Painting Naked (Macmillan New Writing) Read online

  About Painting Naked

  “PAINTING NAKED is a sparklingly attractive novel written with humour, brio, and a refreshing unsentimentality.” Elizabeth Buchan, author of WIVES BEHAVING BADLY

  Jillian Hunter treasures her independence. She’s raised two sons by herself, launched a small business, and restored a tumbledown beach cottage in Connecticut. Finally, at fifty-two, she’s ready for another shot at love, but soon discovers most single men her age prefer women in their twenties. Then a trip to London reunites her with Colin – an old flame she hasn’t seen in thirty-five years – and Jill falls for him all over again.

  This could be her chance for a new beginning, one she never expected, and certainly not at her age. But Colin isn’t quite the boy Jill remembers and she ends up risking everything she’s worked for – her business, her home, and her two closest friends – to make a life with him. And when faced with the risk of losing Colin as well, Jill is forced to take an uncomfortably close look at the woman she’s allowed herself to become and figure out a way to win herself back.

  Funny, sophisticated, and wise, PAINTING NAKED is a coming-of-middle-age story about girlfriends when you’re no longer a girl, about growing up when you’re already grown up, and the price you’re willing to pay for the love of your life.

  “A wonderfully uplifting story about a woman on her way to fulfillment.” Katie Fforde, author of WEDDING SEASON

  “PAINTING NAKED seduces easily and satisfies completely. Rich, funny, and loving, reading this book is akin to sharing a perfect meal with old friends. I never wanted the story to end.” Jeanne Ray, author of JULIE AND ROMEO

  “With clear-eyed affection, sumptuous prose, and indomitable wit, PAINTING NAKED examines loss, sorrow, and redemption. Maggie Dana’s first novel is proof that middle age offers no protection against vulnerability when it comes to love and lust.” FIFTY-SOMETHING

  Table of Contents

  About Painting Naked

  Prologue

  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

  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

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Epilogue

  About Maggie Dana

  Copyright

  Prologue

  London

  September 2010

  There’s a party going on downstairs, and it’s for me. A lunch party shrieking with voices of people I haven’t seen in thirty-five years. I’m the guest of honor but I’m still in Sophie’s spare bedroom stuffing myself into pantyhose and trying on shoes that hurt.

  Someone raps on the door.

  “Just a minute,” I yell.

  My thumbs drill twin holes through a pair of tights.

  “Damn!” I toss them in the waste basket and rummage in my case for replacements. Can’t remember the last time I wore tights. Or real shoes, for that matter.

  Sophie rattles the handle. “Jill! What’s keeping you?”

  “Fashion adjustment,” I call out. “Be with you in a sec.”

  “Good,” Sophie says. “But bloody hurry up. The natives are getting restless.”

  She pads down the stairs, footsteps muffled by myriad layers of carpet, and I hear the doorbell ring, followed by Sophie exclaiming over the latest arrival.

  “Hi, it’s marvellous to see you again … How long has it been? … Yes, Jill’s here, just tarting herself up a bit …”

  Her voice is lost in the babble of others.

  I finish tucking myself into tummy-control pantyhose, lurch off the bed, and jump up and down to make sure I’m properly squashed in. A final check in the mirror. Buttercream knit dress, a silk scarf of burnt umber and cobalt that matches my hair and eyes respectively, and brown leather pumps that want to rearrange my toes.

  I look at my sneakers, longingly. Sophie will slay me if I wear them.

  The stairs are narrow and steep and the handrail has gone missing. The treads are too shallow, even for my tiny feet, and with all that damn carpet it’s like stepping in marshmallows.

  He’s standing at the bottom looking up. Tall and brown-haired, with a crooked smile and kind green eyes behind a pair of rimless glasses.

  My foot slips. I miss two steps and tumble down the rest.

  “Hello, Jilly,” he says, then chuckles as he bends to help me up.

  His voice, his once oh-so-familiar voice, is the last thing I hear before passing out.

  Chapter 1

  Wickham Forge, England

  July 1973

  Sophie Neville and I are painting her bedroom. We’re naked, or close to it, because Sophie insists it’s easier to wash paint off skin than off clothes. Her bikini is two scraps of silk held together by lace. The back’s no bigger than a child’s hanky and the front barely covers all the rude bits. I try not to look.

  She takes off her bra. “I’m hot.”

  “Sophie! What if someone comes in?” I’m wearing far more than her, but still feel exposed despite navy gym knickers and a size 34-B Cross-Your-Heart bra that I’m already spilling out of. Nobody runs around half dressed in my house. Certainly not my parents. I doubt Mum’s ever seen my dad without clothes and I’m sure she’s never bared herself to him.

  “Don’t worry, no one’s home,” Sophie says, sloshing blue paint on the wall. “Besides, we used to swim in the buff with Hugh and Keith. Remember?”

  “We were five and the boys were six,” I remind her. “It’s a bit different now.”

  “I’ll say.” She grins. “They’re camping out this weekend.”

  “In the fort?”

  “Where else?”

  I shrug because I don’t want to seem interested, but I am. Desperately. Colin Carpenter hangs out with Hugh, Sophie’s brother, and I lust for information about him. He’s sixteen and they’ve built a tree fort in the woods behind Keith Lombard’s house. Keith lives next door. He and Hugh have been best friends forever.

  Hugh, Keith, and Colin.

  They fancy themselves as the Three Musketeers. Sophie calls them the Three Stooges. I call them two twits and a miracle.

  “Shall we go spy on them?” Sophie climbs down the ladder and strikes a pose. Hips thrust forward, head tilted. Her breasts don’t droop like mine.

  “Now?”

  “No, this weekend, stupid.”

  “What if they catch us?”

  “They’ll probably torture us.” Sophie pulls a tank top from her dresser and drags it over her head. “But if you don’t want to come, I’ll ask Heather instead.”

  That’s all I need. The sexiest girl in school hiding behind a bush and making eyes at Colin. My
Colin. I grit my teeth and scowl.

  Sophie steps into her shorts. “Only teasing.”

  The floorboards outside Sophie’s room are an early warning system. Step on the wrong one and it creaks. Me and Sophie know how to avoid it. So do Keith and Hugh. But Colin doesn’t. He hasn’t hung around here long enough to learn the ins and outs of the Neville family’s house.

  So, of course, it creaks.

  I turn toward the noise and see the tail end of someone’s shirt fly by Sophie’s open bedroom door.

  “The boys are back,” she says.

  I glare at her. It’s me that’s half naked. I yank my shirt off the bed, thrust my arms through its sleeves, and do the buttons up all wrong. I’m redoing them when Sophie says, “So, are you coming or not?”

  I nod. Rabid cows wouldn’t keep me away.

  Snorts and muffled laughter drift across the hall from Hugh’s bedroom and I wonder how long the boys have been spying on us.

  * * *

  Friday morning, I get my period. Bad cramps. Mum says it’ll be less painful once I have a baby. I don’t want one. I don’t want to be like Mum, pinched face, always cross, always complaining. It’s my fault. She was happier before I came along. I can see it in the photos of her and Dad on holiday. She was pretty then, with dark brown curls and a generous smile. Not like she is now, hair scragged back in a bun so tight it stretches her eyebrows.

  I look at her hunched over the sewing machine, hemming another set of curtains for the living room. She never stops doing things over. Once, my dad came home late and didn’t want to turn on the lights in case he woke us up. But he did because Mum had rearranged furniture in the living room, yet again, and Dad crashed into the gateleg table and broke his toe. I’d never heard him swear till that night.

  Sophie rings up. Our phone’s in the front hall. There’s no chair so I have to stand and lean against Mum’s antique bombé chest. I’ve begged for a phone in my room, but no luck. My tummy is killing me. Something in there is dragging a rake through my gut.

  “Don’t spend all day on the phone,” Mum yells above the whirr of her Singer.

  “Is she in one of her moods?” Sophie asks.

  “When is she not?” I wince as a wave of pain hammers me to the wall. I gasp. If this is what having a baby’s like, I definitely don’t want one.

  “You still coming over?” Sophie says.

  She knows I’ve got my period. “I’m not sure.”

  “Come on, Jill. It’s only cramps. You’ll forget all about them when you see Colin.” She blows a raspberry. “You should see the junk Hugh’s packing right now. You’d think he was going to China instead of next door.”

  Shit, shit, shit. I don’t want to miss out. “I’ll ring you tomorrow. Okay? Maybe I’ll feel better in the morning.”

  “Go to bed with a hot-water bottle,” Sophie says. “And take an Aspro. Take two.”

  How would she know? She’s never had a cramp in her life.

  Then she plays her trump card. “If you don’t show up, I’ll tell Colin Heather fancies him.”

  * * *

  I saw Colin Carpenter for the first time last summer. Hugh and Keith had just started building their tree fort when Colin’s family moved to Wickham Forge. Colin’s father works in the City—investment banking, I think—and they bought a house on the posh side of town. Colin was good with his hands. He had all sorts of power tools that the other two lacked—saws, drills, and sanders—and he knew how to use them. The fort looked a whole lot better once he got through with it.

  Except for one thing: It didn’t have a ladder. The only way you could get to it was by climbing the adjacent tree—easy because it had plenty of low branches—then walking across a plank of wood the boys slung between it and the fort. The boys scampered across it like squirrels, then dared Sophie and me to follow. I didn’t want to, but Sophie danced after them like a gymnast on a balance beam.

  I held back, scared witless, while Hugh and Keith hurled insults at me. Colin told them to shut up, so I sat down and straddled the plank and bumped my way toward him. He reached for my hands, pulled me into the fort, and we fell backward amid a chorus of jeers. Then he rolled over and suddenly he was lying on top of me.

  His hair flopped forward and tickled my cheek. His eyes were so close I could see yellow flecks among the green. He smiled. So did I. And when he helped me sit up, I could swear his lips brushed the top of my head.

  * * *

  I take a hot bath, using the last of Mum’s pink bath salts. They’re gritty and they don’t dissolve very well because the water’s not hot enough, so it’s like sitting in sand but without the fun of being at the beach. If I could be bothered, I’d go and get a kettle of hot water, but then Mum would want to know why. So I ignore the grit and lie back with my feet propped on the taps and wonder what it’s like to fall in love.

  Is it like Sophie, who’s ecstatic about one boy this week and head over heels about another the week after? Or is it like my parents, who’re so different I can’t begin to imagine why they got married in the first place? Mum bosses Dad around something awful, yet he puts up with it. Sophie reckons it’s because he’s got a girlfriend on the side. I think she’s mad. My father would never do that.

  I pull the plug and haul myself out of the tub. It’s summer but the bathroom is cold. I wrap myself in a towel and peer in the mirror. Maybe I’ll cut my hair. Or get a perm. Anything would be better than plaits. Yes, plaits. I’m fifteen and my mother insists on plaits. The only girls my age with hair like this are called Heidi and they’re blond and they live in Switzerland and they know how to yodel.

  I pick up Mum’s nail scissors and trim off some split ends. I snip a bit more, then chicken out and drop the scissors in the sink. If I really wanted to piss her off, this’d be the way to do it. Cut it all off. Instead, I scoop my hair into a ponytail and secure it with an elastic band.

  The door opens.

  “Jillian Hunter, how many times have I told you not to wear your hair like that?” Mum snatches the elastic. It snaps and my ponytail falls apart.

  “Ouch!” I rub my head.

  “Put something on,” she says. “You’re half naked.”

  “Mum, I just had a bath.”

  “Don’t argue.”

  I gather up my clothes and slope off to my bedroom.

  Oh, God, my bedroom. My mother’s memorial to the Flopsy Bunnies and apple-cheeked girls in long dresses, pantaloons, and poke bonnets. In one corner, Peter Rabbit wages war on Mr McGregor; in another, Mrs Tittlemouse tells Mr Jackson to get lost. Good for her. I wish I was brave enough to say that to my mother. I want Mick Jagger and Paul McCartney on my walls—not bloody Mabel Lucie Attwell and Beatrix Potter. And I want plain, ordinary paint—lavender, blue, yellow—I don’t care, as long as it’s not baby pink.

  Dad comes in to wish me goodnight. “Do you need anything?”

  “A hug.”

  “You feeling all right, love?” His brow is furrowed like a washboard. I run the tips of my fingers down it—bump, bump, bump—like I used to when I was little. He smiles, takes my hand, and kisses it. His mustache tickles. “Will you be seeing Sophie tomorrow?”

  “Yes.” I snuggle into bed. Right now I’m not fifteen. I’m back to being five, and my father’s about to tell me the story of Katherine, his magic princess, who rides a giant cat with wings and a unicorn’s horn.

  “Well, then,” he says, getting up. “You girls have a lovely time. Okay?”

  Chapter 2

  Wickham Forge

  July 1973

  The next day, Sophie and I go spying. We crouch behind bushes and wriggle through long grass in the Lombards’ back garden. The boys are in the tree fort, unaware of our presence. I think. At one point, Keith runs across the plank and slides down the tree and I could swear he’s looking straight at us.

  “Shh!” Sophie warns. She’s wearing shorter-than-short shorts, a gauzy blouse, and no bra. How can I compete? Colin will take one look at her and
melt.

  We hold our breath and keep still. Keith walks past us, less than five feet from our hiding place, to go check on the line he’s cast in the stream. It’s not really a stream—more like a swampy ditch—but he’s convinced it contains edible fish. He wades into the water and adjusts his pole. He’s not wearing a shirt and his gray flannels are rolled to his knees. Must be a pair of his old uniform trousers. Hot and scratchy. Almost as bad as the rubbish Sophie and I have to wear—pleated maroon skirts that make you look fat no matter how skinny you are, and those miserable velour hats we stuff in our satchels the minute a boy walks by. Keith comes out covered with slime.

  “Our very own swamp monster,” Sophie whispers.

  “Shh! He’ll hear us.”

  But he doesn’t. He obviously hasn’t a clue we’re watching because he reaches down the front of his pants and scratches. Or maybe he does know and he’s just showing off.

  “Stupid git,” Sophie says.

  But she’s smiling and I wonder if she fancies him. If she does, it’d be almost like incest, wouldn’t it? I mean, she’s known him for years. He’s like a second brother. Or does she fancy Colin? I couldn’t bear it if she does. So far, she’s not shown any interest. He’s one of the guys. Her brother’s friend. Right? I’ll die if she flirts with him.

  We wait.

  This isn’t as much fun as I thought it would be. Crouching behind a hawthorn bush and talking in whispers is dead boring. I know Colin’s up there because his bike’s leaning against the tree. Otherwise, I’d go home.

  Sophie says, “I’m fed up.”

  “Me too.” I stretch my legs. God, are they stiff.

  “So, how about we go on over and see what they’re doing?” Sophie stands up, tugs at her shorts. They’re baby blue and really, really short, with gingham pockets on the back. My mother would never let me wear anything like that. “We’ll pretend we’re out for a walk,” Sophie says. “Don’t you dare tell them we’ve been spying.”