I laid it out, just like Mark said, and I could hear Dad raging in the background, spitting flames.
“Come if you want,” I snapped. “But I’m painting this picture! I’m doing it!”
I hung up, and Mark smiled.
“That’s my girl,” he said, and it only fuelled my pain.
It was Mum who arrived through the art room door at gone six. She was flustered and dithery and made gestures to indicate she was sick of the world and everyone in it.
She stopped moving when she saw my painting, and I heard her gasp.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Helen, love…”
And it tipped me over the edge.
Yes, it was horrible. Yes, it was ugly, and sad, and pitiful, and broken, and disgusting. A terrible concoction of colours and lines all messed up together.
And it was my heart that was torn in the middle. My soul that died in the corners of that canvas. My sad eyes staring out at me.
I gritted my teeth and kept going, and my limbs were angry and desperate and my heart was full of hate.
I heard Mark get Mum a stool. He got her a coffee, too. And neither of them said a word.
I found that place inside, and it was so sad in there I could hardly stand. I summoned it and spat it out and sobbed and heaved and slashed my way around that canvas until it was full. Until it was brimming. Until the paint was thick and angry and I was a shaking wreck.
I let out a pitiful squeal that didn’t sound like me, and I cursed the universe for giving me something so good, only to make it so bad.
And then I was done.
I hated that picture with all my heart, but it was the most beautiful, raw thing I’d ever painted.
I dropped my brush and placed my hand in the centre of it, as though my palm could stop the bleeding.
And then my legs went from under me.
***
Mark
Helen’s mum gasped and let out a weird sob, but I was already over there, and I’d taken more than I could fucking bear.
Helen’s canvas was a beautiful monstrosity, her handprint the final emblem of heartache over an otherwise truly horrifying expression of grief. And I felt it.
I felt it when her fingers trailed down the canvas and she crumpled to the floor.
I pulled her to her feet and into my arms, and she weighed nothing, just hollow bones and skin. It broke my fucking heart.
She flailed pathetically, shrieking through sobs that her mum was there, and she’d tell her dad and it would ruin everything, but I was done with her ridiculously sweet ideas of nobility. And I was done with Helen’s dad, too.
I wrapped my arm around her waist, and tipped her chin up and made her look at me and I said what I should have said weeks ago.
“Enough,” I said. “This is enough. It finishes here.”
“But…”
“No,” I said. “Absolutely enough, I mean it, Helen.” I fished the envelope from my pocket and slammed it on the table and it was the greatest relief of my life.
For once she didn’t even argue. She buried her face in my chest, and she was nothing but sobs and arms, and it felt so good, even though it was so sad. Just to feel her against me was the only thing that mattered. The only thing I cared about.
“I’m going to hand in that letter first thing tomorrow morning, and you’d better start thinking, Helen Palmer. You’d better start thinking about what we’re going to do with the rest of time.”
I hoped she was smiling, but I couldn’t tell, she was still a heaving mass of tears.
I felt them, too, and I didn’t want to. I choked my own back with a laugh, and pressed my mouth to her hair.
“You can stop it with this stubbornness as well, I mean it, Helen, this crap will drive me to an early grave. You’ve aged me ten years already. They’ll be thinking I’m your bloody granddad next time we go to Birmingham.”
And she did laugh then. She laughed and I’m pretty sure she snotted all over my shirt, and that was funny, too.
But I was serious, deadly serious.
“I’ll put the house on the market, and we’ll move. Wherever you want. You can pick. We’ll make a whole house full of memories, a brand new house, and it will be ours, with no ghosts, and no memories in cupboards, just ours. Do we have a deal?”
She nodded against my chest, and I breathed in relief. I exhaled every bit of air in my lungs, and it choked me. The relief fucking choked me.
“I’m sorry,” she cried. “I was trying to do the right thing, but it was wrong… it was the wrong thing… but I felt so bad…”
“It doesn’t matter now,” I said. “It’s over.”
“But I made you so sad…”
“No,” I said. “You make me so happy.”