Harriet Evans - Love Always

I know he’s not coming back now, but some days events conspire to make it more difficult than others. This morning the post consists of a council tax demand, Oli’s Arsenal fanzine, one of his many gadget magazines, and a reminder to Mr and Mrs Jones that we have to renew our home contents insurance, which seems particularly cruel. There’s also a smal , thick, stiff envelope, with my name written in handwriting I don’t recognise. I put the rest of the post in his pile – Oli is staying with his best friend Jason and his wife Lucy, nearby in Hackney, which is where he went before. He comes by the flat to pick his post up, just lets himself into the hal and goes again, we don’t see each other. I open the envelope addressed to me.

YOU ARE INVITED TO THE LAUNCH OF

THE FRANCES SEYMOUR FOUNDATION

A CHARITY FOUNDED IN MEMORY OF FRANCES SEYMOUR

TO SUPPORT YOUNG ARTISTS

THURSDAY 9TH APRIL

2.30PM CHAMPAGNE RECEPTION & BUFFET LUNCH

3.30PM SPEECH BY MIRANDA KAPOOR, FRANCES’S

DAUGHTER

3.45PM PRIVATE VIEW OF EXHIBITION OPENS

At Summercove,

Near Treen,

Cornwal

RSVP

rsvp@seymourfoundation.org

Overleaf: ‘Summercove at Sunset, 1963’

On the back is a painting, one I have never seen before. ‘Summercove at Sunset, 1963’ must have been painted from behind the white house, which is nestling against the black trees in the lane behind, the lawn and the terrace sloping gently towards the cliffs, the countryside lush and green, the grey terrace echoed by the grey-green of the lavender against it. There is a lone figure on the lawn, a tal man with a towel around his neck, walking towards the sea. It is very stil , almost dreamlike; no feeling of movement in the branches or the lavender or the grass. The light is pale gold, casting long shadows. The man is striding but you feel he’s been frozen mid-step by the artist, that they wanted to capture this moment in time.

I stare at it, in the fading afternoon light; I’ve seen Granny’s paintings at Summercove, in gal eries, in catalogues and books, but I’ve never seen anything like this before. It feels like a new approach, only it was one of the last things she ever painted. I turn the invitation over in my hand, letting the corners of the hard cardboard press into my palms. Who sent this out? Louisa, of course. It wasn’t Mum, that’s for sure.

It’s been over a week now since Mum and I had our showdown, and I stil haven’t heard back from her. I don’t know what comes next. This gives me another reason to be in touch, I suppose. Tapping the invitation thoughtful y against my hand, I walk towards the studio.

The sun is – sort of – out, a silvery sheen of cloud covering the sky but there are shadows on the ground and it’s kind of warm, for the first time this year, over halfway through March. I am lost in thought as I walk round to Fournier Street and out at the back of the Hawksmoor Christ Church, its looming, sinister bulk casting the streets into shade. I need more time to think.

Cathy often says in her wise way that your life is made up of three sides of a triangle: home (where you live and how settled it is), relationships (friends, family and of course romantic), and work (having a job, having a fulfil ing job, one that doesn’t make you cry every night or mean you’re a sex worker). Cathy’s triangle dictates that you don’t have to have al three sides working to be happy, but you need two sides to be able to function properly. We used to discuss this in the long evenings around the time of Horrific Ex Boyfriend Martin, three years ago – a psycho doctor who kicked her out of her flat and changed the locks, the week after she lost her job in her previous company. No home, no boyfriend, no job. No sides of triangle: bad. But strangely, it was OK, because it was relatively easy to get two sides of the triangle up and running again. She got a job quite quickly, bucking the trend of my other friends at publishing houses or law firms or smal start-ups who suddenly lost their jobs: it was obviously some kind of slow period in the actuary recruiting world. She stayed with Jay, who has a spare room in his flat, and whom she has known almost as long as me, and the weird thing is that we remember that period with a lot of happiness. We were out a lot, loads of us, drinking in Spitalfields and Shoreditch, there were great new bars opening up each week and it wasn’t a stop on a tourist trail the way it is now. Oli and I were getting ready for our wedding, and finding the whole thing surreal and weird: Cathy and Oli and I al went to a wedding fair at ExCel, and had to leave after five minutes when the first stand we came across was a production company that wil make a DVD of your wedding day set to a song that is special y composed for and about you; it was next to a stand that sold you fluffy toys with the pet names you and your partner cal each other embroidered on for you to give away to guests as wedding favours . . . We went to Summercove for a fortnight, the four of us, and I remember we ate fresh crab nearly every day, with pools of garlic butter and fresh bread. We helped Granny clear out Arvind’s study while he was away giving a lecture at Bologna, one of his last trips abroad, and threw out a huge amount of papers. I have since wondered what we threw out . . . probably the secret to happiness in the Western Hemisphere, or a cure for cancer, but it’s hard to tel when you’re confronted with a box containing a copy of Woman’s Own from 1979, two packets of crisps that went out of date in 1992, and assorted scraps of torn-up paper, which is what it mostly seemed to be. I remember Granny so wel that summer, laughing over boxes, a scarf tied over her hair like Grace Kel y. She would have been in her mid-eighties then and she stil looked like a star.

* * *

It seems a long time ago, that period in our lives. Rose-tinted spectacles, perhaps, but I look back on it now and smile. I clutch the invitation in my hand, bending the hard card over into the shape of a tear.

At the studio, I put it on the little shelf by the safe. I stare at the painting on the back, thinking. It is very stil ; starting to get dark outside and the traffic seems distant. I shake my head. Where is the damn diary? Where is it? I feel as if I’m no nearer to finding out. I should have gone back to look for it and now I’ve made things worse, not better. I feel like a failure. I’ve let Cecily down.

There’s a knock on the door and a deep voice says, ‘Nat, hi.’

‘Ben! Hey,’ I say, and though it’s hardly a shock to see him, I’m particularly grateful for the diversion this morning. ‘I was just coming to ask you

—’ I turn round and stop, open-mouthed. ‘Wow. Your hair! What happened to you?’

‘I had it al cut off.’

‘When?’

‘Last Thursday. You just haven’t been in since then.’

‘I was out visiting shops and stuff. My goodness. Why?’ He rubs the top of his head rueful y. ‘Um – I decided it was time for a change.’

‘Al your lovely curls!’ I say. ‘And the stubble! Al gone!’ He looks sad. ‘I know. My head feels cold.’ He is running his fingertips lightly over his scalp. I watch, transfixed, as his long fingers push through the thick short stubble of his hair and move down towards his smooth chin.

‘You look completely different,’ I say. ‘Strange.’

‘Oh, thanks,’ he says. ‘No, I don’t mean you look strange.’ I rush to correct myself. ‘It’s strange, I mean. You look – it’s like Samson.’

‘He lost al his strength and got murdered,’ Ben says. ‘You’re making me think I should put a bag on my head. Is it that bad?’

‘It’s real y not. In fact it’s the opposite.’ I hear Cathy’s voice, it seems ages ago, that lunch – If he had his hair cut . . . Wow, he’d be absolutely gorgeous – and I can feel myself starting to blush. ‘You look great. Real y – it real y suits you. You look much better – not that you looked bad before.