‘Don’t, Gina,’ she says, smiling brightly again. ‘Come on.’
‘Sorry.’ Gina glances at the doors, worried someone will come in. Her mum, barely holding it together as it is, or Stuart’s sister, who’s very drunk. Everyone is drunk. They’re all knocking it back to avoid talking about the elephant in the room.
The bridal elephant in a velvet suit and an ironically elaborate hairdo.
‘Look, I’m really sorry about jumping in and stealing your wedding thunder,’ says Gina, trying to make a joke of it, like they always do. ‘There’s still a few months to sort out a new bridesmaid, if you want. I don’t want to be the bald bridesmaid who upstages you at the altar . . .’
Naomi turns away, but her control finally slips. ‘I don’t care about my wedding! I’ve told Jason we’re going to move it till you’re better, sod the deposits.’ She yanks at the roller towel, making it crunch loudly. That silences the pair of them, and for a moment, they just stand there, staring at one another in despair, because all the normalities that their lives had pivoted on last month now seem like toy boats bobbing on a huge, unknown ocean.
‘All I care about is you getting better,’ says Naomi, in a broken voice. ‘I don’t want to lose my best mate. That’s really selfish, isn’t it? But I don’t. I can’t imagine making another friend like you ever again.’
Gina smiles, despite her brimming eyes. ‘Don’t tell Jason that.’
‘He knows!’ Naomi’s own eyes are full. ‘He knows what you mean to me.’
Gina reaches out to touch her arm, and Naomi struggles not to burst into tears. They both blink frantically to avoid mascara run, and the blackness of the situation gives them hysterical giggles, balanced right on the very edge of sobbing.
Gina’s never felt more grateful for Naomi than at this exact moment; she’s the thread that links all the parts of Gina’s life together. Good bits, bad bits, secret bits, ugly bits. And knowing she does the same for Naomi gives her something to hold on to.
‘We can’t cry,’ Gina half laughs, half sobs. ‘If they see the bride and the chief bridesmaid crying it’ll set them all off!’
‘Don’t worry, I used waterproof mascara. I knew this would happen.’
They blink and flap and try not to catch each other’s eye because that’ll be the end.
‘The thing is,’ says Gina, in a rush of honesty, ‘I just want to get on with it now.’ Now she’s here with Naomi, she can get this off her chest. Stuart’s being lovely, but she needs to be a certain way with him and with Janet. She finds herself reacting to fit in with their roles of supportive partner and devastated mother; it’s easier to let their reactions shape hers. She fits into the space created by their concern.
If she thinks about how she actually feels, a cold black gap opens up inside her.
Gina grips the cold edge of the sink. ‘Don’t you think that . . . sometimes the universe balances things out?’
‘What?’
‘You know, we all get our share of good luck and bad luck, eventually.’
Naomi frowns. ‘You’re not making any sense, love.’
‘I mean . . . I’ve been lucky, Naomi. When you think what could have happened to me . . . And it’s like Kit’s mother said, what goes around comes around. I—’
‘No!’ hisses Naomi. ‘No! That is such bullshit, Gina, and you must not think it.’ She grabs her arm. ‘Tell me you don’t believe that.’
But Gina does think that and secretly it’s what’s giving her the calmness people keep going on about. There can’t be anything worse than this in her life now; the sword hanging over her head for what happened to Kit has dropped. And how much bad luck can one person have? Dad, Terry, Kit . . . Surely this is it now, for ever.
She just has to get through it. The thought of what ‘it’ might be makes the cavern open up again beneath her, and she wobbles.
‘I’m going to be fine, Nay,’ she says. ‘We’re going to get through this.’
Naomi looks as if she’s about to throw up, but she forces another of her smiles, and together they go back into the private room, where everyone else’s smiles suddenly reappear too, as if a switch has been flicked.
On Thursday, Gina heard, via Rory, that Stuart would be coming to collect his box of things from her flat the next day, after work.
She and Stuart exchanged brief texts directly about the collection time: he was going to call round on his way to football practice, but he made no reference to any reason for the sudden change of heart. In addition to the items he wanted, she’d decided to give him the set of Murano bowls. They were nice, and he’d bought them after all. Looking at them now didn’t give Gina the pleasure they deserved; she wanted Stuart to have something beautiful to remind him of their marriage. Maybe one day he’d see in them what she had.
Gina was thinking about the bowls when she arrived at the Magistrate’s House at lunchtime, wondering what sort of treasures had once been displayed in cabinets when the Warwicks had held court there. She headed round the back into the kitchen, drawn by the smell of toast. There was a crowd around the table, and as she knocked and let herself in, various heads turned.
‘Ah, good,’ said Nick. ‘Someone who’ll know what to do.’
Kian, one of the builders’ lads, was sitting at the kitchen table, his head turned away from his outstretched hand. Lorcan and his apprentice carpenter, Ryan, were hovering behind him, looking worried, and amused respectively.
‘What’s happened?’ Gina asked, reaching into her pocket for her mobile to call an ambulance. Kian’s face was milk-white. ‘Lorcan, I thought you were the designated first-aider on site.’
‘It’s not an ambulance job. We’ve just got a bit of a jewellery incident.’ Nick stepped back and revealed that he was trying to get a ring off Kian’s finger with a bar of soap. The camera on the table next to them was a clue as to what had just happened.
‘Cold water,’ said Gina at once. ‘Ice cubes, if you’ve got them. And, failing that, we can try butter.’
Lorcan nudged the sniggering apprentice next to him. ‘You heard the lady, Ryan. Bowl, cold water. Chop chop.’
Ryan went over to the brand new fridge-freezer, a lone white column of modernity in the ramshackle kitchen, and rummaged for ice cubes while Kian stared at his diamond-encrusted little finger.
‘Suits you,’ said Gina, and he looked mortified. Kian was one of the non-speaking apprentices.
‘I’m afraid that’s your hand-modelling career over, Kian,’ said Nick. ‘But if it makes you feel any better, I got some lovely photos.’
‘Your regular hand model not back from Paris yet?’ Gina raised an eyebrow, and something passed across Nick’s face.
‘No, but my reserve hand model has just arrived.’ He raised a hopeful eyebrow. ‘Would you mind ? It’ll only take a few minutes.’
‘It’ll have to wait until we’ve had a chat about plastering.’ Gina tapped her folder of notes. ‘I’ve had a couple of quotes in from the contractors I showed round last week and I need to talk through some of the specialist repairs to the cornices in the—’
‘Can we talk about them while I photograph some bracelets, please? I’m already late on this. I can’t cope with you and Amanda and Charlie yelling at me.’
‘Lorcan?’ Gina looked at him. ‘Aren’t you yelling?’
‘Me?’ Lorcan pretended to be affronted. ‘Do I ever yell? Listen, I can’t risk any more of my lads to jewellery-related injuries so this one’s all yours. That plaster isn’t going to come off by itself.’
‘It’s already coming off by itself,’ Nick pointed out. ‘In most of the rooms.’
‘Have you two been rehearsing this routine?’ asked Gina, amused. ‘Lorcan, if you get Ryan to make me some tea, I can ask Nick all about plastering while he’s photographing.’
‘I don’t know.’ Lorcan raised his hands at Gina. ‘You models and your diva demands.’
‘We’re worth it. Milk, no sugar. ’ And Gina let Nick steer her towards hi
s makeshift studio in the drawing room.
Lorcan’s team had already started to prepare the areas of the Magistrate’s House that didn’t require building consent for the first stages of repair work. The hall parquet was protected with plastic sheeting, and the stairs had polythene covers over their twisted oak banisters to shield them from the drills and barrows being marched into the downstairs rooms. Most of the panelling in the hall had been removed in sections so the old walls underneath could be patched up with new timber and fresh plaster where they’d decayed. Gina never ceased to be amazed at how simple even the most magnificent houses were beneath the polished wood and paint. Just lime and horsehair, wood and nails, like every other house.
The drawing room where Nick was working was shrouded in dust-sheets (‘good natural reflectors’); he’d set up a trestle table with a couple of chairs in the wide bay window that looked out onto the far end of what would have been – and might still be - the croquet lawn. There wasn’t much sun and the borders were overgrown but, even so, Gina’s imagination supplied a padded velvet seat round the three sides of the window, with deep chintzy sofas, and tea on silver trays.
‘I know what you’re thinking,’ said Nick, seeing the direction of her gaze. ‘Window-seat? Right?’
‘No,’ Gina lied. ‘I was thinking that I need to chase up the window specialists.’
She wasn’t sure why that had come out. It was good that Nick had the same sort of vision of the house as she did. But either he seemed to have a knack of seeing into her head or she was very easy to read, and on days like today, with Stuart’s visit playing on her mind, it made her feel self-conscious.
‘But, yes, a window-seat would be amazing,’ she agreed, unable to help herself. ‘We could put radiators underneath and get Lorcan to build latticed covers over them.’
‘I love that idea,’ said Nick. ‘Encouraging the croquet players from the comfort of inside when it’s raining. Do you want to sit down? This’ll take five minutes, then we can talk plaster. I promise.’
He cleared a space at one end of the table, stacking the camera magazines and letters into heaps, then pulled out a small velvet pouch and tipped a tangle of charm bracelets onto the table. He took a few shots of them in a pile on the white background. Then, at his suggestion, Gina slid them onto her wrist one at a time while he took close-ups of the charms and the links.
Nick murmured instructions, and she spread her fingers, picked up a cup, balanced her hand at an angle, watching the light fall onto her skin. As with the eggs, Gina had the strange sensation of seemingly seeing her hand and wrist for the first time.
Funny how that knobble on the wrist looks so delicate, she thought. When it’s actually a reminder of the solid bone underneath.
‘Nice manicure,’ Nick observed. ‘Going somewhere glamorous tonight?’
‘Thank you. And no. The only thing in my diary is my ex who’s coming round to collect a box of stuff tomorrow night.’
It had slipped out. She frowned at herself.
But Nick didn’t react, just carried on clicking away. ‘I see. Is it for his benefit? Does he notice things like that?’
‘No. I always do my nails.’
‘Why’s that? Don’t they get chipped, working in places like this?’
She hesitated. There was a reason why her nails were always neat, but it was personal: her favourite oncology nurse had encouraged her to wear dark varnish to strengthen her nails during chemotherapy – and to give herself something to do in all the hanging around. Her nails had split and ridged during the treatment, but Gina had persevered with creams and oils until they grew back. She never talked about her treatment at work: it had hovered over her like a label when she was at the council. But Nick sounded genuinely interested, and something about their closeness, yet lack of eye contact, made it slip out.
‘I was advised to keep my nails covered with varnish while I was having chemotherapy,’ she said. ‘If they go black, it stops it being so noticeable too.’
‘Really?’ He didn’t react to the mention of chemo, just nodded. It made her more inclined to go on.
‘Yup. I liked having nice nails when everything else seemed to be falling out, or making me throw up. It made me feel less . . . grey.’
‘I like that colour. What do you call it?’
‘Parchment.’
‘Appropriate.’
Gina picked up her mug of tea with her other hand and sipped from it. ‘I like greens and blues but, as you so correctly observed, it’s easy to chip on a building site, and I think it’s important to be chip-free, as a project manager.’
‘I agree,’ he said, without taking his eye from the viewfinder. ‘Although, in my old-fashioned book, you can’t beat red nail varnish.’
‘A red nail,’ Gina corrected him, as he turned her charm bracelet, so the little heart charm was uppermost, nestled in the hollow of her wrist. A bright drop of scarlet enamel, like blood. ‘The correct fashion term is “a red nail”. Like “a bold lip” or “a smoky eye”.’
‘I’ll remember that. Next time I’m photographing a top model.’
It felt intimate, Nick’s close focus on her hands, their no-eye-contact conversation. Their voices had dropped not quite to a whisper but lower than normal, as if the camera were a third person they didn’t want to distract.
And then he looked up, straight at her. His grey eyes were merry, she thought, randomly – merry, like the Merry Monarch. Hooded, long-lashed Jacobean eyes.
Gina’s mind went blank. Say something else about fashion singulars. She wasn’t even a fashion person. All she could think of was ‘a trouser’ and that sounded . . . too flirty.
‘So when did you have chemo?’ He sounded interested, but not nosy.
‘Six years ago. I had breast cancer. They caught it early, blasted me with the worst chemotherapy in the world, put me on Tamoxifen, and now it’s in remission. Touch wood.’
‘Glad to hear it. Touch wood.’
Nick moved as if he were about to raise his head, and Gina felt an urge to change the subject before he looked at her in a new way. She didn’t want to see him examine her for signs he might have missed before.
‘So, is Amanda back this weekend?’ she blurted, the first thing that came into her head. ‘She must be curious to see what’s going on.’ I’m getting enough emails about it, she added to herself. She assumed Nick was getting them too, as he was cc’d into most of them; something she found a bit odd.
‘Sadly not.’ Click, click. ‘She’s got a meeting with a different client in New York on Friday so she’s going to stay in Paris an extra night, then fly out there. Easier than driving here, driving back, getting an early plane. It’s OK,’ he added, ‘I’ve been Skyping her in the evenings, showing her what we’ve been up to.’
‘And she’s happy?’
‘Very happy. Well, as happy as you can be when it’s not very exciting.’
‘I know,’ said Gina. ‘It takes a while to get to paint charts. So will you be spending the weekend pulling plaster off the walls?’
‘Of course! Isn’t that what everyone does at the weekend? No, I’ll probably go back to London for a few days. Leave the plaster removal to people who know what they’re doing.’
Gina wondered why she felt a bit disappointed by the reminder that Nick didn’t really live here. This was just their country weekend place. Why should he stay here on his own?
‘It’s a good chance to catch up with all the friends Amanda’s not keen on.’ Nick waggled his eyebrows conspiratorially. ‘OK, to be honest, I might stay here and pull plaster off the walls. Lorcan’s shown me the special tool. It’s surprisingly addictive. One more. Splay your fingers.’
He took a final photo of the charm bracelet, and Gina relaxed, picking up her tea out of shot. While she was sipping it, Nick lifted his camera and took a single photo of her. ‘Sorry,’ he said, ‘I couldn’t resist. You looked so funny. Here, I’ll show you, don’t panic.’
He turned the camera r
ound so she could see the image. There she was, face half hidden by the white mug, her eyes above it, round and brown like a Manga heroine’s, and her hand stretched out with the charm bracelet dangling languidly from her skinny wrist.
Her wrist wasn’t skinny: it was just how Nick had shot it. Her, but not her. Her seen by someone looking at her and only seeing what was there.
‘It’s one of those moments I was talking about the other day,’ said Nick, seeing her expression. ‘The first cup of tea after a boring photo shoot. Treasure it.’
‘You didn’t take a Polaroid,’ she said.
‘No, I didn’t.’ He paused. ‘Do you want me to?’
‘Um. Yes.’
But when he got the camera out of the plastic crate of equipment under the table, Gina held out her hand for it. He hesitated, then handed it over.
The last time Gina had taken a photo on a Polaroid had been at Naomi’s fourteenth birthday party: it had been her and Naomi, crowding into the frame at arm’s length, wearing Minnie Mouse ears. She’d stayed over because Naomi’s brother Shaun had slipped them four bottles of Diamond White and Janet could detect alcohol on Gina’s breath from the other end of the street.
‘Say cheese,’ she said to Nick, and he grinned obediently.
The camera whirred and clicked, and the flat slip of film slid out.
‘I don’t like having my photo taken,’ he said, as she shook it around. ‘And contrary to popular belief, by the way, you don’t have to shake it. Like a Polaroid picture.’
‘No?’
‘No. The professional way to speed it up is to stick it under your armpit.’
‘I’ll remember that.’ She stuck it under her arm, then checked the image: there he was, photographer Nick, photographed. Looking right up at her, his smile broad but more self-conscious than in real life. The empty house in the background and the off colours of the old film stock blurred the time period. There was something faintly Seventies about the drawing room now.