The Blue Bath (12 page)

“Yeah—it’s all a bit mad at the moment. Listen, can we meet up? I’m at the Dorchester.” She heard a male voice saying something in the background. “Actually, how is this afternoon, if you’re free?”

Kat had stood up and was crossing the drawing room, moving deeper into the house, away from the front windows. How had he found her? Her name was on the guest list, but it was her married name. How had he known it was her?

“So, you’ll come, then? This afternoon—say, two o’clock?”

The words were out of her mouth and the phone back in the cradle before she registered what had happened. She looked around the empty room for witnesses, but there were none.

chapter seven

The short, balding man from the gallery answered the door. Upon seeing Kat, he paused only briefly to run his eyes down the length of her body and then back up to her face in that involuntary way some men do. Opening the door wide, he smiled brilliantly at her.

“You must be Katherine. I’m Daniel’s agent, Martin Whittaker.”

Although he stood very straight, he must have been only five and a half feet tall. He was slightly larger on the bottom than he was on the top, which had the effect of making him seem closer to the ground than he actually was. She took his outstretched hand, which felt small and soft in her own.

“Come in, come in,” he said, ushering her into the large sitting room of the suite. “Daniel will be along shortly. Do make yourself comfortable.”

Hotel rooms. Kat had always found them such odd, artificial places. She had spent too much time in them while she was working. She looked across the room. Glass doors spanned the far wall, leading to a terrace overlooking Hyde Park. The decor was more modern than she remembered of the Dorchester. Less chintz. When had she stayed here last? Could it have been ten years ago when she had first moved to London? The firm had put her up here while she looked for a flat.

The city had seemed so different to her then than it did now. Everything about her life in London back then had seemed so wonderfully new. As an expat she had not known how long she would actually be here. Daily life had a veneer of the temporary that had made her appreciate it more. At some point in the past ten years, her perspective had shifted and all that had been exotic and fleeting had become comfortable and familiar.

Kat unwound her scarf and took off her coat. Too tense to sit in a cab, she had walked from Holland Park, an alternative that had proven ill-advised, as her newly acquired paranoia had impelled her to hide behind her sunglasses, scanning the faces around her and altering her course every time she thought she saw anyone she knew, anyone who could have been at Penfields, anyone who might make the connection between her face and the face on the walls. This had resulted in a rather circuitous route through the park at a rather frenetic pace.

She was warm. Her face felt flushed. She stood with her coat in her hand for an awkward moment while Martin regarded her impassively, before it occurred to him to offer to take it from her. Once he had done so, he didn’t seem to know what to do with it, finally laying it over the back of an armchair. Would she like tea? After ten years in England there was only one answer to that question. This seemed more within Martin’s area of familiarity, as he ably picked up the phone to ring room service.

With Martin occupied, Kat moved toward the wall of glass. The park stretched out in the distance, brown and bare in the meager winter sunshine. It was an unusual perspective on a place that she knew so well. She and Will walked through it nearly every day. It seemed so close, a sensation enhanced by the fact that from this height she could neither see nor hear the moat of traffic that separated her from it. The sun was so low that the hotel’s shadow stretched nearly to the Serpentine.

Martin put down the phone and walked over to stand beside her at the glass doors, smiling a wide, solicitous smile at her. He was dressed simply, but the carefully curated materials belied what at first glance was modest attire. She took in the soft cashmere sweater, the solid silver cuff links, and, most notably, the watch. A vintage Piaget, it looked in perfect condition. Encircling his wrist loosely, it moved smoothly as he raised his hand to his chin, coming to rest against his shirt cuff, so that she could almost feel the weight of it. Everything about him spoke of wealth, while simultaneously dismissing it in favor of the most discriminating taste and pedigree.

“Did you enjoy the show?” he asked, turning briefly from the windows.

Kat regarded him with mild surprise. He recognized her from the gallery? He had been so absorbed in his own conversation that she was surprised she had even registered on him. Or had Daniel told him she had been there?

“I did.”

“Daniel is getting marvelous reviews. We are very pleased. Very pleased, indeed.”

He paused and after a moment turned and regarded her with a practiced thoughtful expression.

“Of course, all of this has been a long time coming for him. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Kat wasn’t sure where he was heading, but was uncomfortable with his sudden familiarity. “Has it?”

“Well, at least the twenty years since I met him in Paris.” He paused, letting the reference break over her. “I believe I have you to thank for that, Katherine.”

It was at this moment that she heard the door to the bedroom open and she and Martin turned at once to see Daniel emerge, unshaven and more wrinkled than the evening before. Gone was the immaculately tailored suit, replaced with jeans and a shirt that looked as though he might have slept in it.

He strode effortlessly through the room and through the years between them to kiss her lightly on both cheeks, startling her with his presence and his proximity, as his face brushed hers. He smelled like coffee and shampoo, and she laughed out loud despite herself. It seemed such an odd greeting. She wondered whether it was always so strange to greet old lovers. To have had that intimacy and to then to go back to being polite acquaintances seemed so affected. So dishonest. Although she could not think what would have been more honest.

Distracted, she glanced at Martin as he looked on, smiling broadly. Was he still here?

It took her a moment to realize that the voice she heard talking to Daniel was her own.

Was he really asking her about the weather? Was she really replying? She glanced at Martin again. Was he really going to stay?

The knock on the door signaling the arrival of room service brought her back to herself. As Martin excused himself to answer it, Daniel opened the glass doors leading to the terrace, letting in the cold air and the traffic noise from Park Lane below. Looking back at Kat, he inclined his head toward the terrace.

“Come,” he said softly. “See the view.”

Kat crossed the room and stepped out to join Daniel on the terrace, only too glad to be leaving Martin inside. After waiting in the cold air for a moment to make sure Martin wasn’t going to tag along, she turned her attention to Daniel. Alone at last. They stood in silence, the small talk having evaporated in the open air. As he leaned forward gazing over the park, his hands braced on the railing, she had a chance to study his profile.

There had always been something faintly indecent about his lower lip. A slightly crooked, surprisingly soft, pink interruption of his strong, lined face. She wanted time to examine it. To remember it. She needed to study him. To place him in a context she could make sense of. There were things that she had forgotten. Important things. She needed just another minute to get a grip on him again, to figure it out. Perhaps she didn’t know him now, but she knew what the hollow of his throat smelled like and the way his hands felt on her skin. She knew the sounds he made in the dark.

He glanced at her sideways, causing her to blush, before turning back to the park. Again, older. And again, unnervingly, Daniel.

He turned to face her again. She could see him dismissing thoughts and looking for more appropriate things to say. The Daniel she had known didn’t know how to do that and had no interest in learning. The fact that he was trying so hard was new. He looked tired, she thought. She wanted to help him, but couldn’t think what to say.

“How long have you lived in London?” he asked finally.

Although he was trying his best to appear relaxed, his features seemed to be in constant motion, struggling to avoid settling into a particular expression, although which particular one was not clear.

His manner was so incongruous that for a fleeting moment she questioned whether she could have remembered it wrong. The way it ended. Or the whole of it even. Or maybe time had simply smoothed off the sharp edges.

“About ten years now.”

About two feet of flat metal railing separated them. Beneath them seven floors of hotel. Beyond them only the sky and the tops of the bare trees.

“Do you like it?”

It was as if he were reading from a script. Saying the things that people are meant to say if they have not seen each other in many years. Slipping into character, she conjured a response.

“I love it. It’s a wonderful, vibrant city and it is great to be so close to the rest of Europe. Only two hours and you’re in Paris.…”

She blushed and let her voice trail off. Paris. The scene of the crime. The repository of memory. Maybe she couldn’t handle small talk with him after all.

It was true, Paris was only two hours away. Not that she went there often. They had bought a French company a few years ago and she had been there for a fortnight handling the negotiations. It had been an intense deal and she’d had little free time. She had sneaked out of the closing dinner early and gone for a walk along the Right Bank, telling herself she needed to clear her head. As she walked along the river, seeing things that were not there, she felt the city watching her back with familiar eyes. In the glow of the yellow bulbs it all seemed unchanged. It was harder to forget in a city that wears its past so conspicuously.

She had thought of the studio on the rue Garancière. She traced the path there in her memory. Across the Pont Royal and through Saint-Germain-des-Prés. She could be there in ten minutes. She started over the bridge, its cobblestones lit up by garlands of lights. Her shadow moved ahead of her, splintered and broken on the uneven stones. Lifting her gaze, she was surprised to see the bridge disappear before her. The arch meant that she could no longer see the other side. Instead, it seemed to end at its apex. She imagined the cars and people dropping off the high curve into the dark river below and strained to hear the splashes as they entered the water.

She stopped. It was too late. She turned back.

On her way back to her hotel she walked past the Tuileries—trying to identify one tree from the many through the bars of the fence. It seemed that she should be able to do so. Whatever else was gone, Paris remained.

She swam through the eddies of cars on the place de la Concorde, emerging on the other side in front of her hotel both more alert and more tired than she had been when she started out. Back in her room she felt the kind of loneliness that comes of full days and empty hotel rooms. But it was brief. There were calls to return and work to be done.

There had been only one other visit to Paris. She and Jonathan had gone there for a weekend just before Will was born. It had been his idea—a surprise for her. She had cried in the taxi from Gare du Nord to their hotel as the city unfolded around them, her feet not even touching the ground. The kind of hysterical, uncontrollable sobs that you cry as a child. She could not stop the tears. Could not catch her breath. Jonathan had been alarmed. He had never seen her cry like that. She had attributed it to hormones and he had accepted the explanation. Later she had felt bad about the lie. Up to that point, her history with Daniel had been a lie of omission. She had never told anyone about Daniel. He remained hers alone. Sacred and apart.

A sudden awareness of the prolonged silence put a stop to her ruminations. She looked up to find that Daniel was studying her. He made no attempt to fill the gap in conversation. Even when she broke away from his gaze, she could feel his eyes still on her. She laced her fingers together nervously on the railing. Did it used to feel like this when he looked at her? She remembered it differently. Turning back to face him, it was her turn to grasp at conversational straws.

“Congratulations on your show.”

He turned away from her to gaze out over the park. His voice, when it came, competed with the wind coming off the park and the traffic noise rising from the street below.

“Did you see it all?”

“Yes.”

He smiled. An abbreviated smile—pressing his lips together, and took in a deep breath, exhaling his words into the air above the park.

“I suppose I should have…” He paused, still gazing out over the trees. It seemed to her that her presence was unnecessary for the conversation. That it wasn’t really she whom he was addressing. “Look, no one knows who the girl in the paintings is. Even Martin didn’t know until last night.”

She could not think what to say and so remained silent.

He paused again and glanced over his shoulder at her. “I suppose I should have asked you.” At this, he turned away again and laughed.

She shivered, suddenly chilled, and waited to see if he would continue. The wind coming off the park was beginning to pick up. Daniel turned back toward her, but looked past her. She had forgotten how pale his eyes were. They seemed to be the exact same color as the cloudless winter sky, as if she were looking through him to the sky beyond. She thought about how much else she might have forgotten.

“Listen, Kat,” Daniel continued, once again addressing the congregation of tall plane trees on the edge of the park. “I know some of the paintings were probably a surprise to you. Martin thought we should talk to you to assure you that we will keep you a secret. And to make sure you were okay with all this.”

He glanced back at her briefly, as if to make sure that she was still there. “I told him that you would be. At the same time, we recognize that you were a part of this and we are prepared to compensate you for that.” He recited the words flatly, automatically. She imagined him discussing this with Martin. She heard the words he had just spoken coming out of Martin’s mouth.