‘Oh, Clodagh.’ Lilly’s heart squeezed for the young woman, understanding what it felt like to have happiness ripped from under you.
‘She didn’t know about Apollo, and I didn’t tell her. What would have been the point, other than destroy her, destroy them?’
‘That took some strength.’
Clodagh nodded.
‘I packed up all his stuff, and when he came back from work I handed him his bags and I didn’t say a word, not one. He just took the bags and started crying, and I got the feeling he had been expecting it, waiting for the hammer to fall. He told me he was trapped and all kinds of rubbish, but he lied to me, Lilly, and he was lying to her, lying to his family, lying to Apollo. She had showed me pictures of their engagement party, and it was bigger than any wedding I’ve ever been to. He was dressed up to the nines and beaming into the camera with his arm around her.’ Her voice broke. ‘He left. It wasn’t the same in the flat. I could see him in every chair, lying in our bed, making promises to me the day we brought Apollo home. It was like torture, so I moved out, went to a shared house that was really grim and then we came here, and that’s that.’ The young girl wiped her nose. It was the day, it seemed, for tears.
‘You have no contact with him?’
‘None.’ Clodagh shook her head. ‘It’s better that way, cleaner. Easier for Apollo too. The idea that Sab could dip in and out of his life would only be confusing. I just want things to be steady.’ Lilly remembered Glenda saying something similar a long time ago now. ‘I guess that’s why I’m thinking we should probably takethat flat in Kennington. Apollo can stay at school, and we’ll only be twenty minutes or so walk from here. That’s nothing in the scheme of things.’
‘That sounds like a good idea.’ Lilly smiled to hide her desire to sob, daft as it was. Her tears were for the inevitable separation that was looming, but also for Clodagh’s broken heart, Sab’s broken promises and all that she, too, had endured. It really was monstrously unfair, all of it.
‘I’m okay though, Lilly. I don’t need him, don’t need anyone. I’d rather be on my own than be with someone who is not going to show up for me, pick me.’
Lilly poured the tea and considered Clodagh’s words:obsessed! Completely obsessed, convinced there’d never been a love like it ...
‘I understand, my love, I really do.’
1973 – aged 17
Lilly was happy. Her course at art college filled her with joy! It was a dream come true to spend her days studying beautiful paintings, learning the techniques of sculpture and collage, her two chosen modules for this year, and listening to experts debate the hidden meaning behind classic works of art. And she’d made a friend, a best friend, no less. Glenda Brooks was a Londoner, like her, who lived with her mum and dad in Enfield and commuted in and out each day. Feminism and the push for equality hadn’t quite reached Glenda’s street, and while Lilly had joyfully attended the protests against the Miss World competition, Glenda had declined the invitation to come with; her sole ambition, it seemed, was to get married and have kids. She spoke about it often, stating how she couldn’t wait to bag a husband, leave home and get a house of her own where she could start her Pyrex collection. This would give her the freedom her strict parents denied her.
Glenda had explained the hoops she’d had to jump through just for them to give her permission to attend art college. Her parents were persuaded, finally, by a conversation with the local priest, who extolled the virtue in honing a God-given talent, and how Michelangelo himself had only grown closer to God as he painted the Sistine Chapel. And by the ace up his cassock sleeve, the fact that Luke himself, one of the four evangelists, was indeed an artist, ta-dah! Glenda was a skilfulceramicist and Lilly hoped that marriage, whenever it came, wouldn’t curtail the successful career that beckoned, firmly believing that in this new day and age it was far easier for women to have it all. Her plan was to carry on working for Bertie, curate her own exhibitions, maybe get her own work to a standard that meant it might sell and, like Glenda, she too wanted to get married and have babies. I mean, who didn’t? But all in good time.
‘So, do you go to church and stuff?’ One of the first questions Lilly had asked her new friend, after hearing how the priest had swayed her parents.
‘Do I heck as like!’ Glenda’s eloquent response kind of told her all she needed to know. ‘My parents practically live in front of the altar. My mum has her nose so far up Father Shaun’s arse I’m sure she’d know he had haemorrhoids before he did.’
Lilly had laughed out loud at her friend’s crude and confident humour.
She and Glenda were quite unlike most of the girls on their course, who lived in shared flats, delighting in the new and unexplored playground of London that, for girls like Tilly who had grown up in Shropshire, Liz who was from Harrogate, and Julia from Bath, was nothing short of one adventure after another. These girls hung out in coffee shops in the West End and went out with boys who had very long hair, boys who wore suede and fancied themselves as poets. Boys who smoked grass and liked to hypothesise about utter bollocks while confusing the reading of Kafka and Sartre with actually being Kafka or Sartre. These girls were pleasant enough; it was just that their lived experience and hers was so very different it was hard to find common ground. The main difference, she quickly came to understand, was money. Tilly, Liz, Julia and others like them had grown up with it, and she had not. A shared love of art could only take them so far, but when they had, on a whim, decided to go to Paris, booking flights as casually as she’d buy a bus ticket, Lilly knew she was not in their league.
Her job at theB’Artgallery in Pimlico did, however, buy her a brief whiff of popularity, as Bertie Barnes was momentarily famous, or infamous, depending on who you asked. This was after hisallegedaffair with a senior-ranking Tory was splashed all overthe News of The World. The person who looked the least impressed in the rather grainy paparazzi shots being said Tory minister’s wife.
‘Have you seen this?’ She had rushed into the gallery with a copy of the paper in her hand, brandishing it in the air like a flag.
‘Oh, don’t! Yes, I have.’ Bertie had covered his face with his hands. ‘My nose looks big, don’t you think? It’s a most unfortunate angle. Do you think my nose looks big?’ This apparently was his most pressing concern. That, and how upset Beautiful Jack had been by the indiscretion.
Bertie continued to be a friend and a huge influence in her life. He was a fount of knowledge! His expertise was broad, covering a variety of subjects from how to style her hair and the right choice of accessory to pep up any outfit to where to find the best cappuccino this side of Watford. She worked in the gallery on weekends, the odd evening and during her holidays and, frankly, would have done so for nothing; the fact that Bertie paid her handsomely was just a wonderful bonus. He was, she came to realise, terrible with money. It was quite typical when he sold some artwork for a hundred pounds and immediately treated himself to a Murano glass chandelier that set him back nearly two hundred.
‘Can we afford it?’ she’d asked tentatively, as he admired the stunning twisted loops of glass in greens and blues.
‘Don’t be so vulgar! We never talk about affordability!’ He had thrown theTatlerat her in protest.
‘Is talking about affordability more or less vulgar than knitted loo-roll holders, pampas grass and Viennese Whirls?’
‘Oh, Bob! You have the best memory! How I love that boy, Beautiful Jack!’ He closed his eyes and clasped his hands. ‘Do you think he’ll forgive me?’
‘I’m sure he will.’ She hoped it sounded convincing.
‘Maybe I should give him a call ...’ he’d murmured as he wandered off.
This was her favourite kind of day, warm and breezy. With her easel set up on the towpath and the sun casting nets of diamonds out over the surface, Old Mother Thames sparkled! The only fly in the ointment was the dust and noise created by the plethora of workmen who toiled in their donkey jackets to widen Vauxhall Bridge. A mammoth undertaking that upset the rhythm of life on this side of the river.
She lifted her hand in a wave to the other side of the bank.
