Last Chance by R.A. Spratt

Author:R.A. Spratt [Spratt, R. A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760148614
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia

Friday and Melanie spent the next two days focused on art. It was easy to forget that they were meant to be on the lookout for criminals. The mystique of the Louvre collection was captivating. Listening to lectures and drawing beautiful artworks all day was a really fun cover ID. They’d spent a whole morning learning about Liberty Leading the People by Eugène Delacroix. After hours of staring at the painting of a semi-naked goddess brandishing a French flag in one hand and a bayonetted musket in the other, as she led soldiers across the battlefield in the July Revolution, the politics of the art world seemed unimportant.

Friday and Melanie fit in surprisingly well with the other art students. Roberto, Adam and Sophia were all very talented, but they all had such different styles of drawing, Melanie and Friday’s efforts didn’t stand out as being of a different quality. Melanie had a lovely whimsical style, while Friday was more linear and literal. The others just assumed she was a Cubist and that the clinical style was a statement about man’s existential inhumanity, not a lack of skill. Maybe it wasn’t. Friday began to wonder if she had more talent than she had thought. Art was different when you were doing it for fun, not just a compulsory component of the school syllabus. They weren’t being marked. She could draw what she liked, how she liked, and she enjoyed it.

Late on Wednesday afternoon, Friday and Melanie were sitting in the lounge room working on their sketches of Liberty Leading the People when the porter stumbled into the room. Friday’s first thought was that the poor woman had been stabbed. She was gasping for breath and clearly traumatised.

‘Quick, sit down,’ Friday urged, looking her over for obvious signs of serious wounds – perhaps a carving knife sticking out of her back. The porter was so rude to everyone it wouldn’t surprise Friday if someone did stab her. But there were no blood patches on her clothing or weapons extending out of any visible part of her body. After several moments of heavy gasping, the porter lunged forward and grabbed Friday by the front of her brown cardigan.

‘It’s okay,’ said Friday. ‘Take your time. Say what it is you need to say.’

The porter struggled to control her breathing, ‘I . . .’ she wheezed, then dragged in a deep breath so she could say, ‘. . . hate you.’

‘What?’ asked Friday.

‘She said she hates you,’ said Melanie.

‘What did I do?’ asked Friday.

‘All the other children have telephones, but not you,’ said the porter. ‘No, you make a hard-working woman climb five storeys’ worth of stairs to deliver messages.’

‘You’re in this state just from climbing up stairs?’ asked Friday.

‘I would murder you right now if I had the energy,’ said the porter.

‘They really need a defibrillator in the building,’ said Melanie.

‘There is one down in my office,’ said the porter.

‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ said Friday. ‘If someone is going to have a heart attack here it’s going to be at the top of the stairs, not at the bottom.

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