After the Party by Lisa Jewell Page B

woman to see his stunning daughter, his dinky son, to see what he’d produced. Although he was forty-two years old, at heart Ralph still felt as unformed and insubstantial as a teenager. The existence of his children gave him the stature of a man.
    He took the wallet back into the living room and passed it to Rosey.
    She held it unopened for a moment, eyeing Ralph as if he was delicious sport. Ralph felt his temperature rise. This woman was amazing. Everything about her was amazing. The more he looked at her the more beautiful she became. The more time he spent with her the more he wanted to know about her. Ralph was not a man with a roving eye or a weak heart. Ralph was a loyal and faithful man and he was unnerved to find himself feeling a deep attraction to another woman for the first time since he’d fallen in love with Jem.
    â€œSo, Smith tells me you’re an artist?” She pulled the walletopen and took out the photos, her eyes still on Ralph, waiting for his response.
    â€œYup,” he said, glad for a line of questioning that would take his mind off his feelings.
    â€œWhat sort of stuff do you make?” she asked, glancing at the top photo.
    â€œOil on canvas. Still life. Smith’s got one of my paintings in his spare room.”
    â€œAh! The flowers in the hand! I LOVE that painting. I keep telling him he should put it out here, soften the place up. Wow, that’s one of yours?”
    â€œYeah. It’s an old one. Very old. But it’s kind of the same vein as what I’m working on now. It was supposed to be my ‘floral period’ and it’s turned into ten years of churning out the same stuff.”
    â€œWell, you know, if that’s what you’re good at, and you clearly are . . .”
    â€œYeah, I suppose. Though I could do with testing myself a bit more. That’s one of the reasons why I’m out here.”
    â€œOh, nice, and I thought you’d come to see me,” mocked Smith, returning with a mug of coffee and a croissant on a plate.
    â€œThat too,” Ralph smiled. “Just needed to get a fresh perspective on things, see things in a different light—literally.”
    â€œGood on you,” said Rosey approvingly, “good on you. And this must be Scarlett?” She turned a photo round to show him. It was Scarlett, last month, black curls in a cloud around her pale face, almond eyes squinting into the camera, in a white dress and big net fairy wings, her hands green with felt tip pen and a splodge of something orange on her dress.
    Ralph nodded and felt a brief burst of adoration at the sight of his perfect girl.
    â€œWow, she’s beautiful,” said Rosey, “and she looks just like you.”
    â€œEr, that doesn’t make sense,” joked Smith. “Let’s have a look.”
    Rosey passed him the photo and he examined it, looking from the picture to Ralph and back again. “Nope,” he said, “looks nothing like you, she’s all Jem.”
    â€œAh, yes,” said Rosey, looking at the next photo in the pile. “This must be Jem.” She turned it to show him. It was Jem, her face still plump with pregnancy, a newborn Blake held against her cheek, her eyes bright with the euphoria of new life, her hair a mass of black curls. It was typical of Jem to have chosen a photo of herself that did her no justice whatsoever. For Jem this photo was an advertisement for parenthood. Look, it said, look at the sheer unadulterated joy in my eyes. Nothing else in the world could make you feel this good . It was a look of utter triumph, of Olympian achievement, of world domination. And of total and utter bliss.
    Jem was weirdly evangelical about procreation. Ralph didn’t get it. He loved his kids, he enjoyed being a dad, but he could see that it wouldn’t be for everyone. He could see that it was the sort of decision you could make only if your heart was really, really in it and