CHAPTER TWO Harry faces a conundrum

      The following morning Harry started up his Citroën and headed back towards Wandsworth. That was the good thing about this particular job: it was fairly close by and there were no parking restrictions on the road outside. To avoid using the Underground, with its cattle trucks of commuters and dilapidated escalators, Harry drove wherever possible.

      He was enjoying this current project, a mural for a middle-aged couple’s kitchen. As usual he rang on the bell, got no answer, and then let himself in. Ian and Anna both left for work long before Harry even thought about opening his paints, and usually he finished long (he suspected) before they returned. Little notes would be left for him, words of encouragement, or a sudden change of heart, and would he mind terribly, if it was not too much of a pain, just adding another bit to the scene? On two occasions they had left him photos of buildings or sights they wanted incorporated. Harry didn’t mind. After all, he was there to paint what they wanted. That was the whole point of his murals: to realize his clients’ dreams. He would make suggestions, talk through ideas, and provide sketches, helping the client with crystallize whatever it was they had in mind. In this case, Ian and Anna had been quite certain they wanted a river scene running all the way round the kitchen between work surface and overhead cupboards, with images of their favourite parts of the countryside as background. Since he had been a comparatively young child, Harry had nursed a love and fascination with architecture. From the Suffolk churches and grand houses in and around the area where he grew up, to the medieval castles discovered with glee on family holidays, Harry’s taste had always been broad and varied. But as he grew older, read, learnt and saw more, so he developed a love of classicism. William Kent, Capability Brown, and Vanburgh were his heroes; Fragonard, Watteau and Boucher his artistic inspiration. Much of his work reflected this, his skills honed by a year at art college. After leaving Cambridge he’d shelved any ideas he might have had for becoming an architect, and instead, spurred on by his mother, he’d enrolled at St Martin’s. Although this had crippled him financially at the time, the gamble had paid off: ever since, he’d been able to maintain a career doing what he loved most. This latest work was a river scene, surrounded by luxuriant foliage and with hints of ancient temples and ruined columns in the distance, was no exception. He’d sketched the whole thing first on paper, then lightly onto the wall, so they could begin to see how the finished painting might look. Did they want people, birds and animals added along the way? Quite definitely, Anna had nodded emphatically. And what about a few more ruins? Or a folly on a hill in the distance, perhaps? Yes, they’d agreed, that might be fun.

      He walked downstairs into the basement kitchen, with its large, square central space and thick terracotta tiles, put down his kit, and made a brief examination of his work. Over halfway through now. He should be finished in a couple of weeks. Luckily he had another big job to go to in a restaurant, plus a very small cupboard decoration in another private kitchen. He often found juggling the work difficult, so that sometimes he would take on more than he could really cope with, and on other occasions he might be unemployed for several weeks. Still, he’d never been out of work for long, and he certainly saw no point in worrying about it. So far, between bouts of feeling very cash rich and extremely short, he had survived very happily. The restaurant might take as long as a couple of months, though. Perhaps he could paint the cupboard while he was at the preliminary sketches stage of the other. Marcus, the restaurant owner, need never know. He would just have to work into the evening for a few days. But then there was the bathroom in Chelsea to do. He’d forgotten that. Damn. Perhaps he could do the prelims for Marcus, but postpone actually working on the walls for a week or two. He’d already postponed the Chelsea job once. He would just have to work a bit harder and longer over the next few weeks, Harry thought to himself as he boiled the chrome kettle in Anna and Ian’s kitchen.

      His mobile rang. Below ground reception wasn’t great, but he could still hear Julia’s voice.

      ‘What are you doing now?’

      ‘Working incredibly hard. Making myself coffee.’

      ‘God, you have it easy.’ She laughed. ‘And do you have plans tonight? Why don’t you come over?’

      ‘I tell you what, why don’t you come over to me? Come straight from work and I’ll cook you supper.’

      ‘OK. That would be great. I feel I’ve hardly seen you.’

      Harry paused. ‘Come whenever you can. Bye.’

      He put the phone back down on the work-surface and blew onto the top of his coffee. How could she say she’d hardly seen him? They were together all Saturday. And he’d spent the previous Wednesday night at her flat too.

      Ben was right though, he should be thanking his lucky stars. Perhaps he was being too choosy, too particular. From the outset, he had found Julia easy to talk to, down to earth and lacking pretension. And she was stunning, no question about it. Ben, though, had a vested interest in their relationship. It was he who had introduced them in the first place. Initially, Harry had felt his normal wariness of City workers. They were all (with the exception of Ben, of course) over-worked, materialistic machines, fit only for sneering at. Anyway, he was sure she wouldn’t think much of him. He didn’t even know how to read the FT share prices. But Ben had refused to listen to his attempts to wriggle out of the evening, and so eventually he’d given in and gone along. To his surprise, but as his friend had promised, Julia was broad-minded, self-deprecating and, despite being an extremely proficient investment banker (Ben had told him so), reluctant to discuss her own work for fear it would sound too dull. At the end of the evening, they’d exchanged numbers, met up a couple of evenings later, and gone to bed with each other two dates after that.

      Harry slurped his coffee, in between peering intently at the mural and laying out his paints. It had certainly been an unusual first night. They’d met up in Soho, and she’d suggested they go to a Chinese restaurant she knew on Wardour Street.

      ‘It’s a really fun place. The waiters are always extremely rude, but the food’s great,’ she’d told him. Harry had been further surprised by her restaurant choice, having prepared himself for a ludicrously expensive meal in one of the top restaurants in town. Glazed brown ducks had hung by their necks in the windows, their heads pathetically limp. Harry shuddered and followed Juliain, hoping he wouldn’t be forced to look at them throughout dinner. He needn’t have worried. No sooner had they entered the slightly steamy atmosphere than a waiter bluntly told them to ‘get upstairs’.

      ‘See?’ said Julia. ‘I told you they were rude.’

      ‘Other people seem to like it too,’ said Harry as they were frog-marched through the crowded first floor to a table.

      Harry found himself liking Julia more and more. As she talked, he attentively held her gaze, absorbing the details of her face. A slender jaw-line, straight nose and pale blue eyes; bobbed blonde hair and distractingly perfect white teeth beneath her narrow lips. Her skin, protected by a light brushing of foundation, looked pale and perfect, almost translucent. He imagined her playing a femme fatale in an old film; she would look even more beautiful in black and white.

      After the Chinese, they managed to hail a taxi surprisingly quickly and, getting in, Julia said without conferring, ‘Cottesmore Gardens, please.’ Following her, Harry had no intention of avoiding what was inevitably going to ensue. He felt more attracted to her than to anyone else he’d met in the past few years. As the taxi trundled off, Julia turned to him seductively, her lips shining with a renewed gloss of lipstick, her long legs folded towards him.

      ‘Great Chinese,’ said Harry. ‘What do you think happens if you’re rude back? Do they poison you? Has anyone ever been poisoned?’

      Julia laughed, then said, ‘I’ve had a lovely evening, thank you. It’s been such fun.’

      ‘Good,