The suitcase was already propped by the front door, and the stew still simmered on the stoverich, thick, with buttery dumplings. How he used to love it.
Imogen dabbed her drying hands on a towel, almost automatically. She stared at the familiar back of his head, at the little mole behind his ear that she had kissed a thousand times, and she didnt recognise him.
Are you off on a business trip? she asked.
No, Imogen. Im leaving.
The words hung in the kitchen like the scent of burnt toast.
Where to?
Somewhere else.
The towel slipped from her grasp.
Edward?
Imogen, lets not make a scene. We both know its over. Ive made my decision; you havent.
Over? she laughed, a nervous, terrified sound. Tomorrow is our anniversary. Eighteen years.
Exactly. Eighteen years of the same stew.
The blow landed straight at her throat. She gasped.
I gave up my PhD for you. I could have been
You could never have been anyone, he said, smiling the way people smile when theyre about to feel sorry for themselves. A restorer. Who needs that nowicons, dust I gave you a life, for the record: an apartment, a car, a seaside holiday every year.
I gave?
Fine, the flat is on me, but Im not a monster. Stay a month or two, then well sort things out.
She clutched the back of a chair, her fingers turning white.
Who is she?
Does it matter?
Who?
He glanced at his watch.
Grace, thirtytwo. Shes alive, Imogen. She goes to the theatre, skis, laughs. You, meanwhile, have turned into a housekeeper without even noticing.
Imogen fell silent, a lump forming in her throat.
Edward lifted the suitcase, turned to the door, and something flickered in his eyesnot regret, but a sharp, animal annoyance, like a landlord watching his old dog being taken to the pound.
Dont worry. Thirtyeight isnt a sentence. Enjoy your freedom, Imogen. Youve earned it.
The door shut.
The stew continued to cool on the burner.
For the first week she didnt cry. She wandered through the flat as if it were a museum of a strangers lifehis shirts, his toothbrush, a halffinished mug on the table.
On the eighth day Sophie called.
Immy, you there?
The words hit her like a punch. She sobbed into the receiver so loudly that the neighbour downstairs knocked, asking if everything was all right.
Sophie Im thirtyeight now. I feel empty. Eighteen years of cooking stew, and I cant even recall the last time I held a brush
What do you remember?
You remember why you went into restoration?
Imogen froze. A memory surged: the National Gallery, a nineteenyearold her, standing before the Trinity altarpiece, tears in her eyes because people could create such beauty and keep it alive.
I remember.
Then go and fetch your paints from the storeroom. I saw them five years ago; theyre still there.
She found them in a shoebox under old curtainsdry, halfcrumbled, but the brushes were intact, bought with a scholarship and a vow to skip lunches.
She sat on the storeroom floor and weptsoftly, differently now.
The next morning she enrolled in a paid course at the Royal Academy of Arts, paying with the last of the money shed saved for a holiday that would never happen.
She visited the hairdresser, cut off the long braid Edward had forbidden her to touch for two decades. In the mirror stared a stranger: sharp cheekbones, fierce eyes.
Well, hello. Long time no see, the woman in the mirror seemed to say.
Three months of study followedmuseums, sketchbooks, nighttime drawings that grew bolder as her hands remembered what her mind had not forgotten.
In February Sophie called again.
Immy, Ive got a job for you. Remember Arthur Whitaker, the guy Michael works for? His mother died, and he inherited a house in Hampshire. Old, full of icons on a whole shelf. He wants to throw them away
Dont you dare! Imogen sprang up. He mustnt touch them!
I was thinkingmaybe you could have a look? Hell pay.
Ill look. Tomorrow.
The icons were in terrible shapeeight pieces, blackened, flaking, cracked. Imogen leaned over them, her heart thudding so hard she could hear it.
Mr. Whitaker, she croaked, this one I need to examine it under a lamp, but Im almost certain its seventeenthcentury, northern provenance. Very valuable.
He raised an eyebrow.
How much?
Restorationhard to say. But resale could fetch a lot.
Can you restore it?
She stared at the faint faces emerging from the soot, understood: this was her chance, the only one.
I can.
The work took six months. She rented a tiny workshop on the outskirts of Camden, the smell of solvents almost unbearable. She lived on bread and butter, lost twelve pounds, broke down twice when a mistake threatened the piece. Once she called a professor at four a.m.; the saintly woman appeared an hour later with a thermos.
Finally the first icon shone, clean and luminous.
Arthur Whitaker stared, speechless.
Its a miracle, he whispered.
Its not a miracle. Its work.
He paid double. Within a week a friend of a friend called, then another, then a dealer from Mayfair. Word spread faster than any broadcast.
A year passed. Then another.
Imogen now lived in a modest rented flat with high ceilings, a studio on Camden Lock, a sixmonth backlog of commissions for two monasteries and a private collectorSir David Sinclair, whose name always appeared in the business pages with a respectful hush.
Sir David would come to the studio himself, never sending couriers. Hed sit by the window, watch her work, sometimes bring coffee, sometimes nothing at all.
Youre a strange client, Mr. Sinclair, Imogen said once.
Im a strange man. Mind if I stay?
No problem.
Fortyfive, a widower, with thoughtful, weary eyes and pianists handsthough he never played piano, his life was a sort of financial symphony.
Nothing happened between them. Yet Imogen found herself waiting for his visits.
One evening she didnt want to go anywhere, but Sophie urged her onthere was an anniversary gala at a Mayfair gallery, the whole art world would be there, clients she needed, not a single excuse to stay in her cell.
Imogen slipped into a simple black dress, the first shed ever bought from a decent designer a month earlier, pearl earringsa thankyou gift from a grateful client, and a pair of heels shed barely used.
Sir David arrived himself, no chauffeur.
You look radiant today, he said.
She laughed, truly, for the first time in ages.
The room buzzed with conversation, champagne flowed. Imogen paused before a Korovin landscape, pretending to study it, just to catch her breath.
Imogen?
She turned.
Edward stood there, older, hair turned silver, bags under his eyes, a glass in his hand trembling slightly. Beside him a young, slender woman with a sour expression, clinging to his elbow like a coat rack.
Edward, shall we go? Im bored, the woman snapped.
Hold on, Grace, he replied.
He stared at Imogen, bewildered.
You youre?
Hello, Edward, she said softly.
Youve changed, he murmured.
Time does that.
Grace tugged his sleeve.
Whos she?
This is my former wife.
Grace scanned Imogen from shoes to earrings, her face tightening.
Delighted. Ill be at the bar.
She stalked away, heels clicking.
Now they were alone, amidst a crowd but somehow just the two of them.
What brings you here? Edward asked.
Im a restorer. Clients.
A restorer? He blinked. Seriously?
Yes, seriously.
Immy He stepped closer, the scent of brandy on him. I have to sayI was an idiot.
She stayed silent.
This Grace is a nightmare. She cant even fry an egg. Always clubs, resorts, restaurants. Im tired, Immy.
I can imagine.
Im filing for divorce. Already submitted. He seized her hand. Lets try again. You loved me, you always did.
Imogen looked at his fingersonce so familiar, now foreign.
She gently withdrew her hand.
Edward, do you remember what you said as I left?
He frowned.
You saidenjoy your freedom.
Immy, I didnt mean
Wait. I want to thank you. No sarcasm. He stared, confused.
You really gave me freedom. I couldnt unwrap it for yearslike a present youre afraid to open. When I finally did, I found myself inside, the woman I buried eighteen years ago.
Immy
So thank you. Andno. Im not coming back.
But why? I have a flat, money, I can support you
I support myself. Been that way for a long time.
At that moment Sir David entered, calm, with two glasses.
Imogen, ready? The collector from Edinburgh is waiting.
Yes, Sir David, she replied, taking his hand.
Edward watched them, his gaze fixed on her back as she bowed politely to the welldressed man.
Grace, at the bar, muttered something he didnt hear.
Imogen paused at the doorway, not triumphantly, just a small wavelike saying goodbye to an old acquaintance.
The collector was a stout gentleman with childlike blue eyes, Boris Whitby. He tipped his hat, kissed her hand in a genteel oldfashioned way, and said, Madam, Ive heard miracles about you. I didnt believe them until now.
Youve seen my work?
I saw The Virgin of Mercy, seventeenthcentury, eighteenhundredsomething. Remember?
She had spent half a year on that piece.
Did you buy it?
I did. And I want more. I have something delicate to discuss.
They moved to the window. Sir David lingered by the column, unobtrusive yet close. Imogen felt his presence like a warm blanket.
Through the corner of her eye she saw Edward still standing by the Korovin, alone. Grace had vanished, likely after a spat. He glanced in her direction, but she didnt turn back.
Boris whispered, I have a Novgorod icon, sixteenthcentury. Its provenance is murky.
Imogen tensed.
Stolen?
Noexported in the twenties, then to Paris, New York. Bought legally at auction two years ago, but I want it returned to its original home, restored to its nineteenthcentury form. Im convinced the original masterpiece lies beneath the later layers.
Why?
He fell silent.
My grandmother was from Novgorod. Her father, a priest, was executed in 1937. Ive searched for this icon for forty years. Now Ive found it.
A sting of tears sprang in Imogens eyes.
Ill take it.
The work on the Novgorod icon would begin a month later, after paperwork. In the meantime life marched on.
On a Monday morning Imogen arrived at the studio to find an unmarked envelope slipped under the door, a handwritten note in uneven script:
Immy, we need to talk. Not on the phone. Wednesday at seven, by your studio, the café on the corner. If you dont come, Ill understand. Please.
She stared at the paper, crumpled it, smoothed it, crumpled again.
Wednesday at seven she went.
She didnt know whyperhaps to close a chapter that had never truly been beautiful, just lived.
Edward waited at a corner table, a untouched cup of tea before him. He stood, awkward, when she approached.
Thanks for coming.
I have twenty minutes.
Ill be quick. He clutched the cup. Immy, without Grace, without the crowd I said something at the galawords that werent right.
What should I have said?
He lifted his eyes; true fear flickered in themthe kind that comes when you realise the damage youve done is irreparable.
I messed up, and I cant clean it up.
Right.
Whatright?
Yes, I messed up. She said evenly, not angry, just stating a fact. Why call me?
He was silent, then produced a velvet box, worn at the edges. Imogen recognized it instantly.
Grandmas ring, she whispered.
Remember?
It was the little emeraldset ring Edward had given her at their engagement, then asked back a few years later for safekeeping for future children that never came. Hed kept it.
I want to give it back. Its yours, rightfully.
Just take it. Not a proposal. I understood at the gala how youd been with Mr. Sinclair Do you love him?
Imogen sat, listening to the echo of her own heart.
I dont know yet. Maybe someday, if time allows.
Edward nodded, heavy.
Its strange, seeing you not as a master, not as a cheat, but as a tired man who lost his most important game. He looked at her, really looked, for the first time in decades.
A tear rolled down his cheek, unwashed.
Thank you for leaving, he said.
If you hadnt, Id have been cooking stew until I was sixty, hating you in secret, hating myself. Now I dont hate you or me. Thats rare.
She stood, slipped on her coat, turned at the door. He sat, head bowed, shoulders trembling.
Outside, the wind hit her facecold, scented with leaves and a hint of smoke.
She walked down the boulevard, tears soft and steady, not from sorrow nor triumph, but from the relief of a long, painful chapter finally closing, its edges smooth, its knots untied.
Deep inside, a tiny splinter of doubt lingered. Was it a mistake to let go after eighteen years? Could there have been another chance?
She reached the tube station, paused for a heartbeat, then decidedno.
She descended the escalator.
The Novgorod icon turned out far more complex than shed imagined: three layers of paint. The deepest was sixteenthcentury, as Boris promised; above it, an eighteenthcentury overpaint; the topmost, a nineteenthcentury revision. She stripped each millimetre by millimetre.
Almost a year later, everything had changed.
Sir David proposed to her in Aprilnot in a restaurant, not with a ring; he was too practical for that. They sat in her tiny kitchen, sipping tea.
Imogen, will you marry me?
Just like that?
Why complicate? Were not twenty any more. We know what we want.
What do you want, Sir David?
You. All of your life. If youre not ready, Ill wait. Im patient.
Give me until autumn.
Until autumn it is.
He didnt mind.
In May Sophie told her that Edward had moved to the countryside, sold his London flat, bought a house in a village. He and Grace divorced quickly, no drama. He now lived with a widowed neighbour who made him soupquiet.
Imogen smiled at the news, grateful for any peace.
In August the climax arrived. She removed the final layer from the Novgorod icon.
In the quiet of her studio at two a.m., she stared at the resurrected face of the Saviorstill, stern, painted by an unknown hand five hundred years ago. Wars, revolutions, emigration, auctions, and now a return home, to the grandson of the priest shot in 1937.
She called Boris.
Boris, Im sorry its open.
Silence, then a trembling voice from the other end.
Im leaving now. I cant wait till morning, he whispered, tears spilling.
He arrived at seven a.m., unshaven, in a rumpled suit, bearing a box of chocolatesabsurdly childlike.
He entered, saw the icon, fell to his knees.
Imogen turned away, giving him space, her own quiet moment with the icon, her grandmother, her greatgrandfather, the weight of a history that converged in her little Camden studio.
September found Imogen walking down the aisle.
The wedding was modest. Twenty guests: Sophie with her husband, a professorAs the last glass clinked and the night settled over the city, Imogen finally felt the quiet certainty that the love she had built for herself would endure, no matter the shadows of the past.
