‘Yes, and it’s amazing.’
‘Now you sound like a historian.’
I leaned on the bar, looking out over the tables so I didn’t have to meet Tara’s gaze. And ever so casually, ever so quickly, I said: ‘I thought it might make a good subject for the community art project. You know? Presents from the Past and all that stuff?’
‘What?’ Tara bellowed, so loudly that two women sitting in deep conversation to the side of the bar both looked up.
Shaking out the cloth I still held in my hand, I pretended to wipe a non-existent mark from one of the beer pumps. ‘I thought it might be a good idea for the grant application.’
Tara squeezed my arm. ‘Yes! This is perfect.’
She took the cloth from me and gave me a little nudge in the small of my back. ‘Go on then.’
‘Go where?’
‘Home.’
I looked up at the clock on the wall. ‘I’m working until ten.’
‘Not now you’re not.’ She looked round the bar. ‘It’s quiet, and Lucas is working at eight. I can hold the fort until then.’
‘Why do you want me to go?’ I was confused.
‘So you can get started.’
‘No.’
‘Go on.’
‘I don’t want to.’
‘Stevie, go home now or I’ll fire your ass.’
‘You wouldn’t.’
Tara folded her arms and stared at me, unsmiling. ‘Try me.’
I wasn’t about to test her resolve.
‘I’m going,’ I said, skirting round her and lifting the hatchto get out from behind the bar. When I was safely out of arm’s reach, I added: ‘But I’m not happy about it.’
She threw the cloth at my retreating back and I ran.
*
I knew if I went back to my flat and got comfortable, I’d never venture back down to the garage. So when I got home, I didn’t go up the stairs. Instead I left my bike leaning against the wall outside, and taking a deep breath I opened the garage door and went in.
It took me a moment to get accustomed to the dim light inside so I had to blink a few times as I slowly approached my stack of canvases, nervously as though they might come for me – like a lion tamer approaching a lion.
‘Come on, Stevie,’ I muttered. ‘Come on.’
My forehead was sweaty. I wiped it with the back of my hand, annoyed at myself for reacting so badly. I reached out for one of the carrier bags that I’d shoved all my equipment into. I didn’t need paints or anything like that at the moment. I just needed a sketchpad and some pencils really. All I wanted to do was to start getting some ideas on paper. ‘It’s no biggie, Stevie,’ I told myself. ‘Stop making such a meal of it.’
Obviously all my pads were at the bottom of the bag. I reached inside, wishing I had the cash to just buy new stuff instead of going through this trip down memory lane. But I didn’t, so I had to grit my teeth and get on with it.
I pulled out a tin box, which I knew had tubes of acrylic paint in, and put it down on the concrete floor of the garage with a clatter. A tray of watercolours followed. And underneath that was a stack of tiny canvases. I caught my breath. Normally I painted big. Not as big as a mural, perhaps, but I painted on canvases the size of fence panels, swirling the paint across them. They were kind of landscapes but not. And they had been the paintings that got me noticed and had been in the exhibition.
But when things started getting complicated in my life – Dad moving abroad, Nan’s dementia, and Max being Max, my paintings got smaller and smaller. By the time Max stole the contents of my flat I was painting tiny squares of canvas, the size of a ready-meal container. Tight, dense pictures, which I could see now as I pulled them out of the bag, were really not very good. And then – after the police arrived at the gallery and I had that heart-stopping moment when I thought my brother was dead – I couldn’t paint at all.
