Chapter 19

19

“Your hair! You are Ophelia! You are Venus Rising from the Sea!”

It takes me a moment to recognise the voice of the woman from the park. Like me she has also made an effort to look alluring, although her version of that seems to be wearing a flower crown and a pale lace dress with long sleeves that sway as she moves.

I shuffle uncomfortably as a couple of patrons in a nearby café turn to look at me, seeing not Ophelia or any other Pre-Raphaelite figure but an embarrassed and sweaty ginger woman in a too-short dress and tatty trainers.

“Shush!” I admonish. Then: “I’m so sorry—I think you told me your name at the park but I can’t remember it.”

“It’s Frida.”

I hold out my hand. “Ah yes. I’m Delphie.”

“Our hands together. Feels like soup.”

“Sorry?”

“Our sweating hands, all smooshed together.”

“Hmm, yeah.” Ew. I wipe my hands on the back of my dress. She does the same, grinning at me as though that was a pleasant interaction. She pats her bag, a patchwork, tassely affair. “I’ve brought pencils and pens for drawing. Have you got yours?”

I shake my head. “Oh, no, no, no. I’m not here to do any drawing. I’m here to meet Jonah off the poster. The one with the blue eyes.”

“Ah, I thought he was the model.”

I blink. Somehow that possibility had not occurred to me. I’d only considered the notion that Jonah was a participant or maybe even the instructor. But the model? How will this work? How am I supposed to even introduce myself with his junk on full display? There is so much to worry about right now.

I follow Frida into the pub, climbing a staircase that leads into a function room. Every window is all the way open, but the room remains as hot as Hades. There’s a circle of chairs, easels set up in front of each one. In the middle of the circle is a rug, upon which is an absolutely beautiful short-haired woman sitting cross-legged in a kimono.

“Welcome, welcome!”

It’s the bald man from the poster. The one that Frida fancied. I hear her make a little excited noise beside me.

“Hallo!” She waves at the other attendees, a varied selection—some who look like they’ve come straight from the office, one in a supermarket uniform, a teenager with dyed black hair in a severe bob and a stud on each side of her nose.

Frida takes a seat and nods at me to do the same. “Come on, Delphie. Sit by me so we can buddy up.”

“Where’s Jonah?” I ask the bald man, who introduces himself as Claude. “I actually just came to see him.”

Claude looks at his watch. “Kat is our model for the first session.” He points at the beautiful woman sitting on the rug. “Jonah models for the second session.”

He is a model!

“What time is the second session, please?”

“In an hour.”

I nod. An hour. An hour is nothing when the alternative is eternity in Evermore.

I sit stiffly in front of an easel. While Claude busies about saying hello to his regulars, my phone vibrates with a text.

I realise that perhaps I was rude last night. I apologise. Best, Cooper.

“You have no materials with you?” Claude asks, distracting me before I can reply. I shove my phone back in my bag.

“Oh. No. Sorry. I didn’t think I was…I was just coming to see…um…no. I don’t.”

“What’s your medium? Charcoal? Pencil? Ink? I think we have some acrylics somewhere if you want to paint, but the sink isn’t working so probably not a great idea in terms of mess.”

“Charcoal?” I say, not quite sure why, because I’ve never drawn in charcoal. Maybe that’s why. I remember my pencil drawing of Mr. Taylor, the speckled photocopies pinned up all over school. I push the memory back into the locked box of doom in my brain and smile my thanks as Claude hands me a few sheets of thin paper and a long stick of charcoal.

“Okay, guys.” Claude claps his hand together like a flamenco dancer. “We will do a series of ten-minute speed sessions in which Kat will switch poses each time. Then we will do a longer thirty-minute pose. Following that will be a short break before Jonah arrives and we begin session two.”

I cannot believe I’m going to see Jonah again in one hour. I grin to myself as I imagine us talking again. Having him look at me with those kind, sweet eyes. Touching my arms.

“Delphie?” Frida whispers beside me. I look up to find that everyone has already begun drawing. Kat has stood up and disrobed, her arms upright and in a prayer position. “You were caught in a daydream.” Frida says.

I pick up my charcoal and press it against the sheet of paper. It immediately snaps in half. Damn. I have no clue what I’m doing. I place one of the broken halves of the charcoal on the easel ledge and look up at Kat. Her skin is so unmarked, like it’s been filtered. You can see her ribs, but she is not skinny. She has a narrow strip of pubic hair that is so neat it looks like it’s been drawn on. Is that how it’s supposed to look? Because I wouldn’t know where to begin.

Shit. Jonah has seen Kat naked. Have they slept together? Surely they must have—two people as genetically blessed as them seeing each other in the buff week after week.

“Delphie!” Frida repeats. “Are you well?”

While I’ve been worrying, she’s done an entire drawing that’s not half-bad. A little beeper goes off, and Kat changes her pose. She does a sort of splits position on the floor, and holds one hand to her ear as if she can hear something in the distance.

“I’m fine! I’m doing it!” I wave Frida away. Pressing the charcoal to the paper with less tension, I begin to sketch the outline of Kat’s body.

Before I know it, the timer has beeped again and Kat is now sitting crouched, with her hands across her knees, and then again standing up and doing a martial arts posture. I fall into a kind of trance, only the smell of charcoal dust and the sound of scratching on paper making any dent in my consciousness.

“Time is up!” Claude shouts. I blink as if I’ve just awoken from a long sleep. A flood of emotion spreads through me. It’s a good emotion, euphoria almost. My heart is beating fast like I’ve had a little too much coffee.

That was…I haven’t drawn anything since the incident at school. God, I’ve missed it.

“Wow,” Frida says, leaning over to look at my drawings. She picks up my papers one by one, making a noise of delight at each new sketch. “You didn’t say you were a professional.” She holds up her hand to high-five me. I studiously ignore it.

“I’m not a professional.”

“She is not,” Claude murmurs from behind me, weirdly close to my neck. “But perhaps she could be…one day.”

Frida hands him the papers, which he examines, making comments about lines and compositional choices that I don’t quite understand. All I know is that it feels good. Whatever is happening right now feels good.

“You work well on the female form,” Claude drawls. “And you will get to do more of Kat in session two because alas, dear Jonah has texted to say he cannot make it.”

I jump up, my papers scattering onto the floor. “What? No! I thought he was the model for the second session? I came here to see him.”

Claude puts his hands up. “I’m sorry! Since he modelled for David Hockney last year we have many people show up just to see him.” He rolls his eyes. “But life drawing should be about the art, not the model! This is not a pop concert, you know.”

Frida muffles a snort beside me.

“Jonah modelled for Hockney?!” I yelp. I love David Hockney. He’s my second-favourite artist after Modigliani. And Jonah modelled for him? What are the chances?

Claude nods like it’s no big deal. “Jonah is an excellent model. He makes the most wonderful shapes with his body.”

I wonder dazedly about the shapes that Jonah makes with his body. What shapes can I make with my body? Will Jonah like my shapes? I quickly shake my head and force my mind to focus on the more vital issue at hand. I have to see Jonah tonight. I’m running out of time. “You said he texted you, right? I need to get in touch with him about…something. Please can I have his number?”

Claude presses a hand to his chest. “Gosh, no. I can’t just hand out the private information of my models to anyone. Their safety is very important to me.”

“Safety? I don’t want to hurt him!”

“I wouldn’t know that. How would I know that?”

“She would never hurt him,” Frida pipes up, full of indignation, as if she’s known me for longer than the sum total of sixty-five minutes.

“I’m his…friend. I wouldn’t do anything to hurt him, ever. Please give me his number.”

“If you really are his friend,” Kat calls over, “surely he would have texted you to tell you about the last-minute gig.” A gig? Doing what? “Some exclusive dance event at the Shard,” Kat continues. “That’s why he can’t come tonight. He was so excited about it. I expect he texted all of his friends. He texted me. But not you. You don’t even have his number. Which leads me to believe you are not his friend.”

Kat. You gotta love Kat. “Yes, yes,” I say, digging out my phone and pointing at the empty black screen. “Ah yes! The Shard! Dance event! There’s the text! What time did it say the event was on your text?”

Kat opens her mouth, but Claude tells her to hush. “Kat! She is clearly lying. Zip it.”

Kat literally mimes zipping her mouth.

I dash over to her. “Kat, will you give me Jonah’s number? Woman to woman. It’s important.”

Kat points at the imaginary zip on her mouth.

“Fine,” I say.

And it is fine. It’s not ideal, but it’s fine. I have a lead. He will be at the Shard tonight.

I roll up my sketches, slip them into my bag, and determinedly march out of the function room.

“We’re leaving?” Frida asks. “But we’ve paid for the whole two hours!”

“Oh, you can stay!” I say vaguely. “But I have somewhere to be.”

There’s a Tube strike this week, so I pull out my phone, flicking onto a ride-sharing app. It shows an available car two minutes away. I should get to the Shard in…fifty minutes? That’s ages. Frida peeks over my shoulder at the screen. “Taxi’s too expensive. You could take a bus.”

“I don’t have time,” I say, pressing the booking button for the taxi.

“I’ll come with you,” Frida announces, bringing me back to the present.

I shake my head quickly. “Oh no. No need. Anyway, I thought you wanted to ask Claude out?”

Frida shrugs. “I feel his personality doesn’t match the picture on the poster, you know? On the poster he looks like a dynamo. But in real life it’s like he has a stick of charcoal lodged where the sun will not shine.”

When the car pulls up, I dive into the back seat. Frida—ignoring my polite rejection of her company—immediately climbs into the other side, strapping herself in and giving me a thumbs-up. “It’s funny,” she says, her eyes shining with excitement. “All this time I’ve lived in London and I’ve never been to the Shard. I always said to Gant we should go, and he always said, ‘Frida, be quiet.’ I do talk a lot, I suppose.”

“Gant sounds like a dick,” I mutter.

Frida shrugs and nods her head slightly, her gold moon earrings dancing at the movement. “He wasn’t so bad.” Her eyes have welled up again. She seems genuinely heartbroken.

As we slowly pull away from the pavement, Claude jogs out of the pub and over to the car. “You are crazy and possibly a danger to my most popular model!” he shouts through the open window, his cut-glass voice ringing in my ears. “But you have much artistic potential!”