Teresa flicked through the Renaissance book, colour plates of men and women in their finery, their skin taut as boiled eggs, bulging eyes, delicate ringed fingers and swathes of damask on their shoulders. Strangely elongated Virgin Marys, darted with a yellow beam of the Annunciation; nightmarish scenes of mythical beasts; men with five legs; women turning into pomegranates. She read the names silently: Bellini, Bosch, Cranach. It was another language to learn and assimilate, to wield like a weapon.
The Vogue was well out of date, but Teresa didn’t care. It was hers. She was glad it was already a year old. Sarah barely glanced at her magazines before dumping them on the floor of her bedroom, their colours and allure a siren that Teresa was astonished her mistress couldn’t hear. But she didn’t want Olive getting into trouble.
‘Are you certain your mother will not mind?’ she said.
‘She won’t even notice. Isaac is still here I think,’ Olive said, putting away the sketchbooks and The Orchard under the bed. ‘We should go and see what my mother wants with him.’
Teresa pushed down the cloud that rose in her chest at the mention of Isaac, closed the Renaissance book and followed Olive out.
?
Isaac picked up the second glass of lemonade and clinked it against Sarah’s. He was used to women being like this around him; feline, flirtatious, giddy. He never encouraged, but this only seemed to make their behaviour more pronounced. It was almost clownish – and yet he had learned not to assume immediately what women wanted from him. It might look like one thing, but it was quite often another.
He thought of how essentially different Olive was from her mother, so innocent, reaching out to him like a drowning girl, more obviously than she probably imagined. And yet she intrigued him in a way that Se?ora Schloss did not. Sarah dazzled immediately, but there was something supple and interesting about Olive, beneath her awkwardness. She was a survivor of her parents’ marriage. He wondered whether if Olive stayed with them indefinitely it might work out badly for her.
He heard footsteps, and Olive appeared at the door, switching her attention between him and her mother, as if she was trying work out a difficult sum. Teresa was peering behind Olive, with a strange look of triumph on her face that made Isaac wary.
‘Liv,’ said Sarah. ‘Guess what?’
‘Do I have to?’
‘Mr Robles is going to paint my picture.’
‘What?’
‘As a surprise for Daddy,’ Sarah went on. ‘I’ve given Mr Robles a commission.’
‘But he hates surprises.’
‘Well, so do I, Olive. But Daddy is getting this painting, whether he likes it or not.’
Olive came forward, seating herself on the moth--eaten armchair, left at a careless angle to the sofa. ‘Have you got time to paint this, Mr Robles?’ she asked. ‘With all the work you have?’
‘It will be an honour,’ he said. Olive bit her lip and looked towards the unlit fireplace, filled with logs that Isaac had piled up for their convenience. Teresa remained in the doorway. She was sneering slightly at him, and he felt irritated with her. She lived in a bubble, she had no idea how many times over the years he’d protected her.
‘I should be in the painting,’ Olive announced.
‘Livvi,’ said her mother after a pause, realigning the crease of her trouser leg. ‘It’s my surprise.’
‘I think Daddy would like us both to be in the painting. We sat for one years ago. We should do it again.’
‘We did?’
‘You’ve forgotten. Yes, we did. Mr Robles, don’t you think that would be a good idea?’
Isaac felt the pressure of the women’s attention like a physical weight. ‘You must decide,’ he said. ‘He is your father, your husband.’
Sarah picked at a bobble on her trouser. ‘Mr Robles, if I agreed to sit with my daughter, would you need to paint us together?’
‘Not always, se?ora.’
‘Well then,’ she sighed. ‘We shall work it out between us, won’t we, Olive?’
Olive tipped her chin in Sarah’s direction. ‘Yes, Mother,’ she said. ‘We will.’
6
Olive and Sarah were to have three initial joint sessions, arranged when Isaac was not teaching in Malaga. Teresa was to guard the secret. ‘Tell Harold that we’re at the market in Esquinas,’ Sarah had instructed her. ‘Or seeing the local doctor. You can think of something, Teresa. You’re so clever.’
By the second session, as Isaac painted Olive and her mother in the dimming light of his cottage kitchen, Olive knew something was wrong. Sarah, in a semi--sheer lavender blouse and a brown silk skirt, kept her spine continuously at a slight arch, one arm draped behind Isaac’s kitchen chair. She was concentrating on being her best self for the artist, but Olive could see how bleak and drawn Isaac looked.
She thought he should be happy; his party had just won the national election. It had been on the wireless, on the front pages of the newspapers her father brought back from Malaga. A left--wing coalition was in power, something that surely must make him feel triumphant.
‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, when Sarah excused herself for a moment.
He looked up from where he was painting, with a surprised expression. ‘A boy was killed,’ he said. ‘I knew him a little.’
‘Killed?’
‘Last night. A local boy called Adrián, a member of the Anarchist party. Worked in a factory in Malaga. Started by tying red ribbons on donkeys and bicycles, and ended up burning his boss’s property records. He had a loud mouth, but he was only a kid. Some bastards shot him and tied him to the back of a truck.’
‘Oh, Isaac. That’s awful.’
‘They’re calling it a crime of passion, which is a joke. He didn’t have time for love.’
‘Have they arrested anyone?’
Isaac’s expression darkened. ‘No witnesses. He tied himself to the truck, of course. He didn’t have any feet left by the time they’d finished.’
‘Good God. Who would do such a thing?’