Free The Gallery of Vanished Husbands: A Novel by Natasha Solomons Page A

the titles of the books, she realised every one was a gardening manual.
    ‘My father’s lair. See, it has the best view of the garden.’
    The bay windows framed the ponds and lawns in such perfect proportions that outside looked more like a work by Fragonard than real life.
    ‘My mother doesn’t come in here much. That’s why the painting’s here. She was always telling Daddy to bugger off to his study and stay there.’
    Juliet blinked. She still wasn’t used to the way Charlie swore, casually using ‘bugger’, ‘damnation’ and ‘bollocks’ as condiments to sprinkle over his conversation. She was not offended, simply aware that he lacked her middle-class aversion to bad language. In thirty-odd years she had never heard her father swear and her mother only once – on the day she finally accepted that George was not coming back.
    Juliet studied the portrait in the trim gilt frame. It was of a balding, middle-aged man, thin-lipped and with pouches beneath his eyes. He looked neither happy nor sad, kind nor cruel. She backed away and regarded him again from a distance. The man remained flat and cold; his face empty.
    ‘It’s nothing like him,’ said Charlie.
    ‘Why didn’t you paint him?’
    ‘I was going to. But then he died. And I was only fifteen. I’m not sure that mine would have been much better.’
    ‘You should take it down. One day you’ll forget exactly what he looked like so you’ll look at this to remember and then eventually you’ll see this blank man instead of him.’
    Juliet perched on an overstuffed sofa, pretending to be at ease, and glanced around the room again.
    ‘The light’s good. I think we should hang the paintings in here.’
    ‘Mummy won’t like it. Yes. We absolutely should.’

    Juliet wished she drank. Then she might feel less nervous. After tea she and Charlie had arranged all the pictures they’d brought and all in the right order, poised on easels around the room. Juliet had written out neat labels for each one. The light was perfect – late afternoon sun drifting across the lawns and turning the walls the colour of
crème caramel
. The evening wasn’t simply about the pictures though: it was about her. She fidgeted inside her special-occasion frock, a sleeveless blue dress cut just below the knee. Charlie had told her to bring a ‘cocktail dress’ but Juliet had never had a cocktail and was unaware that drinking them required a particular outfit. She’d gone to Minnie’s
on the high street and the girl there assured her that this dress was just the thing; now, standing here, Juliet had her doubts.
    ‘You look the business, love. Not as good as me. But you know, you did what you could.’
    Juliet turned, smiling, to face a man of about twenty-five with hair conker-brown and as tightly curled as wood shavings. He preened in a dinner jacket slightly too large for his pickpocket build.
    ‘I feel like a Teddy Boy. But a fucking handsome one. Let’s blow this place and go somewhere good, Fidget, my love.’
    As he spoke, Jim slipped an arm about her shoulders and walked her around the pictures.
    ‘You done good.’
    ‘You like the new frames? I know you didn’t want to . . .’
    ‘No. You was right and all. I just didn’t see it before. Jesus. It does something to them blues.’
    ‘I like the light in here. It should be good for another couple of hours. Is everyone here? Do you have the other pictures?’
    ‘Course. Me and Phil brought the lot. Max did two new ones special. Well. Probably not special. But he did two new ones anyways. Here.’
    Jim heaved up a pair of canvases wrapped in brown paper that he’d stacked against the wall and placed them onto the large desk. Juliet prickled with excitement as she fumbled in the desk for scissors. The other artists – Charlie, Jim, and Philip – she knew. They shared the Fitzrovia studio and one by one Juliet had been allowed to meet them, Jim confiding that Charlie had wanted to keep her to himself for