The Very Picture of You

‘But it’s not that long ago, so she could be – and he’s clearly duplicitous. I don’t want Chloë having her heart broken again. It was bad enough last time.’

Polly reached for the tub of hand cream on her bedside table. ‘Ella – how old is Chloë now?’

‘She’s… nearly twenty-nine.’

‘Exactly – oh…’ She grimaced as she tried to twist off the lid. ‘Open this for me, would you?’ She leaned forward and handed me the pot. ‘I daren’t snag a nail – I’m working tomorrow.’

‘What’s the job?’ I asked as I unscrewed it.

‘A day’s shoot for a feature film. My hands are going to double for Keira Knightley’s – I have to put them up to her face, like this.’ Polly held her palms to her cheeks. ‘I’ll be kneeling behind her and won’t be able to see, so I hope I don’t stick my fingers up her nose. I did that to Liz Hurley once. It was embarrassing.’

‘I can imagine.’ I handed Polly the opened tub.

She scooped out a blob of cream and dabbed it on her knuckles. ‘Chloë’s got to make her own mistakes.’

‘Of course: the trouble is she makes such bad ones – like getting involved with a married man. The first thing she ever knew about Max was that he was someone else’s husband.’

‘Remind me how she met him?’

‘Chloë and I had gone into Waterstone’s on the King’s Road; we saw that Sylvia Shaw was signing copies of her new book and, as Chloë had liked her first two, we decided to stay. While Chloë was queuing to have her copy signed, she started chatting to this man – I could see she really liked him – who said that he was Sylvia Shaw’s husband. So that’s how it started – right under his wife’s nose!’

‘And his wife never found out?’

‘No. Chloë said that she was too absorbed in her writing to notice. But Chloë was crazy about him. Do you remember the state she got herself in when it finally ended?’ Polly nodded grimly. ‘She went down to seven stone. And what she did to her hair?’

‘It was a bit… severe.’

‘It was savage. She looked as though she’d been in some… war.’

Polly stroked cream on to her other hand. ‘That was a year and a half ago,’ she pointed out calmly. ‘Chloë’s on an even keel again now.’

‘I hope so – but she’s always been fragile. She’s not like Mum, who has this core of steel.’

‘That’s ballerinas for you,’ Polly said simply. ‘They have to learn to dance through the agony, don’t they, whether they’ve got a broken toenail or a broken heart. Damn…’ She peered at her left hand then reached for the magnifying glass on the bedside table and examined it through that. ‘I’ve got a freckle.’ How did that happen?’ she wailed. ‘I use factor 50 on my hands all year round – my rear end gets more UV than they do. Where’s my Fade Out?’

Polly went over to her dressing table and rummaged amongst all the hand creams, nail polishes and jars of cotton-wool puffs. ‘I can’t afford to have any blemishes,’ she muttered. She lifted up a framed photo of her daughter, and my god-daughter, Lola. ‘Here it is…’ She sat down on the bed again then held out the pot for me to open. ‘I know you’ve always looked out for Chloë.’

I loosened the lid and passed the pot back to her. ‘Well, she’s a lot younger than me, so yes… I have.’

‘That’s nice; but now you should just… let go.’ Polly looked at me. ‘As I’ve known you since we were six, I feel I can say that.’ She began to massage the skin lightener on to the offending brown mark. ‘Chloë’s got over Max enough now to be able to marry Nate – just be happy for her.’

‘I’d be thrilled if Nate was someone I liked.’ I groaned. ‘And why does she have to give him a portrait? If she wants to spend that much, then why can’t she give him something normal, like a gold watch or… diamond cufflinks or something?’

Polly squinted at her hand. ‘Why don’t you paint them together?’

‘I suggested that, but Chloë wants a picture of Nate on his own. She’s going to give it to him the day before the wedding.’

‘Which will be when?’

‘July third – which is also her birthday.’

‘Well, she’s always wanted to be married before she was thirty.’

‘Yes – so perhaps that explains the quick engagement – as though anyone could care less what age a woman is when she gets married or whether she gets married at all: I mean, I’m thirty-five and still single, but I really don’t…’ I let the sentence drift.

‘I’m thirty-five,’ said Polly, ‘and I’m divorced.’ She tucked a hank of red-gold hair behind one ear. ‘But it doesn’t bother me. Lola has a good relationship with Ben and that’s the key thing. He’s being tricky about maintenance though,’ she added wearily. ‘Lola’s school fees are fifteen grand now with all the extras, so thank God my digits give me an income.’

I considered Polly’s hands with their long, slim fingers and gleaming nail beds. ‘They are lovely. Your thumbs are fantastic.’

‘Oh, thanks. But it isn’t just about looks – my hands can act. They can be sad or happy.’ She wiggled her fingers. ‘They can be angry…’ She clenched her fists. ‘Or playful.’ She ‘walked’ her fingers through the air. ‘They can be inquisitive…’ She turned up her palms. ‘…Or pleading.’ She clasped them in supplication. ‘The whole gamut, really.’

‘There should be an Oscar category for it.’

‘There should. Anyway…’ She examined them again. ‘They’re done. Now it’s time for my tootsies.’

‘Have they got a part in the film too?’

‘No. But they’ve got a Birkenstock ad next week, so I need to get them tip-top.’

Polly kicked off her oversized sheepskin slippers and examined her slender size six feet with their perfectly straight toes, shell-pink nails, elegantly high arches and smooth, rosy heels. Satisfied that there were no imperfections to attend to, she put them in the waiting foot spa and switched it on.

‘Ooh, that’s nice,’ she crooned as the water bubbled around them. ‘So what does your mum think about Chloë’s engagement?’

‘She’s elated. But then, she couldn’t stand Max.’

‘Well, he was married, so you could hardly expect her to have been crazy about him.’

‘True – though it went deeper than that. Mum only met Max once, but she seemed to loathe him – as though it was personal. I’m sure that was because… well, you know the background.’

Polly nodded. ‘I still remember when you told me. We were eleven.’

The window was misted with condensation. I rubbed a patch clear and sighed. ‘I hadn’t known it myself until then.’

‘That was a long time for your mother to keep it from you,’ Polly observed quietly.

I shrugged. ‘I don’t really hold it against her – she’d been terribly hurt. Having made a new life, I suppose she didn’t want to remember the awful way in which her old one had ended.’

Your father was involved with someone else, Ella. I knew about it and it made me desperately unhappy – not least because I loved him so much. But one day I saw him with this… other woman; I came across them together: it was a terrible shock. I begged him not to leave us, but he abandoned us and went far, far away…

‘Do you think about him?’ I heard Polly say.

‘Hm?’

She turned off the foot spa. ‘Do you think about him much? Your father.’

‘No.’ I registered the surprise in her eyes. ‘Why would I when I haven’t seen him since I was five and can barely remember him?’

One, two three… up in the air she goes.