Katie Fforde's Winter Collection by Katie Fforde

Author:Katie Fforde [Fforde, Katie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2016-11-03T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

‘HI! WHERE HAVE you been? What’s all that?’

Harriet staggered through the door of Sally’s flat, weighed down with artist’s materials, tins of emulsion, huge sheets of paper, and a bundle of household paint brushes.

‘You’ve got to help me, Sally. I’ve got to produce a portfolio by ten o’clock tomorrow.’

‘Of course, anything I can do. What’s a portfolio?’

‘A folder of work, drawings, sketches, things like that.’

‘But, Harriet, I can’t draw to save my life!’

Harriet smiled for the first time that morning. ‘You don’t have to, twitto! I want you to model.’

Once Sally understood Harriet’s problem, she threw all her energies into helping. All day she lay on a sofa in various states of dress and undress. She took up yoga positions, pretended to serve at tennis, do ballet or anything else that Harriet asked for. When she became stiff from holding the same position for too long, she primed sheets of paper with the white emulsion, leaving Harriet to create meaning out of a black banana, an unripe kiwi fruit and a half-empty bottle of Perrier.

Harriet had to abandon her tidy, water-colour habits. Time was short, and working at such a furious pace forced her to be bold. Swift, curving lines slashed across sheets of white paper, blocks of white chalk created patches of light on sheets of black, in a frenzy of creativity. When May appeared in the evening, Harriet laid her brush down for a moment.

‘Well here we are,’ said May. ‘The proud possessors of a mobile phone and a telephone number.’

‘Was it awfully expensive?’ Unconsciously, Harriet wiped paint on her face with the back of her hand.

‘No, it’s all right as long as we don’t use it. They charge us for incoming as well as outgoing calls. If we have to ring anyone, it’s better to use a phonebox if we can.’

‘We’ve got Piers’s phone for a bit,’ Sally reminded her.

Harriet nodded, her mind back on her painting. She had stopped doing lightning sketches and was using acrylics, working on a composition using the many sketches she had of Sally’s naked body, some fruit, and a cat drawn from memory which, if she were honest, looked a little like an owl.

Sally made her stop for something to eat. May made appreciative noises, and they both plied her with glasses of wine. Eventually, May went back to the boat and Sally went to bed. At three in the morning, Harriet abandoned her painting and lay down on the sofa.

‘I’ll just close my eyes for a moment,’ she promised, and fell asleep.

‘Harriet?’ Sally stood over her with a steaming mug. ‘It’s half-past eight. You’ve got to be at your class at ten. I’m doing your cleaning job, remember?’

Sally’s voice seemed to come from a long way off. Harriet dragged herself away from the kaleidoscope of confused images which had been her dreams and into the present. Sally poked at her with a scarlet-tipped finger.

Harriet pushed her hair out of her eyes. Whatever was in the mug smelt faintly medicinal.

‘What is it?’

‘Camomile.

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