‘You’re here to tell me that it’s worth a fortune?’
‘No. I’m here to tell you that it had a secret drawer.’
He became very still. ‘That was in it?’
‘No, it was empty, but it’s what got me looking through the rest of the house. I knew there had to be more than that one photograph. I found this in the attic.’
She opened the envelope, tipped out the contents. Photographs, letters that had come from his parents’ flat in Paris. The report of the car accident where they’d died, fleeing across the border with her family. Their death certificates. A letter his father had left for him in case anything went wrong. He’d known the danger...
‘I’ll leave you to look at them.’
‘No!’ His hand gripped her arm, holding her there beside him, and he picked up a photograph of his mother holding him in her arms, his father standing beside him with such a look of love on his face that it had brought tears to her eyes when she’d seen it.
And suddenly the stiffness, the self-protective armour melted and she was in his arms, holding him, wiping the tears from his cheeks, murmuring hush sounds as he thanked her.
‘Did you ever see your grandfather again?’ Tash asked a long time later, after he’d read the letter, looked at the photographs. ‘After your grandmother’s funeral?’
‘That was when Ramsey realised how sick he was. He wouldn’t have it, of course, and it was only after a fall and a stay in hospital that we were able to move him into a nursing home for his own safety. I used to go and visit him. Mostly he had no idea who I was; occasionally he thought I was my father and asked me how Christabel was. How long before the baby was due.’
‘It’s a terrible thing, Alzheimer’s,’ she said. ‘It robs you of the chance to end things properly. Tell people that you love them.’
‘Say the words while you can?’
‘I...’ How could she say yes and not tell him that she loved him? How could she load him with that emotional burden? ‘It’s complicated.’
‘That’s what I thought, but I’m going to make it simple.’
He stood up, took her hand and led her across the studio and switched on the floodlights above his work plinth, lighting up a sculpted figure, a scene that was imprinted on her heart.
She took a step closer, looked at herself as Darius had seen her. The figure lying semi-prone amongst a tangle of sheets was sensuous, beautiful, and he hadn’t had to reveal her ribs or her organs to show her inner depths. Every thought, every feeling was exposed. Anyone who looked at it would know that this was a woman in love.
The detail was astonishing. In the modelling of the hands, the tiny creases behind the knee, the dimples above her buttocks. They hadn’t been in the drawing. He’d done this from memory.
When she turned he was there, watching her.
‘She’s beautiful, Darius,’ she said a little shakily, ‘but she’s going to be a bit of a tight fit on the mantelpiece.’
‘She won’t leave here. She’s not for display in a gallery window. This was personal, Natasha, for me, an attempt to hold on to something rare, something special. But once it was done I realised that only the real flesh-and-blood woman will do. Tomorrow it will be nothing but a lump of clay.’