“Shit, sorry. I keep meaning to collate those.”
Calum gathered them up. “What are they? Flash for the studio?”
“Some. Most of them are just doodles, though. Lena, who runs the place for me, puts it all online. I don’t have much flash in the studio anymore, unless it’s custom—once it’s gone, it’s gone. I haven’t done the same design twice in years.”
“Lucky you. I wanted to scrap all the shit I had hanging around my place, but Rob—the, uh, person I worked with—had this idea in his head that the place should look like a seventies scratch parlour.”
Brix didn’t miss the bitterness lacing Calum’s usual gentle tone. Rob. Hmm. He filed it away for future reference. “Where’s your place?”
“It’s not actually mine.”
“Okay, where have you been working?” Brix busied himself tossing the spaghetti in the sauce. “You were destined for big things last I saw, but I ain’t heard nothing about you since you left Dark Box.”
“Maybe I haven’t done nothing.”
Calum found the bowls and placed two on the counter. Brix served up the spag bol, resisting the urge to pile it up on Calum’s plate. He knew from experience that too much food when you were fucked up made the sick feeling in the pit of your stomach a hundred times worse.
He pushed Calum’s bowl along the counter. “If you’d been doing nothing all this time, I reckon you’d have told me already. What studio were you at?”
“Black Star Ink.” Calum accepted the fork Brix held out. “You won’t have heard of it, though. I had a long waiting list, but that was probably because there were no other studios nearby.”
“Where the hell were you? London’s got more studios than I’ve had hot dinners.”
“That’s ’cause you’re made of string. The studio was in Paddington.”
“Paddington?” Brix let the string jibe slide. “What on earth’s in Paddington?”
“Fuck all . . . that I was interested in, anyway, but the place did okay. I just didn’t see much return. My, uh, ex handled all the money stuff.”
“Rob?”
Calum grunted and appeared suddenly interested in his bowl of food.
Now we’re getting somewhere. Not that picking Calum’s life apart and forcing him to talk when he so obviously didn’t want to held much appeal, but Brix couldn’t deny he was curious. More than that, and had been ever since he’d found Calum huddled on that damn fucking bench. “What kind of work have you been doing? Traditional is still big down here, but we get a bit of abstract and watercolour through the doors, and some of my guys are bang into their neo shit.”
For a moment Calum looked like he wouldn’t answer, then his gaze fell on the stag on his hand. “I’ve done a lot of dot-work sleeves this year, and some geometric stuff. Did a pretty cool portrait a few weeks back.”
“Can I see?”
“It’s on my phone.”
The faint light in Calum’s gaze faded like it had never been there at all. Brix touched his arm. “I’ve got a bunch of pads upstairs. We can get sketching after dinner, if you want? I could use fresh eyes on a manga piece I’m doing for a sleeve.”
Calum shrugged absently, and Brix let him be. After all, it wasn’t like he didn’t know what it was like to be trapped in his own head.
Brix woke early the next day, acutely aware the moment he opened his eyes that Calum was—hopefully—asleep on the other side of the wall.
He sat up, listening for any sign of movement from the spare room or downstairs, but there were none, save Dennis yowling on the landing, waiting for Brix and Zelda to get up for breakfast.
Brix swung his legs out of bed and padded silently to the bedroom door, avoiding the creaky floorboard that sounded like a dying cat first thing in the morning. Zelda came with him, weaving sinuously between his legs, doing her best to trip him.
“Stop it!” Brix scooped her up, draping her tiny body over his forearm in a re-creation of a black-and-white photograph Lena had snapped of him last summer when she’d brought Zelda to his door and persuaded him that his home was meant to be hers too.
Zelda gave him her patented death stare, but her rumbling purr gave her away. Beneath her scathing belligerence, she was the sweetest cat in the world. Brix tickled her chin, then set her down as he came to the spare room. He eased the slightly ajar door farther open and took a tentative peek inside. Zelda followed his gaze and sashayed forwards, leaping soundlessly onto the bed, sniffing the empty space where, by the rumpled sheets, Brix assumed Calum had been.
Brix went back to his own room and threw a vest on over the tatty jogging bottoms he’d slept in, then he darted downstairs, suddenly struck with a stomach-churning fear that Calum had slipped away in the night. Or worse. The notion was grim, but Brix couldn’t deny the cloud of despair he’d sensed around Calum. Rock bottom was a tough place to be. And if you couldn’t see a way out, Porthkennack offered plenty of scenic places to carve your own.
The numerous nights Brix had considered doing just that flashed into his mind. He stumbled, saving himself on the banister he’d only painted the week before. The smooth satinwood was cool and calming against his palm, but the blue shade bothered him, like it had since he’d stepped back and studied the finished project. Shame he still couldn’t say why.
