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back to bed. He still brings in cuttings about the subject, buys Petra herbal preparations promising to rebalance the soul and promote uninterrupted sleep. He’s tried to monitor when it happens most, or when the episodes are more extreme or when they happen least but so far his analysis has established no set pattern or reason.
‘Rob rescued me,’ Petra told him.
Eric pursed his lips to prevent himself from saying, Well, that’s a contraction in terms.
‘Actually, the police found me,’ Petra clarified, ‘and they called Rob.’
‘The police,’ Eric sighed but more because he had a bit of a thing about men in uniform.
‘Police?’ Gina exclaimed, having arrived at the studio just at that moment.
‘Oh fuck, not the bastard police,’ scowled Kitty, right behind Gina but hearing even less of the conversation.
‘Stop picking up fag ends,’ Eric said.
‘But you are a fag,’ Kitty snorted.
‘And we did come in at the very end of what you were saying, darling,’ said Gina.
Gina carefully put her cashmere cardigan on a coat-hanger before placing it on one of the coat hooks, hanging her butter-soft nubuck leather Mulberry bag beside it. She slinked her slender frame into a pristine white lab coat and swept her hair away from her face with a wide velvet hairband. Kitty meanwhile took off her black crocheted shrug and slung it over the back of a chair, kicked off her thumping great black boots with the integrated steel shin guards and clumped down into the old pair of black trainers she kept at the studio. It was only when she tied back the drapes of her dyed black hair that her eyes became visible, meticulously delineated by bold swipes of black eyeliner, shaded in with eye shadow the colour of bruising and emphasized by thick slicks of jet black mascara.
Jewellers Kitty Mulroney and Georgina Fanshaw-Smythe shared the space with Eric and Petra and over the years the four of them had formed a thriving community, each referring to the others as their Studio Three. They shared the overheads, divvied tools and equipment, pitched in for a compact kitchenette, divided the chores and dished out praise for each other’s work and support for each other’s lives too. Their studio occupied a section of the third floor of an old building on a narrow street running between Leather Lane and Hatton Garden. Though it was not a big space, toes were never trodden upon. But the true success of their working environment was due to their extreme differences on personal and creative levels.
The variously pierced and tattooed Kitty, with her kohlblack make-up, dark pointy dress sense, and hair the colour and consistency of treacle, nevertheless made jewellery of painstaking delicacy and femininity; beautiful filigree pieces, two of which were on display at the Victoria and Albert museum. She sparred with Eric, trading insults and nicknames – though she had checked in advance if he’d mind her calling him ‘Gayboy’ and she was actually quite flattered when he retaliated with ‘Jezebel’. She also had a gentle fascination with Gina whose vowels were as polished as her beautifully bobbed fair hair, whose tools were in the same perfect condition as her weekly manicure, whose domestic set-up appeared to be as neat and classy as the ending of a Jane Austen novel. In turn, Gina had nothing but awe and respect for the impecunious Goth from New Cross. She marvelled at Kitty’s sullen darkness, her apparent self-sufficiency when it came to love, her brazenness when it came to sex, her creative nonchalance when it came to money – not to mention her fascinating ways with black leather, black everything.
‘I’m two-a-penny in SW3,’ Gina had once said, ‘but you, Kitty, you are unique. Exotique.’
What was neither predictable nor dreary was Gina’s work; large and chunky, fusing tribal design with modernist juts and twists.
‘One thing you are not is predictable or dull,’ Kitty protested. ‘You have daughters called Harry and Henry – how much more rock-and-roll can you get?’
‘But that’s short for Harriet and Henrietta,’ Gina said.
‘But you call them Harry and Henry and when people see you loading them into your Sloane Range Rover, that’s what they hear.’
Eric Bartley, far more girly than any of the women, felt it his duty to cluck over them like a mother hen. He brought in cakes and treats and new-fangled organic tonics and was the one who made the tea most often, earning him the moniker ‘Teas Maid’. If any of the women seemed below par, he’d give them a grave, sympathetic nod. He constantly sought their advice: from Clarins versus Clinique, to his frequent relationship dramas and what to cook that night; from his hair colour or his weight, to whether to buy Grazia or Men’s Health. But when he was working on his strong, masculine, classic designs, he worked in utter silence, interspersing long periods of extreme concentration and productivity with bursts of manic chatter and scurrilous gossip.
Today, all eyes are on Petra. She may have washed the grass from her hair and restored its long, glossy mahogany curls, her fingernails may now be clean and jogging pants hide the plaster on her knee, however it is not the odd white socks and Birkenstocks which betray her in an instant, it’s her demeanour. Everyone is used to Petra being the quieter member of their tribe, but today she is exceptionally wan. It casts a pallid mantle over her already delicate features; darkened hollows compromising the rich hazelnut of her usually bright eyes. She’s slim, but today she looks brittle. Though her clothing rarely courts much attention, today she looks a mess.
‘Are you all right, Petra darling?’ Gina asks.
‘Because you don’t look it. You look crap,’ says Kitty, ‘if you don’t mind me saying.’
‘I had a bad night,’ Petra tells them. ‘I’m fine now. Just a bit tired.’
‘Rob?’ Gina mouths to Eric who shakes his head.
‘Not Rob,’ Petra hurries. ‘Rob came to my rescue. I just went walkabout whilst I was asleep. You know me.’
‘Right out of the house,’ Eric whispers to the other two. ‘She was walking to Whetstone.’
‘I don’t even know where Whetstone is,’ Gina says, as if it was possibly as far flung as the Arctic. ‘I thought you just tottered off to rearrange things in the kitchen, or bumped into the odd wall or door.’
‘I do, usually,’ Petra says.
‘Do you have any history there?’ Kitty asks darkly. ‘In Whetstone? A past life? Or ancestors? Bad blood?’
Petra smiles and shakes her head.
‘Then maybe you weren’t so much walking, as being led?’ Kitty suggests in a hush.
‘I just walk,’ Petra shrugs. ‘I don’t know where I was going, or why, because I can’t remember. But the police found me and Rob came for me.’
‘Did you hurt yourself?’
‘Bashed, bruised and blistered,’ Eric interjects, ‘the poor lamb. Look at her footwear – that’s necessity, not fashion.’
‘I’m fine, I’m fine,’ Petra says, suddenly tiring of the attention. ‘I’m just knackered. And pissed off with myself because I haven’t actually left a building in my sleep for a good few months.’
‘Not since the fire-escape incident?’ Eric asks, with a sly wink.
‘God,’ Petra says, covering her face in horror.
‘You escaped from fire?’ Gina asks ingenuously.
‘You were in Bermuda, Gina,’ Kitty growls. ‘Petra was staying at a hotel in the country for her friends’ wedding.’
‘And woke up freezing cold and stark naked on the fire escape,’ Eric adds.
‘And the only way back in was through the main entrance,’ Kitty says.
‘And of course she didn’t think to take her room key,’ says Eric.
Gina