‘Ben?’ I cal . I run my hand over my forehead; it’s clammy. ‘Is that you?’

‘No, it’s Ivor the Engine,’ the voice says. ‘Who’s that? Thomas the Tank Engine? Is that you? I love the sound of your piston engine. Can I buy you a drink, handsome?’

‘Har de har,’ I say, as Ben comes in. He shoots me a cautious, quick look, and then as it’s clear I’m not in tears or rocking on the floor, he smiles. ‘You al right, sunshine? What’s up?’

‘Nothing much,’ I say, putting my sheepskin boots on. ‘Just got an email from a divorce lawyer, that’s al . Kind of weird to see it there in black and white on the screen.’

Ben puts two rol s of film down on the counter and leans next to me. ‘Sorry to hear it, Eric,’ he says. ‘That’s awful.’

‘I’m Ernie,’ I say. ‘You were Eric.’ I point at the photo of us as Morecambe and Wise on the board. ‘Remember? You borrowed Tania’s glasses and you couldn’t see a thing?’

‘Yes, yes.’ Ben rubs the bridge of his nose. Tania, like most people in East London, has black-framed glasses, perfect for ‘doing’ Eric Morecambe and other assorted old-school comics. Who knew? He pats me on the back. ‘How are you?’

‘I’m OK,’ I say. ‘I’m keeping busy. Think that’s the most important thing.’

‘Sure is,’ he says. He drums his fingers on the surface. ‘Look, do you fancy going for a drink tonight?’ There’s a pause, and he amends what he’s saying. ‘Not just with me. Er – it’s me, Jamie, Les and Lily – we’re going to the Pride of Spitalfields, do you fancy it?’

‘Oh.’ I don’t know what to say. ‘What about Tania?’

‘She’s busy. And – wel , you know.’

I’d forgotten; she told me that awful day at Arthur’s, that she wasn’t working with him any more. I should have remembered. I just haven’t seen them. I blush. ‘Of course, sorry.’

But I feel awkward, I think because I don’t want to go. The idea of going out and having a good time at the moment is a bit of a step too far for me. It’s hard enough during the day, slapping on a smile and being professional. In the evenings I just want to eat and sleep. ‘Er – no, thanks,’ I say.

Partly to avoid another long pause, I add, ‘You won’t miss me. Or Tania, if Jamie’s there. You can flirt with her to your heart’s content.’

Ben narrows his eyes and looks as if he’s going to say something, but he doesn’t. Instead he clears his throat. ‘I don’t have a crush on Jamie, for the fiftieth time.’

‘You do,’ I say. ‘You show her your teeth whenever she hands you the post. And you say, “Oh, thanks! Jamie!” Like she’s just split the atom.’

He pushes me. ‘You’re just jealous I’m spending the evening with Les. He’s promised to tel me al about his blank-verse poem set on the outskirts of Wolverhampton.’

‘No, seriously?’

‘Yes,’ Ben says. ‘It reminds me of that bit in Adrian Mole, where Adrian starts to write a novel, cal ed—’

‘ Longing for Wolverhampton,’ I finish. ‘Absolutely.’ There’s a noise outside in the corridor and we laugh, quietly.

Ben stands up. ‘No worries,’ he says. ‘I’d better go, anyway. Just wanted to check you were OK. Let me know if there’s anything I can do.

Anything in the flat needs someone tal to get at, or whatever. I know you’re having a bad time. Just want to say I’m around. Al right?’

I nod, my eyes prickling with tears. I’m surprised by them. ‘Yep. Thanks. Thanks – a lot.’

‘No worries,’ Ben says. ‘Bye, Eric.’

‘ Ernie,’ I cal , but he’s gone, and I go back to staring at the computer screen, then start checking my diary for a time to meet Nigel Whethers.

It’s the strangest thing, but al the time, I’ve been drawing too. Walking through Spitalfields, watching the way the bare branches arch against the light in London Fields, the snow-drops struggling through the ground. Watching the buds on the trees, the pansies in the window box opposite that have flowered al through winter, the little sparrows that hop away from me along our street. It al feels new and exciting, al of it, it always does at this stage, and I know once I start working out how to make it a reality it’l be depressingly problematic, the designs wil look flat and dul , and I’l have to discard many of them. But I can’t worry about that now. I have to get on with it.

So after a couple of weeks go by, I’m surprised to find myself looking back and realising that I’m coping. I like being by myself, if I’ve got work to do. I like the chal enge of it al . I was never sure about hiring the PR and giving up the stal , and I know I should have listened to my instincts now.

The bank thinks my husband is stil around to bankrol things and so they’re off my back for the moment. It’s going to be tight, but I know what I’m doing each day and why I’m doing it. And that feels good.

I haven’t seen Oli since last week, when I watched him walk away. We have spoken, though, briefly. ‘How are you?’

‘OK, yeah. You?’

‘Good, OK, yeah.’ He’s going to come round sometime and pick up some more of his things, and we’l talk then. For the moment, the space is good. When I think about his face, laughing in the kitchen as I try to make scrambled eggs, or the hot, humid day we moved into Princelet Street, how we had sex in the kitchen, hurriedly taking each other’s clothes off, amazed that we had done this, that we were living together, for ever we thought, or even just doing karaoke together, singing Heart’s ‘Alone’ – his favourite song, Oli has a penchant for a bal ad – sometimes I think I’m going to start crying, about how sad I am, how much I could miss him if I let myself. But that’s not how it happened. He left, he has given me this month’s rent, and moreover, he’s loaning me five thousand pounds to pay back the bank, and for that, at least, I am truly grateful, as wel as for the memories we have. I just – I’m just not ready to total y move on from them yet.

There are two things on my list I stil haven’t sorted: the diary, and Mum. Something is going on with her and I haven’t faced up to it. I was supposed to be having dinner with her the week after Oli left for good. She cancel ed me at the last minute, and hasn’t been in touch since, though I’ve tried her every day. She’s great at being unavailable, she’s doing it now and I don’t know why. Does she know I’ve got the diary? What Octavia said? Does she real y just not care that much? I’ve cal ed her again this morning, and there’s no answer. ‘Hi, Mum,’ I said, my voice keen and bright.

‘Just at the studio, cal ing to say hel o! Hope you’re wel . . . Um, OK then! Bye.’

Actual y, part of the reason I’m cross is because I’m relieved. I don’t like going to Bryant Court. I’d do a lot to avoid it, in fact. Since I left for col ege, twelve years ago now, I haven’t been back much. I’d spend holidays with friends or my col ege boyfriend or at Archie and Sameena’s in Ealing, or mostly down at Summercove. Bryant Court is my past, and I don’t like it much.

It’s not how smal it is, or how dingy. It’s not how the outside of the thirties block looks rather stylish and then you get inside and it’s damp and musty-smel ing, with an under-tone of something rotten, and always too hot or too cold. It’s not that when you arrive, you get the feeling Mum wants you to leave. It’s al those things and more. It’s the sense of detachment I feel from it – I lived there for almost twelve years of my life.

I look back on those years now and try and make sense of them. Was I just an uptight kid? Probably. But lately, when I look at my list of things to do, which I stil keep by the bed, I see ‘ 6. Mum 7. Find diary’ and I realise how far I am away from doing those things. More and more as the days go by, I find myself thinking about Mum and the flat and our lives together there, and how strange it was. It doesn’t seem strange when you’re in it.

It’s starting to, now.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

A fortnight after the funeral, one Wednesday afternoon, I am in the studio. I have ticked several items off my To Do list for that day, and I’m feeling virtuous. I’ve cal ed Mum: no answer. I’ve sent Arvind a New Yorker cartoon card to his new home, the one with the two snails and a remarkably similar-looking tape dispenser, and the first snail is saying to the second snail, ‘I don’t care if she is a tape dispenser. I love her.’ I have spoken to Clare Lomax today, to let her know I’ve made my first monthly repayment. I’ve phoned a couple more shops about the possibility of them taking my pieces and I’l go and see them tomorrow. I’ve had two more orders today, and I’m extremely pleased. I need more to show them, though. And it needs to be great, real y great.

As part of the new col ection I have been trying to work on a new version of the jewel ed headbands I did wel with a couple of years ago, based on a photo I saw of a headband worn by a Maharani of Jaipur. The bands are black silk, and clasping gently on to the side of the head are grey and palest pink velvet floral shapes studded with diamanté. They can be worn to a wedding or a birthday party. They are real y beautiful, at least they wil be if I can get them right, but every time I try to add the diamanté it just looks tacky, amateurish. My fingers get covered in the glue, I prick my thumb twice on the needle as I try to sew them on, and eventual y groan in frustration. I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

I start to sketch alternatives. I flick through the V&A book of jewel ery that I have by my side. Ben and Tania gave it to me for my birthday last year. I get out my cardfile of postcards, pictures of different pieces of jewel ery, different paintings and images that inspire me, everything from Rita Hayworth to a portrait of a very cross-looking Medici duchess, decked out in the most beautiful rubies. I jab my pencil into the soft paper and stop, looking up around me, blinking hard.

It’s quiet here this afternoon. The writers’ col ective is meeting in the basement this evening, and they are always extremely raucous –

apparently they have a lot to be angry about, and it often involves drinking a lot of beer. I can hear people pul ing rails of clothes over the road in the market below but that’s it. My eyes are heavy, with a sense of peace, but I’m not especial y tired. My hand steals to my neck as I stare into nothingness and I realise I’m clutching Cecily’s ring.

I’ve taken to putting it on every day since I got back, I don’t know why. I like wearing it. It’s unusual. Moreover, I like the fact that it was hers, and that Granny wore it al those years. I know nothing about Cecily, except from those pages of the diary, but I have this and I like wearing it.

I pick up my pencil and start sketching the ring from memory as I can’t see it, nestled in the hol ow at the base of my neck. The flowers are so pretty – simple and attractive. I join the tiny gold buds studded with tiny diamonds together, linking them together like a daisy chain, in a row. It is one of the most pleasing things I have done for a while, but I’m not sure I can execute it myself – it’s too elaborate, and I may have to hire someone else to work it out. A section of it would work as a pendant, as wel . A charm bracelet?

Necklace? My pencil skates busily over the white paper, and the scratching sound echoes in the silence, broken only by the occasional noise from the street below. There’s something there, I don’t know what it is. The links . . . the flowers . . . Cecily’s ring, perhaps I should use the ring as the centrepiece? My pencil is getting blunter as I push heavily down onto the pad, sketching, rubbing out, resketching . . . My mind is clear of everything else troubling it. I love this, the fact that you can escape into your imagination, use a part of your brain that isn’t affected by everything else in your life. I lost it for a while. It’s so good to have it back; even if what results is rubbish, just to know I stil love doing it is the most important thing. And the voice in my head, sounding remarkably like Clare Lomax, that has been tel ing me I ought to give up the studio and save on the rent, is silenced. I need a place to come to, to work. This is my job, and if I’m going to take it seriously, I ought to have an office. If Oli’s not coming back we don’t need the flat, do we? I’d give that up before the studio. Somehow, that clarifies things for me.

And suddenly, as I am drawing furiously, there comes a soft tapping at the door.

‘Natasha, are you there?’ a voice cal s.

I unfurl my legs, stiff and aching from the cold and from being in the same position for so long. I rol my head slowly around my neck, and it crunches satisfyingly.

‘Who’s that?’

‘It’s me,’ says the voice. ‘Mummy.’

What’s she doing here? The hairs on the back of my neck stand up; my hand flies to my throat. ‘Come in,’ I say, after a moment.