I want to quiz her further, as if I were preparing one of my clients for court and how the defence might try to discredit her, but Mum moves the conversation on far too quickly, asking Alice about school and education, which Alice skims over. I get the feeling she doesn’t want to talk about her past too much and, I suppose, who can blame her after everything she’s been through? I end up telling Alice more about my childhood and my friends, how I met Luke at school, and so on.
‘You must have lots of friends if you’ve always lived here,’ says Alice.
‘Maybe not as many as you’d think. Most of the people I went to school with have spread their wings a bit further afield than Little Dray. I’m good friends with one of the mums from Hannah’s school, Pippa Stent. Her daughter, Daisy, is friends with Hannah. We’re both on the board of governors. I’ve never really done the whole mums-playground-coffee-circuit thing, mainly because I’m hardly ever there. What with work and everything, Luke knows the other parents better than I do.’
‘Don’t you miss being a mum?’ asks Alice.
Instantly, my hackles rise and I can feel a surge of defensive anger shift inside me. I look Alice straight in the eye when I answer. ‘I am a mum. Just because I don’t do the school run, it doesn’t make me any less of a mother.’ I’m not sure whose face I want to slap. Alice’s for questioning me as a mother or my own for getting so angry about it. Jesus, Alice is only young, she doesn’t have any children and it sounds as though she had a shit role model. What does she know about motherhood?
‘I’m sure Alice didn’t mean you weren’t a good mother,’ says Mum. ‘She probably just meant the school run, didn’t you Alice?’
‘Sure, of course. Sorry, Clare, I really didn’t mean to offend you.’ She bites her lip and both Alice and Mum look at me expectantly.
‘Hey, forget it. I’m tired. I didn’t mean to snap.’ I force a smile. I could do with going up to bed, but if I go now it will look as if I’m flouncing off. And although I’m still pissed off with what Alice said, I don’t want to upset Mum or leave with an atmosphere hanging between us all. I’ll be the one ending up looking like a bloody idiot.
I fill the next half an hour telling Alice about work and manage to elicit a few laughs with anecdotes about strange clients and the obscure reasons they’ve sought legal advice.
‘The worse was the couple who were having an affair at work and stayed late one night to, how shall we say, cement their relationship.’ I sit in the armchair with my feet tucked up underneath me. ‘They ended up having sex across the office desk, but in all the excitement, they somehow managed to bundle off the desk and she hit her head on the filing cabinet, which made the boss’s golfing trophy topple off and knock her out stone cold. They had to call an ambulance and everything, but the best of it is, she came to see me wanting to sue her workplace for industrial injury due to poor health and safety standards!’
We all laugh at the story and when I’m confident that the equilibrium has been restored, I make my excuses and head up to bed.
Whether it’s the revelations of what Alice has been through, the fact that she still has my T-shirt or that she and Hannah seemed as thick as thieves earlier, I don’t know, but I find myself waking from a restless sleep. I look at the LCD display of the clock-radio. I’ve only been asleep two hours. I stretch my hand out across the bed, more to confirm the fact that Luke isn’t there than to see whether he is.
I decide to go down and see him. Despite being in a house full of people, I’m feeling lonely. I put it down to a rather traumatic evening and the sadness that I feel for Alice. Although Mum and I had never said it, I’m sure we’d both hoped that Alice had had a good life in America with our father. That she had been loved and cared for.
I think at times it was the only hope that kept Mum going. I dread to think how she would have coped if she had known about the harrowing ordeal Alice had endured. I can’t even begin to image how she must have felt. A young girl who had no one to turn to when she needed it most. It was all credit to her that she had come out of it without being affected too badly. Maybe that’s why she has been keen to bond with us here so quickly. Now our father is dead and her stepmother out of the picture, she has no one other than her friend. No wonder she wanted to bring Martha over with her. Still, I’m glad she came on her own in the end. I resolve to put any negative feelings I might have been cultivating to one side. Alice needs us.
As I walk down the hallway towards Luke’s studio, I’m surprised to hear the soft burr of voices coming from behind the closed door. I can’t make out what is being said, but a small giggle punctuates the air. My heart does some sort of double beat and my chest feels as if it’s going to burst with the extra air that has filled my lungs. I puff out a long breath and, snatching at the handle, push open the door.
At first I think I’m seeing things, looking at my own reflection. Sitting on a stool in the middle of the room is Alice, still wearing my T-shirt but now her hair is pulled back into a ponytail just like I wear mine to work. Just like it is tonight. Luke has his back to me, facing Alice with a canvas on the easel between them. He turns around and, at least has the decency to look sheepish, but Alice speaks first.
‘Oh, hi, Clare.’ She smiles at me. ‘Are you okay? I thought you had gone to bed.’
‘I did, but I couldn’t sleep,’ I say, surprised at how I appear to be having a civil conversation when what I really want to do is scream at both of them and demand to know what the fuck is going on.
‘Me neither,’ says Alice, jumping off the stool. ‘I think it’s the jet lag. I came down to get a glass of water and noticed the light under the door.’
‘Alice was just having a look at some of my work,’ says Luke.
‘Tell Clare the truth,’ says Alice, giving Luke a coy smile.
My heart does that funny two-beat thing again. The truth? What is she on about? ‘Well?’ I look at Luke.
He steps to one side so I can see the canvas he’s working on. I don’t know why I didn’t notice it when I first came in. I was so busy throwing evil looks at the pair of them that I didn’t take in anything else. Alice comes and stands beside me, slipping her arm through mine. We both look at the beginnings of a portrait. A portrait of Alice.
‘I wanted to surprise you and Mum,’ she says. ‘I wanted to have a picture done as a present.’
On the canvas I can see an outline of what is clearly Alice’s face, made up from abstract colours that will all blend in eventually, to make the perfect composition. It’s more than just a couple of hours’ work. I’ve seen enough of Luke’s paintings to know that what is in front of me didn’t just appear in the last hour. ‘How long have you been working on this surprise?’ I ask, emphasising the last word.
‘Just tonight and last night,’ says Luke. He taps the end of the brush against the palm of his hand. There’s an awkward silence. I gaze at the canvas, but I’m not taking in the detail. I’m using it as a diversion for the anger I’m trying to tamp down; that green-eyed monster which makes me so angry. ‘What do you think?’ asks Luke eventually.
What do I think? He so doesn’t want to know what I think. ‘It’s nice,’ I say, unable to inject any enthusiasm into the word.