Where the Light Gets In

by Lucy Dillon

  The early drops had turned into a shower, knocking the petals off some of the flowers in the beds. The parents starting to gather with cello cases and music bags by the bandstand wore waterproofs and resigned expressions as water dripped off the plastic bunting.

  ‘Over here would be good.’ Lorna put her coffee down and went to show him. ‘We need to be able to see and hear the band …’

  ‘Right. Got you. Simon, pass us that pole?’

  Sam worked quickly with Simon, and when the marquee was up, he helped her and Tiffany move their boxes from the tiny tent. It smelled of damp grass and tea, but it was dry.

  Would Joyce come if it carried on raining? she wondered, seeing yet another tiny detail she’d missed in the painting: a fat silver pigeon’s coo. It was so full of surprise and wit. Nothing like their attempts.

  She was conscious of Sam near her, a few feet away, waiting to speak.

  Tiffany, propping up the first canvases, realised that he wanted to talk to Lorna alone and coughed. ‘Simon, can I get you a coffee?’ she said easily, steering him out of the tent. ‘You must be hungry …’ Their voices trailed away, and there was Sam, in front of her.

  ‘I know you’re avoiding me but we need to talk.’ He gazed at her, his eyes steady on her face, seeking her confidence. ‘Ryan phoned me, told me what’s happened. I’m sorry. It’s … surreal.’

  Lorna raised an eyebrow; she couldn’t help it. ‘You knew nothing?’

  ‘Nothing!’ Sam looked surprised she was even asking. ‘I barely saw him when he was in Birmingham that summer – his brothers bundled him off. And I was at university after, so we didn’t see much of each other …’

  ‘Pardon me? Lorna?’ One of the orchestra organisers popped his head in, waving a plastic wallet. ‘Can I give you a copy of the final set list?’

  ‘Yes, great!’ She reached out and took the folder. The sight of the eight pieces and a start time in under an hour set the butterflies wheeling in her stomach.

  Lorna turned back to Sam, and tried not to notice the hollow of his throat under his unbuttoned collar, the smell of him close to her in the warm marquee.

  He ran a hand through his damp hair. ‘I don’t see any point in taking sides, not now. Ryan’s broken. Jess sounds like she’s in major denial. God knows what the kids are making of it.’

  ‘I can tell you what Hattie’s making of it. She’s spending as much time here as she can. And Jess isn’t in denial, she’s in shock. She trusted Ryan – she gave up everything to be with him. Things were never the same with our mum and dad afterwards, you know. They always saw us as really happy children, then suddenly Jess is pregnant and leaving, and they don’t know how it happened.’ Lorna swallowed. ‘Dad never got over it, and Mum … Things changed. You could see it in the work she was doing. No more fairies after Jess left. We weren’t in her work anymore. And, yes, we noticed.’

  She hadn’t meant to let that slip; it had come out on the rush to defend Jess. Lorna flushed, embarrassed. She’d never told anyone, not even Tiffany.

  They stared at each other. Sam seemed conscious that she’d shared something she hadn’t meant to. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Don’t be.’ She sounded harder than she felt. ‘If they hadn’t been so wrapped up in each other Jess might not have been so keen to find her own family.’

  He reached out a hand, his eyes soft and sympathetic. ‘And what about you, Lorna? I should have—’

  Lorna swallowed and watched Sam’s hand touch her arm. No one ever really asked how she’d felt, when her best friend became someone else’s mum, and her parents folded in on themselves. Only Sam, only now.

  ‘There you are!’

  They both spun round. Jess and Ryan were standing at the door of the marquee, peering in as if they were visiting Santa’s Grotto. But with no chance of a nice surprise at the end.

  Chapter Twenty

  For a couple whose seventeen-year marriage had just been revealed as merely half a story, the Protheros seemed surprisingly together. Eerily so, in fact, thought Lorna as she inspected Ryan and Jess’s faces for clues of recent harsh words or tears.

  Jess ushered Tyra and Milo into Lorna’s marquee, out of the drizzle. ‘I know we’re early but we wanted to get the best seats,’ she chirped in a voice that sounded a bit too cheery. ‘You didn’t tell me we should have brought an ark!’

  ‘Ha ha!’ said Lorna, at the same time as Sam managed an almost convincing guffaw. They side-eyed each other simultaneously, in a cartoonish way that would normally have made Lorna’s stomach flip at how in tune they were, but Sam’s eyes didn’t crinkle as they usually did when something like this happened. He looked tense.

  Jess was meticulously turned out, which was always a sign that things were wrong. Her dark hair was blow-dried straight, and she was wearing an entire page from the Boden catalogue in one go: cropped red jeans and white plimsolls, a crisp blouse with a blue cardigan, topped off with a jaunty rain mac.

  Ryan, in contrast, was a wreck. His hair was grown out, there were bags under his eyes and he seemed creased from head to toe. He couldn’t look further from the teenage Lothario. He looked like a teenage Lothario’s weary dad.

  ‘Put that down, Milo,’ said Jess, and grabbed a jam jar of water from his curious hands. ‘We look with our eyes, not our hands.’

  Tyra and Milo were just as ever. Bright, confident, fiddling curiously with the art materials on the trestle tables. Thank God for that, thought Lorna, and ignored Tyra’s forceful squashing of some paint tubes.

  ‘Hey, Tyra, nice wellies,’ Lorna observed. ‘They new?’

  ‘Yes. Mine are frogs.’ Tyra pointed to her brother. ‘Milo got ladybirds. Dad bought the wrong ones.’

  ‘Dad always buys the wrong ones,’ muttered Ryan.

  ‘No reason why girls can’t have frogs,’ said Lorna brightly. ‘Or ladybirds.’

  ‘How are you, Sam?’ asked Jess, swinging round to him, deliberately blocking Ryan so there could be no secret communication. ‘Haven’t heard from you in a while.’

  Sam rocked back and forth on his wellies. ‘I’ve been up to my knees in bird seed and DIY, trying to get the farm into the black.’

  ‘Sam lent us this marquee,’ Lorna piped up. ‘Saved the day! Isn’t that great!’

  The tension was building to a nearly unbearable level when the flap rustled and a tray of coffees appeared. ‘Lorna, I got you a …’ The coffees were followed by Hattie. She saw her parents and froze, unable to back out.

  ‘Ah, there you are! Just in time to tell your mum and dad about our event!’ Lorna removed the tray from her grasp and gestured at the tables. ‘Go on, show them how it works …’

  Hattie’s body language was more eloquent than her explanation as she ran through the spiel they’d rehearsed for visitors. Her shoulders hunched, and the pantomime eagerness with which Ryan was listening made Lorna tense up on her behalf. Each step her dad took towards her forced Hattie back another step. Jess was pretending to listen, but Lorna could see her attention drifting towards Ryan over and over when he wasn’t looking – her eyes were hurt, and kept flicking away, as if she had to keep reminding herself he was the man she’d married.

  Lorna checked her watch; after a morning of time passing glacially the second hand had suddenly jerked forward, and the concert was due to start in exactly five minutes. Her chest tightened with nerves.

  Right on cue, Calum Hardy pretended to knock on the marquee door. ‘Hello, hello! Lorna, we’re on stage in two.’

  On stage ? Also, we ?

  ‘I need to introduce you and your event at the same time as the band … Oh, hello! Already found some willing volunteers? Cool!’ He smiled at Sam and the Protheros, and then held out his hand. ‘Come on!’

  Sam gave Calum a funny look as he grabbed Lorna’s hand, and Lorna wanted to explain, but she had no choice but to follow him out into the cooler air. The rain had stopped, but the sky remained uncooperatively leaden.

  He kept hold of her han
d until they reached the bandstand, and Lorna was slightly sorry when he dropped it.

  ‘I was hoping Joyce would be here,’ she said. The park had filled up, and a reasonable crowd was now gathered by the chairs, most of them still huddled under umbrellas. ‘You’ll mention it’s her idea …’

  Calum was grabbing a microphone from a volunteer. ‘Thanks, Ben.’ He turned and grinned at her. ‘All set? Let’s go!’

  ‘What? No …’ Lorna watched with dread as Calum jumped up on to the stage and beckoned her to follow him.

  She shook her head – no way did she want to get up on stage. There were a lot of people now. Lorna counted her breaths – in, slowly, out, slowly – as she scanned the crowd for Joyce, but she wasn’t there.

  Her heart sank. Had it been too much to ask? Was she angry with her for taking her idea? Had the association with Ronan been too painful to deal with in public?

  Calum held out a hand, and smiled at her so encouragingly – and so unexpectedly – that Lorna took it again. Then suddenly, whether she liked it or not, she was on stage, and it was starting.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me tremendous pleasure to introduce the highlight of our Art Week events!’ He swung his arm towards her. ‘Lorna Larkham of the Maiden Gallery, and the band of Longhampton High School! Now, as well as enjoying the talents of our young musicians, we are privileged to be part of a truly experimental art event here this afternoon …’

  Calum was good in front of a crowd. He made her event sound fun and trailblazing – proper art, in other words. Lorna worried he was talking it up too much, though. Everyone was looking at her: the orchestra behind, the crowd in front. By the marquee, Jess and Ryan and Sam were staring too. Lorna had never ever done anything that involved people looking at her; she hadn’t even been in school plays. Her mouth was so dry her tongue was sticking to the roof of her mouth.

  ‘… and if you head over to the Maiden Gallery’s marquee in …’ Calum made a big show of looking at his watch. ‘… two minutes, Lorna will equip you with all you need to be part of Longhampton art history!’

  He turned and smiled at her. Lightheaded with adrenalin, Lorna smiled back. Calum’s eyes were twinkling behind his glasses, as if they were sharing a joke, and she felt … an uncomplicated happiness. As if Lorna Larkham were in the crowd, watching the art-event organiser, and she were an entirely new adult person, who’d stepped fully formed into this situation with none of her laughable career record trailing after her like toilet roll stuck to her heel.

  As if she was in control, for once.

  The feeling didn’t last long. At the marquee a queue of curious onlookers had formed, headed up by a photographer from the local paper. Hattie and Tiffany were policing the line while Ryan and Jess talked to one child each, to avoid speaking to one another.

  Ten white easels stood like an army inside the marquee. Blank and arrogant and perfect. Lorna took a deep breath and stepped inside. As she did, the photographer grabbed her.

  ‘Right, I need a nice one of you putting the first touch on the canvas,’ he said, moving people around to get a clear shot. ‘Quick, they’re going to start. Here, grab this.’

  ‘No, no, I’m not the artist.’ Lorna raised her hands against the proffered brush. ‘I can’t go first.’

  The canvas loomed, exactly like the one in her spare room that she’d never found the courage to spoil with paint. Behind her, the rustle and whisper of the band faded away as the conductor shushed the children’s orchestra and raised his baton. Tiny ants swarmed around Lorna’s chest, up into her throat, and every nerve in her arm flickered. Everyone was looking at her. Calum Hardy, Tiffany, Jess. Sam. Sam was still here, standing towards the back of the crowd, looking at her.

  What was she supposed to do?

  Lorna buckled. She grabbed a couple of brushes and bent down to Milo and Tyra’s level. Kids always made a better photo, she told herself. And whatever they painted would be more interesting than her anxious overthinking.

  ‘When the music starts,’ she whispered, ‘paint what you think it sounds like, on this canvas.’

  Tyra’s eyes widened. ‘Me?’ She pointed to herself dramatically.

  Lorna nodded. ‘Just choose the colour you can hear in your head and put it on there.’

  Neither Milo nor Tyra questioned what she meant. Instead they swivelled happily to the rainbow of paints on the side.

  Lorna picked up a brush herself, more to give herself something to do with her hands, and held her breath.

  And then the music started – the first simple, rocking-chair chords of ‘Imagine’ – and something happened. Lorna’s brush reached instinctively for the purple paint, and there it was.

  As the school band honked and parped their way into the first verse, she looked at the mark on the white canvas. That’s what it sounded like: a calm purple wave and she’d made it.

  Lorna suddenly felt like a transparent balloon against a cloudless blue sky, the music and the colours passing through her into her hands. She reached for the paint and squelched her brush in it before the sparkle left her – something about the regular heartbeat of the melody really did feel purple and she drew a pulsing line along the base of the canvas, relishing the slippery ease of the paint as she went, the breathy feathering as the paint ran out.

  Next to her, Milo and Tyra splodged away with enthusiasm, a brush in each hand with different colours. They didn’t care about being wrong or right. Milo was bouncing as he painted, and Tiffany had flipped into nanny mode, moving paints out of reach before red brushes could be plunged into yellow paint ramekins. Within moments, the canvas glistened as the colours erupted across it like fireworks, colour and sound in one.

  Lorna stepped back to look at what she’d done, and a child pushed into her space to add an arching red shooting star as the violins soared behind them. His paint dripped down into the pretty feathering of her purple wave, but she didn’t mind.

  A magical thing was taking shape right in front of her, a machine powered by imaginations working together and separately, and Lorna wanted to float away with excitement. Even if it was a huge mess, she’d achieved something she never thought she would. She’d beaten a white canvas in a staring competition. Finally!

  So this is what it feels like to be an artist, she thought, and the words sent a flutter of silvery elation across her skin as she reached for another clean brush.

  The sun came out during the next piece, and the marquee began to fill up with people eager to have a go at expressing ‘Eye of the Tiger’ in poster paints. Tiffany had to organise a one in/one out system at the easels, as Hattie washed brushes as fast as she could. The photographer moved around taking pictures, people gathered to watch the artists working, and the buzz of interest rose, along with the smell of trampled grass in the marquee.

  ‘Let me guess – was that the John Lennon?’ said a voice next to her elbow. ‘I would say so, from the waves?’

  Lorna turned round. Joyce was standing next to her, with Keir following close behind. She was resplendent in a man’s black jacket over her trousers, with a trilby tipped at a rakish angle. A hammered silver brooch finished off the look. Lorna had never seen Joyce so dressed up; clearly, she’d gone to some effort, and Lorna felt honoured, if a little disappointed that Joyce had missed the chance to make the first mark.

  ‘Hello!’ she said. ‘Were you waiting to see if the rain stopped?’

  ‘I was waiting for you to start, Lorna,’ said Joyce. She squinted at the three finished canvases. ‘What joyful colours. This has all worked out even better than I’d imagined.’

  ‘Would you care to join us for the 1812 Overture ? We’ve been saving a canvas for you.’ Lorna tried to sound light, but held her breath. Had Joyce changed her mind about joining in? Was that why she was late?

  Their eyes met. Joyce paused, then to Lorna’s relief, she nodded, with a twinkle.

  The queue stepped back as one when Joyce approached the painting area – she had an aura, Lorna t
hought, fascinated. A calm intensity, like the gathering weight in the sky before snow, her creativity suspended somewhere between her imagination and the canvas.

  Joyce picked up a brush and moved it gently in the air, her gaze fixed on the easel as if the colours were already appearing to her.

  ‘There you are!’ Calum Hardy popped up out of nowhere, and within moments he’d organised a photo call with Joyce and Lorna, volunteers in Art Week T-shirts and, of course, himself in the middle. Joyce made the elegant first touches to the 1812 Overture canvas (bright yellow peaks, three inscrutable red circles), and gave the local paper a few quotes about how inspirational the area had been for her, but she declined to be photographed next to her own painting, Ronan’s bandstand.

  ‘Lorna is a generous curator.’ Joyce touched her arm, nudging her forward to give her the moment. ‘I’m honoured to be involved.’

  Calum went off to talk to some more journalists, and Joyce and Lorna were left alone for a moment, observing the activity from a distance.

  ‘So what did it feel like, that first stroke?’ Joyce regarded her from under her trilby. ‘With everyone watching you?’

  ‘Scary,’ Lorna admitted. ‘I have no idea where it came from, the colour or the shape.’

  ‘Who does? It was very brave.’

  She suspected Joyce was being kind. ‘Hardly brave . I didn’t have time to think. The music started, so I had to.’

  ‘All first leaps require courage. And it’s hard to be watched while you’re working, I know.’ Joyce’s gaze didn’t flinch. ‘It was a sterling effort.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lorna. ‘And thanks for making me do it. You’re right, it had to be my responsibility. Even if you’d have done it better.’

  ‘I don’t know about that. You have your own vision,’ said Joyce. ‘You’re a very creative person, Lorna. You just have a rather narrow idea of what form creativity can take.’

  Neither of them spoke. Suddenly it felt as if the world had shrunk into the damp space of the marquee, and they were back in Rooks Hall, talking in front of the fire with the ticking clock, the smell of firewood and dog hair. She bloomed with pride. If I had to paint this emotion, she thought, it would be a deep, warm red.