“You’re late,” he says in a thick East London accent.
“Sorry,” I say, feeling thrown. “It’s my car. I had to jump-start it. I need a new one, although I’ve been thinking about getting a bike.”
“I don’t need the whole backstory, baby,” he replies.
“Right. Show, don’t tell,” I say.
Lee runs art classes in his atelier at a whopping one hundred quid for three hours.
“Mara, right?” he asks.
“I am,” I say. “Mara Williams. Here to try to combat Jupiter retrograde.”
We are a week into Jupiter retrograde and this could prove to be a problem. It is here, apparently, to slow my personal growth. But not today, Jupiter.Not today.
“Hello, fellow fire,” he says, dipping his head. “Aries.”
Thrilled, I clap my hands together excitedly, and when Lee reacts with muted amusement, I calm myself immediately.Must not get carried away. Must stay cool. Must not be weird in front of people from same small town.
He opens the door to the next room and I’m surprised to see three other painters all setting up their easels to hold the large blank canvas frames that cost an extra thirty pounds on top of the fee. “Your easel is there at the front. Within spitting distance of our subject,” he says with a naughty wink, “so keep your coat on.”
I take my place in the long, low-ceilinged room, which has a small raised platform at one end, paints and brushes filling thelittle shelving area at the back. Not a space on the floor is wasted, piled high with drop sheets and larger canvases leaning against window frames, obscuring what little light there is to begin with. Above me, from the ceiling, hang herbs and dried flowers bunched together with string. It’s quite something.
“Where is the subject?” I whisper to the lady next to me, who is mixing skin tones on her palette with turpentine and linseed. She flicks her long ginger curls over her shoulder and rolls her beady eyes.
“He’s later than you,” she says, looking at my shoes, then my dungarees, then all the way up to my beret. She smirks, and when she turns away, I quickly take the beret off and pop it in my backpack.
The main door opens in a blinding light, reminding us that it is a bright summer’s day we’re all missing out on, and I squint for a moment before I make out a familiar shape. My heart starts to quicken as my eyes adjust.
Oh, hell no. I’m not paintinghimnaked.
“Oh my God,” I say under my breath, my eyes darting to Lee and then back to the figure, wrapped in a too-short terry toweling robe in baby blue.
“Nina!” booms the voice. “Fancy seeing you here.”
“Hi, Gerry,” I say, the heat in my cheeks instant and ferocious.
Lee guides Gerry to the front area of the stage, and while wrestling a thick smoothie and a bacon sandwich, he disrobes and perches on the edge of a stool, maneuvering the straw into his mouth as his whole naked body settles into position.
“Uh, Lee,” I whisper, trying to get his attention, but he’s already across with another painter, whispering quietly and intensely.
“How are you, Nina?” Gerry says. “Recovered from your little frustrations at work the other day?” He sucks hard on his straw andmakes the most disgusting sound as he works hard to get the thick yogurt drink through.
“Yeah, sure,” I say, looking at the ceiling and then the floor and then settling on a candelabra to the side of the stage. “Um, why are you doing this?”
It’s a fair question. He manages four local council facilities in Broadgate, he has plenty of money, I presume, so why on earth is he here at this little local life-drawing class, naked on a stage, posing like he’s a buxom, pert-breasted vixen in a Botticelli?
“Lee painted me and my third wife for the wedding, last year, and this is how I’m paying him.” He glances down at his pectorals, attempting, I think, to make them move up and down. Then he looks up at me looking at him and I look away in horror.
“You’ve not made a start,” Lee says, finally arriving, his hands clasped behind his back as he bobs up and down, observing my blank canvas.
“I... aah.” I lean into Lee and lower my voice to a whisper. “This is my boss. And, um, I just think it’s a bit inappropriate to be here, looking at him, you know... um, naked?”
Lee nods as if he’s heard this a hundred times before.
“That’s Gerry’s daughter there at the back,” he replies, and I swing my head around to see a girl of maybe twenty-five with her tongue jutting out the side of her mouth making huge circular strokes. She glares at me, irritated that we’ve broken her concentration.What?she mouths.
“Ew,” I say, unable to hold it in. “I’m sorry. I can’t.”
