Muddy Waters by Judy Astley Page A

cleaners – I left her cruising the High Street.’
    â€˜Really? I wonder what else she’ll pick up. Thanks for the paper,’ he said vaguely, refusing to be distracted. Stella plugged in his kettle and clattered around making tea, also refusing to defer to his intense concentration. She felt aggrieved, somehow, done out of the chance to do her own work while everyone else around her went about fulfilling exactly what they wanted to do as if nothing else could possibly be expected of them. She’d worked herself into such a state of resentment that she’d decided she didn’t even like the fact that Abigail had volunteered to collect Adrian’s jacket. She didn’t want her handling his clothes, even securely bagged in opaque polythene – it was all too intimate. Yesterday, any other day, she was sure she wouldn’t have felt like that but then yesterday she hadn’t seen Abigail pawing at Toby. Abigail had reminded her then of the sleek little Siamese cat which had sat on her lap that morning. It had purred ecstatically and kneaded lovingly at her leg, with its needle-sharp little possessive claws digging and hurting.
    â€˜Something wrong?’ Adrian asked, suddenly sensing a cloud.
    Stella looked at his face where an expression of dutiful concern was in place, but his hands were still over the keyboard, all ready poised to form the next sentence the moment he’d said the right thing. She squeezed his shoulder, ‘Nothing I can quite put my finger on.’

Chapter Six
    Perhaps next time, and if not, he could find himself another bloody model, Ruth thought glumly as she walked into college the next morning, already ten minutes late for the class at which she’d have to sit with Melissa and confess to failure. Melissa, waiting for her on the steps, stubbed out her cigarette on the scarred trunk of the sycamore tree and ran to join her as she saw her by the gate.
    â€˜Well?
Did
you?’
    â€˜No. He just painted away as bloody sodding usual,’ Ruth sighed. ‘I’d poured the geranium oil in the bath too. It’s supposed to be irresistible. And I used my passionflower body lotion. What a waste. He did say I
glistened
and he seemed to like that but he still didn’t touch me – not unless you count prodding my bum with the sharp end of the paintbrush and telling me to roll to the left a bit. He hardly even looked – it’s so
insulting.
Christ, he’s
old,
you’d think he’d be grateful.’
    Melissa giggled, ‘With all that oily stuff on your body, it’s probably the best thing. You must have been like a skating rink. He’d have slid off.’
    Ruth scowled at her. Into her highly visual imagination came a ridiculous and unwelcome cartoon of plump and naked Bernard skimming like a gold-medal skater off her body and the velvet-strewn sofa, out through the balcony window and plummeting heavily into the river. ‘It’s not
funny.
I want to have sex with him
now
, not after the painting’s all finished and done with and framed and hung up and it’s too late for all the
passion
and the excitement.’
    â€˜Passion for you or the painting?’
    â€˜Both, I suppose. I want people to look at this picture and be able to
tell
that there’s more to it than me sprawled on the sofa reading
Marie Claire
and hoping.’
    â€˜He might just be a lousy shag,’ Melissa pointed out, ‘and then there wouldn’t be much use in that either, would there?’
    Stella knew she was wasting precious working time. The rainbow pile of envelopes still waited in a basket next to the computer. She had just two more days to get next week’s column done and faxed. Abigail had gone up to her room for a rest after lunch. ‘I do occasionally have a little sleep in the afternoons. Or a little read,’ she explained, waving a glossy magazine at Stella when she asked if she had a headache. Contrary