‘Except we didn’t.’
‘Didn’t what?’ Kate says, holding the door open for her.
‘Do it together. You skulked at the back.’
Kate laughs.
‘I wasn’t skulking! I just wanted to give you your own space.’
Funny way of showing it, Marisa thinks. They walk out into the street.
‘Do you fancy a coffee?’ Kate asks. ‘It would be great to chat.’
‘No, I’m sorry,’ Marisa says, flustered and then annoyed with herself for being flustered. ‘I mean, I’ve got a deadline. Work stuff.’
‘Ah yes. The painting! How’s it going?’
How can she get rid of her? Marisa wonders. Why all these questions? They are standing on the pavement now, facing each other, Marisa with her arms crossed in an attempt to create some physical boundary between them.
‘It’s going well, thanks.’
‘That’s great. Do you like working from that room?’
She’s just trying to be friendly. It is not how Marisa would have gone about it, but she must try not to judge. She calms her breathing as Carys would have advised. Inhale. Exhale. Empty your mind of anxious thought.
‘Yeah. The light’s amazing.’
‘I’m so glad.’
Why are you glad? Marisa thinks. It’s my fucking house.
‘OK, well that’s a shame about the coffee but let’s do it another time.’ Kate reaches out to squeeze her arm. ‘I’m so happy we’re living together.’
She looks at Marisa with such intensity it is almost as if she is staring, and although Kate is smiling, the smile doesn’t quite reach her eyes, which remain dark and narrow and slanted. Marisa pulls the sleeves of her sweatshirt over her hands.
‘I’d better go.’
‘Sure thing,’ Kate says.
As Marisa walks away, she knows without looking that Kate hasn’t moved. She crosses the road at the lights and turns left by the cafe that has faded gilt lettering in the window, and when she turns back, Kate is still there.
Kate lifts one arm and waves.
‘See you back at home!’ she shouts across the street.
Automatically, Marisa raises one hand in response. Then she quickens her pace until she gets back to the house and when the door shuts behind her, she realises she has been holding her breath.
6
Back in her study the next day, Marisa can’t concentrate. She stares at the photo of Petra, one of the six-year-old twins, that she has pinned onto the cork-board above her drawing table, trying to communicate her features to the tip of the paintbrush she has poised in one hand above the blank sheet of paper. Petra is a pretty child – prettier than her sister, which seems unfair given they are identical twins. But such things are unquantifiable, Marisa has come to learn. It’s not about the physical fact of a child’s appearance, it’s about the dimple in a chin or the way someone frowns or laughs, revealing tiny, jewel-like teeth.
The photo she has of Petra has been taken during a family day at the beach. Petra is in a blue swimming costume, imprinted with orange pirouetting dancers, and she is standing with her back to a sand dune, so she must be facing the sea. It is windy and Petra’s wavy, yellow hair is being buffeted, thin strands of it landing across her face. She is looking directly at the camera, with a steady intensity. Most children would be grinning on demand, Marisa thinks. Or they’d refuse to pose at all. Or they’d be actively scowling. But Petra does none of these things. She simply stands there, a calm, stocky little person in the middle of the wind and the sand and the sea, waiting for the photograph to be taken.
When her parents had emailed Marisa the photos of the twins, she had printed them all out as she normally did. But this particular image, she had blown up to double its original size. She was drawn to it – to her, rather. What must it feel like to be so calmly confident about one’s place in the world? To not have to try to make people love you?
It is difficult to translate all of this into a series of brushstrokes. Marisa can get the physical attributes down – she finds the other twin, Serena, much easier – but she knows there is something missing, some vital intimation of Petra’s character that remains lacking, so the paintings remain flat and lifeless.
She tries with a different flesh colour, mixing in a dab of orange to the pink, and then she tries putting her in skirts rather than dresses, and then shorts rather than skirts, but nothing works. She has been in here since six this morning, sneaking out of bed before Jake was awake and before Kate left for the office. She had barely slept and her dreams had been scattered and fragmentary. At one point, she had sat bolt upright in bed, convinced that Kate was bending over her, closely examining her face.
