A/N Thank you for the reviews! So sorry for the delay in posting. Stupid job and two very busy weekends. Everything is much quieter for the next five weeks so (promises, promises) I should resume weekly updates.
The brush of her ballet flats skittered across the uneven concrete floors and bounced off the empty walls, circling back to her ears. The space was vast, at least four times the space Thomas had in London. It was beautiful too, in its own way. Exposed brickwork, battered, with crumbling mortar; the pockmarks of its violent industrial past. A red steel skeleton supported the structure, a marvel of engineering, arches and buttresses. Solid, honest metal but rusty, its red patchy and balding in places, dirtied. Now though, light shone in through the vaulted windows, illuminating the perfect imperfections. Leaving misshapen boxes across the scarred flooring. Cleansing morning light. Edith arched her neck into the sun and shut her eyes, letting it warm her cheeks.
London was only two weeks ago but it was another life, lived by a different woman, one who shared her face and her name. The memories were foggy and frayed. That's how she wanted it: dull and faint.
She had parceled up Anthony's face, watching as the thick plastic tabs of the bubble wrap distorted his blue eyes and golden hair, and sent it to John's. She parceled up the rest of him too, of them. The scrabble trophy, the Mexican cookbooks, numerous books, DVDs, the odd video, the pashminas he'd bought, the scarf she'd stolen, sketches, the yellow pencil sharpener. Every reminder found its way to a solid cardboard box and the dusty attic at Matthew's house.
Sybil would have condemned her behavior as 'unhealthy'. She travelled the Middle East with a big American contingent, returning to Yorkshire full of buzzwords and the appropriated wisdom of dozens of second hand therapy sessions.
Edith didn't care. She took every part of her interlude of illusional happiness and pushed it into the furthest recesses of her mind. Unhealthy or not, it allowed her to function. To an outsider she appeared perfectly normal.
There might be a day when she could dig it all out and sit amongst the scrapbook of her loss. Perhaps look back with fondness. Reminisce. Enjoy the sweet ache of the nostalgia. But today was not that day.
Thomas bounced from foot to foot, hands jammed in the pockets of his skinny jeans. They were tight, it was no mean feat. He was nervous.
"Ede, come on, the suspense is killing me. What do you think?!"
She took a turn about the vast room, ran fingers through the dust, flaked a little of the red paint, scuffed the toe of her shoe into a dent on the floor.
"Edith!" He stood in her path, bearing down, "I will cut you."
"Drama queen."
"I am not dramatic!"
With a deep breath she brushed a little dust off the shoulder of his leather jacket, "Well –" she opened her mouth and closed it, arching an eyebrow, pursing her lips. Tormenting Thomas was one of the few pleasures left in her life, she intended to enjoy it.
"Edith Violet Crawley – you must speak, so help me God woman, put me out of my bloody misery."
"Thomas, I love it."
His eyes shone, he even smiled, "really?'
"Really."
Thomas found the old factory without her input. Probably on the assumption that she appeared to be quite happy in London and wouldn't want to make the move, let alone become an investor. As soon as she agreed to his plan he started to fret that she'd disagree with the one significant decision he'd made. No amount of reassurance had worked, she trusted Thomas, particularly with a decision requiring a measure of head as well as heart. The trust wasn't misplaced. The beautiful, broken building was in the middle of Liverpool's vibrant art district, not far from the docks or the city centre; perfectly positioned for the business they intended to run, and run successfully. Very successfully.
"Ha!" He hit his thigh and picked her up like she was a child, hands on her waist, spinning her through the air. On realising what he was doing he let her go like a sack of potatoes and she just held her footing.
"This business is going nowhere fast if you break the back of your partner before the contracts for exchange are even signed."
He raised his hands, still smiling, "sorry. Just had an over abundance of emotion. It's out of my system now." He brushed his hand up a red column, peeled off a little more of the paint, "you really like it?"
"Yes!"
"You think we can do this?"
Much to her surprise the answer was obvious and immediate, "I do, I really do."
"Right." He held her hand and pulled her bodily across the room. He prattled on about where they would put the small café (unsurprisingly, by the kitchen), the location of the foil blocking machines (in a second room at the back of the property, a 1960s addition with windows overlooking a neglected alleyway) and the gallery (in the main factory at the front). There was nothing remotely surprising about this tour but Thomas showed her around the place with the demeanor of a giddy schoolboy and Edith let him have his moment.
Finally, they came to a small staircase at the back of the building and Thomas ushered her up the structurally dubious steps, "just you wait until you see this bit!"
The landing on the top of the stairs opened into an enormous room nesting in the eaves lit by two enormous skylights.
Thomas skipped into the middle of the space and held out his arms, "studio!" He turned overdramatically to his left, "my side -" and then to his right, "your side."
Even splitting the space with Thomas it was nearly double the size of her flat in Brixton. Space enough for three or four Pollack canvasses and numerous others of a more reasonable size. Such a waste.
He waved a hand in front of her eyes, breaking her stare into middle distance, "Ede? Comments, thoughts, queries?"
"It's lovely Thomas. Amazing, actually, but –"
"But what?"
"I can't paint, you know that."
He looped his arm around her shoulder, "not right now, but you will paint again Ede."
"I wish I shared your confidence."
"You were like this after Sybil died."
Losing Anthony was a death of sorts. The sudden irrevocable loss of a future she'd anticipated, however unwisely. Red robes and paint pallets. A small wedding. Children too, with blue eyes and blonde hair. It was all ripped away.
"I know I was, but I was able to paint again –" She cleared her throat, " - because of him." It was childish not to say his name out loud, but it helped a little not to have the syllables tripping over her tongue.
Thomas scoffed, banging his way down the stairs to the main room, "you give that bloody man too much credit. He didn't tell your hands to hold a pencil and get your brain to translate mental images to paper. He didn't pick your colour palate and make it into something brilliant. You're a genius Ede, you painted the pictures and you will paint again." He grabbed a broom propped up at the side of the room and held it in her direction, "in the meantime, there's plenty for you to do."
Thomas wasn't wrong. The next month passed in a blur of organizational charts, lists and endless activities. Taking their worn old factory and turning it into the business they imagined was no small task. Edith spent most of her time taking Thomas's ambition and rendering it into something tangible, and, more importantly, affordable.
They were lucky that they both appreciated shabby chic and even luckier that it had become the interior decoration style du jour. Top restaurants across the city were spending oodles of cash trying to look as cheap as possible. Crawley and Barrow just purchased things on the cheap. The café was mismatched chairs and wobbly tables, sanded down and painted in various pastels.
On one particularly hot afternoon a young blonde man helped her unload a heavy table from Thomas's ancient van. He ended up staying for the rest of the day hefting about furniture, fixing the coffee machine and hanging pictures. By the time she locked up that evening Crawley and Barrow had an employee, Jimmy Kent. Thomas treated him with the contempt he treated anyone new to his life. Jimmy took everything thrown at him with charm and grace. As if determined to be the light to Thomas's dark.
The gallery space was filled with various artwork. Thomas's foils had their own section. Edith found other Liverpool-based artists and three photographers to add to the range of work. She tucked her latest paintings away in the dimmest corner. Not because she didn't feel they were equal to the other works on display and not for any reason of modesty. They were a catalogue of her relationship with Anthony and it was almost unbearable to look at them. Cambridge in the snow. Four feet emerging from the end of a copper bath tube. A still life made up of a scrabble board and croissants and mismatched mugs of steaming tea. The Great Hall at the RCJ with two dancing figures spinning around the Causes List. She priced them all up with brisk efficiency, little white stickers beneath each frame. As though she was valuing each moment in her life. She couldn't manage it for the RCJ picture, 'POA' was all she wrote. She wished she could be stronger. Cold. Hard. Ruthless. For a moment she wished she was Mary and things were bleak indeed.
That night she dreamt of Anthony, his firm, clear voice was in her ear and his mouth was at her breast and between her legs. Then they were outside and he turned his back and took the hand of a dark haired woman in black billowing robes. She woke with a start, drenched in sweat.
She couldn't stop him haunting her unconscious hours, but in the day she ignored his presence, forged onwards as if there was nothing and nobody in her past. The business was everything and everything was the business.
Perhaps it was an instinct for self-destruction, or simple fatigue, but her resolve cracked at the end of the opening day. A customer had left a copy of The Times on a chair in the corner of the café. She sat down and found herself flicking to the legal section. There he was. In red robes, tights, buckled shoes and a ridiculous wig. She muffled a laugh through her hand. He wasn't smiling. He'd told her once that you didn't smile in the official picture because that was the one they used in newspaper articles and you didn't want to be "grinning like an idiot" next to a headline about a lenient sentence for a rapist or some such. Every member of the judiciary perfected what Anthony called, 'the Daily Mail scowl.'
On closer inspection, her nose almost pressed to the paper, she could see that he was tired and, curiously, unshaven, with sallow skin and flat eyes, almost grey rather than their usual blue. She should hate him, but she didn't. She hoped he was okay. She even hoped he was happy, or that he would be.
"You'll get newsprint on your face if you're not careful."
She jerked back in the chair and clasped her hand over her heart, "Thomas, you scared me! How is it that you make no noise moving around this place?"
He shrugged and flopped in the chair opposite, "I'm stealthy."
"Ghostly more like – otherworldly."
"Stupid outfits." He jabbed at the paper, his index finger prodding Anthony's chest.
"Ridiculous. Why you can't administer justice in a boring old business suit I do not know."
"You never mention him." Thomas looked at her, "You can, you know. If you need to talk, hell, if you just want to, I'll listen. I'll always listen."
"I know. I don't need to though. Quite the opposite, I need to not talk about him. In that spirit -" She pulled a small notepad out of her back pocket and Thomas groaned, "today was good. A good opening day, but we can do better –"
"Let me guess –" he plucked the pad from her hand, "you have a list of all the ways we can do better."
She smiled, "yes."