“Of course she didn’t,” said Hunter. “It was a suicide. The week before Christmas, don’t you remember? It made the local paper.”
He spooned two sugars into a plastic mug of instant coffee, and stirred with his good hand. I noticed that the new wood of the counter was already stained with a multitude of coffee rings, and worse. A black splodge on the floor was evidence of a major ink cartridge incident.
Ambleside’s brand-new police station wasn’t wearing very well. Inside the thin cladding of Lakeland slate, it was pure breezeblock, overwhelmingly grey. Selena had just gone down a grey corridor with a WPC to find a grey bathroom, so I had a few minutes on my own with Hunter. I watched his hands while he keyed a number on the phone.
“I had other things on my mind before Christmas,” I said.
“Oh, that’s right. Just got out of the nick, hadn’t you?” he said casually. “Well, her husband was Luke Staithwaite. Son of Isaac. Staithwaites have farmed over Little Langdale way for generations. Borrans Rigg Farm. There’s nobody answering.” He put the phone down.
“The father should be there, shouldn’t he?”
“Isaac? He’ll be out working. Luke was the only child, the last of the line.” Hunter raised an eyebrow at me. “She probably expected you to know all about his death. It made the headlines. Family tragedy: first the mother, now the son. You’d have thought they died a week apart instead of eighteen months.”
“I wasn’t reading the papers just then.” I’d been more concerned about my own tragedy at the time, struggling through the thickets of an excruciating family Christmas. “So was it definitely suicide?”
Hunter pulled a wry face. “Well, not officially. The coroner returned an open verdict, but that was just to spare the family’s feelings, since there were no insurance issues involved. There was even a suicide note, for Christ’s sake, but the coroner decided it was inconclusive. Said it could have been an accident while Luke was cleaning his shotgun.”
“So why don’t you agree?”
He gave a caustic grunt. “Farmers don’t shoot themselves in the head by accident. And they don’t, as a general rule, clean their shotguns in the bedroom.”
“Okay. Why would he commit suicide?”
“He was a farmer,” said Hunter, as if that explained everything. “They do it all the time. It’s a hard life and getting harder every year. And they have the means.”
I glanced at the door. There was still no sign of Selena returning. “Then why does she think she killed him?”
“Guilt,” said Hunter. He looked like he hadn’t slept well. There were indigo shadows under his eyes and deep creases round his tightly drawn mouth. I wondered if his hand was hurting, or if it was the nightmares keeping him awake; but I knew better than to ask.
“Guilt about what?”
“Who knows? Maybe she was having an affair.”
“And that’s why she tried to drown herself?”
“Drown herself? In Windermere, in full view of half a dozen people? With a pocket full of pebbles? Give us a break,” said Hunter. “Attention-seeking.”
“Or a cry for help.”
“Whatever,” he said impatiently. Then, as Selena and Fiona came back in, he switched his face from sceptical to sympathetic. A small shift of the muscles and he was all professional concern.
Fiona raised her eyebrows at him. “Can I get back to my paperwork now, Sergeant Brigg?”
“Please do, Constable Curry,” he answered gravely. The formality was a game between them, I had decided; a dance of decorum, for I thought that Fiona, big, busy and competent, secretly fancied Hunter.
Well, it was nice that somebody did. He was a bit frosty for my taste. Fiona saw Hunter as noble, but I knew better. He was just hacked off with the hand life had dealt him, or rather had taken away from him. Although perhaps his injury wasn’t to blame for his wintriness; it was possible he’d always been that way.
Hunter pushed the cup of coffee over to Selena. She can’t have noticed his right hand when we first arrived, but she did now.
With a small gasp she stared down at the pink gap where the fore and middle fingers should have been. The ring finger was a stump beyond the first knuckle; the little finger was truncated by one joint. Only the thumb was intact. The long scars that extended up his sleeve were still a youthful red. Selena took another quick, shocked breath, and then got a fit of the giggles.
“Sorry,” she said, her own unblemished hand over her mouth, “I didn’t mean to laugh. It’s just… a surprise, for a policeman.”
“I’m uncommon,” said Hunter calmly. He was getting better at not reacting to people’s reactions. When I’d first met him, his eyes would narrow at any hint of condolence. They didn’t now, even though Selena was saying all the wrong things:
“Oh, wow! What happened? Did it get trapped in something? Couldn’t they sew them back on? Or were you born …” She didn’t seem able to take her eyes off it.
“It was an accident. Reattachment failed,” he said brusquely. “Mrs Staithwaite, your father-in-law isn’t answering his phone. I think the best thing is for us to give you a lift back to your farm. Borran’s Rigg.”
She showed no alarm at being identified, but looked almost complacent. “All right,” she said meekly. “As long as Eden can come too.”
Hunter glanced at me quizzically.
“I don’t mind,” I said. “But aren’t you on the desk?”
“Neil and Fiona will hold the fort.”
“Won’t they mind?”
“No.” He meant Yes, but I don’t care. They wouldn’t stop him. Hunter was the hero, the talisman, the winner of medals. With the reorganisation of the local force, the new police station at Ambleside gave them the perfect place to hive him off to after his convalescence. They’d found him a desk job, made allowances, given him plenty of leeway and a long leash. I think they were a little scared of him.
Even Inspector Irlam, for all his Manchester experience of guns and gangs, tiptoed around Hunter. I’d observed them together at a sat-nav cock-up on Compston Road, when a lorry managed to defy the one-way system and caused a spectacular gridlock which half the town turned out to admire. I’d seen how Larry Irlam, loud and forceful with the crowds, had switched to sudden deference on turning to his sergeant.
“I suppose you might be useful,” said Hunter to me now. “If Isaac Staithwaite’s there you can explain to him exactly what happened. He may need to repeat it to a doctor.”
“What doctor? I don’t need a doctor,” said Selena. “There’s nothing wrong with me.”
She sat in the back of the police car with her hands clenched tightly round each other. I felt the same way about police cars.
But then she smiled at me, and before Hunter got in, leaned over to whisper,
“So what happened to his hand?”
“He met a man with a machete,” I said, so that she wouldn’t ask him. As we set off I gazed studiously out of the window, because I didn’t want her interrogating me either. I still remembered the look Hunter had given me when I’d asked him the same question, the first time we met.
It was just after New Year, when I was only two weeks out of jail, and still as straggly and stunned as a new-hatched chicken. I slunk into the police station and found myself confronted by a broad young desk sergeant with a face of stern politeness. He had grey eyes and a generous mouth that should have looked friendly, and didn’t: the premature lines around them gave him an angry air.
I thought he was annoyed with me. Although I noticed the hand resting on the counter, it didn’t seem important. I was too wrapped up in my own concerns.
“I’m reporting in,” I’d said. “I’m a – I’m out on licence. I need to notify you of a change of address.”
“It’s your probation officer you need to tell.”
“I can’t get hold of her. I need to make sure somebody knows I’ve moved to Ambleside. I’ve been offered a job.” The first of my house-sitting assignments: I’d dived at it headlong, desp
erate to get away from home. But I was also terrified of infringing the terms of my licence and being sent back to prison.
Maybe Hunter sensed my terror, for he questioned me gravely, gave me an alternative phone number to try and took down my details in a reassuringly ceremonious way. When I told him I’d been sent down for forgery he showed no reaction. He was efficient and thorough and gave the impression that his mind was somewhere else entirely. He held his pen levered between thumb and little finger, which gave his writing a curious slant. It looked awkward.
“Doesn’t it change your signature?” I said, unthinking.
He grimaced. “Oh, my bank loves me. I need to learn how to forge my own handwriting. Maybe you could help me there.”
That rocked me back. He’d been so formally polite up to that point. But then I saw the tightness in his face; he was avoiding sympathy. So I said,
“At least you can still play the violin.”
He relaxed a fraction. “True. The piano’s a bit of a bugger, though.” At which I felt brave, and nosy, enough to ask how it had happened.
“Machete,” he said. Something warned me not to ooh and aah. I wondered how a policeman could cope with half a hand.
“What, someone a bit careless?” I said.
“A bit.” The hand resting on the counter hadn’t moved. “A drug addict in a hostage situation. In Barrow, about a year ago.”
I didn’t inquire any further. A year previously, I’d been about to go on trial, after interminable months on bail and in limbo, still unable to get my head round what was happening: trapped by my parents’ pain, my sister’s contempt, and above all the incredulity of Nick, my only love, my partner. The outside world had passed me by.
But after that first meeting I looked up Hunter Brigg on the internet in the library. Yep, big story, which I couldn’t have missed if my head had been anywhere near screwed on.
The Machete Murder. A junkie stoned on meth had holed up in a laundrette in Barrow with his girlfriend and her sister, shouting incoherent threats. Hunter was one of the two bewildered policemen who were first on the scene – Barrow not normally being a hotbed of hostage-taking – and in the ensuing bedlam, he broke in through the back door and relieved the junkie of his machete, too late to stop the sister getting her throat cut, but in time to save the girlfriend from a similar fate.
At a cost. The injuries to Hunter’s right hand resulted in the loss of three and a bit fingers, and later in the acquisition of a clutch of bravery awards and newspaper headlines. In every photograph, he looked grim. He gave no quotes. Well, he actually gave plenty, but since they were along the lines of I wasn’t brave at all, I was a stupid bungler and the whole thing was a mess, the reporters had prudently chosen to ignore them.
Hunter had told me those additional details two weeks later, after he’d found my stolen scooter for me in the backyard of a sixteen year old fence in Bowness. I bought him a ginger beer and a sort of fellowship was born.
I would never have had a drink with a police officer before I got nicked. I didn’t know any policemen then: they were just the faceless, overbearing instruments of the state. But once I got arrested I met plenty, and discovered that while some were pompous Plods the majority were down-to-earth and occasionally even sympathetic.
Hunter wasn’t particularly sympathetic. But he had the hand: I had the record, and we both, I think, saw ourselves as injured outcasts. Mavericks. Misunderstood. Well, I did, anyway.
A ginger beer in the Golden Rule didn’t quite make a friendship, though. It didn’t make me feel any more comfortable in the police car beside Selena.
Hunter drove in silence past Skelwith Bridge down roads that were not yet car-clogged as they soon would be, once the daffodils got into their full riot gear. I stared out of the window at their tight, prim buds lined up against the ragged walls. It had been a daffodil that made me decide to be an artist twenty years ago. I hated the bloody things now.
Selena was watching Hunter drive. After a while she leaned into me again and whispered, “Isn’t he clever?”
“Incredibly,” I said aloud. “You should see him juggle truncheons.”
Hunter ignored us both. “I’m turning left soon, I believe?”
“In a minute,” she said. The lane was narrowing, the higgledy stone walls bulging out into the road. The traffic braked and crawled past an overgrown entrance penned in with cherry trees. I hadn’t travelled down this road since returning to the Lakes three months ago, but now it prodded at my memory.
“I’ve been here before!” I said with sudden realisation.
Hunter snorted. “You don’t say.”
“No, I mean I’ve stayed here,” I insisted. “At that place we just passed.” I twisted my head round to see the driveway disappearing. “Years ago. I went on an art course there, in a sort of bunkhouse.”
“That’s Russell’s place,” said Selena. “Raven How. He’s an artist too.”
“That’s it! I remember Russell!” I said excitedly. “Is he still there?”
“Oh, yes. They still do painting courses.”
“Nine years ago,” I mused. It had the golden haze of legend now. I wished I could go back, rewind, and start again at seventeen. So many things I’d do differently. I wasn’t quite sure which, though.
Hunter took the next entrance a few hundred metres further on, and drove along a jolting, uphill track. Half way, I glimpsed the untidy grey bulk of Raven How again before it dived behind a hillock. At the end of the track, we arrived at Borrans Rigg Farm: a tall, austere farmhouse of weathered brick, unusual in this stony landscape. Beyond its surrounding fields rose the wolfish peaks of the Langdales.
I jumped out of the car into a large concrete farmyard and stared round and up at those grey authorities: Cold Pike, Pike of Blisco, and back beyond them Great Gable and Scafell. An iron crown. Their slopes were cloaked in fox and sable. I’d painted more scenic views in the last few months than I could count, but this one took my breath away.
A pair of sharp-nosed dogs stood to attention in their sentry kennels and barked at us. It felt colder and cleaner here than in the town. I sucked in smells of cows and earth, and heard farmyard clatter breaking out from the shed to my right. There were buckety noises and a bull’s trammelled bellow.
In answer, calves bawled from the bigger barn at the back of the yard. Between the two was a pair of squat semi-detached cottages, converted out-buildings with tubs of determined primulas beside their bright red doors.
The curtains in one cottage moved. A girl came out, stamping her feet into wellies. She was as square and solid as the cottage, with a flat face and fair curls strenuously pulled back and tied down.
“Selena?” She stared at Hunter, registering the uniform and then the hand. “What’s happened? Is everything all right?”
“A slight mishap,” said Hunter.
“Nothing’s happened,” said Selena. “There’s nothing wrong, Bryony. You can go off and do your work.”
But Bryony marched over to the bellowing outbuilding and disappeared into its darkness. A moment later she came out followed by a man. Tall and lean, he had to duck beneath the lintel.
“Here’s Isaac,” she said.
He wasn’t decrepit. He wasn’t even old, not really. Maybe sixty, with cropped hair as grey as granite, a face as still and weathered as the rocks in the fields. I thought at once it was a face that had noticed much and been surprised by nothing. A face like that of the grandfather I had never seen except on one creased photo, standing amongst grazing horses.
Isaac looked silently at Selena with stoical tolerance, and then directed an enquiring gaze at Hunter.
“Let’s go inside, shall we?” Hunter said. We all trooped through the side door of the farmhouse, which led straight into the big, high-ceilinged kitchen with faded green walls, limp tea towels draped like sad flags round a blackened range and a row of boots – seven of them – standing knock-kneed by the door. As well as the range, there was a modern cook
er, and the chairs which Isaac motioned us to sit down on were clunky yellow pine; but the long dark table, scarred and battered, might well have been eighteenth century oak. A tide of paper-work washed across it, held back by the teapot.
On the ancient rag rug lay an old border collie which raised its grizzled nose to Isaac. He felt absently for its ears as he sat down in the easy chair next to the range. He looked like the farmer in my first reading book, his strong hand resting on the sheepdog’s head.
“Well, go on,” he said, his voice cave-deep.
“Mrs Staithwaite?” Hunter asked Selena. “Are you happy for Eden to explain what happened?” He meant happy for Bryony to hear it; his eyes travelled to her standing stocky and puzzled in the doorway.
But Selena just shrugged. “Sure.” She stood by the stove and fiddled with the zip on my puffa jacket. Her long trench coat, still damp, was in a carrier bag along with her other clothes. I’d put them in the tumble drier, but they stank.
I described, as briefly and factually as I could, Selena’s dip in Windermere, aware throughout of the farmer’s grey eyes fixed on me unwaveringly. As I finished they creased into a slow smile.
“That was courageous of you,” he said.
“Not really.” I was flustered; what had I needed courage for? I’d gone scarcely thigh-deep in still water. But his tone almost made me believe that I’d actually done something right for a change. It had been so long since anyone approved of me.
“All right now, are you, lass?” he asked Selena.
“I’m fine.”
“Silly thing to do, wasn’t it?” He spoke as if to a child, and she answered like one, head down, hair twirling round her finger.
“Not really. Nothing bad happened.”
“But it could have. You should take care of yourself. You could have caught a chill.” If Selena had thought Isaac would be cross, then she was wrong. He was gruffly solicitous. It wasn’t appreciated. She shrugged and hunched her shoulders as if to ward him off.
Isaac sighed. “Bryony,” he said, “why don’t you take Selena up to her room and sort those clothes out? Then you can give Miss…”
“Shirer. Eden Shirer. Call me Eden.”
“Miss Shirer her clothes back.”
“I don’t need Bryony!” Selena seemed discomposed, a princess who had wandered out of her castle to find herself in the woodcutter’s cottage.
“You’ve got me anyway. And Ruby’s upstairs, mending curtains. Come and say hallo to Ruby,” said Bryony, not untenderly. As they passed through the inner door I glimpsed dark polished floors and a black dresser with a funereal peace lily drooping over it, and heard the slow, momentous ticking of an ancient clock.
Isaac fondled the old dog’s ears. He looked at Hunter and said steadily, “Well, she’s not been right since Luke died.”
“Of course. Depression?” Hunter was good at the voice of concern. I couldn’t tell how much he really cared.
“She’s been under the doctor. She didn’t want to go, but he gave her some tablets first off when she couldn’t sleep. I thought she was all right now, or better, anyway. She took it hard.” He looked into a distance somewhere beyond the old dog’s head.
I cleared my throat. “She said a couple of odd things.”
Isaac’s gaze switched to me. It gave me a weird feeling: like being watched by a mountain. Not many people looked at me so thoroughly.
“Aye?”
“Well, when Selena came out of the lake, she said she stole her husband.” I drew a breath. “And later on, in the middle of the night, she said – well, she said she killed her husband. I know that’s nonsense.” Something in Isaac’s face took my voice away.
“She seems to be suffering from some confusion,” Hunter said prosaically.
Isaac’s brows drew together. “Stole Luke? I don’t know what she means there. Not unless…”
“Yes?” prompted Hunter.
Isaac shook his head more definitely. “Luke’s death wasn’t Selena’s fault. She did him good. She helped him get over it when Carol died.”
“Your wife?”
He nodded, turning his face back down to his dog, kneading its ears. “Luke met Selena soon after; at the funeral, in fact.” His face twitched slightly. “Selena was supposed to be at the funeral the day before. Got the date mixed up. Strange way to meet, but they got on all right. Gave Luke something to hang onto. In each others’ pockets after a bit.”
“Then what went wrong for Luke?” Hunter’s voice was hushed respectfully.
Isaac sighed and leaned back in his chair. The dog, abandoned, rested its chin on his lap in appeal.
“Luke had problems,” he said. His voice was deep and quiet, lifting the words up from a well of silence. “He had problems years back, long before Carol died. He was always given to ups and downs. Easily influenced. He’d get these grand ideas – these money-making plans – and then take it badly when they didn’t work out. Because they never did work out. It seemed like every set-back went round and round in his head and he couldn’t shake it off. It all started with the foot and mouth.” He looked at me directly. “Before your time.”
“I remember.” I’d only been a child, but you couldn’t live round here and not remember the coming of the foot and mouth disease.
“It was terrible,” said Hunter gravely.
“It was a plague and a siege rolled into one. The barriers. The warnings. The fires and the stench. Those massive burial pits at Great Orton: like the middle ages. Everybody suffered, every farm. Some took years to get over it – not just money-wise, but up here.” Isaac tapped his head. “Some never did.”
“I know,” said Hunter.
“Luke never did. Death and disaster were always there, just waiting round the corner. Then last year he thought our stock had it again.”
“What?” Hunter’s head jerked back.
“One of the cows went lame, had mouth ulcers. I was pretty sure it wasn’t foot and mouth – you don’t forget what that’s like in a hurry – but I couldn’t convince Luke. He… panicked.”
The dog whimpered, waiting. But Isaac’s hand was still. His voice was very even.
“He took the gun up to his room. I didn’t know. I was outside with the vet when we heard the gunshot. The cow was fine: she’d just ate something that she shouldn’t. But Luke was dead.” He glanced bleakly up at Hunter. “You know he left a note?”
“I read the copy in the coroner’s report. It didn’t mention foot and mouth.”
“No. But that was the root of it. Nothing to do with Selena. He was obsessed. I couldn’t help him. No-one could help him.” The tendons tightened in the hand that gripped the chair arm.
“Selena is clearly affected by his death. I would recommend that she goes back to see her doctor,” Hunter said.
“I’ll get Bryony to take her.” As the women came back into the room Isaac’s hand relaxed, returning to the dog at last. Its eyes shuttered themselves in ecstasy.
Selena was wearing jeans and a baggy grey jumper: a masculine jumper, way too big, that buried her curves and made her look soft and guileless. Bryony handed me a bag of my clothes.
Behind them both was a third woman, tall and angularly graceful. I recognised her. She was Russell’s wife, Ruby, whom I’d met on my painting course at the neighbouring house nine years before.
Ruby’s name was fitting. She glowed with colour: ruby, emerald, gold, a slice of jungle vibrancy lighting up the sombre room. Her outfit might have been the same one I remembered from nine years back: long red scarf, green velvet jacket, swirly mauve-and-gold hand-painted wellies. There were a few more lines than previously on her strong face, now in middle-age but still handsome. Her auburn hair was bright.
“Those curtains are sewn up,” she told Isaac, but her sharp eyes alighted on Hunter and his hand. He grasped all her attention until I said,
“Hallo, Ruby? I was on one of your courses years ago.”
Her gaze shifted; her brow furrowed. “Reall
y? A weekend one?”
“No, a week. One of the summer courses. It was nearly nine years ago; you won’t remember.”
“I do indeed! Certainly I remember!” She didn’t. “Let me see, you’re–”
“Eden.”
“Of course! You were little Eden.”
“Still am,” I said.
“A lovely name! Eden, yes. You were quite talented, as I recall. So what are you doing these days, Eden? Still painting? Did you go to art college like you planned?”
“Yes, I did.” Though it hadn’t been quite as I’d planned. “I paint a bit. Small things, you know.”
“You must come over some time,” she said. “Russell would love to see you again.” I doubted if he would have a clue who I was.
Isaac stood up, even taller inside the house than out. “Talent as well as courage, eh? We’re very grateful to you.” He held out his hand and I shook it. It was cool and firm, calloused with fifty years of effort.
“What do you say, Selena?” suggested Ruby, not even sotto voce. Selena gave her a quick look and then recited without expression,
“Thank you, Eden, and thank you, Sergeant Brigg.”
We all trooped outside. I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to stay at the farm with the tall man and the old dog: a storybook world, unchanged over centuries. I wanted to sit at the ancient kitchen table under the slow tick of the clock.
I wanted the sleepy baaing of the sheep and the unseen bellowing of the bull to drown out Greta’s shrill complaints, to banish all the world’s reproofs. I wanted to pull that ring of hills around me like a shawl of charcoal and sienna.
“I’m pleased I could help, Isaac,” said Ruby. She kissed him loudly on the cheek, at which Isaac looked awkward and Hunter’s mouth twitched. “I’ll bring that pulsatilla over for your joints. It might benefit Selena too: her moods, you know. Anything else you need doing round the house, just say the word. We’re quiet right now: no painting courses until Easter.”
“Eden’s a brilliant painter,” put in Selena. “She’s as good as Russell. She paints cards for people to buy.”
“Cards? Of course, that’s it!” Ruby slapped her thigh in a theatrical gesture that made Hunter smile. “Freddie’s bookshop! That’s where I’ve seen your name. You sell your landscapes there, don’t you? So does Russell. Eden Shirer! I knew I’d heard that name before. Yes, they’re very nice.”
Her voice turned down. I cringed. My watercolours were snares for tourists, and she must know it. Certainly Russell would know it. I shrivelled inwardly at what he would make of my work.
“They’re lovely paintings,” said Selena wistfully. “I wish you could paint me, Eden.”
I felt myself wilt. “Like I said, I don’t do portraits.”
“You said not any more! So you used to. You could again, just once, couldn’t you? I really wish you’d paint me.”
“Selena, don’t nag Miss Shirer. She’s done enough,” said Isaac gently. Selena flashed him a resentful glance.
“But it’s important,” she insisted. “Because Luke never had a picture of me, did he? We never took any wedding photos.”
“You didn’t want them,” Isaac said. “You refused.”
“Point-blank,” said Bryony.
“Well, I want a picture now! For Luke. I want you to come back and paint me, Eden. Please do, please.”
“Look, Selena–” Isaac stopped, because Selena hiccupped and was starting to sob tearlessly, like a child trying to prove a point.
“It’s For Luke. How can you say no? Don’t you care what Luke would think?” she wailed.
“That doesn’t make any sense,” said Bryony.
“It’s an excellent idea, Selena,” said Ruby briskly. “You’re made to be painted. A born model. Eden should definitely do it.” She mouthed at me, “It’ll be good for her.”
Maybe so. I didn’t think it would be good for me. It would just prove my limitations yet again.
“Will you, Eden? Will you come back?” Selena’s huge eyes begged me.
I meant to refuse; but something welled up unexpectedly inside me. It wasn’t pity. It was an emotion that I hadn’t felt for so long that I hardly recognised it now. Desire.
I thought it had died in jail; but now it stirred again. I desired those rampant, guarding hills and the solemn farmhouse with a sudden fierce need; not just to look at but to paint, to capture; to make them mine and make me them.
So I said with careful casualness, “What if I did a picture of this place, and put you in it?”
“The farmhouse? Could we get it printed up?” asked Bryony. “The Aireys got cards made up for the Farmstay guests, Isaac. Or we could use it to advertise the cottages on the website.”
“No, no, not on the website!” cried Selena. “This is for Luke! It’s not for everybody!”
“No website,” said Isaac heavily. “How much do you charge?”
“I wouldn’t charge you anything,” I said. I would paint Selena standing on her head if it gave me the chance to come back here.
My heart was thumping with intense, shocking need. I wanted the brush in my hand now. I wanted to make the colour grow across the paper. I felt my skin grow hot with wanting.
It wasn’t just the landscape. It was that face, as still and worn as rock. Those eyes as watchful as the sky. The grey head of an austere king, haloed by the iron crown of hills.
I didn’t do people. And I didn’t understand this unforeseen, electric urge. But, more badly than I’d wanted anything for ages, I wanted to paint Isaac.
Chapter Four