Page 87 of Pictures of Him

‘Baby,’ he says, for this is what he used to call her. He has found the right name. ‘Baby, can you hear me?’

She does not speak and her eyes are dead, a deadperson’s unseeing eyes. His voice is raised, threaded with panic. Catherine! Catherine! Answer me. Talk to me. He is rocking her gently, back and forth. And now Jack is standing next to her but she does not see, she does not care.

Sam has wrapped his arm around her shoulders and he begins to lead her from the room, but at the last moment she stops still. Outside the sun has dropped down behind the hill and blood drains from the sky, first pink, then steel, now black for her vigil. And it seems to her, as she turns to take one final look at his broken body, that even the air is weeping.

Now

The question rises up, as always, but this time it passes from my brain to my throat to my mouth and then the words are out there and I see the look of dread as Sam hears them.

‘He died. Didn’t he?’

No method voice now, just a broken whisper as Sam tells me what I already know.

‘Yes. He did. I’m sorry.’

There are no words for this, no words, but we sit together with your death between us, and it’s almost comforting, almost as if we’re sharing the loss, just like we did when my mother died. The past doesn’t matter and nor does the future, there’s just this moment of acceptance. No sound, just space. Pure white like one of your canvases.

‘Should I tell you what happened?’ Sam asks after a while.

I nod and then, because I can, I use my voice.

‘Yes.’

‘There was a fight between them. It was over you. He fell back against the beam and a nail went through his skull.’

He pauses, framing what comes next.

‘He knew what happened to you, Catherine. He understood.’

So this is how your forgiveness is delivered to me – by a man who spent a lifetime hating you and loving me. Not forgiveness I know now but understanding. And sorrow at all those lost years.

‘And Jack?’

Finally I speak his name without fear or shame.

‘Jack has lost everything. His wife, his child, his best friend. There was an investigation, of course, and talk of manslaughter but they went with accidental death in the end.’

Death, the word echoes, but I won’t let it bring me down. I’ll stay right here in the bright white space you have created for me. In a while I’ll reach forward and touch Sam’s hands, gripping together so tightly on his knee.

‘It’s alright,’ I’ll tell him. ‘We will be alright,’ and I’ll watch the light come into that handsome, healthy face and I’ll feel glad that I can fix him.

But not quite yet. First I’ll turn away and look out at my tree for the last time, looking but not seeing the branches swaying in the breeze with their tiny buds of green. I’ll sink back into the place where you are, the place where we were young. There will be salt in the air and on our tongues and you’ll be smiling at me, if you can call it that, and you’ll ask me to tell you my life story and I’ll say I don’t think my life has really started yet.

And you’ll say: ‘Perhaps it starts right here.’

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Acknowledgements

I would particularly like to thank my amazing agent Felicity Blunt for championing this book; with her early guidance it became the story I wanted to write. Thanks also to Melissa Pimentel and the brilliant translation rights team at Curtis Brown.

I have loved working with the very talented editor Francesca Pathak at Orion: thank you for your enthusiasm, understanding and absolute connection with the story. Thank you to the whole Orion team for working so hard on this book. Thanks also to Celine Kelly for her early editorial suggestions. I am also very grateful to Abigail Scruby at John Murray for her editorial wisdom.

A huge debt of thanks to Dr James Stallard for sharing his expertise on dissociative disorder, his reflections on Catherine’s case and coincidentally a couple of brilliant plot suggestions. Researching Catherine’s condition, I also drew from the invaluable resourceShame and Guiltby June Price Tangney and Ronda L. Dearing. The artist Tom Hammick, whose work I love: your gorgeous paintingCarmen and the Bullwas an inspiration for one of Lucian’s.

Lucinda Horton and Harriet Edwards, dearest friends,inspirational writers, co-founders of our writers’ group: simply, without you there would be no book.

Thanks and love to Jane and Anna, my sisters, first readers and everything in between, for your lifelong commitment to the cause. Jake, Maya and Felix, you have grown up to this book and turned into such amazing people along the way. You make me so proud.

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