Good Husband Material

‘Oh, Fergal, you’re so clever,’ Nerissa sighs, lifting a face like a cream-skinned, innocent flower. ‘All these hidden talents.’

She’s small, pretty and curvaceous, and, judging from her short, select list of former conquests, finds fame in a man a powerful aphrodisiac. Nineteen going on immoral, and about as determined to get what she wants as Scarlett O’Hara. Sounds like her too, when she’s trying to get round me, all that fake ‘lil’ ol’ me’ stuff.

Daddy’s bought her everything she’s ever wanted – so far. He’d jib a bit at me, though, even if I were for sale, which I’m not – just available for a short loan.

She’s about the same age Tish was last time I saw her …

Tish.

Swimming out of the green paint like a mermaid; walking hesitantly into the gallery as if summoned by my subconscious.

For a minute I really do think she’s a figment of my imagination as she pauses in the doorway, gazing around. Her eyes seem dazzled by the lights, then they slide over the painting near me and meet mine, and it’s as if we are falling into each other all over again.

Someone coming in behind her touches her elbow to get past, breaking the contact, then she turns on her heel and is gone.

I only realise I’ve taken a stride forward when Nerissa’s weight on my arm brings me up like a sheet anchor.

‘What is it? Where are you going?’

I realise I’ve been holding my breath as though I’ve been swimming underwater for a long distance. ‘Nowhere,’ I sigh. ‘I’m going nowhere.’

Nerissa’s eyes flick from the painted girl behind me back to the empty doorway. She’s never going to be acclaimed as Intellectual of the Year, but she has her own sharp instinct to guide her.

‘That was the one – the girl in the picture, wasn’t it?’

‘The girl in the picture doesn’t exist.’

The lady vanishes.

Again.

She was the one.

Chapter 3: Painted Out

Oh God! What on earth made me call in to see Fergal’s exhibition? And how could I have known he would be there, days after the show opened?

It was pure (or impure) curiosity – but I certainly wouldn’t have given in to it if it hadn’t been for James’s constant snide, jealous little remarks since he found out about Fergal. He even shoved the review of the exhibition under my nose, so it is all his fault.

My heart is still going like the clappers even now I’m safely home, and there’s a feeling like a hot nest of snakes in the pit of my stomach.

He saw me too. (Oh, damn and blast!) All those people, and the minute I walk through the door they part between us like the Red Sea before Moses. Like some invisible ley line …

(Wow – that’s just given me a great idea for a novel title – Ley Lines to Love!)

One glimpse of Fergal, and the pain and hurt feel as fresh as yesterday. But also something else, something I’m ashamed of: lust, I think. All those hot snakes. Very biblical.

It’s certainly something never stirred in me by James …

When our eyes met it was just like the first time, when I fell on him from a great height – except then he felt it too, I know he did.

This time he simply froze, expressionless, with that old painting he did of me right behind him so that I seemed to be swooping out towards myself over his shoulder.

Like coming face to face with your doppelganger (except that he’s given me red hair, for some reason, though at least it means that no one will recognise me).

James goes to art galleries only if I force him to, and I certainly won’t be doing that with this exhibition.

Poor old James, steady as a rock. I can’t let this ridiculous stirring-up of past emotions affect my feelings for him.

I may be racked with anger, lust, whatever – shaken but not stirred – but it can all be safely bottled up and infused into my next book. Imprisoned by Love between hard covers.

Dear old James – he’s just as handsome in his own way, and if we have the sort of love that grows steadily rather than bursts instantly into flames and dies quickly, that’s better, isn’t it? And even if he isn’t the world’s best lover (which is something I wouldn’t have realised, I don’t suppose, if I hadn’t had the world’s best lover), that isn’t his fault.

Is it?

Perhaps he’s a bit stuck in his ways sometimes, and admittedly he’s been behaving strangely since he found out about my sordid past, pointing out any mention of Fergal in the press or on TV.

There’s been quite a lot since the press suddenly discovered that he’s been quietly exhibiting paintings and selling them for years. You’d think they’d have connected Rocco the painter with Rocco the singer by now, but apparently not, until he outed himself, as it were, with this one-man exhibition. I always thought he’d abandoned his painting at the same time he’d abandoned me.

I don’t know why James has to make all these snide remarks about groupies and rock stars. Do I go on and on about his former girlfriend Vanessa, who went off and married someone else after helpfully presenting him with a replacement companion in the form of Bess the Stupid Bitch, and then turned up drunk at our wedding reception, where she peered critically at me through a positively funereal wreath of smoke and remarked blightingly, ‘He was always looking for a virgin to sacrifice to his career. I suppose you’re the next best thing.’

Cow.

Small, blonde and bubbly cow, now back to working for Drew, Drune and Tibbs as a secretary … She’s a bit tarty. In my head I call her the secretarty and if I’m not careful, one of these days it’ll slip right out.

Mind you, one of the things we originally had in common, James and I, was that we’d both been thrown over by someone else.

We seemed to have a lot in common … only lately we seem to have more not in common, if you see what I mean.

How did I get home from the gallery? I’ve no recollection of it, so I must have been running on automatic pilot, fired by a need to dive into my dark basement like a scared rabbit into its burrow, and be quiet for a while.

Quiet, that is, except for the muffled thumps and howls as Bess alternately throws herself at the kitchen door and vociferates her desire to be with me, and the deafening silence from Toby the parrot, building himself up for the wild eldritch shrieks my eventual appearance will generate.

I can deal with Toby. He can – and often does – manage to open his cage door and escape, but let me see him fight his way out of two layers of candlewick bedspread, that’s all I can say.

As for Bess, her idea of silent sympathy is to stuff her wet, germy black nose into my hand, which breaks up the train of thought, since I then have to go and wash the said hand. A dog’s nose is so unsanitary: if they haven’t got it stuck up another dog’s rear they’ve got it stuck up their own.

It’s odd how the mundane weaves its way in among your thoughts when you’ve had a shock, isn’t it?

Thoughts of Bess, and not having defrosted anything for dinner, and what time James would arrive back from seeing his client in Worcester, and whether the spirit would move the extremely evangelical born-again Christian girl on the third floor to try once more to convert me tonight, all performed a sort of mournful morris dance through my mind, bells muffled.

I could always get Bess to drool the girl to death. Death by Drooling would probably make a saint of her. In stained-glass windows she could be depicted dripping, with the sort of wholesome, earnest, sincere expression that makes you want to take pot shots with an air gun …

After a while I became aware of the flashing light on the answerphone, reached over and pressed the playback button.

‘Hi, James, this is Vanessa. You forgot your Filofax. I’ll just drop it in tomorrow morning in case you need it over the weekend. It’s no bother – I’m practically round the corner now. Around ten? Byeee!’

‘Find your own husband, you cow!’ I told the answerphone, and it bleeped thoughtfully.