by Lucy Dillon
Lorna had wasted no time in getting in touch with as many local artists as she could, in an effort to give the gallery an infusion of new work, and there was no shortage of aspiring artists eager to be represented on its walls. The more modern ones emailed links to their websites, but some still sent in work in portfolios or on CDs. Lorna was only halfway through the pile of discs that had been opened, filed by Mary in one of her many storage boxes and promptly forgotten. Some she thought were interesting, some terrible; some she honestly couldn’t tell whether they were good or bad. A few were plain worrying.
It was the hour before closing, and she was trying to tick off a few more before Keir arrived with Joyce. Outside, the first drops of rain were flicking against the windowpanes and the back office felt cosy. Tiffany was long since back from her walk with the dogs, and now Rudy was asleep under the desk, while Bernard was chasing tennis balls up and down the stairs. Lorna eased off her boots and began clicking through an endless parade of abstracts called Refractions XII – XXX , which seemed to be the inside of someone’s skull during a series of debilitating migraines.
Blue, green, yellow fractals.
The works represent the intersection of tangible shape and temporal confusion, in order to challenge the viewer’s perception of artistic practice …
They reminded Lorna uncomfortably of the art she’d tried to sell in London. It had been challenging too.
‘That’s a bold use of colour.’
She spun round on the chair. Joyce was standing right behind her, wrapped in a heavy black coat with a deep fur collar, the colour of old snow. She’d appeared so silently that for one surreal second, Lorna wondered if she’d died in hospital and this was her last earthly visit before moving on to a higher plane.
But then Joyce coughed, and pointed at the screen. ‘Although how big is it? How on earth can you tell anything from that little snap?’
Lorna scrambled to her feet. ‘Hello! Joyce, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in. Where’s Mary?’
Joyce leaned nearer the computer screen. The smell of fading perfume and locked wardrobes intensified. ‘Mary scuttled out as soon as she saw me. She’s gone to help Keir.’
‘Where’s he?’ Lorna looked round – the gallery was empty, the Closed sign still swinging on the door from Mary’s exit.
‘He’s trying to find a place to park. What a performance. Do you mind if I …?’ She indicated the chair Lorna had vacated. Underneath it, Rudy wagged his tail and Joyce nodded at him as she sank into it. ‘What do you call this?’ She flicked a finger at the screen.
‘It’s a submission. An artist based in …’ Lorna studied the CD case. ‘In Bromsgrove.’
‘Hmmph. Are they all like this?’
‘Mostly. Would you like me to …?’ Lorna pressed the space bar, moving the images on.
They peered in silence at the screen, the headachey yellows and greens merging into one another. Lorna began to feel embarrassed, somehow responsible for the art. I should know what to say, she thought. Joyce will know whether it’s good or not – I don’t. Her confidence wavered.
‘And this is how artists send their work nowadays?’ Joyce asked. ‘On a computer?’
‘Some do. Some send links to their websites.’ She paused. ‘I prefer the old-fashioned portfolios, to be honest with you. But there’s often more context on the website. Who they are, why they paint. Subtitles, in other words, to give you a foothold.’
‘But how can you tell what it feels like?’ Joyce rubbed the air between her arthritic fingers. ‘The texture, the canvas …?’
‘You can’t,’ said Lorna, ‘I think this is how it comes. It’s computer generated.’
They stared at the final image. It was so busy and angry, Lorna felt her eyeballs hurting. ‘What do you think this is about?’ she asked, emboldened by the fact that Joyce wasn’t actually looking at her. She tried to phrase it in such a way that it wasn’t obvious she didn’t know.
‘Well, it’s playing with the idea of colour and rhythm,’ said Joyce. ‘And I suppose there’s a sort of tonality about it. Is this the type of work you represent here now?’
‘No,’ said Lorna.
‘Do you like it?’
Something important was hanging in the balance between them. Was it good? Was she missing a genius in the making? Lorna thought of the art she did know she liked, instinctively – Joyce’s safe white house, the contemplative portraits she’d seen a few days ago – and found her answer.
‘No,’ she said honestly. ‘It’s giving me a headache.’
There was a long pause, in which she wasn’t sure if she’d said the right thing. Then Joyce sighed. ‘Me too. Well, that’s a relief,’ she said. She gazed round the office, her pale eyes taking in the shelves lined with artists’ files, including her own. ‘I’ve never been in here, you know. Quite the nerve centre.’
‘Let me take you upstairs,’ said Lorna. ‘Before Keir comes in here and tells me off for making you sit in a room he hasn’t health and safety checked.’
Joyce’s first evening as Lorna’s guest was spent closeted in her bedroom with Bernard. She was ‘worn out by the day’, she said, and just wanted to listen to the radio, then sleep.
‘Of course! Absolutely fine!’ Lorna’s cheeks ached with smiling. She’d smiled and smiled while Keir was there to reassure him that he could report back to his dragon boss, and felt she had to keep smiling to compensate for Tiffany’s mood, which was still hanging over the place like fog. ‘I’ve put a radio by the bed, can you see? That’s the on button. And there’s a carafe of water, and I’m sure you know how the electric blanket works. Would you like me to bring you some tea later? A snack?’
‘No, thank you. I’m fine.’ Joyce was settled in the chair by the window, her knitting on her lap. The lamplight shone through her fine white hair, exposing the palely freckled scalp beneath. Lorna looked away; it felt like a too-personal thing to notice.
She scanned the room for anything she’d forgotten. ‘You’re sure there’s nothing else you need?’
‘Very sure. Just some rest.’
Lorna’s eye fell on a photo she hadn’t moved from the chest of drawers – a framed snap of her and Jess on the beach in Wales with Mum and Dad, the camera balanced on a rock and the four of them only just in focus. Jess had been in charge of running back while they counted down from five, and her mouth was still open in loud instruction, while Dad and Lorna were clearly saying ‘two’. Mum was smiling, mysteriously, at Dad.
Don’t move it, she told herself. Draws more attention to it.
‘And it’s fine for Bernard to sleep in here,’ she added, ‘I’ve put one of Rudy’s cushions in.’
‘Thank you.’ Joyce smiled thinly. She did look tired. ‘And where will you be?’
‘Oh, on the sofa bed. I’ll be fine.’ She’d never slept on the sofa bed but it was only for a few nights. ‘Right then. I’ll … leave you to it. Shout if you need anything!’
Lorna smiled once more and then turned to go. At the door, she heard Joyce say, ‘Lorna?’
She turned, expecting a ‘thank you’.
‘Is this you?’ Joyce pointed not at the photograph, but at a pencil sketch on the bookshelf. It was of Lorna and Jessica, aged about three and seven, doing a jigsaw on holiday, their heads bent together, Jess’s dark curls mingling with Lorna’s straight blonde hair. Jess had found it with their mother’s things and given it to Lorna after the funeral. The tenderness meant Lorna could only look at it for a certain amount of time. She rationed it.
‘Yes,’ she said, ‘my mum drew that.’ She paused. ‘She was an artist. Cathy Larkham?’
‘I thought so,’ said Joyce, ambiguously, and nodded, half to herself. ‘It sings with love.’
Their eyes met for a long moment, and Joyce knew , Lorna thought. Joyce understood something that she wasn’t quite sure she understood herself.
Lorna was still thinking about the sketch – and her mum – when she walked into the kitchen and sa
w the pile of washing up by the sink. Tiffany was texting on her phone at the table but she flipped it over when Lorna walked in. There were coffee mugs on the table, and the breakfast bowls were still on the side where they’d been left, crumbs and buttery knives everywhere. How could Tiff sit there texting someone, and not take ten seconds to load the dishwasher with her own dirty plates?
‘I don’t want to start making house rules,’ said Lorna, flicking on the kettle. ‘But can you not leave cups by the dishwasher? They’re going to start mounting up, with three of us here.’
‘OK,’ said Tiffany, surprised.
‘Maybe I should do a rota,’ Lorna went on, despite herself.
‘If that’s what you want.’
I wish I could just go into that white room and lie down and look at the stars out of the window and think about Mum, she thought, then realised she couldn’t, because it was full of stuff she’d had to move out of the sitting room to unfold the sofa bed. Most of it Tiffany’s.
The kettle boiled and the phone rang on the wall. Tiffany jumped on her chair, nearly spilling her tea. ‘Can you get that, please?’ she said, even though she was nearer.
Lorna frowned. And that was another thing – why wasn’t Tiff confiding in her about whatever it was that was going on? Didn’t she trust her?
‘Please?’ Tiffany repeated.
It was an old phone, obviously left there by previous tenants, and talking on it tethered the speaker to the wall by the window. Lorna looked down at the street below as she answered. Outside the gallery, someone in a Barbour jacket was looking into the window – was it Sam? She’d been thinking about him on and off all day – it was his birthday at the end of the month, and she’d been wondering it if would look too keen to take him out for a drink.
‘Hello? Lorna? It’s Jess.’ From the sound in the background, there was an impromptu recorder recital going on at the Protheros’.
‘Hi, Jess.’ She said Jess’s name for Tiff’s benefit and saw her shoulders slump back to normal. ‘Thanks for the Valentine’s card. I see you didn’t even get Ryan to write it this year. Slipping. Did you like mine?’
‘I did! Cute!’ She moved on too swiftly and Lorna knew she’d barely noticed the card she’d spent ages choosing. ‘Listen, I’m ringing to ask a favour.’
Lorna returned her gaze to the man outside the shop, willing him to look up so she could see his face. The dark hair was familiar, and was that a beard? She angled her head against the windowpane. Was Sam staring into the shop in the hope of seeing her? Why didn’t he look up?
‘… would that be all right?’ Jess had finished speaking.
‘What? Say that again?’
‘I don’t know what you did with Hattie while she was there last weekend but she’s incredibly keen to come back. She even suggested getting the Friday-night train.’ Jess made a clicking noise.
The man made a visor of his hand on the glass to see into the darkened gallery, then gave up and walked away. Lorna flattened herself against the window to see but she couldn’t tell whether it was Sam. When she turned, Tiffany was frozen at the table, staring at her with big eyes.
‘What?’ she mouthed.
‘Is someone downstairs?’ Tiff gestured.
Lorna shook her head. Jess was rattling on in the bossy tone that made her habitually zone out, and the strange, hunted expression on Tiffany’s face was too weird to ignore.
‘… from Wagamama, so maybe you could give her some money for helping you out in the gallery? Lorna? Are you listening to me? Lorna!’
Lorna dragged her focus back to the phone as Tiff pushed back her chair and went over to the window. ‘Wait, sorry – are we still talking about Hattie?’
‘Yes!’ Jess sounded aggrieved. ‘Are you checking your emails while you’re talking to me?’
‘No!’ That was something Jess did, sometimes when Lorna was actually there in person. ‘Of course I’m not. I’m listening.’
‘So? What was the last thing I said.’
‘Hattie … wants to come here this weekend?’
Tiff wandered back to the table and stared at her phone. Just behind her, on the landing table, the extravagant bunch of red roses glowed in the dim hall light. Funny that Tiff had put them out there, rather than kept them in her own room. And she’d barely mentioned them since, almost as if she didn’t want them. Why was that?
‘Yes! And?’
‘You want me to give Hattie some cash because she’s packed her job in at Wagamama?’
‘No, she’s been made redundant . They’ve laid all the students off.’
Oh, was that the reason for Hattie turning up out of the blue last weekend? Had she been sacked, and had to make up an excuse? Jess was the sort of mum who would probably march round there and demand explanations.
Lorna felt bad – she’d meant to find a moment to ring Hattie. Should she say something now? It felt wrong, keeping things from her sister, but if that was all it was …
‘Between you and me, though, it’s a relief,’ Jess went on. ‘That business last weekend, Hattie running off, missing Ryan’s birthday … I think she knew this was coming and didn’t know how to tell us. As if we’d be worried!’
Really, though? Jess sounded so relieved Lorna didn’t want to raise any doubts. ‘Well, I’d love to have her, if she wants to come. She’s the best wrapper I’ve ever seen.’
‘Thanks, sis.’ Jess sounded relieved. ‘I know it’s short notice but—’
‘You’re welcome,’ said Lorna, and it was only when she put the phone down, after some quickfire information about Tyra’s swimming badge and Milo’s nits, that she realised she was going to have to buy another bed.
Rudy had spent his life working to a regular and relatively uneventful timetable, and he made it clear with every inch of his elongated body that he didn’t like change. All the extra noises and unfamiliar smells in the flat needed investigation, and when Tiffany had gone to bed, he wandered from room to room until he found Lorna lying on the sofa, her feet sticking out from under the spare duvet, waiting as usual for sleep to finish its rounds of everyone else in the world and find her.
She heard rather than saw the little dog enter, and dropped her hand to dachshund level, which he sniffed, and then licked with a delicate tongue, his gentle greeting. His wet nose tickled her fingertips. And since she was feeling rather unsettled herself, Lorna lifted Rudy up and let him curl into the narrow ledge of unoccupied sofa in front of her body. On top of the duvet, not under it. She had limits.
‘This is just a dream,’ she told him. ‘You never get to sleep on the sofa.’
He curled up against her, warm and compliant, and Lorna felt comforted.
Her mind drifted through the events of the evening. Tiff’s mysterious behaviour, Joyce arriving, settling into her bedroom, reading her art like the secrets in her palm. And then Hattie. Was that really the whole story, that she’d snuck away to Longhampton to avoid telling her mum she’d been sacked? Something didn’t feel right.
Sam’s face floated up, as it had done so often for so long, but now, with that beard, the face of a different man again. The flat line of thick brows framing his dark eyes was just the same; Lorna traced the the curl of disappointment that it hadn’t been him, peering into her gallery, then traced another curl of shame at the way he’d politely repelled her approach.
She stared blankly at the windows, where the thin curtains were letting moonlight drift across the walls. You’re not thirteen any more. You’re an adult, and so’s he. You barely know him as a man. You have no idea what his personal life was like then – or is now.
I need a reason to call him, she thought, then rolled her eyes at herself. Rudy wriggled further backwards, pressing his bony spine into her leg. Then it popped into Lorna’s head: Hattie was staying the weekend; it would make perfect sense to ask Sam if he wanted to spend time with them? He was her niece’s godfather, after all.
Rudy moved, growling very low under his breath, and Lorna heard
the sitting room door move. A thick wedge of dim light fell into the room, closely followed by the sound of feet on floorboards.
Oh God, was it Joyce? Was she sleepwalking? Was she in need of medical attention? What if she fell? The responsibility of what she’d taken on suddenly weighed on Lorna.
She sat up quickly, so fast Rudy nearly tumbled off the sofa, and reached for her mobile as the door opened.
‘Hello?’ she whispered. ‘Joyce?’
But it wasn’t Joyce, it was Tiffany.
Without her make-up on, and barefoot in her polka-dot pyjamas, she looked much younger, and Lorna could see, even in the half-light, that she’d been crying.
‘Tiff?’ she whispered. ‘Are you all right?’
She shook her head. ‘No. Lorna, I need to talk to you about something. Something bad.’
Chapter Twelve
Lorna shifted over on the sofa to make room for Tiffany, and she slipped under the duvet, tucking it tight around her legs. She frowned at the pattern, as if she wasn’t sure where to start her story.
‘Let me guess,’ said Lorna. She had a few ideas of why Tiff was finding this so hard. ‘Something to do with those roses?’
Tiffany looked up, surprised. ‘How did you know?’
‘Because you’ve never had flowers and not made a huge song and dance about them.’ She tried to sound teasing, hoping it would make Tiff smile. ‘I remember every single tacky petrol station bouquet you ever got from Jim the Crim.’
‘He wasn’t a crim,’ Tiff said automatically. ‘He just used his mum’s disabled parking badge once or twice.’
‘Yeah, yeah. So you say. Who are these from?’ Lorna nudged her. ‘They’re gorgeous; you’d normally be shouting it from the rooftops.’
Tiffany hugged her knees. ‘You have to promise not to judge. It’s … a real mess.’
‘Is it someone I know?’ she said, to get the ball rolling.
‘Sort of.’
Wait. It couldn’t be Sam, could it? whispered a weaselly voice in her ear. He’d noticed Tiffany that day in the gallery; he could have popped back in to chat while Lorna was out walking Rudy and Bernard. Why wouldn’t he fancy Tiff? She was smart, petite, confident – the sort of woman Sam had probably dated while he was working in London …