was different. From an early age he’d recognized that the way to escape this oppressive family life was to keep his nose to the ground and work hard. His brothers helped with this. All of them were big; nobody messed with the Armstrong boys, so their little brother evaded the normal bullying meted out to swots. It was the one thing for which he would always owe them. By the time they’d all left school he was big enough to look after himself. At fifteen he was six feet tall and shaving every day, and no one touched him. He was left to study as hard as he liked, and it soon paid off. The first of his brothers to get any O-levels, he stunned the rest of the family by managing ten straight As. From then on university was just a formality. None the less, the day he’d won a place at Cambridge to read economics had been the best of his life. His ticket to freedom.
‘I wonder if the little thing will have any hair to start off with,’ said Lucie, suddenly opening her eyes.
‘I don’t know. At least we know what colour it’ll be.’
‘Worried I’ve been with the postman?’
Ben laughed. ‘If it’s not very dark indeed, you’ll be in big trouble.’ He rubbed her tummy gently. This was what he’d been looking forward to ever since they’d married: a son or daughter, so he’d have his own proper family. Just six weeks to go. He couldn’t wait. This was what he worked so hard for. He wasn’t going to make the same mistakes his father had. He would always be able to provide for his family. Lucie would be effectively retiring in a few weeks’ time – he now earned enough for her to extend her maternity leave indefinitely if she so wished, and still put money aside for the future. Their child would always have a parent at home. Ben glanced around the room. Life was pretty good. Upstairs he’d carefully decorated the nursery – yellow, because he felt it was good for boys and girls, and he’d also lined the room with a frieze and a mobile of wooden parrots. It was the only yellow Lucie had allowed in the house – elsewhere, she’d firmly banned it as being ‘too early nineties’.
‘But I like yellow,’ Ben told her, ‘it’s cheerful.’
‘But, darling, everyone has yellow. It’s so faux.’ Ben bowed to her better judgement. After all, she knew much more about style and current trends than he did – as she should, the amount of magazines she subscribed to.
Later, as they lay in bed, Ben said to her, ‘So what d’you think is Harry’s problem with Julia?’
Lucie put down her magazine, paused and then turned to him. ‘Harry’s a romantic, darling. But I also think he’s terrified of committing to anyone other than his mythical perfect person. And I’m not sure she exists.’
‘Maybe.’
‘Perhaps he’s right, and Julia isn’t the one for him, but all I’m hearing is how wonderful she is. I don’t really understand his problem. And anyway, I thought all men liked big tits.’
‘Not at all. We don’t all adhere to men’s magazine ideology. And anyway, I love you and yours aren’t exactly huge, are they?’
‘Ben, I feel so flattered.’ She laughed. ‘But I do think Harry should give Julia a bit of a chance. He wants too much – no couple are going to be in perfect unison all the time, but he just won’t accept that.’
‘It’s his mum and dad,’ Ben told her. ‘Perhaps we’re at an advantage – we’ve got no standards to judge marriage by, but he’s got his brilliant parents, still happy together after thirty-five years. Harry says they even still sleep together, and his dad’s now seventy.’
‘Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about Harry. We’re going to have more than enough to think about in a few weeks – I want you to concentrate your energies on us.’ She kissed him, and turned off the light.
CHAPTER TWO Harry faces a conundrum
The following morning Harry started up his Citroën and headed back towards Wandsworth. That was the good thing about this particular job: it was fairly close by and there were no parking restrictions on the road outside. To avoid using the Underground, with its cattle trucks of commuters and dilapidated escalators, Harry drove wherever possible.
He was enjoying this current project, a mural for a middle-aged couple’s kitchen. As usual he rang on the bell, got no answer, and then let himself in. Ian and Anna both left for work long before Harry even thought about opening his paints, and usually he finished long (he suspected) before they returned. Little notes would be left for him, words of encouragement, or a sudden change of heart, and would he mind terribly, if it was not too much of a pain, just adding another bit to the scene? On two occasions they had left him photos of buildings or sights they wanted incorporated. Harry didn’t mind. After all, he was there to paint what they wanted. That was the whole point of his murals: to realize his clients’ dreams. He would make suggestions, talk through ideas, and provide sketches, helping the client with crystallize whatever it was they had in mind. In this case, Ian and Anna had been quite certain they wanted a river scene running all the way round the kitchen between work surface and overhead cupboards, with images of their favourite parts of the countryside as background. Since he had been a comparatively young child, Harry had nursed a love and fascination with architecture. From the Suffolk churches and grand houses in and around the area where he grew up, to the medieval castles discovered with glee on family holidays, Harry’s taste had always been broad and varied. But as he grew older, read, learnt and saw more, so he developed a love of classicism. William Kent, Capability Brown, and Vanburgh were his heroes; Fragonard, Watteau and Boucher his artistic inspiration. Much of his work reflected this, his skills honed by a year at art college. After leaving Cambridge he’d shelved any ideas he might have had for becoming an architect, and instead, spurred on by his mother, he’d enrolled at St Martin’s. Although this had crippled him financially at the time, the gamble had paid off: ever since, he’d been able to maintain a career doing what he loved most. This latest work was a river scene, surrounded by luxuriant foliage and with hints of ancient temples and ruined columns in the distance, was no exception. He’d sketched the whole thing first on paper, then lightly onto the wall, so they could begin to see how the finished painting might look. Did they want people, birds and animals added along the way? Quite definitely, Anna had nodded emphatically. And what about a few more ruins? Or a folly on a hill in the distance, perhaps? Yes, they’d agreed, that might be fun.
He walked downstairs into the basement kitchen, with its large, square central space and thick terracotta tiles, put down his kit, and made a brief examination of his work. Over halfway through now. He should be finished in a couple of weeks. Luckily he had another big job to go to in a restaurant, plus a very small cupboard decoration in another private kitchen. He often found juggling the work difficult, so that sometimes he would take on more than he could really cope with, and on other occasions he might be unemployed for several weeks. Still, he’d never been out of work for long, and he certainly saw no point in worrying about it. So far, between bouts of feeling very cash rich and extremely short, he had survived very happily. The restaurant might take as long as a couple of months, though. Perhaps he could paint the cupboard while he was at the preliminary sketches stage of the other. Marcus, the restaurant owner, need never know. He would just have to work into the evening for a few days. But then there was the bathroom in Chelsea to do. He’d forgotten that. Damn. Perhaps he could do the prelims for Marcus, but postpone actually working on the walls for a week or two. He’d already postponed the Chelsea job once. He would just have to work a bit harder and longer over the next few weeks, Harry thought to himself as he boiled the chrome kettle in Anna and Ian’s kitchen.
His
