Ellen walked down the steps and out of the gate, turning to wave, but Oliver was already inside. She imagined him walking along the corridor, straightening the pictures so they all hung exactly level. Already she knew that he liked things to be just so. Perhaps he would take himself down to the basement, tidy up their breakfast things before he went out to the patio with the paper. If only she could shut the gallery on Saturday mornings and be with him.
Their affair had been so sudden and unexpected. Only four weeks earlier, Ellen had been sitting behind her desk in the front room of the gallery, sorting through the accounts. The light had slanted through the small window behind her, reminding her that yet another summer was going by without her having bought the right blind. The back of her neck felt hot to the touch. Her headache was getting worse. She rustled in the desk drawer for the packet of ibuprofen she kept there. She stood up to get a glass of water from the small kitchenette behind her and felt a familiar prick of pleasure at the pictures that hung around the white walls.
This was the place where Ellen felt most comfortable. The hours she had spent alone here had been hours in which she had time for herself and for the quiet grieving and reflection that she needed to do after Simon’s death. Somehow the atmosphere of the gallery gave her an inner calm that she could never find at home with the children. Since her uncle Sidney had willed it to her three years earlier, she had worked hard at building up the business, extending the premises through into the large back room, knocking out one of the cupboards and the dividing wall behind it so a short passage led from the front to the back. Her uncle had taken her on at a moment in her life when she was directionless, kept going only by the need to support her kids. He had the mistaken belief that her art-college training would be qualification enough, but working there with him had taught her everything she needed to know. She had taken on the legacy and turned it into an increasingly vibrant business for him.
At the sound of the bell, she glanced up as the glass door opened and a customer came in. Him again! The same man had been at the latest exhibition opening, had been in twice during the previous week and once already this. Idle speculation had inevitably become Ellen’s way of passing the day as people wandered in and out of the gallery. The lean, angular planes of this man’s face and his dapper pin-stripe suit said ‘City’ although his unkempt, boyish, almost black hair suggested something more relaxed, perhaps in the media. He exuded a youthful self-confidence appropriate for someone in what she guessed must be his late thirties. When he’d put his hand on her desk yesterday, as he asked her a question, she had surprised herself slightly by glancing up to notice a pair of cornflower blue eyes edged with long dark lashes – eyes a girl would kill for. For a moment, he held her gaze, then turned to leave.
As she had expected, he walked past her desk, smiling as he wished her good morning. She returned the greeting. He went into the back room where, on the small black-and-white security monitor, she could see him standing in front of the same picture as he had before. Over the last couple of weeks, she had often stood there herself, transported by the richness and power of the colours. Rough semi-circles of neon pink, mustard yellow, Lenten purple and brilliant carmine were juxtaposed with others in shades of apple green, red and aquamarine, all roughly outlined and set against a background of cerulean blue edged by a darker, more mysterious night sky: Starship by Caroline Fowler. Caroline was one of the newer artists that Ellen had brought to the gallery, impressed by her use of colour and the bold statements made by her canvases. She had a strong following already and this, her second exhibition with Ellen, had cemented her success. Unusually, the man didn’t stand in front of the painting for long. As he walked through to the front of the gallery, Ellen hoped she might at last have a sale on her hands.
‘I love that painting, Starship,’ he said. ‘Every time I come in here, I’m drawn to it. I’d like to buy it but I don’t have anywhere to hang it at the moment.’
‘I could keep it here for you for a while, if you’d like.’ She opened the drawer where she kept her red stickers and receipt pads.
‘No. I don’t think that would work. It might not suit whatever place I buy.’
‘Are you moving to London?’ Ellen’s curiosity got the better of her.
That was how their conversation had begun. Within five minutes of him introducing himself, Ellen was offering him a coffee as he described where he’d been living in rural France. He’d run a small arts and crafts gallery there but felt after two years that it was time to come home, so had sold the business and was looking to start again in London. As they’d talked, they’d discovered that their shared interest in art and the business of running a gallery extended into the books they’d read, films they’d seen and even the stretch of Dorset coast she knew from her childhood holidays. As the time passed, Ellen had hardly noticed the bell signalling other customers, until one had interrupted to buy another of Caroline’s pictures.
Oliver had waited, flicking through the prints folder, as she took the customer’s details, then stuck a red spot on the label beside the picture. As she returned to her desk, he looked at his Rolex and asked if, at five to six, she was closing. Thrilled to have made the sale, she had had to phone Caroline first to tell her the good news, then happily agreed to go for a very quick drink before she had to rush home to cook the children’s supper.
She smiled as she got on the bus, remembering those magical days of snatched encounters: coffee in the gallery, a walk round the local park, lunch, a drink in the pub. Oliver was funny, concerned and, most importantly, interested in her life. Despite her half-hearted attempts at resistance, she had felt like Alice tumbling down the rabbit hole into Wonderland, unable to stop herself, simultaneously curious and alarmed about what might happen next. At last, three weeks after they’d first met, the moment had come when she had turned to him as they stepped out of Bistro Pepe and he had taken both her hands and leaned towards her. She had pulled back, aware of and unable to believe what was coming, but he had pretended not to notice. It didn’t matter to him that they were in a public place and that people might look askance at a younger man kissing a definitely middle-aged woman. As his lips touched hers, she felt as if she’d come home at last.
That night he’d accompanied her home and she’d invited him in for coffee. The day before, she had put the children on the train for Cornwall where, as always, they were spending the last five weeks of their long summer holiday with Simon’s family just outside St Mawes. Without them, the emptiness of the house bore down on her.
One kiss had been all that was needed to puncture the ten years of overwhelming numbness she’d felt since Simon’s death. Left on her own with two small children, then aged only five and three, she’d had no alternative but to batten down her emotions and concentrate on helping them cope with the lack of their father. What was important was that she kept Simon alive in their minds, making sure above all that they knew he’d loved them. To do that, she couldn’t include another man in their lives, however frequently her friends and family said that was exactly what the children, and indeed she, needed. Until now. At first the sex was awkward, unfamiliar, embarrassing, but Oliver’s confidence and consideration drew her out of herself until she relaxed and moved with him. Since that first night together, Oliver hadn’t left except to go to pick up a few clothes and check out of wherever he’d been staying. And she had never wanted him to.
Ellen couldn’t remember when she had felt so indifferent to what her neighbours thought of her. The net curtains of Oakham Road might be twitching as she and Oliver came and left together – let them! The only people, apart from her family, whose opinion she particularly cared about were Kate and Bea. She could imagine their faces when she told them about Oliver. After so many years of knowing her as a devoted widow and committed single mother, they would be completely taken by surprise. But keeping Oliver to herself made their relationship all the more precious, all the more intense. She didn’t want that to end by going public, even though she knew that, once the kids came home, she would have to. If not sooner.
When she
