I couldn’t get that painting off my mind.
I took it out and looked at it, two, three, four times, thinking about how I would tackle it – if I was going to tackle it, which of course I wasn’t; even though it would be nothing but an intellectual exercise, purely to see if I could. In any case, just supposing that I did attempt a copy, it couldn’t possibly be mistaken for the original. You couldn’t forge a painting from a photocopy. The dimensions, the colours, the texture, everything about it would be wrong. So what was I worrying about?
I taped and sized the sheet of blank paper. It felt like velvet. No point in wasting it. However, it would certainly be wasted if I tried to copy the painting on to it straight off. Watercolour’s not like oils: you can’t keep going over and over a picture to get it right. You only get a single chance. For a medium so light and delicate, it is horribly immutable. One mistake can never be erased.
Russell was in a cold, restless, petulant rage and I didn’t know what I’d done wrong apart from rescuing his painting course for him. Ruby made no reference to the near-disastrous weekend, merely saying next morning at the breakfast table, in a more conciliatory tone than previously, “Stay a bit longer if you like, Eden. The next course isn’t for another fortnight. You can help me in the garden in lieu of rent.”
I accepted, with some misgiving, hoping that Russell’s bad temper would blow over soon. Surely the household couldn’t always be as turbulent as this? I tried to chat normally for the sake of Delilah, silent at the far end of the table, but I thought she was as shaken and bewildered as I was.
Ruby seemed oblivious. “Does anyone fancy coming along to Sizergh Castle with me and Delilah?” she said brightly. “They’ve got a farmers’ market and eco-fair on today. How about it, Eden? Would you like a day out?”
Although I was grateful for her effort to be friendly, I shook my head.
“Not today, thanks. Maybe another time.” I wanted to paint, and Sizergh, though eminently paintable, was too far away to sell round here.
“Russell?”
“Jesus! Spare me,” grunted Russell.
“There’s no need to be like that. I want to see if it’s worth my while booking a stall there in the future.”
“A stall? For God’s sake. Just when have any of your hand-knitted jars of eco-fucking-chutney ever turned a profit?”
“That’s unfair,” Ruby said with dignity. “Do you want to come or not?”
“I have no fucking desire to go fucking shopping at a farmers’ fucking market.”
“Don’t swear, Dad,” said Delilah.
He turned on her. “Oh, so I’m your dad when I swear, am I? So you can tell me off? I’m your dad when you want your lift or your fucking pocket money!”
“Don’t swear, Russell,” said Delilah, cool and steady as a stone.
He glared at her. “Go and find your father if you want someone to row with! He’s the one who didn’t give a stuff about you, after all!”
“It’s not me who wants the row,” said Delilah quietly.
“Stop it, Russell,” said Ruby. “Are you coming with us or not?”
“Do I sound like it?”
“Just as well,” said Ruby. “We don’t want Mr Grumpy spoiling our day.”
He threw the salt-pot at her. It was a hand-made one of Ruby’s, a blue pottery thing, and it smashed on the kitchen floor. Delilah sat immobile. Ruby went red. Russell stomped out and I swept up, vowing silently that whatever I did today I would not stay in the house on my own with him.
However, neither could I go outside to paint: the rain fell steadily, turning the day yellow-grey, as heavy as wet canvas. After Ruby and Delilah had left, Russell began banging around in his studio. I hid in my bedroom, aware of the cardboard tube lurking under the bed like a cobra waiting to pounce.
But that was ridiculous. A picture couldn’t hurt me. I reached under the bunk, unrolled the photocopy yet again and flattened it out.
Well, why not? It was a challenge. Why shouldn’t I be able to do it? I didn’t have to justify myself to anyone. After all, it wasn’t as if I was going to do anything with the result.
Five minutes later I was hurrying along the path across the fields to Borrans Rigg Farm in my rain-soaked puffa jacket, clutching my box and my portfolio wrapped in plastic sheeting. The crown of hills had vanished under blankets of drab mist: the whole world seemed grey and overwhelmingly wet.
When I knocked at the farmhouse door, Selena answered, bored and bad-tempered in her baggy jumper, an indolent Cinderella lounging in the kitchen. Her eyes narrowed at the sight of me.
“Bryony’s out,” she said aloofly. “It’s her you came to see, isn’t it? You being such big mates and that. Along with all your other mates.”
“I came to see you,” I said, dripping in the doorway. “I wanted to apologise for intruding the other day. I honestly didn’t think you’d mind me bringing a few people over.”
She frowned. “You didn’t think I’d mind a whole load of strangers staring and pointing?”
“Well. Sorry. Look, if you like, I could paint that portrait of you that you said you wanted. I’ve brought all my gear.”
Selena eyed my box distrustfully. “Why now, all of a sudden?”
“To make up for annoying you. And actually, I want to get away from Russell.”
“Hah!” said Selena, but her eyes brightened. “What’s he been doing now?”
“He’s in a hell of a bad mood. Ruby called him Mr Grumpy and he threw the salt-pot at her. And they had a huge row yesterday; that’s why I brought the painting group over here. I’m staying out of his way.”
Selena laughed. “Mr Grumpy! I like that.” She opened the door wider to let me in. “Well, I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have shouted at your friends. But I was feeling down and I just wanted some privacy, you know?”
“I know.” I found the Wordsworth letter and laid it down on the table. “I brought this back for you as well. I did try to check it out.”
She shot a glance at it. “So is it worth anything?”
“Not sure. It all depends if it’s genuine, and I’m no expert. I expect the Wordsworth Museum could tell you, but I’m not going to show it to them. You ought to, if you want to do anything with it.”
Selena picked the letter up and put it down again uncertainly. “I don’t know.”
“You said Luke had mentioned it to you once. What did he say?”
She shrugged. “He just said it was this old letter that he’d found and it ought to make us rich.”
“That depends on your definition of rich. A thousand pounds or so, according to Matt, if it’s the real thing.”
Her eyes brightened. “Matt said that?”
“Maybe more. But I wouldn’t get your hopes up. He doesn’t think it’s genuine.”
She pouted. “Luke said the letter meant everyone would want to come and stay here at the cottages; you know, Americans and Japanese and that, and we could charge them what we like.”
“Maybe you could. There’s nothing to stop you getting the letter valued. Matt might be wrong.”
“But Matt knows about old stuff. He said this table was older than the house! He could tell that just by looking. He knows loads about books and furniture and stuff. He’s dead clever, isn’t he?”
“He is,” I said, the penny dropping as to why she liked Matt. In his shielded, sardonic way he was protective of her, even kind – perhaps in honour of Luke’s memory – but he was also safe. If Ruby was correct about Selena’s aversion to sex, then Matt certainly posed no threat.
But exactly why did Ruby think Selena saw sex everywhere? That didn’t tie in with her being averse to sex. It was a puzzle; but one I didn’t feel inclined to grill Ruby about.
I left the letter on the table. “Well, it’s up to you what to do with it,” I said. “You could always keep it as a family heirloom.” An heirloom with no heir, I realised, too late to bite back the suggestion.
However, Selena had lost interest. As she looked
up from the letter to me, she switched on her radiant Botticelli smile in an abrupt angelic transformation.
“I’m glad you came back to paint me,” she said. “Where shall I pose? Should I do my hair? Oh, I would have gone to the hairdressers if I’d known!” She jumped up and tried to smooth her tangled hair in a mirror by the sink.
“It’s fine as it is, Selena.”
“Can I wear jewellery? Should I put some different clothes on? I should wear something smart, shouldn’t I?” She was as excited as a child getting ready for a party.
“No jewellery.” Her face dropped, so I said, “Have you got a top in a strong colour? Not pastel. Red or purple, maybe.”
She ran off and came back in a deep red polyester blouse. I guessed it was one of Carol’s. I sat her on a stool facing the kitchen windows and arranged her hair around her shoulders. Her eyes half-closed, just as the old dog’s had under Isaac’s caressing hand. I was touched, and disconcerted.
Sitting myself opposite her, I sketched quickly, making a few roughs. It came more easily this time, for I knew her features now. For a while she kept quite still for me, as if entranced. At the first sign of restlessness I was ready, and began to chat.
”How often have you sat for Russell, Selena?”
“Sat?”
“As a model. Though you might have stood, or lain down, to let him draw you.”
“Oh… only once. Ages ago. He asked me to do it, but I didn’t like it much. I was there a whole morning, sitting on this really hard chair, and when I tried to talk to him he just grunted. Ruby kept coming in all the time, with cups of tea and that, like she was checking up on him. He got really annoyed.” She laughed. “Mr Grumpy!”
I thought of all those portraits of Selena in the studio, clothed and otherwise.
“Did he ask you to sit for him nude?”
She sat bolt upright and glared at me indignantly. “No way! I wouldn’t do that! What do you think I am, a slag?”
“Of course not. Keep still,” I said mildly. “So many girls are into sexting now that I didn’t think nudity was always such a big deal.”
“It is for me,” said Selena. “Would you do that?”
“No. I never felt the urge, and my boyfriend wouldn’t have liked it,” I said, although I realised that actually Nick would probably have quite enjoyed it. “But there’s nothing sleazy about life modelling for artists. I considered doing it at one time, when I needed the money.”
“But you didn’t do it!”
“No. I bottled out.”
“Well then,” she said. “I wouldn’t do it either. I don’t take my clothes off for anybody. No way. Not Russell or any of those creeps. I hate the way he looks at me. That’s why I wouldn’t go back and let him paint me any more after that one time.”
“Why, how does he look at you?”
“Like this.” She frowned and lowered her eyelids in a disdainful leer. “Like I’m dirt. As if he thinks I’m shit, but he still wants to look at me. Creep.”
That word again. Russell was creepy; like Griff, like Isaac.
“Did he do anything more than look?” I asked her. “Did he say anything improper to you?”
“Like I say, he just grunted. Dead rude. Just grunting and staring.”
“But did he, you know, try anything on?”
“I wouldn’t let him touch me with a bargepole,” said Selena with contempt and satisfaction. So the offence was solely in her head: as it had been with Isaac.
“Good for you,” I said. “Okay, I know now how I’m going to paint you. Just stay there.” I began to set up my board with a clean sheet of heavy paper for the portrait proper.
But my mind was busy remembering the disturbing naked portrait of Selena hidden in Russell’s studio. He had done more than just look, hadn’t he? It wasn’t just in Selena’s head. It was in Russell’s too.
I was troubled by the memory of that weird, near-obscene painting. Selena’s wide-eyed, passive face: the tight black strokes that held her down. Was that Russell’s way of possessing her? He had no chance with the real Selena, but he could tie her up in his imagination, bind her with his brush… I shivered.
What would Luke have said, if he had ever seen it? And Isaac? Isaac would have been appalled. He’d treated Selena with impeccable propriety. I was sure of that.
Yet now another image troubled me. I saw Selena cringe away from Isaac, in the farmyard and in Ruby’s house. It had seemed instinctive, not an act. Why such revulsion, why the outburst? Get away from me!
Now she sat quite silent, the spell thrown over her once again at the sight of the paintbrushes, while I carefully blocked in eyes, cheekbones and chin. The rapt, dreamy mouth: the dark lashes, half-closed. I squeezed the paints onto the palette and began to mix. I decided to work fast, without talking, before she moved.
Useless. The more silent I was, the more restless she became.
“When can I look?”
“Not yet,” I said.
“How soon?”
“In a bit. Tell me about Ruby. Why did you say she was poison?”
Selena shifted, making me sigh in exasperation. “It was Luke who said it. She kept on giving Luke these pills he didn’t want. He said they were crap. Useless.”
“Were they homeopathic?”
“What? I don’t know. She told him they were good for stress. But they didn’t do him any good.”
“That doesn’t mean they were poisonous,” I said.
The shapely mouth turned down. “Well, I know Luke didn’t like Ruby one little bit. She was always peddling and meddling, he said. Calling round to see how Isaac was every day after Carol died. Sucking up to Isaac, like she owned him.”
“Being friendly,” I suggested.
“Yeah, right. Like a spider, Luke said.” She made a wiggling motion with her hand. Talking about Ruby was putting her in a bad mood, and making her move more and more. I changed tack to a less emotional subject.
“That old letter. Who found it?”
“Luke did. He found it under the floorboards, stuck through a crack, but Isaac took it off him. He was really mean to Luke sometimes.”
“No, he wasn’t,” I said, automatically.
“How would you know?” she flashed back. “You weren’t there. He called Luke a liar. There was no need for that! Poor Luke got dead upset. Why shouldn’t it be under the floorboards? Old house like this, stuff ends up all over the place.”
“When was it Luke found the letter?”
“Years ago. He was only about twenty.”
“So you weren’t there either,” I said.
“No, but he told me!”
“Tell me how you met him,” I suggested.
Her eyes took on a faraway look. “It was at the church on the day of his Mum’s funeral. I felt really sorry for him. Poor Luke, he looked so lost and lonely, like a little boy all dressed up and nowhere to go. He had nobody.”
“He had his dad,” I objected. “He had Bryony.”
He eyes snapped back at me. “No, he didn’t. He’d fallen out with them.”
“What about?”
That careless shrug again.
“But why were you at the church anyway?”
She smiled. “Oh, that was an accident. I was meant to be at a funeral the day before.”
“Whose funeral was that?”
“Christ, I can’t remember! It was ages ago.”
“You must have been to a lot of funerals to forget them so easily,” I said. “When you knew you’d got it wrong, why didn’t you just go home again?”
“I stayed for a bit just hanging round the churchyard,” she said defensively. “For something to do.”
“Hanging around Hawkshead churchyard.”
“Well, why not? And I noticed this good-looking guy in a black suit, all serious and sad… so I went up and said hallo.” She smiled mournfully.
“Where were you living at the time?”
“Different places. Blackpool, Liverpool, Manc
hester. I’ve lived all over.”
“So what were you doing in the Lake District?”
“You never heard of a holiday?”
“So what was your job? Did you have one?”
“Why do you want to know?”
“Well, all right. Where were you born, Selena? Where did you go to school?”
Her eyes flashed. “Why are you asking me all this? It’s none of your business!”
“I’m only making conversation.”
“Is that what you call it? I call it being nosy! Nosy and rude!”
She was right, of course. So I placated her by offering to show her the painting, which was almost done. It was decent enough, though it turned her striking looks to ordinary prettiness.
“It’s nice,” said Selena, but she was still stiff with resentment.
On an impulse I pulled the picture back across the table; and at the bottom of the page, recalling Ed and his quotations, I wrote in my best italic the only bit of Wordsworth I knew apart from the Lonely Cloud:
She was a phantom of delight
When first she gleamed upon my sight.
A bit twee, but I thought it might please Selena. She looked at it blankly.
“What do you think of it so far?” I asked.
“It’s very good,” said Selena, without the interest I expected. She hunched her shoulders. There was something odd about the way her eyes moved across the page.
“Do you like the words?”
At that she looked almost scared. “They’re very good,” she said in a monotone, and pushed the portrait back to me.
Then I knew. Her eyes had scanned the picture as you’d expect; but not the words. I remembered how, in Ruby’s house, she’d hastily replaced a book as soon as I asked her what she thought of it. And she’d refused to read the Wordsworth letter; but not because the writing was too crabbed. Selena couldn’t read.
I felt sorry for her and ashamed of myself. Asking her about her school. Her job. No wonder she didn’t want to answer. What sort of job would she have had, if I was right, and she was illiterate?
“I just need to finish it off,” I said. “Are you okay for ten more minutes?” I wanted to polish it up now, make it better, as recompense for shaming her: for all the humiliations she must have suffered through her youth.
“I suppose so.” She was subdued. So I praised the colour of her eyes until my compliments returned some lustre to them, and meanwhile used the rigger to tweak her features. I’d fudged the background, but her skin-tones were good, and I was pleased with the river-shine of her dark hair.
Not startlingly original, but competent. It would have earned me an A* in my schoolgirl days, and a C minus at Uni. But it looked like Selena, that was the main thing.
“There you go,” I said. “That’s you finished. I can cut the words off if you think they spoil it.” I read them out, and looked at her enquiringly.
“No, that’s okay,” she said. She reached out a finger to touch the paper delicately. “That’s me?”
“Careful! It’s not dry yet.”
“I like it. Can you do another? Can I put something else on? There’s a really nice green blouse upstairs.”
“Later,” I said. “You shouldn’t sit for too long at a time. Maybe in a bit: you could wear the other blouse and your jewellery too then if you want. But take a rest now. Meanwhile I’ll just work on something else, if you don’t mind.”
“I don’t mind.” She ran her finger round the edge of the damp painting, smiling now, not quite believing, as if I’d done a magic trick. I was glad to have pleased her.
Now it was my turn. I got out the photocopy that moustache man had given me and clipped it flat to my portfolio. I washed my palette clean and selected a set of paints, colour-matching on a spare page of my sketchbook. No pencil. This would be brush or nothing. I needed to practise those bold strokes, to recreate that assured sweep of brown and red.
“What’s that?” Selena craned round me. “It’s freaky. What’s it meant to be?”
“It’s an abstract. It can be whatever you like.” That didn’t make it easier. If anything, it made it harder, because I had to stop and think: why is that line so hesitant, just there? Where is it leading? Why does that red deepen, and blur itself into a whirlwind frenzy at that point? I had to interpret everything. There was no abstract equivalent of Usual Tree Stuff. No tricks; or I hadn’t learnt them yet.
Selena put her head on one side, studying it. “It just looks like a load of lines and boxes. You got done for copying paintings, didn’t you? You did time. Ruby said. She’s really got a downer on you.”
I winced. “Ruby said right. I spent ten months in jail.”
“I don’t care,” said Selena kindly. “But what are you doing it again for?”
“I’m not. Copying’s only illegal if you try to sell the painting as someone else’s. I’m just doing this for fun. It’s for a friend.”
“Your other pictures are really pretty,” said Selena, meaning this wasn’t.
“Thank you.”
She watched me for a while. Since all I was doing was producing a series of similar roughs, she soon lost interest and disappeared into the front room. I heard the TV go on.
I went across and closed the door. Then I took a deep breath, propped up the drawing-board with its single, primed, taped sheet of paper and looked at it for several minutes, the painting growing in my mind, piece by piece, until it made a whole. Just as I had with MacLeish, I felt my way inside it and lost myself there.
Then I painted the first line.
Keep the paint wet, keep the flow, the heavy red, blot, wait, refocus. Now, the new determined line, straight in, upwards, disappearing, stop. Wait, focus.
It was full on. Although it can’t have taken more than half an hour – the TV clapping and laughing somewhere in the distance – it was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I felt pulled out of myself. I couldn’t afford to lose that focus: I had to be both careful and confident at the same time. No room for wrong moves. No way to turn back. A mistake would have been visible for ever.
And then it was finished. It was over. I felt shivery and exhausted, as if I’d run a race. Selena came in wearing a jade-green blouse. She put the kettle on, looked at the picture and pulled a face.
“Can’t see the point,” she said. “Anyway, it’s too big.” It was three times the size of the photocopy. I’d scaled it up to fit the paper. And it was more than three times as striking: this was the right size for it, I knew, and the orange slash just jumped out at you. The colours weren’t quite the same, but the feel of it was. It worked. I could still do it.
“Go and get your jewellery,” I said. I might as well paint her again while the thing dried.
“It’s Carol’s jewellery really.”
“Doesn’t matter.” As I began to wash the palette for a second time, there was the sound of a car drawing up outside and then a sharp rap at the door. Selena went to answer it. The sound of Hunter’s voice brought me up short.
“May I come in?” It was his uniform voice, serious and steady.
“Hallo,” said Selena. “Have you come about the receipt? I found it underneath the mint cake, you know, like I told you on the phone. It’s here.” She snatched a slip of paper from the top of the microwave and waved it at him triumphantly. “So you see,” she said.
“I see,” said Hunter, studying it. “11.49. Well, that certainly confirms what you told us, thank you. I’ll take this with me. However, it’s not actually what I came about.” He took off his cap, laid it on the table, and nodded at me gravely. Meanwhile, I was drying my hands and frantically wondering how to move the wet abstract out of sight without attracting his attention to it.
“Eden’s come to paint me,” said Selena proudly. “What do you think?”
She held up the portrait. Hunter looked startled.
“It’s very good,” he said, with a note of surprise that pleased me. Or would have, if his eyes hadn’t tur
ned to the board and paints still resting on the table.
“What else have you been painting?” He walked round to see. He studied the photocopy. His face didn’t move. He looked at the roughs, and at my finished abstract. He touched the corner of the old, slightly yellowed paper. Then he looked at me.
I couldn’t stand it.
“I’m just trying it out,” I said. “It’s something different to my normal stuff. It’s a one-off. Not what you might be thinking, Hunter.”
“She’s not faking it or anything,” chipped in Selena. “You don’t need to worry. She’s just copying it for a friend.”
“I see.” He walked around the table with that slow policeman tread. He deliberately turned the pages of my sketchbook. At that moment, I hated him.
He said nothing at all for a few minutes. Then he turned to Selena.
“Shall we talk in the other room? I’d like to discuss a possible case of identity theft with you.” Quiet and severe. Not the Hunter I knew. This was a stranger.
Selena shrugged and led him to the front room. He left the door open. I washed my brushes, my hands oddly shaky, and through the water heard snatches and phrases. Something about the Identity Cards Act. Reason to believe. Illegally altered. Administer a caution. Invalidate your marriage. All on his side: I couldn’t hear her answers.
He came back into the kitchen alone.
“What friend?” he said harshly.
“A friend who likes the picture.”
“What’s your friend’s name?”
I cleared my throat. “That’s none of your business, Hunter. It’s a favour for somebody who helped me out once. Anyway, you can see it’s not even a true copy. It’d be useless as a fake.”
“Helped you out how?”
I was silent.
“Let me fetch you a bucket of sand, and you can stick your head in it,” said Hunter. “A favour? A one-off for some mythical friend? Don’t make me laugh. I thought you were trying to go straight? That’s what you told me.”
“I am. This doesn’t mean anything. I am not a fraud, Hunter.”
“No, you’re an idiot,” said Hunter. “You’re in deep water, and you won’t admit it.” He looked from me to Selena, who had followed him back into the kitchen with a horrified face.
“I wash my hands. Goodbye to the pair of you,” he said scathingly, and left.
As soon as we heard his car door slam, Selena burst into noisy tears. “I didn’t do anything wrong!” she cried. “And he says it’s not real! He says I need to go to the police station and get cautioned! He says I could be prosecuted! Just because I lost my birth certificate and I had to get a new one.”
“With a different name on?”
“There was a reason. I’m not a criminal! And now he says I might not really be married! Just because of that! He says I should talk to a lawyer! I don’t want to talk to a lawyer!” She choked and sobbed and began to pluck at her sleeves and hair.
“Calm down,” I said. “Come on, sit down, Selena. It’s not that bad. I’m sure it can be sorted out.” I was too shattered to feel much sympathy, but I did my best. “A caution doesn’t mean much. You’re getting off lightly. I don’t suppose they’ll prosecute you unless you’ve claimed benefits in a false name or something. Have you?”
She shook her head vigorously. “No! No! Nothing like that.”
“Well then. Don’t worry about it.” I tore off a sheet of kitchen roll and squatted by her chair to offer it to her. She was really distressed. I made an effort to gentle my voice. “Why did you change your name, Selena?”
She snatched the paper towel and roughly rubbed one eye, then the other. “I never liked my old name. I never wanted that name.” Her voice shook.
“What about your family? What do they call you?”
“No,” she said. “I have no family.”
“None at all? What about that Grandad who told you the stories about selkies?”
“No!” She was practically shouting. “He’s gone. I told you! There’s nobody!” Her shoulders began to heave again.
“All right!” I was alarmed. “Calm down now, Selena. It’s all right. I’m going to paint you again, remember? I can’t paint you if you’re in a state. Why don’t you go and get your necklace or whatever on?”
“No! I don’t want to now! He said jewellery made me look like a whore!”
“Who did?”
But she rocked backwards and forwards in the chair, tearing at the kitchen towel. “He said it was my fault. He said I stole his soul. He said I haunt men. I steal their souls.”
“Who are you talking about? Was it Luke? Did Luke say that?”
“It was him. The one who made me–” She stopped again.
“The one who made you what? Was it Russell? No, look, it’s all right,” I said, because Selena had begun to pull at handfuls of her hair and her mouth was wrenching out of shape. “Don’t cry, Selena! It’s in the past,” I said soothingly. “Whoever said all that, they’re not here right now, are they?”
She shook her head, her hair in her mouth.
“So forget it,” I said. “They don’t matter. You don’t need jewellery. You’re beautiful without it. Come on, I want to draw you just so, in that chair – your hands lying here–”
I laid my hands on hers, gently rearranging arms, head, shoulders, reassuring her until she was quiet again, half-hypnotised and passive, although her cheeks were still wet.
This time I painted her straight to paper, no preliminary sketches. Her forlorn face under my brush took on a greenish tinge, with cloudy shadows, the eyes drifting unfocussed and the hair swirling as if she were underwater. A siren: no, too sad for that. A lost mermaid. A drowned girl. Sinking, beyond rescue.
“It’s not working,” I said at the end. It was working all right: it was good, too good, too drowned and desperate to show her. I moved it under the table so that she would not see. “No, it’s a mistake,” I said. “The first one was better. You keep the first one.”
I pushed the sixth-form effort back towards her. She gazed at it as if into a mirror, turning her disconsolate face from side to side. “It doesn’t look the same now it’s dry.”
“The colours change. But it’s still you.”
She looked dissatisfied. It wasn’t good enough any more. That irritated me.
“That’s Selena,” I said. “I can only paint Selena. If I knew who you really were, then I could paint the real you.”
“I’m Selena now,” she said, frowning. “Who told that cop I wasn’t, that’s what I want to know? Who gave them my birth certificate?” Then she gasped in sudden realisation. “It must have been Isaac! The old bastard. He dobbed me in!”
I couldn’t let that pass. “It wasn’t Isaac. It was me.”
“You?”
“I saw the certificate by accident when I was here. I knew straight away it was a fake. It was obvious it had been tampered with. Who did it, Selena? Did you do it yourself?” It occurred to me, however, that that was most unlikely if she couldn’t read.
She stood up. “You ruined my life!” she said, her voice shaking again.
“Oh, come on,” I said roughly. “You brought it on yourself. I expect you had a conviction and wanted a new start. Was that it? Anyway, it’s not so bad as all that. You heard Sergeant Brigg. Just get yourself a lawyer and sort it out.” I was fed up by now. If she was in a pickle, it was of her own making. I had enough problems – what Hunter was thinking about me, for one: that concerned me much more than what he thought of her.
“You don’t know what you’ve done! What if I’m not really married at all? He’ll be furious!”
I shrugged. “I don’t know what your legal situation is. But Sergeant Brigg just wants it sorted. It’s not personal. He isn’t angry with you.” Not like he was with me.
“I should never have asked you to come in!” she wailed. “I thought you were my friend.”
“I am.”
“No, you’re not. Get out!” She pic
ked up the palette and made as if to throw it at me.
“That’s mine,” I said, snatching it off her. I was past caring. I crammed my wet brushes into my box and laid my abstract painting, now dry, in my portfolio with furious care. It was good. Why couldn’t Hunter see how good it was? Why couldn’t he trust me?
The drowned girl was still damp. She was good, too. I had a talent. Hunter knew nothing. I stamped out of the door and carried her back to Raven How through the rain, shrouded under the plastic sheet, staring out with unseeing eyes. I marched raging through the long wet grass until, half way, I noticed rain was leaking through the plastic, weeping wet trails down her cheeks.
Nothing I could do to save her. An illogical notion flickered in my head: that the lost girl I had painted, sad and drowned and drifting fathoms deep, was not Selena.
It was me.
Chapter Twenty-four