Part 19 (1/2)

'Enough!' Pamela smacked her hands onto her knees before standing up. 'This, I have to see. Lead the way.'

I followed them into the studio. Work had been so all-consuming that I hadn't found time to sit and watch Kit painting. I missed those companionable evenings.

Pamela glanced up at Sibella's portrait. 'Morning, ma'am,' she said. 'Now, you are a vision of loveliness. Though I wouldn't like to find myself on the wrong side of you, I think. There's flint in those eyes.'

No wine bottles in sight, full or empty. I'd seen Kit making a frame for a vast canvas, and there it was against one wall. His work in progress stretched towards the ceiling and was perhaps four feet wide. The three of us walked around to stand in front of it.

We were looking out of an open window-with a sill and a frame- and straight into the dense understorey of a rainforest so real that I could almost smell the lichen; yet the effect was produced by light and colour. I was spellbound. It was somehow more real than reality.

'How long have you spent on this?' asked Pamela, examining a mirrored water droplet that glittered on a fern.

'Eighty, ninety hours so far. Martha and I have been two s.h.i.+ps pa.s.sing in the night.'

The pair of them began to discuss technicalities: working with such a large canvas, getting it safely to Dublin, sourcing wooden shutters to complete the window effect.

'Might try vineyards next,' said Kit, pulling out a sketch. 'Think what you could do with those mathematical patterns!' He was about to expand on the thought when Finn shot through the doorway, hands gripped around an imaginary steering wheel and Formula 1 noises bubbling through pursed lips.

'Wanted on the phone, wanted on the phone, Kit McNamara. Will a Mr Kit McNamara please come to the phone? It's Granny from Ireland.' Then he made a handbrake turn and accelerated out again. I heard him changing gear on the verandah. Kit waved an apology to Pamela, and trotted off.

'Kit's mother,' I explained, as Pamela and I followed at a more dignified pace. 'She can't sleep, and then she's bored. So she phones Kit.'

'Your man is exceptionally talented,' said Pamela. 'Did you realise that? If I had a fraction of his ability I'd be singing from the rooftops.'

'New Zealand inspires him.'

'Just wait until the autumn. Oh, such colours!'

We strolled onto the lawn, and I asked Pamela's advice about some shrivelling of the leaves on our citrus bush. But there was an elephant in the garden. I couldn't ignore it.

'I'm so sorry about your son,' I said.

She patted my arm. 'I'll tell you the rest of the story, but another time. People don't usually want to hear. It spoils their day.'

When we reached the glossy shade of the walnut tree, she leaned across the back of the truck and let her dogs off their chains. 'You don't get over it, you know. You never do. But if you're very lucky, you get through it.'

I watched my neighbour drive down the track in a confident whirlwind of dust. The dead sheep slid around on the flatbed of the truck, and dogs raced alongside with maniacal joie de vivre. She looked the archetypal competent woman. Everything in her world obeyed Pamela Colbert: the husband, the dogs, the sheep, the garden.

Well, no. Not everything. Even she couldn't control Death.

Sacha arrived home soon after Pamela had left. She'd made her own way up from the road gate, a bottle of Coca-Cola in one hand, and burst in as I was wrestling with a pile of ironing.

'Don't panic!' she crowed, as the door hit the wall with a plaster-shattering crack. 'I'm back!'

'I'd have collected you from the road,' I said, crossing the kitchen to hug her.

'Mmwah!' She gave me a noisy kiss on the cheek, dropping her backpack onto the floor. 'Where is everyone?'

'Have you been dragged through a hedge backwards? That's the wildest hairdo I've ever seen. It'll take hours to get the tangles out.'

She touched her head vaguely, then did that intensely annoying teenage thing-wrenched at the fridge door and stood looking at the shelves. I once read a statistic about how many weeks of our lives we spend looking into fridges. It was horrifying.

'Why are you drinking c.o.ke?' I asked. 'You don't even like it.'

'Shows what you know about me.'

'We've got leftover lasagne there, on the top shelf.'

'I haven't eaten a thing today,' she said, putting the bowl into the microwave. 'D'you think the diet's working yet?' She turned side-on to me and inhaled sharply. 'Tabby's given me some of her clothes.'

'I think it's time to forget the diet. You're overdoing it. Tabby was born a different shape from you.'

'Oh my G.o.d, I forgot to set the microwave going.' She pressed the start b.u.t.ton and stood watching the plate doing its wobbly dance on the turntable. 'I wonder what it's like to be in a microwave?'

'Fatal, unless you're a plate of lasagne. So you've had a good time?'

'Yep. Ting! That was quick.'

Giving up on the ironing-surely a metaphor for all that is fruitless and sterile in the modern world-I joined her at the table and asked about her evening at Bianka's house, which seemed to consist of listening to music and talking all night.

'Any reason why you're so jolly?' I wondered whether I really wanted to know. I had a nasty feeling it might be to do with Jani. No parent of a sixteen-year-old girl likes to imagine . . . well, you know.

She shrugged. A burnished strand of her hair fell into the cheese sauce.

I tried again. 'I hope you didn't, er, didn't go too far.'

'You mean did I screw Jani?'

'No!' I was tight-lipped. 'Um, well . . . I mean, I hope you're making good choices.'

'Oh I am,' she said, laughing uproariously. 'I am. I'm fantastic at making good choices! I'm a legend in my own lifetime. No, Mum, I didn't sleep with Jani. Chill. Now if you'll excuse me, I've gotta go and see who's on Facebook.'

'You haven't got to do anything of the kind. You've got to finish that lasagne-you've hardly eaten any.'

She bent over the table, held her hair back with one hand, and piled the whole lot into her mouth. 'Happy?'

'Go on, then,' I sighed, and the next moment she and her backpack had gone. I strode into the hall, calling after her, 'Have a shower! You look like a tramp.'

Her head appeared over the banisters. 'Now, Mum, that's not PC, as you ought to know. We don't call them tramps, we call them homeless persons.'

'Get away with you,' I said, laughing. 'Don't forget to scrub behind your ears.'

The bathroom door slammed shut.

Why d'you think she's locked herself in there? I hadn't heard from my mother in a while; I'd almost missed the old boot.

'To have a shower, of course.'

Really? Not to throw up all that lasagne you've just made her eat?

'You're paranoid,' I snapped. 'Silly woman.'