Harriet Evans - Love Always

Above the work table six big cork tiles are glued to the wal , onto which I have stuck photos – the one of Granny when she was younger; me and Jay at Summercove when we were five, squinting into the sun, both dark, fat, smal and serious; and Ben and me last year when we went as Morecambe and Wise to the Petticoat Studios Christmas drinks. Tania didn’t get it, but as she grew up on the Left Bank that’s excusable. No one else did either, though. Their average ages are about twenty-three. The photo makes me smile every time I look at it; there’s such panic in our eyes as we realise what a mistake we’ve made, and behind us are grouped our effortlessly trendy fel ow studio-renters in a variety of super-cool fancy dress outfits, from Betty Boo (Jamie, of course) to Johnny Depp as Captain Sparrow (Matt, one of the writers in the writers’ col ective in the basement). I never remember that about fancy dress: that you’re supposed to look bril iant, but gorgeous as wel . I always just look insane.

Final y, there’s a picture of Oli and me on our wedding day two years ago at the Chelsea Physic Garden, he in a light khaki summer linen suit, me in white Col ette Dinnigan. We’re in profile, black and white, laughing at each other, and we look for al the world as though we’re in a photo shoot in Hello! . Sometimes, in the middle of the afternoon, I’l glance up from my work and catch sight of that photo, and I’l have to remind myself it’s me. There are clippings from magazines, lots of pins just in case I have ideas for things, a cartoon from Private Eye about artists, and a Sempé cover from the New Yorker which Oli had framed for me on our first wedding anniversary.

I have to cal Oli now I’m back. We need to talk again. It’s been nearly three weeks, and coming back from Cornwal , from everything there and the meeting this morning, has made me see one thing clearly: this state of in-between nothingness can’t go on.

There are window boxes outside with pansies and geraniums which have died. I need to sort them out now spring is nearly here, take a trip to Columbia Road and buy some more. Cheaply, of course. There’s nothing to be frightened of. I can get on with things. I want to channel my new-found, urgent sense of purpose, of the need for action. But stil there’s something stopping me, I don’t know what. It’s more than Oli. It’s Granny’s funeral, it’s what Arvind and Octavia both separately said, this casual crumbling of the wal I’d always thought was around us al . It’s the scant pages of the diary I’ve read, enough to make me want to read more, desperately read more.

Where’s the rest of it? Cecily didn’t just write that first chunk, that much is clear. What happened that summer, after the boys arrived? I’m holding the post in my hand and I feel myself screwing up the letters as I screw up my eyes, trying to think. To go from never hearing her name mentioned, to being able to hear her voice so clearly that it’s almost as though she’s talking just to me, is incredibly strange. To go from thinking that your family is sane and happy, if distant, to realising you don’t real y know anything about them at al – where’s the rest of it? What happened afterwards, with my mother, with her, with al of them? I have to find out, but how? I have to find the diary. And I have to find some way of talking to my mother about it.

I put the post down on the table. The letters fan out by themselves. At least two are from the bank. I can stop ignoring them. There are two more window envelopes, which always means a bil or a reminder. And there’s an invitation to a new trade fair, in June, in Olympia. I’ve been ignoring those for a while too: what’s the point? But now, flushed with enthusiasm, I feel as though anything’s possible. I realise that if I’m ever to make my own business work, I need to start designing again. Come up with a new col ection that’s so amazing I’l be on every fashionista’s blog, sold in Liberty’s in a year and have my own diffusion line in Topshop by next year. But more importantly, get it right. Do it because I love it, not because I have to. So what . . . what col ection? What wil it be?

Then, as if someone else is tel ing me to do it, my hand steals slowly but surely to my neck. I feel the thin chain and Cecily’s ring hanging on it. I walk over to the tiny mirror hanging by the fridge and stare at myself. There are dirty brown circles under my eyes.

The ring nestles against my skin, the almost pink gold soft against my skin. The twisted metal flowers are beautiful. I think about this ring, about Granny, about my dead young aunt. And suddenly, I hear my grandfather’s voice, as his dry fingers push Cecily’s diary towards me: Take it . . . And look after it, guard it carefully. It’ll all be in there.

I take the pages out from my skirt and look at them, wondering what comes next.

‘Nat,’ a voice cal s outside. ‘Hey! I’m early!’

Of course she’s early. It’s Cathy, she’s always early. Quickly, I shove the pages into my bag as Cathy pokes her head round the door.

Cathy is very short; I am tal . It is one of the many differences that brought us closer together, since we were eleven-year-olds negotiating the nightmarish, unforgiving terrain of the al -girls West London grammar school. She is holding up a brown paper bag.

‘I went via Verde’s,’ she says. ‘I bought quiche. Terrible morning. I think I lost someone fifty grand.’ Cathy is an actuary, she works in Bishopsgate, the financial district on the edge of the City which encroaches daily ever further into Spitalfields, bringing glass office blocks and Pret a Mangers into the once-ramshackle, historic streets. ‘I’ve got salad. And cakes. And some real y expensive fruit juice.’ She comes towards me and kisses me on the cheek. ‘How are you, love?’

I lean down and hug her tightly, feeling her cold, silky, thick hair against my skin, her reassuring Cathy smel – I think it’s a combination of Johnson’s baby lotion and Anaïs Anaïs. She’s not one to experiment with new things, our Cathy. If she’s happy with something, she sticks to it. She found Anaïs Anaïs when we were sixteen and she’s worn it ever since. She likes Florida and goes there every winter with her mum, to the same hotel in Miami. If Horrific Ex Boyfriend Martin hadn’t chucked her out and changed the locks three years ago she’d stil be with him, which is worrying to me, as he was a bona fide psychopath. She doesn’t like change.

She sets the bag down on my workbench and pats my hair. ‘I kept thinking about you yesterday. How was it?’

‘It was OK. Awful, but you know what I mean.’ I kick my bag further under the table.

‘What’s that on your head?’ She points to the purple bump on my forehead and frowns. ‘Did you have a fight with someone? Did your mum behave herself? Or did she try and snog the vicar and you got in the way?’

Cathy knows my mother of old. She remembers our parents’ evening of 1991. She actual y saw Mum with Mr Johnson.

‘It’s fine.’ I laugh, though I feel a stab in my side as I think of my mother. I remember how jumpy she was al yesterday, see her distraught face as she remonstrated with Guy, waving me and Octavia goodbye, hear Octavia: ‘ Do you really not know the truth about her? ’

‘Just a bump.’ I don’t want to, can’t, get into that at the moment, not even with Cathy. ‘They’re al pretty mad, my family. You know that.’

‘They are,’ Cathy says briskly. ‘It’s a wonder you’re not a complete mentalist, Nat, I’ve often thought that. Or even more of a mentalist than you are, if you know what I mean.’

‘That’s so kind of you,’ I say. ‘I want to know how you are, though. What’s up with work? Why’s it terrible?’