Past Secrets (48 page)

There would be no witnesses to what would inevitably be an embarrassing moment when she apologised but explained that she was married, he was going out with her sister, and they should forget all about that inexplicable moment in the attic gallery the other night.

In the end, her meeting with Carey took little planning. She dropped the boys off to school and playgroup respectively, organising with her friend Antoinette to pick them up afterwards, in case she was delayed, in case coffee went on longer. You had to be practical, Christie reasoned.

The moment Carey opened the scuffed door that led to the huge loft studio, practicality went out the window. He was everything that she remembered, everything and more. Towering, darkly brooding, danger emanating from every pore. The electricity was still there, strong enough to power a city.

‘I didn’t know if you’d come,’ he said, his eyes intense on her face.

‘I said I would and I don’t lie,’ Christie said and then winced, thinking that she’d lied to be here. ‘I want to paint you,’ Carey said, which was what he’d said on the phone, but Christie knew that was just an excuse - flattering, but just an excuse.

‘My studio is up the stairs,’ he added, moving back to make room for her.

She climbed the wooden stairs, conscious of him close behind her, his presence at once thrilling and scary. The studio was like all the artists’ studios that Christie had ever been in: devoid of glamour

and warmth. It was a big barn of a place with huge windows for the light, a paint-stained floor and canvases stacked in a corner. There was a table littered with dirty crockery in a small kitchen area.

None of it surprised her. She could imagine that when Carey painted, he didn’t think of boring things like cleaning up.

‘Do you like my work?’ he asked as she walked over to look at the canvases, something she wouldn’t normally have done unless she knew the artist very well. Strangely, she felt she did know him very well.

‘I think it’s wonderful,’ she said truthfully. ‘What I don’t understand is why you want to paint me.

I didn’t think you liked painting portraits.’ She was calling his bluff as there had been portraits at his exhibition.

She turned to face him and realised he’d moved to stand right in front of her. He moved so silently, like a big cat. That’s what he was like: a predator, fierce, wild, taking what he wanted. Excitement rushed through her body, making her nerves stand on end with the sheer charge of sexual tension.

‘I have painted portraits before,’ he growled, the accent husky as his eyes roamed over her face.

He wasn’t touching her, but he was standing so close she could almost feel him tracing the fine bones of her face with his long-fingered artist’s hands. She had left her hair loose again today, conscious that it had been that way when she’d met him first.

‘I didn’t say I would pose for you,’ she said, taking a step back.

‘But you’re here, aren’t you?’ he replied.

‘I came to see what sort of picture you wanted to paint.’

‘A nude,’ he said, as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

Christie didn’t answer.

Against one wall was an old ormolu day bed, piled with cushions and swathed in a piece of crimson velvet. Artists loved velvet: painting the textured folds was a life’s work in itself. To one side of the day bed was a screen over which hung a faded silk print dressing gown.

‘You can change behind the screen,’ Carey said, watching her.

Christie looked at the day bed and thought of herself lying naked upon it with him watching.

The very thought made her feel unlike herself and enhanced the sensation that this wasn’t happening to Christie Devlin, married mother of two. This was an adventure occurring to her other self.

Christie wouldn’t do this but the wild, fey woman she might have been would.

She went behind the screen, undressed and pulled the dressing gown on. With huge sleeves like a kimono and an oriental print, it made her feel like a geisha.

‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked when she emerged from behind the screen.

‘Lie with your head on the pillows, one arm along your side,’ he said absently.

He’d already moved an easel so he was facing

the day bed and it was as if he’d forgotten all about her except as his model. Shrugging, Christie slipped off the kimono and lay down.

‘No, move your hand, further, there, that’s right.

And your hair …’

He strode over to her and every inch of her flesh tensed, but Carey was not seeing her naked in front of him. He arranged a tendril of hair to brush her breast and his hand touched her nipple, making it tauten into a hard nub, yet he still didn’t react.

‘Better,’ he said, standing back and assessing her like a horse breeder looking at a mare. ‘Better.’

She lay there for three quarters of an hour until her muscles ached holding the pose. After art college, she knew that an artist absorbed in his work might selfishly want a model to pose for ever, but she couldn’t hold it any longer.

She stretched, no longer feeling conscious of her nudity, got to her feet, and pulled on the kimono.

Carey grunted and went back to his canvas. ‘I’ll take fifteen minutes,’ she said, walking stiffly into the kitchen section to make herself a hot drink.

After fifteen minutes of silence, she went back to her pose. Half an hour later, she moved again.

It was time for her to leave.

‘I have to go,’ she said, standing. She desperately wanted to see the painting but knew better than to look. He would ask her to look if he wanted her to.

‘Fine,’ he said, engrossed in his work. ‘Let yourself out. You can be here tomorrow, yes?’

She didn’t reply but she knew that she’d be back.

She couldn’t help herself.

The brisk chill of autumn gave way to winter while Carey painted Christie Devlin and the studio, no doubt a beautiful place in high summer, became cold, bringing up goose pimples on Christie’s naked skin. She was used to the pose now, had sat for Carey several days a week for two months and even lying on the couch at home in the evening, she unconsciously found herself sitting the way he’d positioned her that first day.

She hadn’t told James or Ana that she was posing for Carey. There was no need: it was all totally innocent, she convinced herself. Carey barely spoke to her and never touched her, not after that first day. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. And yet she knew that lying there naked while this incredible man took in every millimetre of her skin was not quite as straightforward as it sounded. She knew that when she lay there on the day bed, with crimson velvet caressing her body, she really wanted Carey Wolensky caressing her body. But nothing had happened, and nothing was going to happen. As November began, she knew it was time to end it. She had to because the guilt was driving her insane. The only time she didn’t feel it was when she was with Carey: every other moment of her life, guilt over the people she was betraying racked her.

It was James’s birthday in November and he had been talking about a long weekend away.

Christie knew that if she and James were alone together, without the children, then the crystal-clear guilt of betraying him by not telling him would hit her.

Then there was Ana, little Ana whom she’d been like a mother to. She adored her sister, and even though Ana was less enamoured of Carey these days - ‘He’s obsessed with painting, Christie. He’s not interested in going out with me. We’re too different for it to work. I don’t want to hurt him but remember that man from the night of the party in Haddington Road, I’ve seen him a few times.

He’s gorgeous. I know it’s wrong, but …’

It was small comfort to Christie that Ana wasn’t interested in Carey any more. It would still devastate Ana to discover her sister’s involvement with him.

Finally, Christie knew she had to end it because she knew she was powerless against Carey if he raised one little finger to her. The magnetism between them was so great she would run into his arms and Christie knew if she did that, she would never forgive herself.

So, one cool November morning, she decided that this was the last day she’d pose in his studio.

Surely, he must have seen all he needed, he must have tilted his head at an angle enough times, looking at her, analysing her skin tone, her shape, the movement of her muscles and her skin. He had drunk her in for long enough and she was going to finish it.

She waited until her break, when, as usual, she went into the kitchen and made herself some tea.

The weather had grown colder and the thin robe was insubstantial. She shivered, clutching the mug of tea close to her chest, with her arms wrapped around herself.

‘I’m sorry, Carey, but I can’t come here any more,’ she said, looking out from the studio windows over the roof tops of the surrounding artisan cottages. There, she’d said it. She felt herself tremble.

‘Why?’ he said, and incredibly, he was behind her in an instant, his hands on her shoulders, his strong embrace filling her with warmth. She hadn’t heard him approach, he moved so silently and with such animal grace.

‘You know I’ve got to stop,’ she said, determined not to relax back against him. His hands slid further down her arms, pulling her back against him, making her feel the warmth of his body. She closed her eyes and leaned back.

‘Carey, you must see that?’

‘I don’t see that at all,’ he said. ‘I see that you inspire me. I see what I feel for you and what you feel for me. Why should we stop that?’

Her eyes still closed, she sighed.

‘Because it’s wrong. I love my husband, my children, and Ana. I shouldn’t be here. You have no idea how much I torture myself over you, Carey.

I think endlessly of the people I’m betraying by coming to see you. If they knew, imagine if James and Ana knew about this.’

She knew Ana was no longer interested in Carey but that excuse wouldn’t work with her husband. ‘Ana is a lovely girl but she’s not for me,’ Carey said. ‘She knows that. I told her I was wrong for her in the beginning. She’s stubborn. She went out with me to prove me wrong. I have told her she should find a nice quiet man to settle down with.

I am not a nice quiet man.’

‘Like my husband, you mean?’ Christie asked, sensing the criticism of James. ‘He’s a nice man and he doesn’t deserve this. It’s wrong, all wrong, what you and I feel for each other.’

‘How can it be wrong to feel like this?’ he asked, holding her even more tightly. ‘I have been so cautious, Christie, I haven’t touched you, even though I want to every moment you’re here, every moment you’re not here. But I’ve given you the distance you need, you deserve. I let you make all the decisions and now you say you won’t come any more?’

He turned her around gently and she stared into those dark, dark eyes. She’d never felt anything like the connection between them, the feeling that she’d known him for ever, in another life.

She’d heard some say that there were people destined to meet again and again in many lives, to search each other out until some scene had been played and their spirits could rest. Was Carey Wolensky from her past? The faith she’d been brought up in didn’t countenance such things but there had to be some reason for the intensity of her feelings for him, the sense that he was another part of her.

Then, he took the mug from her hands, put it down on the table, cupped her face between his long, sensitive fingers and kissed her. And Christie knew she was lost.

Her thoughts still with the distant past, Christie shut the front door quietly.

There was no noise in the house, but Christie knew James was there. She knew it because the dogs didn’t come rushing frantically to greet her the way they did when she was the first person to arrive home.

James’s shoes were in the hall, along with his briefcase and his jacket left on the stairpost.

Everything looked normal: except it wasn’t. It was only a day since Christie had been to see Carey, and already, everything had changed.

She walked into the kitchen and the dogs bounced happily at seeing her.

James didn’t say hello or get up to hug her. He was sitting at the table with Carey’s sketchbook spread in front of him and the small oil painting propped up against the fruit bowl.

‘I never knew,’ he said, still staring fixedly at the woman in the picture.

Christie could see the real scene in her mind’s eye: the artist’s studio dirty, grubby and in no way romantic. The smell of turpentine and dust in the air, old paint-smeared rags thrown on the ground, and there was the divan, just as musty and dusty but with a piece of beautiful crimson velvet cloth thrown over it. Only the best painters could make velvet look beautiful with the warmth almost of living flesh. And her lying on it, naked, smiling, feeling beautiful.

‘Did you sleep with him?’ James asked, never taking his eyes off the painting. ‘I have to know, Christie. Did you sleep with him?’

Christie hesitated, thinking. She’d thought about that for years. Which was the bigger betrayal the act of sex, the intimacy of feeling another person’s body inside yours, skin on skin, flesh to flesh? Or was it worse being close to them, talking to them, learning their most intimate thoughts, laughing to hear their voice, sharing a secret from the world? Was that a far greater crime than actually sleeping with somebody?

If their places had been reversed, if James had gone off with another woman - like dear, sweet Veronica from his office, who was shy and adored James, but would never, ever make the move on him - and shared moments of quiet time together, that would have broken Christie’s heart. Not the fact that he’d brought Veronica to a hotel somewhere, stripped her clothes off and made love to her, the way he’d made love to Christie.

No, the intimacy, the kindness, the shared secret: that would have been the most painful thing to deal with. Not the sex.

She had to explain before she answered. ‘That’s not the most important thing …’ she said.

‘It is,’ snapped back James. ‘Did you sleep with him?’

The truth was the only answer. ‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘I’m telling you because I don’t want there to be any more secrets between us.’ She sat down at the table beside him.