‘When was that other picture taken?’ Rachel asks.
‘Which picture?’
‘The one you’ve got on your hallway wall, by the mirror. The one with the four of you. In a boat.’
‘Oh,’ I say. ‘That was just one day in Cambridge. We were punting.’
‘Yeah, I thought it looked like a punt.’
I look at her, surprised. ‘Do you know Cambridge?’
She frowns, shakes her head. ‘No. Never been. I just heard it’s nice.’ She cradles her bump with both hands, her lips berry stained. ‘Did you say Serena took photographs?’
‘Yes. Her studio is in the mews just behind that street over there.’ I point, but Rachel isn’t looking.
‘What does she take pictures of?’
‘Portraits, mostly, I think. Or that’s what she sells most of. She’s got a big exhibition coming up. She’s doing really well.’
The truth is, I don’t really understand Serena’s photographs. She has them hanging all over the house, some in colour, some black and white. A wrinkled old man she saw in India, glowing-faced children with fishing nets she saw in Bali, a panoramic shot of the floating markets in the Mekong Delta, which she and Rory visited on their honeymoon. I always admire them, obviously. But I’m never sure exactly what makes a photograph good, or bad. I suppose they don’t make me feel anything much.
‘You don’t like them.’ Rachel has turned her head and is looking at my face, grinning, a hand flattened over her eyes.
My head snaps up. ‘Sorry?’
‘Her pictures!’ Rachel giggles. ‘Come on, Helen. I can tell by your face.’
‘I don’t know anything about art,’ I stutter, but I find myself laughing a little bit. I’m surprised to find how dizzyingly pleasurable it is, this minor act of disloyalty, rebellion. To laugh at Serena. To belittle her passions, her so-called talent.
‘To be honest,’ I hear myself saying, ‘I think most of it is a load of nonsense.’
Rachel throws her head back and hoots.
‘I mean, not just her,’ I say, already feeling guilty. ‘Most art, I mean. I’m sure hers is good. I just … I probably just don’t get it.’
But Rachel is shaking with laughter. She pulls a packet of cigarettes out of her pocket, and places one between her smiling lips, so that it sticks up straight from her mouth, like a pencil.
‘You crack me up, girl,’ she says, flicking at her lighter with one thumb. She lights the cigarette, inhales, then takes it between her fingers and blows a plume of smoke straight up in the air. She yawns extravagantly, her arms stretching out overhead, revealing gritty stubble in each armpit.
‘Maybe I’ll get one of her portraits,’ she says through the yawn.
‘What?’
‘A portrait. By Serena. Be nice to have some proper photos of the bump. All the celebrities do it now, don’t they?’
She winks at me, then places her hands on either side of her belly, her cigarette still perched between the fingers of her right hand, and starts drumming gently, as if she is playing the piano.
I look at her, try to gauge whether or not she is being serious about going to see Serena. The thought fills me with an irrational sense of dread.
‘I’m so comfy,’ Rachel says, yawning loudly again. ‘I might have a little nap here. You don’t mind, do you?’
Without opening her eyes, she gropes around for the raspberry punnet, takes another handful and tips them into her mouth.
It’s only later, when I notice the wedding photograph Rachel brought down, that I realise. I keep that picture on my bedside table. What was she doing in our bedroom?
32 WEEKS
SERENA
If it wasn’t for the rain, I’d probably have gone home. There didn’t seem much point in staying. But it started again about five thirty, lashing down, hammering at the skylight over my desk. I hadn’t remembered my umbrella.
I like being in my studio when it rains: I put the heater on under my desk, listen to the hum of it while I boil the kettle for tea. The studio is in a tiny mews off the high street. Hardly anyone comes down here. It is deliciously quiet. When it rains, that’s all you hear, like a rush of pebbles, a gorgeous white noise. The cobbles in the mews shine when it’s wet, like polished wood. I photographed the rain on the cobbles once, the stones rising out of puddles like tiny islands. It looked like an alien landscape, or the back of a huge crocodile.
At the back of the studio are the darkroom on one side and my desk on the other. Next to my desk is a corkboard of photographs, art postcards, things I’ve ripped out of newspapers and magazines. Places I’d like to go, one day. A window looks out to the little paved courtyard, where there is just enough space outside for a tiny table and chairs, a few plants in some old milk pails I got from the antiques place in the covered market.