A Trick of the Mind (20 page)

‘Poor Finn,’ I said. ‘I wish he didn’t still worry about me.’

She shrugged. ‘ I guess he still feels a bit protective towards you.’

She said the word ‘protective’ as if it was compensation for something I would prefer him to be feeling. She was wrong. I didn’t want Finn to feel anything for me any more. It
was easier if we could have a clean break, hard though this was proving to be because our lives, our work, our friends had always been so intertwined.

‘Well he’s really no need,’ I said. ‘Honestly. I’m fine.’

‘Anyway, can I see what you’re doing?’

Louise was being nice. But it made me feel awkward. I should have been able to say,
thanks so much for your kind thought
,
Louise, but at the moment I don’t need your help,
though it’s lovely to have your offer and I’ll bear it in mind.
But I felt there was more to her interest than was apparent. You couldn’t be clear with someone who was being
murky with you.

And then she proved my suspicions correct: ‘Chiara said you were traumatised by something that weekend. The weekend we all came down to your cottage. She said she hardly sees you, that
you’re avoiding things and you need support to get you through. So I’ve come to see what I can do.’

‘
Chiara
said?’

Chiara was my most trusted friend. I couldn’t believe she would have told Louise about the anxieties I’d expressed to her on the way back to London in the car.

But how else would Louise have this information?

I capitulated, opened the door of my studio, gestured at her to follow me.

‘Come in. What did Chiara say?’

She followed me.

She stood for some time staring at my canvas. It was the biggest piece of work I had ever done and it had required two trips to bring all my materials down from the flat in the Micra.

I was pleased with it. I’d been building up the layers gradually, concentrating on the paint, on the surfaces. It wouldn’t be anywhere near complete until I’d done several more
layers, and worked on those, so what Louise saw now wasn’t representative of the end product I was aiming for. I was glad of this in part – it meant she wasn’t in a position to
pass judgement, which might be off-putting, and if she tried, I could brush it off. I steeled myself for her reaction, but she seemed transfixed by the work, and didn’t speak. She walked up
and down, viewing it from different perspectives. At last she turned round.

‘
When
did they say the deadline was?’

‘August,’ I said.

‘That’s pretty soon.’

She might not have known that I’d found it difficult, getting paintings into that exhibition when she hadn’t. Or that I’d been embarrassed that I’d won
a commission she and Finn would have killed for, but she was certainly making sure I suffered for it now.

I wanted to get on, but at the same time I had a burning curiosity to know what Chiara had said to her.

‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘I have it under control. You don’t have to worry for me.’

‘You seem to think we’re all in your way, Ellie. It isn’t like that. I want to help you. Chiara wants to help you.’

‘Thanks, honestly I appreciate it, but at the moment I don’t need help.’

‘You have to face facts: if you’re charged with a hit-and-run, you won’t get into the States. They will need someone else for the commission. The sooner they know the better.
No point in burying your head in the sand.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘The hit-and-run thing that happened when you were driving down to Southwold. Chiara told me you hadn’t gone to the police –I guess you were afraid it would affect your chance
of getting into the States, and now you haven’t confessed, you’re afraid it’s too late, that if you tell them, you’ll be done for whatever you call it, perverting the course
of justice or whatever!’

I stared at her.

‘That’s all been sorted,’ I said quietly. ‘It was something I was worried about but it’s OK. It’s all been taken care of.’

But had it? My stomach contracted, the old anxiety. Would it ever go away?

‘OK, hon. No need to sound so jumpy.’

Don’t call me ‘hon’!
I felt like shouting at her.

‘I really need to get on, Louise. As you’ve just reminded me, I haven’t got much time left. I need to catch up.’

‘OK,’ she shrugged. ‘But, Ellie, please don’t take this badly, we all care about you.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And we all want to meet your new guy. Bring him to the pub, why don’t you? You’ve kept him to yourself for too long. We’re beginning to think you’re hiding him
from us deliberately.’

‘OK.’

‘See you around then.’

‘Yes, see you.’

It took me a little while to regain my peace of mind after she had left. I went up to the café with Pepper and got myself a cup of tea and a muffin.

I sat outside on the wall beside the River Lea for a while, staring at the water. The tide was up. It was warm and there was a brisk breeze bringing with it the earthy smell of slurry. Cloud
shadows raced across the surface of the river turning it murky grey, and then raced off, leaving it sparkling again in the sunlight. A radio played somewhere, ‘We are stardust’, and
there was the clanking of building work and the rumble of trains. The cable cars moved steadily in a stream high up in the air. Out on the Thames, tourist boats passed on their way down to the
Thames Barrier, sending a wash across the river and up the creek so waves splashed up the wall.

I tore pieces off the muffin and threw them up in the air for the gulls, who caught the pieces mid-flight. I tried to get the dreamy feeling I’d had when I left Patrick’s this
morning to come back. It was OK, I told myself. Patrick was the only person in the world who could pursue the investigation into the accident, if he wanted to. If he did, I would of course confess
to the fear that I was the culprit. Even then, nothing would change how we felt towards one another.

I must not let Louise’s comments bother me.

I remembered then something Finn once told me about the significance of the evil eyes painted onto the sides of boats in Turkey. They were not simply to ward off evil spirits, but specifically
to ward off the vagaries of envy. People painted them on to their boats when they had had good fortune, because they knew that this good fortune was ammunition for other people’s envy. Next
time I was due to see Louise, I decided, I would need to wear an evil eye.

I went back to my studio and sat and stared at my canvas and could no longer remember what on earth I was thinking when I started it.

All I could think was that the hit-and-run had not gone away. Even if Patrick wasn’t interested in it.

It was hanging around me the way the gulls were hanging around the slurry from the bulldozers on the other side of the River Lea, waiting for their moment to swoop.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Patrick was waiting for me when I got back to his apartment. I’d stopped and bought bags of provisions. I was going to cook for him so we didn’t have to go out, and
could move seamlessly from dinner to bed, or the other way round.

‘You’re an angel,’ he said as I threw pasta into a pan and sliced smoked salmon, one of the few dishes I knew how to cook. With a little crème fraîche and some
dill it would taste pretty good. It was deceptively simple. I chatted as I cooked, about my painting, filling him in on the visit from Louise, missing out the hit-and-run bit of course, but telling
him how she had made me worry I wouldn’t be finished in time.

‘Who needs enemies when your friends behave like that?’ Patrick said.

He was standing behind me, and he leant over, kissed me on the ear, took my earlobe in his mouth and nipped it gently.

I dropped the wooden spoon and turned to him.

‘It’s time you moved in here,’ he whispered. ‘Then you won’t have to put up with them and can concentrate on your art.’

He took me in his arms as I buried my face in his chest.

‘All you have to do,’ Patrick said, taking my hand, and moving it towards the keypad on my phone, ‘is ring the estate agents and tell them you’re moving out.
They’ll have a waiting list of tenants desperate to pay ridiculous sums of money for a flat in Mile End, so they won’t be bothered.’

‘But isn’t it a bit soon?’

I was remembering Chiara’s reaction when I’d told her Patrick wanted me to move in. Yet, living with Patrick in his Wapping apartment was more than I could have hoped for – a
dream come true.

‘Ellie. You’ve just said, your friends have let you down. I always say better one you can trust than a million you can’t.’

And he was right.

It only took a phone call to the estate agents who looked after the flat the next day, and I had done it. They said they would be able to find some new tenants keen to move in as soon as I
wanted.

Chiara and Liam were moving into their new flat in London Fields at the end of the month. Chiara and I met at the flat one evening after work. She had already packed her
clothes into suitcases that stood by the door and when I came she offered to make coffee.

I began to collect my bits and pieces together as she filled her espresso pot.

‘So we’re both moving on.’

‘Yup.’

‘You’re decided, are you, Ellie?’

‘Yes, I am.’

‘But we haven’t even met him.’

‘You will do.’ I still felt betrayed by her telling Louise a confidence. But I didn’t want to bring it up. I continued to take things off the shelves, place them in the
cardboard boxes I’d gathered from the Tesco Metro down the road.

‘It feels odd you moving in with someone I’ve never set eyes on,’ she persisted. ‘Ellie, I hope this hasn’t anything to do with that night in Southwold, has
it?’

I glanced up at her.

‘What do you mean?’

‘The night you thought you’d hit someone in your car?’

‘You shouldn’t have told Louise about that.’

‘I didn’t tell Louise you’d hit anyone! I just explained why you were distracted that weekend! That you were having another of your irrational fears that you were responsible
for something you couldn’t possibly be.’

‘Louise wouldn’t understand that.’

‘OK. Look. I’m sorry, Ellie. You matter to me. Let’s please stay friends. Bring him to the pub at least, please?’

I stopped packing and folded my arms across my chest. Adopted my best teacher pose.

‘I’m OK, you know,’ I said. ‘It’s just perhaps difficult for you all to accept that I’m moving on, starting a new kind of life. I’m happy, Chiara,
happier than I’ve ever been.’

‘And I’m glad for you.’

‘I’m happy for you too, of course, that you’re settling down with Liam. I would just like you all to be happy for me.’

‘We are. We would be, if you weren’t keeping us in the dark about this man.’

‘OK, I’ll bring him to the pub,’ I said.

‘Promise?’

‘Promise.’

‘Because it’s important to me we stay friends.’

‘Me too.’

‘I want you to be godmother to my child.’

I stared at her, my mouth open.

‘Oh, Chiara! That’s so lovely! Oh! I don’t know what to say. Really?’

‘Really. Though of course not in a religious way, Liam wouldn’t stand for that. Fairy godmother, he calls it. Will you be?’

‘I am honoured. Totally.’ And I was. The request had brought tears to my eyes.

And we hugged each other.

By the end of the month both Chiara and I had left the Mile End flat. She had moved into the London Fields place with Liam, who she’d been with for six years, and
I’d moved in with Patrick, who I’d been with for just over six weeks. My painting things were in the studio and everything else I owned was in his flat. Including Pepper.

‘Now I’m living with you, Patrick,’ I said, ‘I’d like you to meet my friends.’

‘Why?’

‘Because they are curious about you.’

‘Why are they curious?’

‘Because you are special to me, and they care about me, I suppose.’

‘Who are these friends? Not the ones who let you down, I hope. Not the ones who poor scorn on your painting?’

‘The ones who I was at college with – there’s Chiara, my Italian friend, and Liam, her fiancé and soon to become father to her child. There’s Louise who, well, she
can be a bit complex. But I used to go out with them every week, and they miss me, and they want to meet you.’

He finally agreed to pop into the pub on Wednesday night for a quick drink – ‘If you promise you’ll come for dinner with me on Thursday. I want to take you to
Moro’s.’

We arranged to meet at Wetherspoon’s as usual. It seemed a little down-market, now I was getting used to frequenting the high-end eateries of London, but it was important to me that my
friends were comfortable with the venue, and none of them had much money.

Chiara and Liam were already there when I arrived, sitting hand in hand leafing through a baby clothes catalogue, and Louise was there with Finn sitting on the far side of an
enormous table, which meant we were all far apart and would be struggling to hear each other’s conversations.

I wasn’t sure how Finn would react to meeting Patrick. I knew it would be awkward for him, but he would have to meet him sometime, now he was a fixture in my life.

I felt my heart swell with pride as Patrick swung in on his crutches beside me. He was looking disarmingly handsome in a deep blue shirt, one of his Paul Smith ones, which complemented his eyes,
and an Armani jacket and trousers. He stood out among my bohemian crowd, who looked, in his presence, scruffy and thrown together in their eclectic outfits made up of vintage finds and bits and
pieces from H&M or Primark.

Patrick smiled his beautiful smile, shook everyone by the hand and bought a round of drinks, and I could see them assessing him, wanting to work him out, wanting to understand how I’d
pulled someone so different from our usual crowd. He came and sat next to me and put his arm around me and placed a chilled bottle of wine in front of me in an ice bucket, and two glasses.

‘So tell me,’ Chiara said. She was sitting closest to us and she leant over so we could hear above the noise of the bar. ‘How exactly did you two meet?’