Part 23 (1/2)

Cam shrugged. 'I'm good at my job. I'm just going to carry on being good at my job and the local politicians can go f.u.c.k themselves.'

'You're completely calm about it, then,' Gwen said, smiling.

'Completely and utterly.' Cam smiled back at her with real warmth. Gwen swallowed, trying to ignore the sense memories of their night together. Her whole body was leaning towards the man, hoping for a rerun. Oh Christ.

'You've been busy.' Cam was looking at her work table, at the half-a.s.sembled shadow box.

'Got to get my stock levels up. I'm famous now.' Gwen grabbed a copy of The Chronicle and handed it to Cam. 'Page six.'

She pressed air bubbles out of the wallpaper, smoothing it down carefully, while Cam read. Finally he looked up. 'At least it's positive.'

'Only if you ignore the sarcastic quote marks.' Gwen shook her head. 'I bet Patrick Allen has something to do with this.'

Cam looked surprised. 'You're probably right. He basically runs this town. Still, at least it's publicity.'

Gwen sat down. 'I guess. I've had a couple of enquiries today already.'

'That's good, right? You said you needed the business.'

Gwen was staring at a tiny paintbrush, turning it over in her hands. 'I just wish I could be sure people really like them. I worry that they're only interested because they saw my name in the paper.'

'You don't get to choose who enjoys art or how.'

'I'm not talking legally,' Gwen said. 'Although a law against keeping great works in the private collections of rich idiots would be good.'

'New from Mattel, Socialist Gwen.'

'Worst. Action figure. Ever.'

Cam laughed. He looked around the room. 'I didn't know about this place.'

'I think it was Iris's work room. I've been clearing it out.' Gwen pointed to a cardboard box filled with gla.s.s jars. 'Don't know what to do with that lot. Feels wrong to throw them away.'

'What about the boxes?' Cam indicated the shoe boxes lining the shelves.

'They're mine. I moved them in yesterday.'

'Oh. Right.'

'Don't look so shocked,' Gwen said. 'It's not that big a deal.'

'You're moving in,' he said.

'This is a really nice house.' Gwen looked away so that she didn't have to watch Cam's expression. If he looked as horrified as Ruby had, she didn't want to know. Instead, she concentrated on her shadow box. It lay on its back, the inside papered with to-scale striped wallpaper, the bottom edge carpeted in tiny burgundy pile. To one side sat a miniature armchair upholstered in dusky green velvet and a two-inch-tall reproduction of Van Gogh's Sunflowers that she was rather pleased with. Cam pointed at it. 'Did you paint that?'

'Yes.'

'It's really good.'

'Thank you.'

'I'm sorry, though,' he added. 'The colours are wrong.'

Gwen laughed. 'That depends on your perspective.'

'I don't get it.'

'They're little jokes. I put stuff in for people to find.'

'Like Easter eggs?'

'Sorry?'

'In computer games. They put in hidden stuff for people to find-' Cam broke off. 'Never mind.'

Gwen lifted another box from the shelf. 'Like in this one. Look.'

The box was one of Gwen's favourites. It looked like a jumble of sewing supplies: cotton reels, scissors, a thimble, but hidden amongst them were tiny figures. A dark-haired girl with red lips peeping out from inside a cotton reel, a boy in yellow dungarees hanging from a scissor handle, a messy-looking dog trapped inside a box of pins, his paws sc.r.a.ping at the clear plastic. There was a minuscule bone on the 'floor' just outside.

'Huh.' Cam seemed at a momentary loss for words. He straightened up. 'Are you ready to go, or do you need to get changed?'

Gwen looked down at her jeans. Good thing this isn't a proper date. 'I'm ready,' she said.

Outside Ruby's four-bedroom house in a pleasant street on the outskirts of Bath, Gwen remembered how she and Ruby had spent Sat.u.r.days in the city, walking around with linked arms. They'd been merciless in their opinions of the well-to-do Bathonians. The ladies-who-lunched and the men with cravats and Barbour wax jackets. Now Ruby opened the door wearing tailored black trousers and a black-and-white striped top, a silk scarf knotted neatly around her throat, and Gwen wondered when the h.e.l.l everybody had become so grown up.

'Cam! Lovely of you to come.' Ruby leaned in so that he could kiss her cheek, diamond earrings twinkling in the porch light.

'Nice that you made an effort, Gwen,' Ruby said, her eyes sliding down Gwen's body, pausing significantly at her blue Converse One Stars. 'Come on through. David's just getting ready. He's only just finished work. You'll know what that's like, Cam.'

Gwen rolled her eyes, then realised that Cam had caught her doing it and was smiling in an annoying way. 'Shut up,' she whispered.

They were sitting in the cream-and-gold living room sipping gin and tonics when David came in. He had always been a restrained kind of guy, but Gwen could tell he was pleased to see her by the way he briefly patted her arm. However he didn't look quite so thrilled that Cam was back in their lives. 'You want a beer?'

'I'm fine with this.' Cam held up the hi-ball Ruby had thrust into his hand seconds before.

'No. You want to come and get a beer,' David said heavily. 'Now.'

'Okey-doke.' Cam stood up, put his gla.s.s on one of the slate coasters on the polished-gla.s.s side table and followed David.

Ruby watched him go, then said, 'Now that's a keeper.'

Gwen's heart leaped and she thought I know. She aimed for casual. 'What makes you say that? His steady income?'

'He used a coaster. It took me five years to train David.'

Gwen laughed. A joke. Of course Ruby was joking. For a moment, there, she had looked so much like Gloria, it'd confused her.

'You okay?' Ruby frowned. 'You're a little pale.'

'I'm fine.' Gwen took a hefty swallow of her drink, forgetting that she didn't really like gin. She was still coughing when David and Cam walked back in.