the Second World War and he used to take his young son out with him, pointing out the pheasants and the partridge, the kestrels and woodcocks. But it was in the cloying heat of August that the estate really came into its own, when car loads of titled gents in tweed jackets strode across the moors in search of grouse.

The Glorious Twelfth, Ernie told Mark, was as big a deal as Christmas Day to him as a child. Young Ernie used to walk behind the men and play paper, scissors, stone with Lord
Ferensby's son, a skinny red-head they called Harry, though he had been christened Henry Edmund De Vere Ferensby, the future sixteenth Lord Ferensby. A bond formed between the two boys that was to endure over the years, it survived the War when the estate workers marched off to fight Hitler and didn't return; it survived Harry's time at Oxford and Ernie's apprenticeship at the steel works, and when the old Lord Ferensby died and Harry took on the title he let Ernie come and join in the shoots on the estate. Ernie's father had suffered a stroke in the early sixties and spent the rest of his days in a nursing home. He never saw his beloved moors again and Ernie wanted to keep the tradition going, wanted to keep his father's spirit alive by trekking up to the top of those moors each weekend, swapping the thick sulphurous heat of the steel works for clean northern air.

Mark had come out of himself after that first shoot and though he had not been allowed to use a gun that day, he had watched the men take aim and fire at the birds, watched the way they treated their shotguns with reverence, drying and cleaning them after a shot, keeping them safe in the crooks of their arms like sleeping babies. The next time they went Mark had been allowed to be a beater, alongside Ernie, and he felt his weak lungs expand as he beat the heather with a stick and watched the grouse rise into the air as though they had been hypnotised. The noise of the gun as it released a cartridge was like a great clap of thunder and Mark watched
as it scattered into the air like a fan, hitting its target with one clear shot.

After that Mark would bombard Ernie with questions. When would he be allowed to use a gun? Would he teach him? What type of gun did his dad use? Ernie had smiled at the lad's interest though his mother had been concerned and asked Ernie not to wave his guns around in front of little Zoe. She was only six then and a curious little thing. So Mark and Ernie would retreat to Ernie's room with its gun cabinet and pictures of grouse and pheasant hanging on the walls. Ernie dressed for the countryside at all times – green wax jacket, wellies, his tweed cap – and he subscribed to
The Field
magazine which he would read out loud to Mark's mother as she sat trying to watch
Coronation Street
. ‘Oh Dad, will you be quiet,' she would say, straining her neck to hear the television. ‘I'm not interested in bloody gundogs.' His mates in the pub called him The Squire; he liked that, he liked the fact it set him apart from the dead-eyed men he had worked with. He had the countryside in his bones and it had saved him from the despair a lot of his co-workers had fallen into when the steelworks closed down. He would throw test questions at Mark over the dinner table. ‘Right lad, at what point do you release the safety catch?' ‘You release it at the moment you fire,' Mark would answer, his voice deadly serious. ‘That's right lad, not a moment before. Safety is the first rule of a civilised shoot, remember that and you'll not come a cropper.' Ernie had been strict about obeying
the country code – after all he was a friend of Lord Ferensby, not some scally up from the smog for a jolly. ‘Respect earns respect, son,' he used to say. ‘Close the gate, stick your litter in your pocket till you get home, keep your dog under control …'

Ernie had taken Zoe's death badly. He had sat in the armchair in front of the window, looking at the thick net curtain, not moving, not speaking. If he hadn't blinked every so often you'd be forgiven for thinking he had stopped breathing. When Mark popped round to see his mam and Ernie on a Saturday morning, he would find the old man in the same position. ‘Tell you what, Grandad, shall we have a drive up to Ferensby today, see if there's owt going on?' But the old man would shake his head and carry on staring at the curtain with the same intensity as he had once lined up a shot. Almost a year later he was dead. Heart attack was what was written on his death certificate but they all knew his heart had given up long before his death, it had stopped the day he was told his granddaughter had been murdered and though he had lived for a year after that, his spirit had left his body and he had sat by that window waiting for oblivion.

They scattered his ashes on the Ferensby Estate on a crisp June morning while kestrels circled overhead and a line of tweed-clad gentleman bowed their heads in respect for the passing of The Squire. Lord Ferensby had organised tea and cakes in the Hall and Mark had stood and looked around at the assembled men and women – workers from the estate
mixed with peers and real-life squires. Lady Ferensby was deep in conversation with Frank Ludlow, Ernie's best friend from school who was battling emphysema and could only speak in a near whisper. Ernie would have liked it, he would have thought it a fitting send off, a respectful one. When his will was read, Mark discovered he had left him his shotgun. He had taken out the yellowing papers that stated that the gun was licensed to one Ernest George Bradshaw of 24a Mackenzie House, Eston, Middlesbrough. He had left strict instructions for Mark to look after the gun, to remember the safety advice he had instilled and to enjoy the moorland as he had enjoyed it. ‘Return to it when you can, son' he had written on a little piece of notepaper. ‘And think of me every Glorious Twelfth.'

Every year on the anniversary of his death Mark would visit the estate, breathe the cool air and say a little prayer for Ernie. He thinks of his granddad's ashes circling the air like a grouse in flight, an eternity flying across the place he loved. Ernie's soul will be at peace, Mark is certain of that. Now it is up to him to let Zoe rest in peace, he can feel Ernie's voice in his ears as he holds the gun in his hands, telling him about respect and decency and doing the right thing. ‘Don't take the safety catch off until the moment you want to shoot; not a moment before.'

The words reverberate around Mark's head as he returns the gun to its slip and places it carefully back into the bag. Not a moment before.