The Exhibitionist by Charlotte Mendelson

Author:Charlotte Mendelson [Mendelson, Charlotte]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pan Macmillan
Published: 2022-03-07T16:00:00+00:00

21

Dreamily, Lucia touches the side of her face and discovers she’s wearing the spirally studs Priya gave her.

‘Mum?’ she hears Leah yelling, but she’s already running upstairs.

She closes the door, opens it again, re-drapes her mother’s precious blue scarf over the dressing-table mirror, beside the graveyard of belts from when she still had a waist. It no longer smells of the past; it smells of nothing. It’s unthinkable that Priya may never meet her mother. Not for the violet depth of her eyelids, the strength of her arthritic and spotted hand, which Lucia needs to draw constantly, but because Carmel Brophy, while absolutely disgusted, would appreciate Priya’s grit, her resolve.

Priya’s mother seems to have died when she was a teenager. Every time Lucia glimpses Priya’s past pain she falls deeper; faster, even, than at the sight of the cut of her triceps, her temples, the tiny gold hoop in her uppermost ear-edge, completely hidden under that swoosh of shining hair.

Was that the phone? Definitely not the doorbell. Oh God; should she quickly change back into trousers?

This morning an urge began to creep over her: to touch the depths. Recklessly, she’d sent a message: What’s happening to us?

Quite quickly, Priya texted back: Are you scared?

I am. A bit. Are you?

Of course Priya didn’t reply.

It’s an irresistible drip of adrenaline, this permanent not-knowing. Racing around the bedroom like a rogue spaniel at Crufts, picking up ugly tops, half getting into alternative tights, she feels an edge of panic. There’s a sound in her throat, a suppressed excited scream. It’s the opposite of vertigo; she is unmoored. Any moment now, she’ll hear the diesel chug of a taxi and there will be Priya, fresh from the Chamber.

Lucia holds herself still but there’s only self-conscious laughter, creaking floorboards, the clink of glass from the living room. And then, almost before it starts, like a predator’s footstep, she hears the landline begin to ring.

She’s so sure it will be Priya, cancelling, that Marie-Claude’s accent is a relief. ‘Hello?’ she says, very quietly. ‘Oh! Please, I can’t now. I can’t, he’s here.’ The chambers of her heart are draining, like caves at low tide. ‘I will ring as soon as the weekend’s over, but I . . . sorry. What?’

‘I think you are ignoring me. Sit down,’ says Marie-Claude, possibly smiling, and something like an arrow is let loose.

‘Sorry. Sorry, sorry. I – it was difficult. I was working, amazingly, and then there’s this quite – for – you know, I told you Ray’s having this show, tomorrow; there’s a big party, food. I think you’re invited. Anyway, I couldn’t . . . OK, I’m sitting. Are you going to tell me what’s up?’

‘He is there? With you?’

Everything felt monumental: cherubs tootling through trumpets, the sky gone black. ‘Not exactly. Downstairs, with some . . . Listen, I know we need a catch-up, but there’s a lot going on. I’m a bit frazzled. Can’t I ring on Monday?’

Marie-Claude has always been intensely diplomatic about Ray. Now she says: ‘I do not care about his show, Lutsia.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.