Page 55 of The Christmas Invitation
‘You sounded pretty definite from here,’ she assured me, with a Cheshire Cat grin that exposed all her teeth.
I’d brought the canvas with me and now I set the portrait on my easel and she got up and came to look at it.
‘It’s taken so short a time – and yet, there it is, the distilled essence of Clara Mayhem Doome!’
‘I’m glad you like it. I just want to do a little more work on your hands, if you wouldn’t mind keeping them still, while holding the stone paperweight?’
I went to get my paints and when I returned she obligingly did so. While I worked, I found myself telling her a bit more about Rollo and how we’d met at a student party. ‘He was very handsome … like a cross between Byron and Dylan Thomas.’
‘Difficult to imagine,’ Clara said. ‘I can see Byron was handsome, and must have been magnetically attractive to a certain kind of woman, but I’ve always thought he was a complete tosser.’
I had to agree with her on that one.
‘When I first knew him, Rollo could be quite sweet and very charming … and also unfaithful, as it turned out. I gave him a second chance, and then a third, after he’d had a health scare and it had made him want to settle down and start a family.’
I sighed. ‘He even talked his mother round. He’d always been afraid of crossing her because she was very well off and paid for his flat and car, but she’d never liked me.’
‘I find that hard to believe.’ Clara sounded genuinely and flatteringly astonished.
‘Oh, she wouldn’t have found any girl good enough for her darling boy, but my strange upbringing and my mother havingbeen adopted were major flaws. She seemed to think not knowing who your real grandparents were was a big deal when it came to having children. All those unknown genes waiting to pop up.’
‘An odd way of looking at it,’ Clara said, turning her bright gaze on me. ‘So your mother was adopted?’
‘Yes, as a newborn baby. But it didn’t work out well and she ran off when she was a teenager – then ended up at River’s Farm.’
‘Interesting,’ she murmured, and then fell silent while I added a few final touches to the background and fell back to take a searching look at the portrait.
‘I think it’s time to stop. It’s finished.’
‘Then let’s call everyone in to see it!’ she said, jumping up and clapping her hands. ‘How exciting! And I can hardly wait to see what you’ll do with Henry!’
I was looking forward to that, too, but before then I’d have to find an art shop: I’d come away from home in such a rush that I’d left behind my big spare tube of flake white. And my putty rubber, which should have had a slightly stretchy and squidgy consistency, had gone hard and crumbly.
Where Rollo was concerned, the new me was also hard, but definitely not crumbly.
Over lunch it transpired that there was a good art and craft shop in Great Mumming, and when Henry heard that I intended driving there that afternoon he offered to take me himself.
‘I’ll go to the wine merchants and get a couple of spare bottles of whisky and sherry.’
‘If you’re going into Great Mumming, then you can bring Teddy up from school afterwards,’ Clara suggested.
‘But I could easily go in the camper van myself, and I can pick up Teddy too, if you like?’ I offered.
‘It’s no bother at all; the Jag needs a run out,’ said Henry. ‘I’ll just take Lass for her walk and then we’ll set off.’
Den, who had been standing at the work surface water-icing some kind of sponge cake while whistling quietly between his teeth, now turned and said he’d go with us and do the driving.
‘Tottie’s got a feeling we’ll be snowed in fer Christmas, so she wants to cram the freezer and larder full to bursting, like a bleeding squirrel.’
‘Who’s a bleeding squirrel?’ asked Tottie, coming in at that moment with a long string of onions in one slightly grime-encrusted hand.
‘You are,’ said Den. ‘Gimme a list of what yer want from Great Mumming, and I’ll see what I can do.’
Henry and Den bickered about who was to drive the car, but Den won and, having finished his icing, put a huge glass dome over his cake and took it out to the larder.
‘Den does so love driving the Jag and I don’t get it out of the garage so much in winter,’ Henry whispered to me.
Tottie had hung the onions up from a hook on a metal rack high over the table, from which already depended a smaller string of garlic and bunches of dried herbs.
