A Deep Deceit

Four

Another four months passed without a nightmare and much of the old day-to-day happiness and contentment returned. Carl’s and my life together was simple and intimate, our pleasures thoroughly unsophisticated. He had his work. I had my pride in his work. We never tired of exploring the beautiful county that was our home. We liked to walk together along the clifftops and beaches, and inland through the woods and meadows, particularly in the spring when we sought out the special places where the bluebells and the daffodils and primroses carpeted the ground. We had our shared love of fine art, we enjoyed cooking and eating good food together and we delighted in each other’s company. We laughed a lot. Carl could always make me laugh. We were so comfortable together.

It was surprisingly easy to forget our suspicions that something sinister lay behind the damage to the van. And in spite of that this four-month gap was the second longest period I had been without a nightmare since our arrival in St Ives.

However, I abandoned the idea of applying for a job. Instead I buried myself in the familiarly safe cocoon of my life with Carl. Once again the world outside us seemed full of danger.

My friendship with Mariette developed over the summer, which, in spite of such a promising start, had generally been cooler than usual for St Ives. Occasionally I joined her for a lunchtime snack in a café or, on the brighter days, sandwiches eaten sitting on the sea wall dodging gulls and tourists, both of which could be infuriating.

It was the summer of the total eclipse. Carl and I watched it together from St Ives Head, the rocky piece of land jutting out to sea to the south of the harbour and always known to the locals as ‘The Island’ because that is what it looks like from most parts of the town, although it is in fact joined to the mainland by a wide, grass-covered causeway.

We were disappointed in the weather, of course. Both the day before and the day after the eclipse were gloriously sunny, but not that special Wednesday. We woke up to a damp, murky morning, but nonetheless set off to the island good and early, in order to secure a prime cliff-edge spot. There we stood, along with hundreds of other disappointed eclipse watchers, feeling vaguely ridiculous as we stared glumly at a completely cloud-laden sky. Then, minutes before totality, the clouds parted and there, quite clearly revealed, was a crescent of sun, the rest of it covered by the moon. It was stunning, and by then, unexpected. The gathered crowd collectively gasped. Then there was an outbreak of clapping. Then a sort of communal rustling sound as we all obediently reached for our special eclipse glasses. Then almost everyone gathered on the island began to laugh. The partially eclipsed sun, although clearly visible, was still covered in a film of light cloud. Through our black safety glasses all any of us could see was a reflection of our own faces.

The atmosphere was extraordinary, quite carnival-like. But when the moment of totality came the laughter stopped abruptly. All of us had been prepared for a couple of minutes of darkness in the middle of the day; we knew well enough what was going to happen, but when it happened it was still a shock.

I clasped Carl’s hand tightly. We did not speak. Nobody spoke. The enormity of the moment was overwhelming. The lights of St Ives switched on and above the town a display of fireworks flashed across the blackness. It was weird. At first there was silence and then the sky filled with hysterical seagulls. Confused and bewildered, they went absolutely mad, wheeling and screeching in their hundreds. As the sky began to lighten so their cries became less frenzied. The birds understood that something extraordinary had happened, every bit as much as the humans had.

I pulled my jacket closer around me. The temperature had dropped dramatically during the eclipse, just as it does at night, but it wasn’t only that which had chilled me and made me shiver. In the modern air-conditioned world it is easy sometimes to forget the sheer might of nature. I don’t think anything has ever reminded me quite as much of the insignificance of the human race as watching the eclipse of the sun on that dull August morning. And to be watching from the heart of Cornwall, this ancient county steeped in legend and mystery, added an extra indefinable magic to the whole experience.

I clutched Carl’s hand even more tightly, feeling the tears welling. I can’t quite explain why I had been so moved, but there it was.

‘I could murder a pint,’ said Carl.

I swung to look at him. He was totally po-faced.

‘You Philistine,’ I said. ‘Have you no soul? That was just amazing, wasn’t it?’

‘Was it?’ he enquired guilelessly.

I made a threatening gesture with the palm of my right hand. I knew he was joking, but even so...

Carl relented. ‘Yes, it was amazing,’ he said, his face softening. ‘Of course it was. Makes all our problems seem so unimportant, doesn’t it?’

I knew exactly what he meant. And I just hoped that our problems would indeed prove to be unimportant.

One way and another the eclipse was the high spot of an indifferent summer, which turned gradually into a mild but exceptionally wet early autumn. During the torrential rain which drenched the south west through almost all of September the roof in our lean-to kitchen sprang a leak again. Carl tried to patch it as best he could. Our absentee landlord hadn’t raised our rent for almost three years and we didn’t want to jog his memory.

Carl finished several of the abstracts I considered to be quite brilliant. He had taken to using oil pastels rather than paint. They didn’t fetch the price of oil paintings, but he could complete them much more quickly and in any case I knew that he enjoyed the medium. Also, the speed with which he could produce in pastels gave his work a spontaneity, which I thought added a distinctive sharpness.

One evening I made pumpkin soup, one of his favourite dishes. I served the soup in deep round bowls, its vivid yellowish-red colour streaked with cream and dotted with chopped chives. Carl enthused as much about the look of it as the taste and as soon as he had finished eating disappeared into his studio, for once telling me not to follow him because he wanted to surprise me. Only three or four hours later he emerged with a splendid three-foot-square painting of my pumpkin soup. On it he had written ‘For Suzanne.’ It was the most wonderful present I had ever been given. The next day he framed it for me. We hung it in the dining room and it seemed to transform the room. It remains to this day my favourite of all Carl’s paintings, not least for the spirit in which it was painted and given to me.

This was a prolific period for Carl. There was another piece, in brilliant primary colours, which I also thought particularly impressive. It consisted of a striking series of interlocking circular shapes, each one sharply defined in itself and yet also blending to be part of another. He called it Balloons.

One afternoon, exceptionally dry and bright for November, we walked together to the Logan Gallery, the little shop up the hill that sold most of Carl’s work for him, taking with us Balloons and two other recent paintings. The owner, Will Jones, was a quietly spoken former schoolteacher with a real eye, Carl always said. Will had taught art for many years and dreamed of one day becoming a full-time painter himself. That dream never came true. Will said he guessed he’d never been quite good enough, although Carl and I didn’t believe he meant it. Artists never did. I had grown to understand that most unsuccessful painters were convinced the only reason they weren’t as big as Picasso was that there had been a conspiracy against them. But if Will had that bitterness inside him, at least he didn’t show it. Indeed, he insisted that having his own gallery was a good second best for him.

He greeted us warmly as he always did, unfolding himself from his chair as we entered the shop and stretching out his arms in welcome. He was exceptionally tall, about six foot five, and spent most of his time in old St Ives ducking to avoid smashing his head – somewhat protected though it was by a thick, almost bouffant halo of silver hair – against doorways and low ceilings.

He kissed me rather theatrically on both cheeks and his arms quickly wound themselves round my waist. I well was aware that Will grasped every opportunity to touch me with considerable enthusiasm. I wished he wouldn’t, but he didn’t mean any harm. He was just a tactile sort of person. Sometimes I quite enjoyed the attention, to tell the truth, and he never really took liberties. He looked a bit like Peter O’Toole with big hair, had a penchant for velvet jackets and capes, and was certainly the most unlikely shopkeeper. I suppose he reckoned he could at least look like an artist, although I always thought he resembled an actor playing the part.

He was, however, physically overwhelming, partly because of his size and partly because of his personality. The bear-hug in which he grasped me took the breath from my body.

‘Will, be careful,’ I admonished him.

He backed off at once. ‘Sorry, darling, just so pleased to see you,’ he cried and winked at me in that way he had, which demonstrated that he wasn’t in the least bit sorry and would actually like to hug me again.

I nearly always accompanied Carl to the Logan Gallery because I enjoyed looking around and I liked chatting to Will. He was the kind of man who accepted you for what you were and didn’t ask too many personal questions. I even liked the name he had chosen for his much loved gallery – Logan, after the famous Logan Rock, a sixty-five-ton hunk of granite balanced impossibly on a clifftop at Treen right down at the bottom end of Cornwall not far from Land’s End.

‘As wondrous a piece of natural sculpture as you’ll ever be lucky enough to encounter,’ was Will’s opinion of the Logan Rock. And you had to warm to a man who could see the world like that. He was a true romantic, right enough, and I liked romantics.

Will took the three wrapped paintings from Carl, but at first merely put them to one side unopened. ‘Coffee?’ he enquired. This was part of the ritual.

While Will busied himself with the kettle in the little back room, Carl and I studied the work of the opposition, as it were. There was a small Clive Gunnell bronze called Windows – an abstract of intertwining ovals, their inner curves finished in a beautiful green patina – which I particularly admired, but Carl and I weren’t into buying other people’s art. Sadly, we could not afford to.

‘Turn it round,’ instructed Will, when he returned to the gallery and noticed me studying the Gunnell. The bronze was mounted and balanced on a plinth, which allowed it to be rotated. Slowly I turned it a full circle.

‘See, it looks right from every angle,’ said Will. ‘You should be able to do that with any piece of work that is truly sculptural. And if you can’t, then whatever it is and whoever it’s by, it’s too one-dimensional and not really a sculpture at all.’

Will had a habit of always having to know more than you did and a rather condescending way of lecturing in a schoolmasterly fashion, but he did know his business, there was no doubt about that, which was why Carl had so much respect for him.

Only when we were sipping our coffee from brightly coloured mugs did Will start to unwrap Carl’s paintings. Then he propped them one by one against a wall and stood back, hands on hips, head thrown back, legs akimbo. A flamboyant pose.

The first he looked at was Balloons, black-edged and framed in white wood – Carl did all his own framing; he said he had no intention of sharing his meagre profits with anybody else. Balloons was a large painting, slightly more than three foot square, just a little bigger than my Pumpkin Soup. Its vibrant colour and dramatic shapes seemed to dominate the gallery. I reckoned it was the finest piece of work in the room – apart from the Gunnell bronze, perhaps.

Will was silent for what seemed a lifetime. ‘You get better with every canvas, Carl,’ he said eventually.

Carl beamed. I glowed. We both respected Will’s opinion enormously – don’t take my description of him to suggest that we regarded him as a figure of fun, because we didn’t. Rather, we considered him a true eccentric, but also a true expert.

The other two paintings, smaller but equally original and striking, also met with the gallery owner’s approval.

‘You’ll take them all?’ queried Carl anxiously. He knew that his abstracts weren’t easy to sell.

‘Of course I’ll take them,’ said Will. ‘I just wish I could sell them for what they’re really worth, that’s all.’

Carl and I knew exactly what he meant. Art is a world of great contrasts, like show business really. Those at the top of the tree are mega-earning superstars and those at the bottom barely make a living at all – particularly if they try to be original.

Carl’s name was not well known and two or three hundred pounds was the most that Will could ever ask for one of his paintings – even those large abstracts he sweated blood over. Not a lot for something Carl had worked on over several weeks.

Nonetheless we left the gallery in high spirits.

‘How about a little celebration in the Sloop?’ Carl asked, clutching my hand and swinging both our arms. I happily agreed and we began to amble down to the harbour.

Although for various deep-seated reasons neither Carl nor I approved of excessive drinking – we had each in different ways seen the damage it can do – we both liked pubs. Carl had the fascination common among Americans for English pubs and I think we both saw public houses as somewhere we could enjoy a certain conviviality without involvement. Mind you, perhaps to ensure we didn’t get too involved, once a week was about the limit of our pub-going, more often than not at a lunchtime rather than the heavier evening session. However, the promise of a decent sale changed things.

It was late afternoon, almost five o’clock. The day had been quite glorious and the setting sun glowed amber and orange. Carl actively disliked going down to St Ives harbour or to the beaches during the tourist season when the place was overrun with people. He had made an exception for the eclipse, partly because I had been so determined that we should watch it from the waterside, but normally he preferred to remain in our little bit of town, up on the hill and way back from the harbour and the beaches, which stayed much the same throughout the year. I wasn’t quite so fussy, but he did have a point. I remembered my noisy summer lunchtime visits to the seafront with Mariette and thought how there was just no comparison with the joy of being down by the waterside on a fine, holidaymaker-free, November day like this one. In the quiet off-season times Carl and I loved to walk together along the beach at low tide and, indeed, to visit the Sloop, which was one of the places we avoided in high season because it was always packed with tourists.

As we approached the famous old waterside inn, a familiar figure emerged through the pub doors and began to totter somewhat unsteadily towards us.

‘Oh, no,’ muttered Carl. ‘I really can’t stand that woman.’

‘At least she’s leaving,’ I said in his ear.

‘Whisky must have run out,’ Carl responded uncharitably.

We both half stopped in our tracks, wondering if we could turn round and escape notice, but by this time Fenella Austen was already upon us. In some ways I was less concerned by this than Carl, because in the six years we had lived in the town Fenella, still widely regarded as the matriarch of the local artistic community even though her fortunes as a painter and sculptor had fallen dramatically in recent years, had totally failed to recognise my existence. I was actually quite relieved by this since, although I tried not to let on to Carl in case he thought I really was a complete and utter wimp, the bloody woman scared me to death – particularly when she was drunk, which seemed to be most of the time nowadays.

Fenella walked straight up to Carl, ignoring me as usual, and flung her arms round him, possibly to ensure she remained upright. Nonetheless it annoyed me.

‘And so how’s our new bright young thing,’ she bellowed, slurring her words only slightly. Fenella had only one level of speech – full volume.

‘Fenella, I’m neither new nor young, I’m forty years old, I’ve lived in St Ives for six years and, although you and I may think I’m bright, the rest of the art world is showing no sign of catching on,’ said Carl in a tone of exaggerated patience.

Fennella was probably only in her late fifties but had been playing the part of cynical elder for many years, certainly ever since we had moved to Cornwall. She leered at Carl. Maybe it was supposed to be a smile, I really didn’t know. She carried with her a strong stench of beer and whisky, and her hair looked as if it could do with a wash. She dyed it a mid-brown colour but not nearly often enough. A grimy yellowish grey displayed itself in a two-inch wedge at the roots. Come to think of it, her face looked as if it could do with a wash too. She wore heavy black eye make-up which had become badly smudged. Her skin was pale and blotchy. I suppose you had to admit it was all a bit of a shame, really, because Fenella still had striking dark-brown eyes and the remains of what must once have been a formidable high-cheeked bone structure. We had seen a sharp deterioration in her looks even in the few years we had been in St Ives.

The local perception was that she was killing herself with drink. She also smoked like a chimney and if one didn’t get her before her time it seemed inevitable that the other would.

‘You’re just a lad to me, Carl, sweetheart,’ continued Fenella in that deep, throaty voice which was the product of her sixty-fag-a-day habit.

She was, as usual, overplaying her hand – literally as well as metaphorically, as it happened. Her right hand had closed itself around Carl’s left buttock. I watched as her fingers squeezed him.

He winced and removed the offending hand smartly from its target. ‘If I did that to you it would be sexual harassment,’ he said, lightly but unwisely.

‘Harass away, darling,’ invited Fenella, as Carl managed to manoeuvre his way past her. ‘I can hardly wait...’

Having lost her support she staggered dangerously and for one lovely moment I thought she was going to fall over. She didn’t, of course.

‘Don’t turn her down for me, Carl,’ I whispered in his ear as we hurried along the promenade to the steps.

‘D-do me a favour,’ muttered Carl. The slight stammer meant that the woman had definitely got to him. Certainly he was no longer amused. I suppose you couldn’t blame him. She was a pest.

He took my hand as we jumped from the quite high bottom step on to the beach. The tide was out and the sun had almost dropped from the sky and hovered deeply golden now, glowing the last of its fire just above the horizon, bathing the entire bay in a truly wonderful light. I was a Londoner born and bred but I had grown to feel a sense of belonging in Cornwall greater than anything I had known before. Its past and its present both suited me. I liked to imagine the harbour in the great days of pilchard fishing when the whole town was kept alive by its one industry. The huge shoals of pilchards that used regularly to frequent the north Cornwall coast in the autumn, were caught by net in shallow water, a process known as seining. Great mountains of the small silvery fish would be dumped on the harbour side, then salted in big wooden tubs and exported to the Mediterranean in sailing ships. I could see the scenes so clearly: the men on their boats emptying their nets and on shore women, children, the elderly, picking up the fish, sorting them, carrying them to the salt vats, everyone involved in gathering this extraordinary autumn harvest. Maybe I romanticised it inside my head, but I couldn’t help it. Neither could I help being enthralled by the tales of the wreckers and smugglers whose wild exploits form such a part of Cornish history. St Ives had relied almost entirely on its tourist industry for decades but, in my opinion anyway, the old fishing port had not to lost its unique character, its special magic.

I gazed out to sea, blinking against that last brilliant fire of the sun. The light in St Ives is almost always special, which is why artists still flock there, but that day it somehow seemed more spectacular than ever.

Switching my gaze briefly inland, I saw Fenella Austen disappear into the narrow streets of the town, no doubt to pester somebody else.

‘Let’s forget the b-bloody woman,’ said Carl.

‘Too right,’ I replied. ‘Stand still.’

I used his shoulder to lean against as I removed my shoes and socks, something I almost always did on the beach unless the weather was really bitterly cold. I loved the feel of the coarse damp sand against my bare feet. I dug my heels in and curled up my toes.

Carl grinned at me. ‘Come along, Robinson,’ he said and he grasped my hand and led me along the beach at a trot.

Laughing together, the way we did so much of the time, we eventually slowed to a walk and spent several dreamy minutes enjoying the sunset and looking at the boats before we decided to double back and have that drink as intended in the Sloop.

A few days later, right out of the blue, Mariette invited me to her house for what she described as a ‘girls’ night in’. ‘A good gossip and a few drinks,’ she said. ‘Bring a bottle.’

I was quite excited. In spite of everything it seemed that I was beginning to exist as an individual. It felt as if I were being invited into some kind of inner circle.

Carl seemed pleased for me too, although, as we were meeting well after dark at 7 p.m., he insisted that he walk me to Mariette’s house and pick me up later, and he cautioned me to take care when he left me at the door of her cottage at the top end of Fore Street, just a few minutes walk from the library.

‘Don’t be silly.’ I smiled at him and he had the grace to look a bit sheepish before grinning back at me.

Mariette still lived with her mother. The first surprise came in the narrow hallway of their cottage, two-bedroomed, I knew, but not an awful lot bigger than ours, which was so cluttered you could hardly make your way through. The walls were lined on either side with shelves packed with brassware. Loads of the stuff.

‘Front door was open one day and a party of tourists just walked straight in; they thought the place was a shop,’ murmured Mariette smilingly. ‘You ain’t seen nothing yet,’ she continued as she led the way into the small lace-curtained front room.

More pieces of brass were everywhere, horse brasses, brass weights, plates, jugs, candlesticks and a vast assortment of ornaments ranging from a Madonna and Child to a range of animals including cats, dogs, pigs and rabbits.

‘She’s got about 4000 pieces,’ said Mariette, gesturing me to a chintz-covered armchair. ‘Cleans ’em in rotation and it takes her an hour and a half every day.’

‘Amazing,’ I said. It was the best I could come up with.

‘Now you know the Cornish are barking,’ Mariette giggled.

I did not meet Mrs Brenda Powell that evening. Apparently the deal was that she steered clear of her daughter’s girls’ nights, even though it was Mrs Powell, apparently, who had diligently supplied sandwiches, cheese and biscuits, and homemade cake for the occasion. Mariette appeared to have her mother, whom I knew to be a widow, pretty well trained it seemed to me. Certainly being installed in her own front room – with, I was told, Mrs Powell busily cleaning brass in the kitchen next door – did not cramp Mariette’s usual style, nor that of her three friends, none of whom I had met before, which made me quite nervous. The gossip was as raunchy as I had begun to become accustomed to – only this time there were five young women swapping stories of their sexual adventures. Well, four, actually. I had very little to say, although I found that I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the tales of their exploits.

‘Suzanne’s all right, adored by a man who will do anything to make her happy.’ Mariette put a hugely suggestive emphasis on the word ‘anything’. I tried not to look embarrassed.

‘He’s coming to get you, I’ll bet,’ she added.

Hesitantly I agreed that he was.

‘Good, we’ll all get a chance to have a look,’ she said. I had yet to introduce Carl to her.

‘No, he told me he’d wait outside,’ I replied innocently.

‘Really,’ remarked Mariette, and glanced at her watch. It was about ten minutes before the time I had agreed to meet him.

‘And no doubt he’s there already. He doesn’t take chances with our Suze!’

The entire group then crowded around the bay window and began to peek through the net curtains in order to get a glimpse of Carl as he waited for me in the street.

‘Is that him?’ cried Mariette. I peered around her and was just in time to see the back of a male figure disappearing round the corner. At that moment Carl appeared from the other direction and propped himself against the street lamp outside.

‘No, that’s him, there,’ I said somewhat unnecessarily.

‘Oh, doesn’t he look nice,’ said Mariette in a rather soppy voice. ‘God, I’m jealous.’

I manoeuvred myself so that I too could get a good view of him. He did look nice. That was the only word for Carl really, that and kind. He was not startlingly handsome, or startlingly anything for that matter, just nice, kind, solid, reliable and funny. And I did love him so.

‘Invite him in, go on, just for a moment, oh, go on.’

The entire throng encouraged me. I stepped briskly outside into the cool night air and, quite out of character, asked Carl if he would come in and meet the girls. Even the words sounded strange as I spoke them.

Carl looked terrified. His stammer made an appearance again. ‘I d-don’t think so, Suzanne, p-p-please, I’d rather not...’

He could not escape, though. Mariette and her friends were apparently not prepared to wait indoors for long. When I did not return swiftly with Carl alongside, all four of them followed me out into the street, surrounded Carl and insisted on being introduced. He blushed, his already ruddy face turning absolutely crimson, and I found it as endearing as I had that very first time in Richmond Park.

‘He really is very very nice,’ whispered Mariette in my ear as we finally said our farewells.

Carl hurried me up the hill. I think he was sweating. ‘Good G-God, Suzanne, I felt like a prize bull,’ he said.

‘You are a prize bull, my love,’ I replied.

He laughed, albeit a little uncertainly.

‘Mariette says she’s jealous,’ I went on. ‘I reckon it’s because she thinks you’ll do anything for me.’

I put a suggestive emphasis on the word ‘anything’ in just the way Mariette had done.

Carl looked slightly aghast. ‘Did she say that too?’

I nodded.

‘Do women really talk like that about men?’

I chuckled. He didn’t know the half of it. ‘Apparently,’ I said.

‘Just don’t ever throw me to the w-wolves again, that’s all,’ he admonished, still with just a hint of nervous stammer. But he was smiling when he said it.

Those truly were a happy few months. Nothing at all happened to cause Carl or I any anxiety. The van incident became ancient history. I really did get a taste of the normality I craved.

Mariette had alternate Saturdays off from the library and one weekend she persuaded me to go on a shopping expedition to Penzance with her. Actually, I didn’t take much persuading, but I wasn’t sure what Carl would make of it. I knew he was anxious about my friendship with Mariette, even though he passed little comment, so I didn’t tell him about the trip until the night before Mariette and I were due to take the little train from the station just by Porthminster Beach.

He was fine about it though. ‘Don’t ever think I don’t want you to enjoy yourself, Suzanne, because I do, in every possible way,’ he said. ‘Just remember that you don’t know Mariette that well, won’t you.’

I knew what he was saying. In a funny kind of way it felt as if I knew Mariette very well indeed, but I didn’t of course, nor could I. Carl was just reminding me to be cautious and I knew that he was quite right to do so. That was how it was with us.

Of course, then I had to ask him for some money. Apart from my nightmares, which were lessening, money was our sole problem. We managed, but only just, and as I spent more time with Mariette I was increasingly embarrassed by having to rely on Carl for every penny. That had been one of the reasons why I had liked the idea of getting a job.

Carl, though, was as generous as ever. He swiftly produced fifty pounds from somewhere. I had few halfway decent clothes and I badly needed some new ones. Fifty pounds would not go very far, but for us it was a lot of money. I thanked him with enthusiasm.

‘Don’t spend it all at once,’ he responded with a twinkle.

I set off cheerily to meet Mariette at the station the next morning.

She eyed the calf-length skirt, cotton print blouse and cardigan I was wearing – more or less the best clothes I possessed – with a distinct lack of enthusiasm. ‘What you need is a complete make-over, my girl,’ she said.

I didn’t even know what a make-over was.

She led me through the crowds at Penzance to a shop called, rather appropriately I suppose, New Look. The prices, the lowest on the High Street, Mariette said, were, it seemed, the greatest attraction – that and a manic adherence to all the latest fashion fads. But every garment looked to me about three sizes too small and skimpy for any normal person.

‘Rubbish,’ said Mariette. ‘You’re slim enough and at least we might find something here which looks as if it should be worn by someone in their twenties, rather than a ninety-year-old woman.’

I retreated, wounded and beaten, and very soon, I’m not quite sure exactly how, found myself buying a bright-orange suit with a daringly short skirt. At least I thought it was pretty daring. In fact, even as I handed over a considerable chunk of my fifty pounds, I wasn’t sure I should be buying it at all. ‘Don’t you think it looks, well, you know, a bit tarty?’ I enquired hesitantly.

‘Yes,’ said Mariette. ‘Great, isn’t it.’

I was then persuaded to buy a pair of ridiculously high platform shoes, but I balked at Mariette’s next suggestion.

‘No, I am not dyeing my hair,’ I told her firmly. ‘Absolutely not.’

‘I didn’t say dye it, I said have a few blond highlights,’ she responded in a wheedling tone of voice.

I stood my ground.

‘Well, what about a nice trendy haircut then? I’ve got a friend who’s a hairdresser who’ll give you a great cheap cut.’

I couldn’t even remember if I’d ever been to a hairdresser in my life. Gran had always cut my hair when I was a child. In adulthood I had let it grow long and straight, just occasionally trimming the ends myself in front of a mirror. But I was a woman, albeit one who had missed out on so much, and I was sorely tempted. Eventually, against my better judgement, I allowed myself to be persuaded.

An hour later I was sitting in a leather chair at the extraordinarily named Fair-dos salon, while Mariette’s friend, a striking redhead called Chrissy, snipped away alarmingly, and Mariette set to work on my make-up. I was beyond protesting by then. Two hours later I gazed in the mirror at a different human being.

My hair was several inches shorter, layered and gelled so that it kind of stuck out round my face. Hard to describe, but I had to agree with Mariette that it did seem to suit me. My lips were more or less the same colour as my new suit, I appeared to have had a cheekbone transplant and my eyes looked about two sizes larger than they had before.

‘Go on,’ said Mariette. ‘Put on the new suit and shoes, and let’s have a look at you.’

Obediently – I was thoroughly enjoying myself by then, by the way – I took my carrier bags into the loo and changed into my new outfit. When I emerged, teetering a little unsteadily on my platforms, Chrissy and Mariette both applauded, and Mariette emitted a loud and vulgar wolf whistle.

‘Why don’t you keep it on,’ she suggested.

I lurched back into the real word. I had a feeling it was not a good idea to confront Carl so unexpectedly with my total transformation. ‘I don’t think so,’ I said.

‘Go on,’ encouraged Mariette, apparently reading my mind. ‘There’s not a man in the world who wouldn’t be bowled over. Carl’ll love it, you’ll see.’

The three of us trailed off to a nearby pub and shared a bottle of white wine. I felt sure everybody would stare at me in my new orange suit, but of course nobody did. Given some courage by this and the wine, probably, I finally agreed to keep the outfit on. I should have known better.

Carl called down to me from our upstairs room when I arrived home.

‘Don’t come down, I’ll come up,’ I called back. ‘I’ve something to show you.’

But as I started to clump up the stairs I tripped over my strange new shoes and almost fell backwards. I recovered myself without injury, but not without making a terrific noise. By the time I reached the top of the stairs Carl was standing there looking at me.

I was still on a bit of a high. I smiled and threw my arms open wide. ‘What do you think?’ I asked, doing a kind of twirl for him.

He didn’t show any anger. He didn’t shout. He didn’t say I looked like a tart. He didn’t say anything like that. He just looked disappointed and a bit sad. ‘I think you look like somebody else,’ he said eventually.

‘You d-don’t like it?’ I stuttered.

‘What’s to like?’ he asked mildly. ‘I can barely recognise you.’

I felt terrible. I went straight downstairs to the bathroom, kicked off the silly shoes and scrubbed every vestige of make-up off my face. I combed down my hair and flattened it against my head, making it look as long and as much the way it had before as possible. Then I took off the tarty orange suit and let it fall carelessly on to the floor. There were a pair of jeans and a sweater in the airing cupboard. I put them on and went back upstairs to Carl.

He smiled at me and touched my cheek. ‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘I know who you are again now. It’s you I love, Suzanne. Not some creature created by your friend Mariette.’

And that was that. He hadn’t liked Mariette’s make-over, that was for sure, but he didn’t create a fuss. Indeed, by the time we went to bed that night it was almost as if it hadn’t happened.

I was just sorry I had wasted so much money on the orange suit. And, of course, I never wore it again.

One way or another, I really had more or less forgotten our vandalised van when two days after my unfortunate shopping expedition, a letter arrived.

The words and letters were cut out of a newspaper. The message was stark and chilling. ‘I SAW YOU TOGETHER LAST NIGHT. I WATCHED YOU IN BED. HOW LONG DO YOU THINK THIS CAN GO ON? HOW LONG CAN YOU LIVE A LIE? FACE THE TRUTH, SUZANNE.’

The post had arrived while Carl was in the bathroom. There were three pieces of mail, one obviously junk, the electricity bill and the offending letter. The address was carefully printed using letters from one of those stencil kits you can buy in Smith’s, and although with the benefit of hindsight it did look a bit odd, I did not initially study it very closely and no particular warning bells rang as I put the mail on the rickety old dining-room table and sat myself down to open it.

My shock was total. My cup of tea grew cold at my side as I stared dumbly at the letter on the table before me. This was nothing like the scratched words on our van, which surely could have been the work of kids. Someone out there was definitely threatening us. Or, more particularly, me. It was quite terrifying seeing my name there on the page. ‘FACE THE TRUTH, SUZANNE’, made my blood run cold.

My first instinct, of course, was to shout for Carl, but then, for once, I decided it was my place to protect him. I wouldn’t show it to him, wouldn’t give him more to worry about. When I heard his footsteps on the stairs I slipped the letter quickly back into its envelope and stuffed it into the pocket of my jeans. Then I forced myself to appear bright and normal as Carl ruffled my hair in passing – if he minded it being so much shorter he never passed comment – and went into our tiny kitchen to pour himself his breakfast coffee.

He was particularly buoyant and energetic that morning, the way he always was on those good days when he couldn’t wait to get to work. Encouraged by Will’s reaction to the paintings we had delivered to him, in particular Balloons, he was working on another even bigger abstract inspired by the kind of shapes we saw daily on the yachts out in the bay. Carl liked best of all to use the things he saw in our everyday life in St Ives in an innovative way. He soon retreated into his studio, humming something indecipherable. It was probably his great favourite, Leonard Cohen, but you couldn’t really tell. Carl was a hopeless singer, quite incapable of carrying a tune. His attempts did invariably make me smile, though.

But that morning I felt I had little to smile about. When I was sure Carl was safely engrossed in his work I took the envelope from my pocket and looked at it again without opening it. I told myself that what I should do was to rip the thing to shreds, dump it in the bin and force myself not to think about it. But for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. Instead, I hid it in the cupboard under the stairs, tucking it into a crack in a bit of old broken brickwork.

The day passed slowly for me, although Carl was in his element. He barely emerged from the studio. I made him some egg sandwiches for lunch but he seemed almost unaware of my existence when I took them to him.

‘It’s good, Carl,’ I told him, peering over his shoulders. The colours were more muted than Balloons, but the shapes even more clearly defined and dramatic.

‘Mm,’ was his distracted reply. He ate one of the sandwiches when I actually placed it in his hand and ignored the rest. That was how it was when he was working well. Normally I would have thoroughly enjoyed watching him work like this, but on that day I didn’t even attempt to. I was completely preoccupied too, but not happily so. I just wandered aimlessly about the house. I thought about going to the library but I wasn’t up to any banter with Mariette. I hadn’t seen her since our shopping expedition and I knew she would want to know all about Carl’s reaction, which I did not want to discuss.

Later I cooked dinner for Carl and tried to chat normally while we ate but did not succeed very well. It was only because he was having one of his work-obsessed days, his mind totally focused on his latest painting, that he was not aware of my unease. Usually he was acutely tuned in to my moods.

In bed I dared not sleep. Indeed, I had been dreading bedtime all day. When I heard Carl’s steady breathing and became aware of the stillness in his body that indicated he was asleep, I climbed out of bed, went downstairs, made coffee and paced the house all night, determined to stay awake, convinced it was the only way to keep the demons at bay – just as I had done when it all began.

I also kept peeping through the curtains at the alleyway outside. ‘I saw you together last night, I watched you in bed.’ Was somebody really watching us like that? I never saw any sign of it. Nonetheless the very idea made me feel sick.

In the morning, before Carl woke, I climbed back into bed beside him and allowed him to assume that I had been there sleeping all night long.

I continued to do this for three nights. During the day it was a struggle to keep my eyes open. In contrast, Carl was working so hard that he fell asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow. On the third day he finished the painting that had so engrossed him.

It was almost as if he awoke from a period of half-consciousness. I knew he was seeing me clearly for the first time in three days and became aware of him watching me acutely. At first I denied there was anything wrong, but he was not convinced.

‘You really don’t look well,’ he told me anxiously. ‘Are you sure you feel all right?’

‘I’m fine,’ I said. ‘Really, I am.’

Again and again I tried to reassure him, but it was the wrong way round for us and I was not very effective in my new role. The way I looked didn’t help, either.

‘Suzanne, you look worn out. You haven’t been sleeping, have you?’

I knew I had bags beneath my eyes and that I looked drawn and tired. Three nights without sleep is not something many of us can survive without showing the unmistakable signs of exhaustion. ‘I’ll sleep tonight,’ I told him obliquely. ‘I’m sure of it...’

I didn’t, of course. I still couldn’t trust myself. And some time during that fourth night after the arrival of the letter, as I stood quietly by the picture window looking down over the rooftops at the harbour lights, afraid even to sit in case I fell asleep and entered my terrible nightmare world, I became aware of Carl standing beside me.

He reached out for me and I could no longer hold back the tears.

‘Tell me, my love, tell me what’s wrong,’ he coaxed. ‘Something has happened. Please tell me.’

I could no longer resist. I had tried to be strong, but I had no strength without Carl. I had always been weak. I had thought that maybe I would become stronger with the years but it seemed it was not to be.

I gave in. I took him to the cupboard under the stairs, groped about until I found the crack in the brickwork and removed the letter I had so ineffectually tried to hide from him.

He looked very grim as he read it, then threw it angrily on to the floor. ‘You’re completely exhausted, aren’t you.’

I just nodded.

‘You’ve been refusing to let yourself sleep. You can’t go on like that. You’ll make yourself ill.’

He led me upstairs, helped me undress, pulled back the duvet and made me lie down on the bed. Then he lay down beside me and wrapped his arms round me, giving me comfort the way he always did, the way only he could. ‘Nobody can see us, not in here, we’re quite private, you know that, really.’

As usual, he had read my mind. More than anything I hated the thought of someone watching us when we were together in bed, the way that awful letter had suggested. Of course it couldn’t be true. I held on to Carl tightly.

Why didn’t you tell me?’ he asked quietly.

‘I suppose I didn’t want it to be real,’ I replied.

He kissed the top of my head, my face, my throat, my neck. ‘I’m going to make it go away,’ he told me. ‘It won’t be real for long. Nothing is going to hurt you, how many times must I tell you...’

I could not stay awake, then. The need to sleep overcame me. The unwelcome visitor could be kept at bay no longer.

I slept until early afternoon the next day. Carl had worked yet another of his miracles and I somehow managed it without dreaming – or certainly without any of the horror dreams.

He was sitting in our old wicker rocking chair watching me when I finally opened my eyes.

Nobody who has not suffered the kind of nightmares that have plagued me could ever understand quite how I felt at that moment. Nobody who hasn’t endured total debilitating exhaustion and yet fought off sleep as if it were his or her worst enemy, even though only sleep can bring relief, can know what it is like to have given in and to have survived a night of rest to wake in peace.

Suddenly the demons had retreated a little again. I was beginning to realise that they would probably never leave me, but the world did not look as bleak as it had the previous day.

‘Are you feeling any better?’ he asked.

I told him I was and even managed a wan smile.

‘I will find out who is doing this,’ he said. ‘And I will stop it.’

I believed him because I always believed him. Carl had never let me down in the whole of our life together.

He made me boiled eggs and toasted soldiers from good local bread spread thickly with Cornish butter, and I sat up in bed and ate.

‘Do you feel strong enough to talk about it?’ he asked, pouring me a second mug of coffee.

I nodded.

Together we tried to think of anyone who could have sent us the letter. There was no one we could realistically suspect, certainly nobody from our new life together. We never got close enough to anybody for them to learn much about us, let alone to discover the past.

Mariette was the nearest I had to a friend, but even she was only barely a friend. You share your life with your true friends, and I couldn’t do that.

Nonetheless Carl asked me if I was sure about Mariette.

I shrugged. ‘What’s to be sure of?’ I asked. ‘I like her company. I like listening to her stories. But she knows nothing about us.’

‘She told you she was jealous of us, of you. People do strange things out of jealousy.’

‘Oh, she wasn’t serious. Mariette has men like other people have hot dinners. She has nothing to be jealous of.’

‘Are you sure?’ asked Carl again. ‘From what you’ve told me, Mariette’s love life consists of a series of one-night stands. I think she has a lot to be jealous of us about.’ He touched my hand gently.

I shrugged again. ‘In any case, I’ve never told her anything about our lives before we came here,’ I said.

Carl nodded. ‘Well, all right, I suppose it couldn’t be her, really.’

I shook my head. ‘Anyway, she’s too nice,’ I said.

‘People can have more than one side to them,’ muttered Carl.

‘You don’t,’ I said.

‘Yes I do,’ he replied. ‘It’s just that you bring out the best in me.’

I smiled. ‘In any case, it just can’t be Mariette,’ I insisted.

‘No, I suppose not,’ Carl agreed. ‘But who, then?’

‘Let’s list the people we know.’

It wasn’t a very long list: Will at the gallery, our neighbours, our local fishmonger who for some reason looked after us particularly well, the boss of our favourite restaurant, a couple of local shopkeepers, the dreaded Fenella and the others we knew vaguely from the pub scene.

‘That old hag Fenella is capable of anything, I reckon,’ said Carl with feeling.

But we both knew the truth well enough. Apart from any other considerations, everyone on our rather pathetic list had one thing in common: they knew absolutely nothing about Carl and me and our past. They had no motive that we could possibly imagine and no knowledge to harm us with.

‘It has to be someone from before, that’s the only logical answer,’ said Carl.

I shrugged again. ‘But there isn’t anybody, is there?’

When we came to live in St Ives, Carl and I had discarded our old lives like a pair of worn-out shoes. For so long now there had just been each other. There was nobody left from the past, not for either of us. There could not be.

We were sitting together at the table in our single downstairs room. Carl walked to the window, which looked into the narrow alleyway outside. Only the upstairs room, that bit higher up, had the wonderful sea view over the rooftops.

‘I don’t know what to do,’ he said softly, almost as if he was talking to himself. I was not used to uncertainty in Carl. He always seemed so strong.

‘The police?’ I suggested tentatively.

‘I don’t think so,’ he said. ‘Do you?’

I shook my head. The last thing either of us wanted to do was to answer a load of questions from the police.

We were both silent for a moment, then Carl turned away from the window. He sat down beside me again and put his arm round me. I could tell that his moment of indecision was over. He seemed right back to his normal strong self. ‘It’s you and me, girl,’ he said in his lovely slow drawl. ‘You and me against the world. That’s the way it’s always been and that’s the way it always will be – which is just fine by me. We don’t need anyone else, not now, not ever.’

He kissed me and I managed a smile.

‘C’mon,’ he instructed suddenly. ‘Let’s conduct our own investigation.’

He led me down the hill through the town to the Logan Gallery.

‘For goodness’ sake, Carl, you don’t suspect Will, do you?’ I asked.

Carl shook his head. ‘He knows everybody, doesn’t he? We need all the help we can get.’

I understood what Carl was up to. He wanted to do something, however potentially fruitless, rather than just sit around waiting for another letter, heaven forbid, to arrive.

Will greeted me with the usual bear-hug. I pushed him away more abruptly than normal and noticed a fleeting expression of hurt surprise in his eyes, but he quickly recovered and offered us coffee. Carl had no time for it that day. He didn’t mess about. He produced the letter at once and handed it to the gallery boss.

Will glanced at it quickly. He looked absolutely shocked and appeared to be momentarily rendered speechless.

‘Any ideas? Somebody scratched the same sort of stuff on the van, as well,’ Carl explained.

Will just shook his head. ‘Why have you shown me this? What does it mean?’ he enquired.

‘I haven’t the faintest idea what it means, but it’s upset Suzanne terribly and it’s not doing me a great deal of good either,’ replied Carl.

Will nodded. ‘I’m not surprised,’ he said.

‘Look, Will, I have to find out who’s doing this.’

‘Have you been to the police?’

Carl shook his head. ‘I reckon I should be able to sort it out. Look at the postmark. Penzance. It’s somebody local.’

Will studied the letter and the envelope. ‘Words cut out of a newspaper. I thought that only happened on TV,’ he remarked.

‘That’s what Carl said,’ I told him.

‘It’s got to be somebody with a screw loose,’ said Carl.

Will gave a short laugh. ‘That’s half the artistic community of St Ives,’ he said.

Carl reached out for the letter. Will put his hand on my arm.

‘Try not to fret, Suzanne,’ he said. ‘I hate to think of you being upset.’

I smiled wanly.

Carl put the letter back in his jacket pocket. ‘Well, if you think of anything – or anyone – give us a shout,’ he said.

‘I can’t imagine who it could be,’ responded Will. ‘I know you get all sorts of petty jealousies in a town like this, particularly among the artists, but I’ve never heard of anything like this before. What could the writer possibly know, anyway?’

Carl shrugged. Neither of us had any more to say.

I thanked Will and steered Carl towards the door. As an afterthought I turned back to Will. ‘Do you want to come to supper at the weekend?’ I asked.

Will was one of the few people we entertained. Apart from enjoying his company, it was the nearest Carl and I would ever get to networking, but we didn’t often formally invite him. Usually he just sort of turned up on the doorstep and we did our best to entertain him for a couple of hours.

Will’s face brightened at once. ‘Love to.’

Outside the gallery I took Carl’s hand. ‘C’mon, let’s go home,’ I said.

Carl shook his head. ‘I want to go to the Sloop, ask around,’ he told me.

‘Are you sure, Carl?’ I asked him. ‘It’s a dangerous thing to do, you know.’

He put a hand on each of my shoulders and rested his face against mine. ‘I know. I just hate doing nothing,’ he said.

I was well aware of that. ‘Sometimes it’s the best thing there is,’ I told him. ‘And the hardest...’

‘I know,’ he said again.

I grasped his arm. ‘Let’s go home, Carl,’ I coaxed. ‘Let’s leave it.’

And to my immense relief he agreed. For the time being.