‘Of you?’
‘Yes or no, Grace?’
All my instincts told me to refuse. But I was desperate to paint again, desperate to have something to fill my days besides reading. Although the thought of painting Jack revolted me, I told myself he was hardly going to stand and pose for me hour after hour. At least, I hoped not.
‘Only if I can work from a photograph,’ I said, relieved to have found a solution.
‘Done.’ He fished in his pocket. ‘Would you like to start now?’
‘Why not?’ I shrugged.
He drew out a photograph and held it in front of my face. ‘She was one of my clients. Don’t you think she’s beautiful?’
With a cry of alarm, I backed away from him, from it, but he followed me relentlessly, grinning inanely. ‘Come on, Grace, don’t be shy, take a good look. After all, you’re going to be seeing a lot of her over the next couple of weeks.’
‘Never,’ I spat. ‘I’ll never paint her!’
‘Of course you will. You agreed, remember? And you know what happens if you go back on your word?’ I stared at him. ‘That’s right—Millie. You do want to see her, don’t you?’
‘Not if this is the price I have to pay,’ I said, my voice tight.
‘I’m sorry—I should have said, “You do want to see her again, don’t you?” I’m sure you don’t want Millie to be left to rot in some asylum, do you?’
‘You’d better not lay a finger on her!’ I yelled.
‘Then you had better get painting. If you destroy this photograph, or deface it in any way, Millie will pay. If you don’t reproduce it on canvas, or pretend that you are unable to, Millie will pay. I will check daily to see how you’re progressing and, if I decide you are working too slowly, Millie will pay. And, when you’ve finished, you will paint another, and another, and another, until I decide I have enough.’
‘Enough for what?’ I sobbed, knowing I was beaten.
‘I’ll show you one day. I promise, Grace, I’ll show you one day.’
I cried and cried over that first painting. To have to look at a bruised and bloodied face hour after hour, day after day, to have to examine a broken nose, a cut lip, a black eye in minute detail and reproduce it on canvas was more than I could stomach and I was often violently sick. I knew that if I was to keep hold of my sanity I had to find a way of dealing with the trauma of painting something so grotesque, and I found that by giving the women in subsequent paintings names, and looking beyond the damage that had been done to them, imagining them as they were before, I was able to cope better. It also helped that Jack had never lost a case, as it meant that the women in the photographs—all ex-clients of his—had managed to get away from their abusive partners, and it made me all the more determined to get away from him. If they could do it, so could I.
We must have been about four months into our marriage when Jack decided that we’d spent enough time wrapped up in each other and that if people weren’t to become suspicious, we would have to begin socialising as we had before. One of the first dinners we went to was at Moira and Giles’s, but as they were primarily Jack’s friends, I behaved exactly as he told me I should and played the loving wife. It made me sick to the stomach to do so, but I realised that if he didn’t start trusting me, I’d be confined to my room indefinitely, and my chances of escaping would be drastically reduced.
I knew I’d done the right thing when, not long after, he told me that we’d be dining with colleagues of his. The rush of adrenalin I felt on hearing that they were colleagues and not friends was enough to convince me that it would be the perfect opportunity to get away from him, as they were more likely to believe my story than friends who had already had the wool pulled over their eyes by Jack. And, with a bit of luck, Jack’s success in the firm might mean there was somebody just waiting for the opportunity to stab him in the back. I knew I would have to be ingenious; Jack had already drummed into me how I was to act when other people were present—no going off on my own, not even to the toilet, no following anybody into another room, even if it was only to carry plates through, no having a private conversation with anybody, no looking anything but wonderfully happy and content.