by Katie Khan
Ten
Thea is still working in the barn when her phone rings on the workbench, the incessant vibration breaking her concentration and stealing away her thoughts. Irritated at the interruption, she wipes her hands clean and reaches for the infernal device. They’ve become slaves to the beeping of a phone – more so than usual as the group stays frantically in touch. Being permanently reachable is exhausting.
She looks at the time in the top corner of the screen. Damn, she’s late for their group call at seven o’clock – it’s 7.09 p.m. She’s been working for three hours straight and has five missed calls (at least it’s a prime number), all from Isaac.
That’s weird, because Ayo was going to connect Thea, and Urvisha was going to connect Isaac. He’s not meant to be calling her.
She must have been concentrating really hard not to hear that irritating buzzing. She stretches, her nerves on fire from where she’s been hunched over the desk, and calls Isaac back.
‘Thea?’
‘I’m here. Sorry I missed the group call,’ she says, holding the phone to her ear with her shoulder.
‘Where are you?’ he asks, and his voice sounds odd – a studied casualness, so she immediately knows something’s up.
‘What’s wrong? Did you find Rosy?’
‘What are you doing?’ he asks again, his voice sounding so relaxed that to anyone else, he could be lying horizontal. But she knows better.
‘I’m in the barn. Did you find something?’
He pauses. ‘I might have.’
‘Where are the others?’ she says. ‘We should connect the others.’
‘No—’
‘Hold on, I’ll dial in Ayo—’
‘Thea, wait. Can you …’ He inhales, his breath whistling in the autumnal air, which is how she knows he’s outside, somewhere.
‘Where are you?’ she says.
‘I’m in London. Trafalgar Square. Listen, will you meet me here? Tomorrow?’
She’s taken aback. ‘Rosy’s in Trafalgar Square?’
‘No – listen – it’s not that. Can you meet me?’
‘I can’t hear the pigeons.’ She picks up a piece of firewood, the bark splintering in her hand. ‘I would have thought I’d be able to hear the pigeons cooing.’ He waits. ‘Of course I’ll meet you, Isa.’
Isaac pauses at the old pet name. ‘You haven’t called me that in ages.’
‘I probably have, you just didn’t hear.’
‘Tomorrow?’ he says.
‘Can you tell me what this is about, at least?’ she says.
He finally drops his faux-casual demeanour, his voice sincere. ‘I can’t tell you, Theodora,’ he says in earnest. ‘I can only show you.’
‘Cryptic,’ she sniffs, her nose streaming in the cold air.
‘Tomorrow, then. Let’s say midday?’
She thinks about her journey down, how she’ll drive to Clitheroe and travel by train to Blackburn, then on to Preston, and finally down to London Euston. There are two changes on that route, which she doesn’t relish: not a great number. But she supposes it’s a three-legged journey, which is better. ‘Are you sure you can’t tell me what you’ve found?’ she says. ‘If it’s about your search for Rosy, I think I’m entitled to know.’
‘It’s only sort of about Rosy.’ She waits as he finds the words. ‘It’s not something that can be explained over the phone, Thea. I really have to show you.’
Thea arrives in a rain-soaked Trafalgar Square just before midday, the unrelenting London traffic stop-starting around the square creating a dogged and perpetual echo.
A busker on the steps plays a guitar, fighting the sound of chugging engines by hitting the strings of the instrument percussively. The dove-grey paving slabs are shiny with wet, and Thea treads carefully to avoid taking a tumble – she only just caught the elbow of an elderly lady losing her footing in front of one of the great lions.
She’d set her right and they’d both gazed up at the lion, into his mouth, and Thea wondered idly who’d put them there. She knows she could Google it. But instant access to information steals the magic of your own imagination. She thinks of some long-dead rich person commissioning four whopping great lions for a square in central London; the poor metalworker forced to make the bloody things, probably for a pittance; and the generations of pigeons who got to sit – and shit – on the shiny monoliths. She laughs to herself as Isaac appears next to her.
‘What are you giggling about?’ he asks by way of greeting.
‘Oh, nothing.’ She laughs again, a stutter of a half-laugh, and he looks at her quizzically. ‘The pigeons had ancestors that sat on this thing,’ she begins to explain, but she can sense tension in his body so she holds off from talking about the passing of time.
‘The fourth plinth is a platform – excuse the pun – for artists,’ Isaac says as they cross the square together to the National Gallery steps. ‘Maybe one day you could put the glass house up there. Alakazam! Make people disappear.’
‘Less a modern art installation,’ Thea says, ducking inside her bright yellow raincoat to shield herself from the rain, ‘and more like the magician who sealed himself inside a Perspex box for forty-something days. Without food,’ she adds, disgusted.
‘An illusionist.’
‘What?’
‘He doesn’t call himself a magician, he’s an illusionist.’ Isaac makes a haughty face.
‘Then he’s already missed the trick. Isaac, what are we doing here? Did you speak to Rosy’s brother – has he seen her?’
‘I’m afraid not.’
‘Oh.’ Thea droops with disappointment. ‘I really hoped she’d be with him.’
‘You’ve run the glass house experiment multiple times, haven’t you?’ he says, leading her up the steps.
She blinks at his sudden seriousness, the lack of preamble. ‘Yes.’
‘Twice with Rosy—’
‘Why are you asking?’ The yellow raincoat slides off her chestnut hair slightly and raindrops pool around her fringe, framing her face, as she looks up at him. She blinks away the water that runs towards her eyes and across her cheekbones.
‘I found something you need to see.’
He steers her round the impressive portico of the National Gallery, past the street artists drawing in chalk on the paving stones despite the rain, their masterpieces blurring beneath the water. A replica Cézanne; a caricature of the American president; flags from around the world – with a soggy packet of chalk for visitors to add their own country’s flag.
‘What did you find?’
Isaac snatches a glance at her. ‘A reference to somebody before they could have been known.’
Thea is suddenly very awake. ‘You found something referring to Rosy?’
‘This way,’ is all Isaac says.
They walk around St Martin’s Place to the more modest entrance of the National Portrait Gallery, set back from the square. The lobby is quiet, and they move through the entrance archways past the donation boxes, ignoring the ticket desk for the paid exhibitions. So it’s free, whatever they’ve come to see, part of the main national collection. Isaac leads them across the patterned mosaic floor to the stairs, worn smooth beneath centuries of eager feet.
On the first floor they pass a modern gallery with photographs of well-known faces, but Isaac doesn’t stop there.
As they climb the floors they seem to move back through time. After the contemporary portraits on the first floor, lit against bright white walls, the second floor is darker; they bypass a dim mauve room featuring a pair of full-height statues in the centre, posed as though they’re whispering about the marble busts lining the edges.
Thea’s trainers squeak and squelch against the unending herringbone of the parquet floor as they continue through the early Stuarts, past students huddling over sketchpads, trying to recreate the alchemy of the paintings hanging on the blue walls.
‘Pointless,’ Isaac mutters. ‘A replica can never capture a fraction of the beauty of
the real thing.’
Thea can’t help herself. ‘What about a photocopy?’
‘But the copy is always flat,’ Isaac says, weaving past the later Stuarts on pale brown walls, then through the George III gallery with its forest green fleur-de-lis wallpaper. ‘It loses the texture, the colour, the individuality – the flaws.’
‘I don’t like the word flaws,’ she says quietly.
‘Inclusions, then.’ He smiles as the natural light diminishes, skylights and windows covered over to protect the older paintings. The rooms darken and darken before they arrive at the Tudors, where Isaac stops.
‘Here?’ Thea says.
Isaac scans the gallery information wall, reading quickly. Then he takes off, striding through the sombre rooms, and she quickens her pace to keep up.
‘What exactly are we here to see?’
He slows, scanning the regal faces in gloss-black frames. ‘NPG 1488. Which is just … over … there.’
Thea’s phone vibrates in her pocket and she looks at it, wondering guiltily if it’s socially acceptable to answer in a gallery. ‘It’s Ayo,’ she says, then slides her finger across the screen to accept the call. ‘Hi,’ she says quietly.
‘Thea?’
‘It’s me.’ She holds her hand above her mouth to muffle the sound slightly.
‘Where are you?’ Ayo says.
‘I’m in London with Isaac. I can’t really talk—’
‘I’m back at the farmhouse. Where’s the key to the barn?’
Thea keeps her voice the same. ‘It’s by the kitchen door.’
‘I’m going to do some exploratory work on the laser, if you don’t mind?’
‘Be careful—’
‘Urvisha’s here, too.’
Thea forces down any possessiveness she feels over the equipment. ‘Great,’ she says. ‘Go for it.’
She glances towards Isaac, who is gazing up at an image of Elizabeth I sitting regally in an ornate frame of swirls topped with a crown, but she knows his attention is on her and the call. ‘Everything okay?’ he says, and she nods.
‘Ayo and Urvisha are back in Dunsop Bridge.’
He looks pleased, almost satisfied, and though suspicion is tickling at the edges of the trust she has for her friends, Thea knows she must overthrow her tendency to work alone, and continue with the task at hand. The reason they are here at the National Portrait Gallery – what was it Isaac said? NPG 1488.
It’s time to find Lady Rosalind de Glanville.
The room is filled with antiquated paintings in embellished gold frames; rich colours muted slightly with age, set off beautifully by the dark amethyst walls behind. The paintings are packed in, doubled up – one high, one low – and Thea doesn’t know where to look, there are so many faces staring back at her.
‘Here?’ she says, baffled. She supposes it’s the right setting for Rosy – the gallery is full of aristocracy with Roman bone structures and matching alabaster complexions.
‘Here. Her.’ Isaac raises a hand to point at a modestly sized oil painting: ‘Portrait of an Unknown Woman.’
Thea peers towards the correlating description, squinting to read the small plaque. ‘Formerly known as Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby. Artist unknown.’ She leans back and looks at Isaac, her upper body forming a question mark. ‘Why—?’
‘Do you notice anything?’ he says. ‘Look closer.’
It’s just the sort of challenge Isaac adores. An observational test she’s afraid she’ll fail – and the only thing Thea truly fears is failure.
She focuses on a crest (or flower?) behind the Unknown Woman’s head. ‘Am I supposed to recognize that symbol? I can’t quite see it—’
‘Not that. Okay, don’t look closer; step back. Take it all in.’
Bewildered, Thea obeys. She steps back and almost crushes a toddler, apologizing to the frazzled father gripping the child’s harness.
‘You don’t see it? I suppose you wouldn’t.’ Isaac sighs, looking at his best friend. ‘It’s you, Thea.’
She tilts her head in surprise. But before Thea can question what he means, a crocodile of schoolchildren wearing hi-visibility neon vests over their uniforms traipse in, two-by-two, and drop cross-legged onto the floor. Politely, Thea and Isaac shift out of the way of the class, as the teacher and a curator from the gallery wave at a painting on the next wall showing Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn.
Thea cranes to see the painting Isaac has shown her, but the schoolchildren have blocked her view, separating her from both the painting and Isaac.
‘Now, class, how can you tell it’s Anne Boleyn?’ the curator asks, his tone friendly, and hands shoot up from the floor.
Across the room, Isaac’s and Thea’s eyes meet.
‘By the B necklace!’ a small girl answers when called upon, and the curator nods approvingly.
‘Very good. And does anyone know how we can tell how old the painting is?’ A few of the children falter, and no hands go up. ‘What if I tell you it’s painted on the wood of a tree …’
Thea is only half listening, as she stares at the Portrait of an Unknown Woman on the wall, trying to discern any similarities to her own appearance. Perhaps the bridge of the nose …
More hands fly up. ‘From the rings of the tree!’
‘That’s right. That’s how we know this painting of Anne Boleyn was made after her death. Because the tree wasn’t old enough to have been painted on when she was alive. So what does that mean?’
It’s hard for Thea to tell, though. Isaac’s painting is small, the oil giving the sitter a soft focus, and with the class taking up the whole floor space of the gallery Thea is forced to look at it from the side. Could it be—?
The curator appeals to the class. ‘Remember what we learned with the Stuarts – is this painting of Anne Boleyn a primary source, or secondary?’
The entire group of children answer excitedly in response – they know this one. ‘Secondary!’
‘Very good. This particular example is actually a copy of an earlier painting, with changes. The next question we need to think about is – Why? What was the artist trying to say with the changes he made? If you come this way, we’ll look at a primary and secondary source for Elizabeth I …’
Isaac and Thea wait patiently as the children find their pairs, chuntering out of the dimly lit room into the next gallery like a neon caterpillar.
‘Gosh,’ Thea says, drawing a breath, as Isaac moves back next to her.
He nods at the Portrait of an Unknown Woman. ‘It’s you in the painting.’ He lifts his palm in a sweep: ‘Look at the three rings she’s wearing on her hand.’ He points to the image, then down at Thea’s left hand hanging limply by her side; one ring on her little finger, another on her forefinger, the third between the joints of her ring finger.
‘Why do you wear that particular ring halfway up?’ he asks, already knowing the answer because he asked her the same question a long time ago.
‘That’s just where it fits. And this way it doesn’t look like an engagement ring,’ she says quietly.
‘Have you always done that?’
‘I don’t know.’ She looks from her own hand, with its three rings, up to the painting of the Unknown Woman, formerly known as Lady Margaret Beaufort, Countess of Richmond and Derby. ‘I just don’t know,’ she repeats, a larger statement than her previous one.
Making sure she knows what he’s doing so he doesn’t take her by surprise, Isaac gently lifts Thea’s yellow hood partway up over her hair, looking between the painting and Thea. ‘Look at the hair,’ he says, ‘look at the face. It’s your face, Theodora – can you really not see it?’
‘I don’t know – maybe—’
‘It is.’ He takes a deep breath. ‘You don’t remember what’s happened, but you will. This is the start of us finding the proof.’ When she doesn’t say anything, he places a hand on her arm. ‘Thea, you did it. You travelled back in time.’
II
The Unkn
own Woman
Eleven
Thea steps back from the painting, disbelief clouding her mind as her faded fever threatens to break back through.
‘I don’t believe it,’ she says, but he’s insistent.
‘I know it’s hard to see. Especially for yourself. But the likeness – it’s uncanny. Truly.’
‘It’s just a painting.’
Isaac smiles, his face bearing that sympathetic look people make when they think they know more than you, and you’re trying desperately to catch up. ‘It’s you.’
Another class of schoolchildren begin snaking into the gallery in their bright yellow vests, and Thea feels a migraine twinge from the loud colour. She wilts against the wall, her forced speedy recovery from the bout of flu and the long journey down mingling uncomfortably. And on top of that there’s … this. Whatever this is.
‘Is this a joke?’ Thea says, her voice low as the fluorescent alligator of children files past. ‘Did you put my photo into that app, the one that matches you with your museum doppelganger? Because Rosy’s missing, Isaac, and I’ve come to London because I thought you said you had something.’
‘I do,’ Isaac says gently. ‘It’s not a joke.’
Thea sighs. ‘That app is popular; it must be really common to look like a painting.’ Unwittingly Thea’s eyes return to the Portrait of an Unknown Woman, to the three rings on her hand.
‘It is relatively common,’ Isaac admits.
‘Exactly. I’m a scientist, Isaac. I need more – I’m going to need some hard proof.’
‘And we’ll get it. This is only the start – I needed you to see this.’ He reaches for her, but she pulls back, holding up her hand to compare the painting’s trio of rings with her own. ‘This is the starting point of our … search.’
‘You were going to say quest, weren’t you?’ She almost spits the word out in disgust.
‘No. Absolutely not.’
‘Because I know how you love a challenge like this, Isaac. We don’t have time to head off on some ridiculous tangent.’ Her face is pleading. ‘We have to find Rosy. We have to bring her back.’