“Well, that was a lovely walk, Muriel, if a little muddy!” said Griff. She didn’t answer as she started up the engine. Nor did I: my morning and my mood had both been spoiled.
We didn’t even get as far as the road. After we’d gone about ten yards, Griff exclaimed, staring, “Hallo there! Is it a gypsy?”
It was Ruby. She was clambering nimbly over a stile beside the track. She wore a patchwork coat with squares of tangerine and violet, and those flowery boots again, in a colourful jangle like a jazz chord. Muriel stopped the car.
Seeing Ruby stride towards us, it came rushing back to me how annoyingly patronising I had found her when I was seventeen. I’d thought her superfluous. It had been clear to me that Russell was the genius, not Ruby, who wasn’t a painter at all but only an artists’ model, even if she made weird pottery; and I resented her encouraging comments because what did she know?
Now she smiled down at me in that same benevolent way. She was carrying a Pyrex dish wrapped in clingfilm.
“Eden! Our little artist. How are you? A lasagne for Isaac,” she explained as we all piled out of the car again. “Selena doesn’t do a great deal of cooking.”
“No, indeed,” said Griff.
“I saw your car from the window at Raven How,” said Ruby, making me grumpily wonder how much time she spent spying on Isaac’s farm. She fixed expectantly enquiring looks on Muriel and Griff, until I had to introduce them, recounting how we’d first met down at Waterhead.
Ruby beamed at them. “So it was you who tried to help Selena? She can be a difficult girl, I’m afraid.”
“She does seem a little troubled,” said Muriel more diplomatically.
“We’re so grateful to you,” Ruby said. We? Did she mean her and Isaac?
She went on. “We’re having one of our soirees on Friday night. A small gathering for dinner, music. Why don’t you come? Isaac will be there, of course. Eden, you must bring someone, a boyfriend. And please, Griff, Muriel,” – she extended graceful hands to them – “do come, as a thank you for your kindness to Selena.”
Muriel began to demur.
“No, no, you must!” said Ruby, laughing. “The more the merrier. We love having people over.”
“I don’t have a boyfriend,” I said sulkily.
“Just bring a friend, then. Russell was most interested to hear I’d bumped into you. He’s dying to catch up.”
I doubted that. If Russell remembered me at all from nine years back, it would be for my unusual youth, not for my talent. Did I really want to explain to him how little I’d achieved since then?
But Isaac would be there. “All right,” I said.
“Ruby, could I have a word?” asked Muriel. She took Ruby’s arm and led her away a few yards, where they began to talk inaudibly.
“Lovely landscape here,” I said to Griff.
“Oh, yes, indeed! I think that’s Cold Pike over there, er …”
“Eden,” I supplied. “I’m Eden. Yes, it is. Have you ever been up it?”
“Oh, many times. But not recently.”
“I believe you do little sketches of your walks?”
“I do indeed!” His face lit up.
“I’d love to see them sometime,” I said, watching Ruby glance our way.
“Friday at seven-thirty, then!” announced Ruby loudly. She rested her hands reassuringly on Muriel’s shoulders before embracing her with loving care.
All very unnecessary. In contrast, I got the bare shadow of a wave as Ruby bore her lasagne to the farmhouse.
“What a lovely lady,” said Muriel, starting up the car again. “I had to explain about you know what. A room full of strangers; but she was very kind. She’ll let everybody know so there’s no awkwardness.”
“Know what, Muriel?” said Griff.
“And meals are usually fine,” said Muriel. “Food gives structure to any occasion.”
“Your food certainly does!” said Griff.
“We’ve been invited to a dinner party, Griff,” she said. “A very nice lady called Ruby. She wants to arrange some company for the poor lonely farmer who lives near here. He doesn’t get out enough. Ruby’s worried he’ll retreat into his shell.”
“Well, that wouldn’t do,” said Griff.
“And it will be nice for us too, won’t it?”
I felt ashamed of my grouchiness. So what if my morning had been spoiled? Griff’s whole life was spoiled, and Muriel’s too. She probably needed to get out as much as Isaac did.
By the time she dropped me off in Ambleside, after a journey filled with Griff’s amiable ramblings, there was no probably about it. Muriel must, I thought, be desperate for a change of company.
“Won’t be a minute, Griff,” said Muriel. She accompanied me to the door, where she said, “Eden? Could I possibly keep one of your drawings of Selena?”
“What for?”
“To show to Griff later, since we can’t take a photo of her. I can’t tell you how significant this afternoon has been. It’s the first time he’s remembered anything without me prompting him. The Lady of the Lake! Her long wet coat! It means so much. It could be a breakthrough.”
At Muriel’s tremulous smile, I felt a pang. She cared so much about him. Who did I have to care for me that way?
I banished the self-pity; and selecting a good likeness of Selena, gave it to her. She slid it carefully into her handbag.
“Thank you, Eden.”
As they left, I fumbled in my pocket for the key, and felt the soft rustle of the birth certificate. I sat down in the Heronry’s kitchen to contemplate it.
My first impression had been right. There was something wrong with the certificate: something that brought back memories of prison. The smell of cigarettes and bleach and bodies seemed instantly to waft around me.
“Selena’s got a secret. You could find it out.”
Only one person ever confessed their crimes to me in prison. The other girls confessed their boredom and dismay and misery, frequently and loudly: but not their crimes. They were all innocent, or had been forced to do it, or grassed up or ripped off, or were otherwise unlucky. Just like me.
I was the only forger. The others were mostly in for drugs, theft, shoplifting, drugs, assault, soliciting, and drugs. There were a few sophisticates: credit card fraud, fencing. A couple of head cases: baby-stealing, GBH, drugs. Lots of self-harmers, past and present. Many mourners of absent children.
Gradually the sea of faces sorted themselves into categories: the harmless, the ones to be wary of and a few to be definitely avoided. My first cellmate Leanne was somewhere between the second and third categories. A motor-mouth, always on about what someone had done to her and what she’d do to them. She turned her radio on full blast and spent the evenings shouting through the window. Whenever she begged stuff off me – phone cards, sugar, batteries – I seldom dared refuse.
Leanne was touchy and easily aggrieved. I was growing to dread lock-up but didn’t know how to ask to change cells. She began to complain loudly about the mess, the lack of space, the bloody stink in her cell since I moved in.
Until I drew her: slouching on her bunk, feet up, listening to her radio. I was trying to phrase a letter to Nick but the unusual quietness of her pose made me draw her instead. It came out well: lively and vivid, because I did it quickly.
I gave her the sketch. She said nothing, just looked at it suspiciously. Next day she flashed it round the spur and was told that it was good. Other girls asked me to do their portraits, or gave me photos of their boyfriends and children to draw.
Leanne became proprietorial and began to act as go-between. I think she took commission in the form of cigarettes. I got used to people looking on with a respectful “Woo!” I guarded myself against those Woos. I never let myself believe that they were right. My portraits were good enough only because there was no competition and no knowledgeable judge.
“Dawn wants you to draw her,” said Leanne one day. “I told her you’d go straight round.”
“D
awn?” I was annoyed with Leanne for touting me so casually. “Later,” I said.
“You’d better go now.” I couldn’t see any reason for Leanne to sound threatening. I’d noticed the other inmates spoke about Dawn very little, and in a circumspect way, but there was nothing intimidating about her. She looked harmless and ordinary – small, round, quiet, middle-aged, lost behind enormous glasses. I assumed she was a housewife who had gone round the bend, maybe run amok in the supermarket.
So for the sake of a quiet life, I went along and drew Dawn. She was perfectly nice: calm and practical, reminding me of one of my old school dinner ladies. She asked me how I was getting on and sympathised at my grimace.
“Leanne’s a wild one,” she said, shaking her head. “Unreliable. Too many drugs. They have a permanent effect, you know. I hope you’re steering clear.” There were plenty of drugs floating round the wing, though I never knew how they got in. I said,
“Yes, I’m steering clear.”
“Wise girl. It was forgery, wasn’t it? Those Holbecks. And Lionel only got three years! He didn’t exactly rush to clear the decks, though, did he? A nasty shock for some of his suppliers. And a narrow squeak for others.”
I didn’t know. She knew more about the case than I did, right down to the Christian name of my solicitor.
“Do you know what I’m for, Eden?”
“Um… shoplifting?” It seemed the likeliest and least offensive option.
She laughed. “No. That’s something I’ve never needed to do. They sent me down for, let me see now: receiving, arson with intent, conspiracy to defraud, criminal damage, obtaining property by deception, importing class C and soliciting to murder.”
She counted them off on her fingers. My mouth had fallen open. She smiled at me kindly.
“I never did the last two,” she said. “I was set up by somebody I thought was a friend. I won’t touch drugs: a dreadful trade. But all’s fair and square, because they never got me for the insurance pay-offs.”
“Oh,” I said, weakly.
“A tidy little business and no-one harmed. These insurance companies swindle anyone they can, after all, don’t they? I know I can trust you with that information, Eden. You’re not a grass. What about you? What else have you done?”
“Nothing. Just the Holbecks.”
“No other artists?”
“No.”
“In all that time with Lionel? Really?”
“No.” But she was watching me shrewdly, and I knew that she knew.
She let it pass. “What about documents?”
“No,” I said, but she began courteously probing. Had I attempted handwriting? Signatures? Wills? Certificates? Did I know anything about the passport business? I kept shaking my head. Just painting. Just the Holbecks, I insisted. That’s all I did. Nothing else. I was an amateur.
Dawn patted my knee. “Good girl. And I’m sure you’ll be going straight once you get out. Not like most of these girls. You’ve got your head screwed on, I can tell. You keep it that way.”
She said she liked the portrait. I don’t think she actually looked at it. I left her cell feeling like a mouse released by a cat: but one that I’d only just discovered was the real thing and not a furry toy.
Afterwards, in certain ways, my sentence got easier. I was moved without explanation to share a cell with Oba, a sad and sweet-natured Nigerian drugs mule. Leanne steered clear of me. I was offered cigarettes without reason. Nobody nicked my mints or spilt food all over my tray any more.
And I was summoned to Dawn every now and then to draw her and to listen to her chat. She liked to talk about art. Tom Keating, Van Meegeren, Myatt and Drewe: the great forgers, although, as she pointed out, the greatest were those whose names would never come to light. She mused aloud on their techniques: the old stretchers, the rusted tacks, the dust rubbed into the canvas, the falsified catalogues.
Huddled over my paper, I never contributed more than yes or no as her voice drifted on, as dry and light as a spider’s web, discussing forgeries she had known. I left her with a feeling of profound relief: but I learnt some interesting stuff along the way.
One of those conversations was in my mind next day as I leant over the counter at Ambleside Police Station.
“It’s been altered, Hunter, look.” I spread the birth certificate out in front of him. “There’s something funny about that eight. Look at the pink pattern in the background.”
“I’m looking,” he said.
“I think someone’s bleached out a number and written in an eight. Some of the background got bleached out too and they had to redraw it. It doesn’t quite match.” Only amateurs use household bleach, Dawn said. You can always tell. Look around the letters.
Hunter squinted at it, unconvinced. “You’re saying Selena has a falsified birth certificate?”
“Exactly.”
“It’d be easy enough to check against the register.”
“But would anyone ever check? Unless you applied for a passport or something. Bryony said Selena doesn’t have a passport. And get this, Hunter. She doesn’t like her photograph being taken.”
“She’s not unique in that,” he said.
“No, but she was vehement about it.” I described the incident with the camera. “And she was adamant that she didn’t want her picture on the website, either. Not even as a painting. Why would that be, unless she doesn’t want to be recognised?”
Hunter turned the certificate over in his hands. “How come Selena let you take this?”
“Um…”
He sighed and shook his head. “So that’s petty theft, then, is it, Eden? Would you like to make a statement now?”
“It’s not theft. I’ve only borrowed it,” I said. “I’m going to take it back.”
He leaned his elbows on the counter. “Eden, I’ve only borrowed it is an idiot’s excuse. Don’t be an idiot.”
“I’ve just said I’ll take it back! Aren’t you interested? It’s deception – don’t you see? Why would she have a fake birth certificate?”
“The biggest market is for illegal immigrants. I doubt if that applies.”
“I think she’s got something to hide.”
“Like what?”
“Like a criminal record. There’s something funny about her.”
“There’s something funny about everyone,” said Hunter. “However.” Straightening up, he rattled the piece of paper. “I’ll photocopy this, since you’ve brought it in, and run a check.”
As he went into the back, I called, “You’re not busy today, then?”
“A lost wallet, a lost puppy, a lost child.”
“A lost child?”
“We found it. It was in the Fudge Shop. They rang us just before the parents did.”
“Life in the fast lane, eh?”
“Don’t,” said Hunter emphatically. He returned and handed back the certificate. “I’ll turn a blind eye as long as this goes back to where it came from.”
“All right.” Although I wasn’t sure how I would manage it.
“And don’t go pulling any more stunts like that.”
“Stop pontificating, Hunter!”
“I’m saying it for your own good. You’ve got a reputation to mend,” he said. He was serious. It made me uncomfortable. Why should it matter to him?
Because he was a policeman, I supposed. He was enough of a maverick to want my company, but conventional enough to want me honest.
“You doing anything Friday night?”
He frowned at me. “Why?”
I felt awkward; I didn’t want to give him the wrong idea. “I owe you a meal. And I’ve been asked to dinner at Raven How: the artist’s place. Selena and the others at the farm have been invited, and so have Griff and Muriel. You know, Mr and Mrs Memory Loss.”
“Should make for an interesting party,” Hunter said.
“Ruby told me to bring a friend, and you’re the closest thing to a friend I’ve got just now.”
“Aaah,” s
aid Hunter. “My heart bleeds. Will the food be any good?”
“It was nine years ago,” I said. “Ruby was a good cook back then. Might be even better now.”
“All right,” said Hunter casually, but his eyes had lightened just a touch at Ruby’s name. “I don’t mind.”
“Great,” I said, equally casually. “Then you can give me a lift.”
Chapter Ten