Pepper had thought them lost; scorched, cracked and blackened by fire – yet here they were, pristine and perfect, right in front of her eyes.
‘Philippa.’ Clara nudged her gently. ‘Go up – Finn is waiting.’
They were all waiting. Every face in the room turned towards her, each one intrigued and admiring. She had gone from being the awkward girl in the corner to the artist whose work had so captivated them all.
Pepper took a blundering few steps forwards, her cheeks burning with the red-hot heat of a hundred pairs of eyes. She brought her hands up to cover her face, but a laughing Finn pulled them down again, leading her on reluctant legs towards the pattern of tiles, and throwing his arm around her with pride.
She blinked as a camera started flashing, trying to shield her eyes only for Finn to lace his fingers through hers, lowering her hand and telling her she must smile.
‘This is crazy!’ she said at last, relieved to find herself laughing rather than sobbing. She was so overwhelmed that she could hardly remember any words at all, let alone utter them.
‘How did you? How did this happen?’
Finn chuckled, lifting her chin with a finger and turning her face towards his.
‘You really cannot guess?’ he exclaimed, as the photographer moved in for another shot.
Pepper frowned, still not understanding, then the truth hit her like a great wave, almost knocking her right off her feet.
There was only one person who could have been behind this – the same person she had to thank for being here in the first place, for meeting Finn, for the fact that those tiles on the wall behind them existed at all.
‘Josephine,’ she said. ‘It was Josephine, wasn’t it?’
‘Maybe . . .’
Finn still had his arm around her, and now he moved so he was facing her, so he could look at her properly.
‘But how?’ Pepper exclaimed. ‘I didn’t tell anyone about this project. I locked all the tiles in my cabinet, inside my studio – and my studio burnt to the ground.’
‘I am sorry.’ For a moment he looked downcast. ‘But now you can build an even better one. I sold all these,’ he added proudly. ‘Five thousand euros is waiting to be transferred to you.’ Pepper shook her head in disbelief.
‘They weren’t for sale,’ she said helplessly, and Finn replied with one of his great bellows of mirth. ‘Someone bloody stole them!’
‘Not me!’ He held up both hands.
‘What if I’d wanted to keep them?’ she went on. ‘I’ve spent the past few weeks mourning the loss of them, and now suddenly, here they are again. Am I supposed to just accept it all?’
‘You are not cross?’ For a moment, his face fell. ‘I can return them to you, if that is what you want?’
Was it what she wanted? Pepper was conflicted, trapped between the opposing towers of shock and pride.
‘I can’t believe they sold,’ she said. ‘All that money for something I created.’
‘Of course they did.’ Emboldened by the astonishment in her voice, Finn bent down and planted a kiss on the end of her nose. ‘They are beautiful, Pepper – a masterpiece. But you are right,’ he went on. ‘They were not mine to sell. I should not have just assumed.’
‘Josephine must have broken in somehow,’ said Pepper, more to herself than him. ‘That wily old fox.’
‘I am sure she will explain everything to you herself,’ Finn said. ‘She will be happy that the secret is finally out.’
‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Do you have any more secrets you need to tell me?’
‘This was my best one,’ he replied. Then, when Pepper found she could not find any words, he pulled her back into his arms.
‘Will you come home with me tonight?’ he asked, his voice muffled by her hair.
Pepper sighed, unable not to think of Clara, and of the baby.
‘Just to talk,’ he said, as if he could see right through into her mind and was reading her thoughts as they unfurled. ‘Bitte.’
She had made it back into the bubble, thought Pepper. Back where it was safe. And so, she wrapped her arms around his waist, squeezing herself against him until there were no spaces left between them.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘On one condition.’
‘Name it.’ Finn stepped out of their embrace and reached for her hands, toying her back into the room.
‘You tell me who my mystery buyer is.’
‘That,’ Finn said, letting go of her hand, ‘is something that you can definitely work out for yourself.’
Chapter 52
She knew what would happen if she followed Finn into his bedroom, waiting in the open doorway while he lit candles and closed the blinds. She knew that once she let him pull her down onto the duvet, there would be no going back. The two of them as drawn to the other as they had been right from that first moment.
He had told her that he loved her at the party, but the tiles she had painted must have told him the same thing weeks ago – he would have known as he unwrapped each one and slotted them together. Now, as they lay together under the covers, Pepper could feel the weight of that sentiment pressing down on them and felt crushed by expectation.
‘I have missed you very much,’ he said, his finger tracing a circle on her stomach, across her hips, lower. ‘I thought that you might not come – that you had decided it was all too much. The baby, the distance that we are from each other.’
He paused to kiss her, first her cheek, then the hollow of her throat.
‘I missed you, too,’ she assured him. ‘There was just so much happening at home, the fire – and after Barcelona, I wasn’t sure how I felt, or what was the best thing to do.’
‘And now?’
‘It feels nice to be here,’ she said decidedly. ‘What you did for me tonight. Nobody has ever done anything like that before – I still can’t quite believe it.’
‘That is not quite true,’ he tempered. ‘It was more than one person who did it, remember?’
‘Well, you both had faith in me.’
Pepper itched with a need to follow up her words with something self-effacing, about how she wasn’t worthy of such esteem, that her work was average at best – but she stopped herself. She was the only person telling herself this story, over and over, which meant that she was the only person who could bring an end to it all, to that inner insistence that the things she created were not good enough. She had to write herself some new rules and start living by them.
‘You are very talented,’ he told her, his nose resting against hers. ‘I have a list as long as Otto’s bar tab of people who want one of your pieces, and who are very willing to pay for them.’
‘But I––’ she started to protest, then stopped herself again.
‘That is amazing,’ she managed. ‘Thank you – thank you so much, for everything.’
‘Do not thank me.’ He smoothed the hair back from her face. ‘It is just good business sense. You are a commodity now – my meal ticket.’
‘Well then, feel free to feast away!’ she joked, yelping as Finn promptly took her at her word and disappeared beneath the covers.