Page 38 of The Retreat

‘But she said that you…’ Imogen began and then stopped. ‘Oh.’

Talia shook her head. ‘She told you that so you’d sleep with her.’ She sighed, as though letting something go. ‘So you’d think you weren’t doing anything wrong. Because she didn’t think you’d have done it otherwise.’

Imogen’s shoulders slumped. ‘So I did just cheat with Flora with no excuse. You were the victim. Not me. All this time…’

Talia shook her head. ‘If there was you, there were others. At a bare minimum, she was already setting up an affair before you anyway.’

Imogen wasn’t so ready to be let off the hook. ‘I made a choice.’

‘Yes, of course you did. But, as I know, she’s very convincing. And from the sounds of it, far more calculating than I ever gave her credit for.’

Imogen felt like she’d been punched.

‘How long did things continue after I found you?’ Talia asked.

‘A year,’ Imogen told her, embarrassed.

‘She still had you convinced I was the bad guy?’

‘Yes.’ She paused, even more ashamed. ‘That day, she chased me down. She acted like I’d rescued her from you... But it was only because she knew she couldn’t get you back.’

Talia laughed. ‘Wow.’ She sighed. ‘Then what?’

‘Things went on for a while. And I thought we were in love. But then she got that offer from The Vespar. I assumed at first I’d be going with her.’ Imogen had to laugh at how fucking stupid she’d been. ‘But she said she needed to go there alone. She wasn’t sure who she was anymore, that she’d jumped into things with me too fast.’ Imogen groaned. ‘She just couldn’t wait to bang a load of Parisian women. Hell, she was probably already at it locally, right?’

Talia shrugged. ‘I don’t know that.’

‘You do. We both do.’

‘The only thing I ever really learned about her was that she’d never let go of one thing until there was something else to go to. And she wasn’t exactly passive about finding the next thing.’

Another shitty truth occurred to Imogen. ‘She told me The Vespar headhunted her. I bet that wasn’t true either. I bet she went after that with everything she had.’

‘She liked to act like things just happened to her,’ Talia agreed. ‘Like she was just a tumbleweed caught in the wind, surprised that everyone wanted her. Like the gallery…’

Imogen blinked. ‘What about the gallery?’

‘You know how it was funded, right?’ Talia asked.

‘She got funding through the Arts Council…’ Imogen stopped. ‘Didn’t she?’

‘Yes, I remember hearing that story. She spun it like the Arts Council came knocking because of some brilliant exhibition she’d curated. Like they’d seen her genius and couldn’t wait to throw money at her. She loved that story. Made her sound like the underdog who got her due.’

Imogen stared at the grass. ‘But it wasn’t true.’

‘I believed it too,’ Talia assured her. ‘But the gallery was funded by her parents. She made this whole thing about how they were emotionally withholding, how they didn’t understand art, how she had to fight for every scrap of validation. But when it came time to open the gallery, they wrote a cheque. A big one.’

Imogen frowned. ‘I thought she hated them.’

‘She did. But she didn’t hate their money.’ Talia hesitated, then added, ‘They made it in arms manufacturing, you know that?’

Imogen was gobsmacked. ‘What?’

‘Yeah. She used to dodge it in conversation, but she admitted it to me eventually. She was so ashamed. But she still took the money.’

Imogen stared at her. ‘How do you know all this?’

Talia looked down at her hands. ‘I only found out because I was helping her with some paperwork. She was hopeless with admin, and I found a scanned letter from their accountant, breaking down the trust transfer. The whole setup was designed to look like a third-party grant, but the money came straight from them. Half a million quid. Disguised as an “arts development endowment”.’

‘Did you say anything?’

‘Of course. And she wept with shame.’

Imogen nodded, recognising the move. ‘Of course she did.’

‘She begged me not to tell anyone,’ Talia explained. ‘And I didn’t. Well, until now.’

Imogen was quiet for a long moment. ‘God, she was exhausting.’

Talia let out a soft, bitter chuckle. ‘And magnetic. Unfortunately.’

Silence stretched between them. A bird chirped obliviously in the hedge nearby.

Imogen stepped closer. ‘I wouldn’t have touched her if I’d known. If I’d even suspected what the real situation was. Who she was.’ Imogen couldn’t ever really know if that was true; she’d never be given the chance to find out. But she believed it. She felt in her bones that she was better than that. She hoped Talia could believe that, too. She hoped that more than she expected it.

Talia was quiet for a long time. Then, softly said: ‘I know. Now.’

Imogen nodded once, throat tight. She’d run out of words.

They stood there, letting it hang. Not forgiveness. Not resolution. But maybe the beginning of something less terrible than the misunderstanding they’d been living in.

Talia finally exhaled. ‘OK.’

Imogen looked up. ‘OK?’

‘OK as in… we’ll talk more. Later. When it’s not a thousand degrees and everyone I work with isn’t five feet away pretending to be zen.’

They turned to walk back.

As they walked, Imogen realised something. Flora hadn’t left her because she wasn’t enough. She’d left her because she was simply a person with a short attention span and no loyalty.

She’d felt like she wasn’t enough to hold on to Flora. And now she was glad she couldn’t. It would have been no kind of life. Sooner or later, she’d have walked into a room and found exactly what Talia had.

Imogen was free. Not of the love. It hadn’t been about that for a long time. It was the curse of inadequacy she was free of.

‘You OK?’ Talia asked.

Imogen looked at her, surprised. ‘Me?’

‘You look sad.’

‘Actually, I’m relieved. What about you?’

Talia shrugged. ‘I think I feel the same.’

‘But you knew what she was. You’ve known it a long time.’

‘I did and I didn’t…’ Talia stopped and looked away. ‘But…’

‘Tell me,’ Imogen said.

Talia looked at her. ‘I guess it’s nice not to hate you anymore.’

Imogen was shocked. ‘You forgive me?’

Talia shrugged. ‘I think so.’

Imogen didn’t reach for her hand. That would have been crazy. They’d only just exorcised the ghost of Flora.

But Imogen thought about it. She thought about it a lot.