Yellow Room Read online

  Contents

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  CHAPTER 34

  CHAPTER 35

  CHAPTER 36

  CHAPTER 37

  CHAPTER 38

  CHAPTER 39

  PART THREE

  CHAPTER 40

  CHAPTER 41

  CHAPTER 42

  CHAPTER 43

  CHAPTER 44

  CHAPTER 45

  CHAPTER 46

  CHAPTER 47

  CHAPTER 48

  CHAPTER 49

  CHAPTER 50

  CHAPTER 51

  EPILOGUE

  THE INSPIRATION BEHIND YELLOW ROOM

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Copyright

  YELLOW ROOM

  Shelan Rodger

  For Mum

  PART ONE

  CHAPTER 1

  Buttercup-yellow walls shine in the warm, late afternoon sunlight that spills into the room and through the slats in Emma’s cot. Emma and her four-year-old sister are lying side by side, playing babies. Chala pretends to be asleep, even trying to produce the funny, spluttering sound that comes from her father’s open mouth when he snoozes in front of the television. Then she rolls over suddenly and gently shakes or tickles her baby sister to show that she is really awake. Of course, Emma has been watching her all the time. She knows perfectly well that her sister is pretending, but this doesn’t stop her delight every time Chala pounces on her. She looks at her big sister with her brown-dog eyes that haven’t yet learnt fear. There is no one else in the room.

  The game gathers momentum and, each time she pounces, Chala’s movements are a little stronger and Emma’s giggles a little louder, but it is Chala who grows bored first and looks around for something else to play with. The only toy in the cot is a rag doll, called Rosie.

  ‘Now Rosie can be your sister,’ says Chala. ‘You go to sleep next to Emma,’ she says gently, lifting the small pillow so that Rosie and Emma can lie more or less side by side. Emma gurgles with pleasure, while Rosie stares up at Chala with unblinking, black-cloth eyes.

  ‘Go to sleep, Rosie,’ says Chala, covering Rosie’s eyes with the pillow. She lifts the pillow, but Rosie’s eyes still stare at her. ‘I said close your eyes,’ she says more roughly, forcing the pillow back down over the two baby faces. Emma’s gurgles have changed key and suddenly she is crying.

  ‘Shh-shh—’ says Chala, growing distraught and pushing the pillow down harder to muffle the sound of her sister’s cries. ‘Stop crying, Emma. Stop!’ Emma struggles and splutters, and Chala pushes harder and harder, and suddenly the crying stops.

  When Chala lifts the pillow, her sister’s eyes are wide open.

  * * *

  ‘Chala! Food’s ready!’ She jumped. After three years of marriage, Paul’s voice could still make her jump. There never seemed to be any warning. He was either there, in your face, loud and utterly present, or simply not there, no background clatter to give him away. The same was true of his moods, which flashed inexplicably from playful optimism to gruff despondency, with no apparent transition from one state to the other.

  ‘Are you coming or not?’

  Paul’s voice again, rising and impatient. Sometimes Chala wondered how he was able to deal in the subtleties of colour on canvas when his words were so often black and white. But maybe that was what made the canvas so important; perhaps it was the one place in his universe where contradiction was allowed to flourish and the decisiveness he projected to the world became blurred.

  ‘I’m there!’

  She raced downstairs to the kitchen and remembered why she loved him. Paul was standing by the table, an open bottle of wine in his hand and a tea towel draped across his arm. He removed a rose from her glass and poured, beckoning her to sit. Candlelight, soft jazz and an avocado mousse for starters. The seductive pull of black and white.

  ‘What—’

  ‘No reason,’ he cut her short. ‘It’s good to have you back, that’s all.’

  ‘But I’ve only been away a week,’ she protested softly, defensive.

  ‘I don’t resent the fact that you’ve been away,’ he cut in again, looking straight at her. ‘I just think life’s too short and it’s important to remember what’s good about it every now and then. Sorry if that’s too romantic for you, but I’m genuinely happy to see you!’ Paul was laughing now, but serious.

  ‘I’m sorry. What an ungrateful old cow you married! I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Forget it.’

  There was an edge now. She felt chastised, guilty for not giving him the benefit of the doubt. And yet Paul’s spontaneity had been one of the things that had attracted her to him.When they first got together he was constantly staging small surprises. He would insist on packing her things for a weekend away, so she would have no idea where they were going. He would send her a text, saying meet me at such and such a place in an hour, which might turn out to be a comedy club or just a walk on the beach.

  But when she had first been introduced to his parents and affectionately told an anecdote about turning up to one of his surprises in totally inappropriate clothing, she had seen Paul’s face cloud and his mother had talked over the end of her story. Chala had been disconcerted to realise that her open admiration for their son was a source of embarrassment to them. Their hallway was filled with signs of his achievements – a star pupil certificate, a rowing trophy, a class portrait and then another with the New College, Oxford crest, a framed law school certificate. Their only son’s stepping stones to success were on proud display, but there were no smiling photos and – most shockingly to Chala – no clue to his passion for art.

  Surely, she had said to him later that evening, you must have been good at art at school? Yes, Paul had sighed, I loved art, but Mum and Dad didn’t. In that moment a sense of purpose was born in her; the resolve, come what may, to stand by his art, to fill in the cracks his parents had left and help make it part of his life.

  ‘So, tell me about your week away,’ said Paul into the silence forming between them.

  Over avocado mousse and a Jamie Oliver special of pasta with chorizo and fennel, she talked. She told him about the chaos of bicycles on the street, about the delicacy of the food and the earnestness of the people, their desire to welcome and please. She described the hotel in the centre of Ho Chi Minh, long hours talking behind closed doors that could have been anywhere in the world, and then stepping out at night into a feast of light and warmth. The humour of animal noises in different languages, which served them so well over dinner one evening with their Vietnamese hosts, and how this gentle congeniality clashed with the sex trade that lurked so close to view all around the city. But Vietnam was a place she would like to return to, a place to add to the must-visit-one-day-with-Paul list.

  What she didn’t tell him was that a colleague had made a pass at
her one night. She hadn’t responded, hadn’t even been tempted, but she had been flattered. So why didn’t she mention this? The question gnawed at her.

  ‘Paul,’ she said suddenly, changing the subject, ‘the words we used at our wedding, do you remember? Kahlil Gibran – “Let there be spaces in our togetherness” – something about two trees growing side by side with their roots reaching toward each other, but without obscuring each other’s light?’

  ‘M…’ Poor Paul. He had that look. Caught suddenly in a conversation he hadn’t chosen, knowing that he was about to be asked to talk about the dreaded ‘f-word’ – feelings. The place for these was in his paintings, not in conversation. He tensed almost imperceptibly, but Chala reacted to his body language.

  ‘Don’t panic. I’m not going to ask if you still love me. But—’ She saw him for a second with a stranger’s eyes – permanently tanned, healthy from the time he spent outdoors, with none of the pallor of the commuters who poured back into their Sussex village at the end of each day, his boyish, blue-eyed, square-featured looks radiating self-confidence. She knew it hadn’t always been the case, but the cliché was made for him: he was comfortable in his own skin.

  She grasped for the thread of what she had been about to say.

  ‘But what does any of that really mean? Does it mean we shouldn’t be totally honest with each other? Should I keep things from you if they’re hurtful or insignificant? Do you keep stuff from me?’

  For a moment Paul looked trapped, but then he relaxed again.

  ‘Yes, I “keep stuff” from you. I mean, I don’t tell you every time I have a wet dream about Cameron Diaz.’ He was laughing, trying to coax her back to the easy exchange of anecdotes and impressions.

  ‘What if it’s a dream about someone we know?’

  ‘No. I don’t see the point in that.’ More serious now. ‘Chala, what’s this about? Where is this going?’

  ‘Please, Paul, don’t be defensive. If we are “two trees” then it’s good to talk about this kind of thing, isn’t it?’ Chala didn’t really know where she was going. She paused and looked into her wine – and suddenly, inexplicably, emotion was rising in her throat. ‘It’s ju… I don’t know. I think it must be different for you. The only thing you can think of to mention is wet dreams, for God’s sake! It’s just th… sometim…’ There were quiet tears on her face now. ‘Sometimes, I’m afraid of myself.’

  A gentle weariness dragged at the lines around Paul’s eyes. He had always wanted Chala to be open. As their trust in each other had grown he had encouraged her to dig into the black holes of her memory, thinking she would be able to move on. He respected her darkness, loved it at some level, but the pull was always there and increasingly he found himself reaching deeper and deeper for the strength to draw her back.

  ‘Che, my lovely, what’s brought this up all of a sudden? Don’t do this to yourself. This is just your imagination talking. Come on, let’s leave all this. Let’s go to bed.’

  As he drew her up from the chair and into his arms, she felt equal tugs of gratitude and fear: gratitude for his ability to paint away the bubbles from her past, for his faith in their future, and fear that she didn’t deserve it.

  CHAPTER 2

  ‘Phiwip! Where are you?’

  Chala’s screams bring Philip to the room in seconds. He sits on the edge of her bed, pulling her out from under the covers, wiping the sweat from her brow and stroking away her fear. ‘It’s OK, my sweet. You were just having a bad dream, that’s all. You’re OK now.’

  ‘Where’s Rosie? Is she still there?’ ‘Of course she is, my sweet.’

  ‘Where? Where is she? I need to see her, Phiwip.’

  Philip responds to the fear on her face. ‘She’s where you left her, in the toy trunk. Look, I’ll bring her to you.’

  Chala backs up against the wall as Philip walks across the room with the doll in his hands. ‘Has she got two eyes?’

  ‘Of course she has,’ he says, sitting down and noticing Chala flinch as he holds Rosie up to her. ‘What happened? What did you dream?’

  ‘We were playing a game, and—’ Chala takes a gulp of air and races through the memory. ‘And then it was my turn to sing “Twinkle, Twinkle”, but I forgot the words and she started laughing, and—’

  ‘Who started laughing?’ Philip struggles to keep up with her. ‘Rosie, of course. She was laughing and laughing and then I got angry and I pulled her eye off her face and then she was crying and—’ Chala is sobbing again. ‘And I think she’s dead, Phiwip.’

  ‘Listen, my sweet, she’s absolutely fine. It was just a bad dream.’

  The next question catches him in the stomach.

  ‘When is Emma coming home?’

  Philip frowns and holds her small shoulders in his hands. ‘Emma can’t come home, my sweet. She had an accident and died. It’s very sad, but sometimes that happens to babies. She’s gone now. It’s just you and me and Denise now.’

  ‘And Rosie.’

  ‘And Rosie.’

  ‘Will you stay here for a bit?’

  ‘Of course I will, my sweet. I’ll stay here until you get to sleep again.’ And Chala snuggles up against him and feels his beard brushing her face and finally feels safe again.

  * * *

  ‘Chala, are you deaf? It’s Philip on the phone!’

  Chala came to with a start at Paul shouting again. She had been working on a report, but her words were long since tucked up behind the screen saver of Rudolph, their pet hamster. She had no idea how long she’d been staring at him.

  ‘I’ll take it in the bedroom,’ she called. She shut down the computer and hauled herself back into the present.

  ‘Chala, my sweet, how are you?’ Philip sounded more tired than usual.

  She struggled with the juxtaposition between past and present that still swam in her head. ‘I’m fine, Philip.’

  ‘You sound tired.’

  ‘So do you, actually. Are you OK?’

  There was a moment’s hesitation and then he filled it. ‘Yes, my sweet, I’m absolutely fine.’

  ‘So, what have you been up to?’ Still, she sensed a reticence.

  ‘Well, a lot of gardening and sitting looking.’ This was a piece of family vocabulary Chala had grown up with. Philip had once been to Cuba and marvelled at the way people sat nonchalantly watching the street or a view without a trace of hurry or boredom. He used to say that we in the West had lost the ability to sit and look, and Chala always made a point on her travels of noticing those that still could.

  ‘And I’m finally going to start some general sorting out.’

  ‘You mean you’re actually going to tackle that heap of old boxes in the attic?’ Chala tried to make light of the fact that, as far as she knew, these mementos of a past long buried had lain untouched since Denise’s departure over twenty-five years ago.

  ‘Well, I can’t leave it for you to sort out when I’m gone, can I?’ He, too, was playing it down.

  ‘Not that you’re going anywhere soon, are you?’ There was the tiniest edge to her teasing – that sliver of nervousness that creeps in when we joke about the death of a loved one.

  ‘No way – not until you’ve learnt to beat me at chess anyway.’

  ‘Good. Then I’ll come down for the weekend when I get back from Australia. I told you, didn’t I, the company is sending me to Australia?’

  ‘Yes – what a dreadful waste of money! Enjoy yourself, my sweet, and ring me when you’re back.’

  ‘OK, I’ll see you in a couple of weeks, then.’ She hesitated, acutely aware of the emotional significance of what he planned to do. ‘You be careful in that att… I love you.’

  She put the phone down gently, a moment of stillness around their conversation.

  Then Paul’s voice broke in, ‘Che, we’re leaving in fifteen minutes!’

  She dived into the shower without answering. Eight minutes later three outfits lay discarded on the floor as she lunged for a green velvet skirt and a
bright orange crinkly top that clashed with the red in her hair. When they’d first met, Paul used to say that her looks were perfect for an artist. Her dark skin and long red hair were an unusual combination, and there was an air of mystery and impenetrability about her which sometimes frightened those who knew her history but fascinated those who didn’t. She had gone through phases in her life of trying to hide the elements that drew attention to her – cropping her hair like a schoolboy, avoiding make-up or colour in her clothes – but the starkness had, if anything, been even more striking, and in the end she had resorted to bright clothes and long hair as easier to hide behind. Wet hair, no make-up. Oh well, this is about Paul, not me, she thought, and fled downstairs.

  He was ready and waiting, in jeans and a faded blue shirt.

  ‘Aren’t you going to dress up?’ she teased.

  For the briefest of seconds he looked like a small child, almost hurt. Chala realised he must be nervous and reached out to ruffle his hair, but he caught her hand in the air.

  ‘Don’t,’ he said, and she swallowed the impulse to take it personally, knowing this was just his way of feeling strong. The elephant shadow of his parents’ disapproval hung briefly between them and she wished he could let her stroke it away for ever.

  * * *

  Chala was standing in front of a black-and-white photo that had been partially coloured in – and battling the desire to find the child responsible and make them clean it up. The photo itself, she quite liked. It was a dusk view of woodland with white light filtering through the trees, but she couldn’t see that the vibrant red bush or bright yellow flower added anything. To her literal eye, it just looked silly. She didn’t like all of Paul’s work, but at least his paintings were – what – real? Vital? Intense? Vivid? Chala bit her lip at the clichés she reached for whenever she tried to think about a piece of art and thanked God that at least she wasn’t an art critic. Sitting looking – that’s what people should be doing, Philip would have said. Too much talking, talking, talki…

  ‘So, what do you think? Do you like it?’ Oh no, not the artist, please no. ‘Don’t worry, it’s not mine – you can say what you like!’ Chala looked gratefully at the woman in front of her, but still didn’t speak. The woman was clad in some kind of checked material which was doubtless very trendy, though it made Chala think of golf, but her face was open and slightly flushed.