me, I do hope you will never think to find.
But in my blood you live,
and in the contours of my own face
I often catch you smiling at me.
The taunting grin of evil.
The taunting grin of absence.
I wish you were dead.
How I’d write a damning
eulogy for the worst man in the whole world.
You have set the bar low – at least –
for all the men who live here on earth.
But I find myself hoping sometimes
they will all join you in hell.
So along with all your disciples,
I wish you were dead, Dad.’
That last word, delivered with such a sting of venom, seemed to ricochet off the glass all around them.
And there was silence for a time, heavy in the warm air.
Opal watched Ruby Tongue vanish in those moments and leave behind a more human version of herself, the Ruby they all knew, the one who had to carry the pain that her alter ego had the luxury of expelling into the world.
As a slow deliberate clapping began, Ruby bowed her head. To Opal it seemed an admission of exhaustion. Maybe it wasn’t until that very second that Opal truly appreciated how draining these three themes – birth, death and sex – that she had so causally thought up, would be for the artists who harvested their souls to rise to the challenge.
Chapter 41
In the days after the showcase, Noah always felt a bit flat. There was something about the build-up, the anxiety, the second-guessing, that moment of wondering if maybe what you’ve created is actually amazing, and then, it was over. The rest of the group came in, experiencing two weeks of almost relentless work in just under half an hour, and that was it. The next day it was time to dismantle.
These past few days had felt particularly deflating. The final challenge had started, and with it the final fortnight of their time at the manor. On top of all that Noah felt woefully under-experienced in the subject matter: sex. He’d had sex, but not the sort that people made art about. It was the teenage sort, fumbling and mortifying in equal measure.
His dalliance with Opal had only cemented his fear that that was all he was capable of. And then there was that one thought that had lodged in his mind afterwards, the one that made him worry this was all some sort of perverted expression of his missing his mum …
Noah was moping around his lab, and swirling around the same old thoughts when there was a soft knock at the door. He worried it might be Opal. After that night she had stopped calling in on him, but it still felt like there was much left unsaid. For his part he was happy for it to remain that way, but as long as he was a guest in her house, he supposed he was also at the mercy of her whims.
But it wasn’t Opal at the door, it was Adam. Noah was surprised. For weeks he and Adam had grown closer, but after the party that had stopped abruptly. Adam had sat quietly while Johan had revealed Noah’s little deception. Noah reasoned that perhaps Adam was angry at having been lied to. It made sense. Noah didn’t think he’d ever met anyone so transparent. He wasn’t an oversharer by any means, rather Adam was so comfortable in his skin that, unlike Noah, he seemed utterly uninterested in pretence of any kind.
‘Hello, Noah, may I come in?’ Adam was also exceedingly polite. On other people Noah might have found his ‘properness’ pompous, but on Adam it was charming.
‘Course, I’m just messing around.’ Noah suddenly felt self-conscious, and he racked his brains for what he could do next to look more convincingly ‘busy’.
Adam too seemed at a loss. He looked around for somewhere to sit, and settled on a rickety painter’s stool. ‘I wanted to speak to you; I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. Doing this second brief it was hard not to concentrate on everything I’ve lost, but then after the dance, I realised there was so much beauty in love expressed …’ Adam looked down, suddenly shy ‘… even if it’s for something, or someone, that you know can never be yours again, or maybe was never yours in the first place …’ Adam seemed to lose his train of thought. It was disconcerting to witness him stumble over his words.
Noah had his back to Adam, and it was only the rattle ofthe test tubes in his hands that made him notice his own hands were shaking.
‘I saw you the night of the party, outside with Opal.’
