James’s hand went to his chin. ‘Maybe. Why?’
He was ready to be snappish about this – it’s no longer any of your business – but he’d already lost her attention.
‘Oooh! Hello you!’
Great. Wild excitement at seeing a sullen in-bred feline, after a greeting with her husband that could be measured with a spirit level.
Eva danced round James to the spot where Luther was hovering on the stairs, picking him up and nuzzling his blankly uncomprehending, angry-looking face.
‘Aw! How’s my best happy hair baby?’
James was starting to really hate the happy hair baby. ‘Happy’? How could you tell, when you’re dealing with something that looked like a tubby dictator in a mohair onesie?
‘And how’ve you been?’ she asked, as an afterthought.
He hated Eva asking this. She knew full well the honest answer was more than his pride could take, and the alternatives let her off the hook.
‘Same. You?’
‘Good, thanks. This year’s intake seem a cute bunch. They really behave for me.’
‘No doubt.’
Eva worked at a redbrick private school in Bayswater and her miraculous crowd control was not unconnected to her aesthetic appeal.
Every so often, she’d come home with some smitten pupil’s unsubtle daubing of a full-lipped blonde, possibly floating Ophelia-like in water. It was usually a stealthy excuse to paint Miss in the scud. James had been irritated at being expected to look at this febrile fan-fic pinned to the fridge door.
‘Here are the ear drops for Luther,’ she dumped her bag on the table and rummaged for the packet. ‘Twice a day and some brownish discharge is normal.’
‘Fantastic. Looking forward.’
‘I’m going to get some more clothes from the spare room.’
‘Knock yourself out.’
‘There’s no need to speak in such a … diminishing way, all the time.’
James rolled his eyes.
Eva stalked upstairs and Luther padded off to the kitchen, with a flick of his tail to express his disgust at James’s inability to keep a woman.
After she had rifled through it for the ear drops, Eva’s tan shoulder bag gaped open enticingly in front of him. James could see a folded piece of paper and made out a name, ‘Finn Hutchinson, 2013’ with multiple kisses. Pupils were painting her this early in the term? He peered more closely. If he acted like a jealous spurned lover, that’s because he was one.
Listening to her moving about on the floor above, James pulled the drawing out. It was textured, thick cartridge paper, the sort you get in art supply shops.
He unfolded it and stared at a charcoal outline of his naked wife, legs hooked over the arm of a sofa, arms thrown back, staring at him unrepentantly from heavy lidded eyes, hair pooled in serpents behind her head.
This could, of course, be another Eva tribute. Nevertheless, something told James this had been sketched from real life, notably the accuracy of the detail.
For as long as he’d known her, Eva had favoured a bikini wax that left only a vertical, cigar-shaped strip of hair. The small smudgy line between the thighs was a sure sign that the artist was gifted with first-hand knowledge. The smoking gun pubes.
James left the portrait unfolded on the table and leaned against the wall, breathed out, and folded his arms.
Feeling nauseous, deathly cold and yet in control, he measured each minute she remained upstairs as an eternity.
When Eva walked in, James took savage pleasure in the moment of grisly silence as she pieced the scene together.
‘You went through my things?!’ she blurted. There it was. If any doubt remained that this was a memento from her new man, her reaction sealed it.
‘You left your bag open. What is it?’ James asked, dully.
‘It’s a drawing. You’ve seen them before.’
‘You’re going to lie to me? Even in the face of this?’
‘How am I lying?’
‘Because this isn’t from anyone’s imagination, Eva, it’s you. Do you think I can’t recognise my own wife?’
A pause. Her face dropped, her shoulders heaved and she started to weep. Frustratingly, James felt automatic guilt at making her cry. He knew he was being manipulated and his fury broke.
‘No, don’t cry! You don’t get to cry. You’ve done this to me, to us! How the fuck do you think I feel? Do you think I deserve to find out you’re having an affair via a doodle of your tits?’
‘I’m not having an affair!’ she said, blearily.
‘What word would you prefer?’
‘I knew you’d make this about Finn when it’s not.’
‘Oh I think it’s a bit about Finn now you’re shagging him, don’t you? How long has it been going on?’
When they first split, he’d asked her if there was anyone else and it was no, no, no – absolutely not.
Eva shook her head. ‘Nothing happened until we’d separated.’
‘Hah. Right. You obviously finished things to start this. Thanks for the Bill Clinton definition of honesty.’
Eva shook her head vigorously. ‘No.’
‘Is that too straightforward for you? Does trashing our marriage have to be about higher, spiritual needs than you being into someone else? That would be so ordinary,
James had built up to shouting and Eva was wiping at her cheeks, head bent, hair falling forward over her eyes. It wasn’t remorse, it was a tactic to make James the villain of the piece and he wasn’t having it.
‘Who is he?’
‘He did some life class modelling. We’ve become closer recently …’
‘How close? This close?’ James gestured with his hands apart. ‘Or let me guess. This close,’ he put his palms together.
Eva shook her head and sniffled.
Wait. Finn. Life modelling. She’d talked about him. She’d met him at a launch, with her restaurant PR friend, Hatty. He’d offered to model for her students and she’d said they couldn’t afford him.
Then a few weeks later there’d been a giggly, supposedly disparaging tale about how this ‘Abercrombie & Fitch type’ had swaggered into school to pose, dropping his robe and flirting with the blushing A-level students.
James remembered saying, ‘What, flirted while flopped out? I have to admire his confidence.’
Eva had demurred with talk of strategically placed towels, and said something about how he was an up-and-coming who was signed with a major modelling agency.
James realised now that cocky Finn had made rather a big gesture in working pro bono.
Eva had gaily wondered which of her sixth formers might have a fling with him. James now detected the sleight of hand, with hindsight: it was Eva he’d met, before