Composite Creatures by Caroline Hardaker (best story books to read .TXT) 📗

paper. A satisfying clunk and splash, as several brushes were plunged into a jar. A few glassy taps later, Art began sweeping the pad in wild abstract strokes. He obviously hadn’t used watercolours before, as the paper wasn’t taped down. I watched as the crisp edges became warped, unbalanced, curling in on themselves.

“You do know you don’t use watercolours like that, you idiot.”

He peeked over the top of the paper, and tilted his head this way and that to find my best angle. I lived up to it, turning my head in profile. My eyes are little, and I forced them open so much that my left lid flickered with the effort.

Art pointed his brush at me. “I’m the creative here – I can use them however I want, Muse.”

“How do you know I’m not a creative genius? I’m the daughter of a famous artist. You’re an Arthur, and ‘author’, not an ‘art’.”

“You throw the word ‘Art’ at me fifteen times a day, it’s about time I lived up to it, don’t you think? No one ever called me that before you.”

Was that true? I was sure he’d introduced himself as Art when we first met. I wouldn’t have just started calling him that, surely?

While I puzzled over that, he continued to paint in eclectic flourishes, fired up by the challenge. I rubbed my twitching eyelid with a knuckle.

“What are you even doing?”

He let out a huge sigh and dropped the brush back in the jar with a wet ’plop’.

“I’m recording you for future prosperity. I’m going to capture you, Norah, right here and now, on your birthday morn. And I’m going to do it for as long as I still have fingers, and you still have a face.”

“Why stop then? I doubt the result would be different if you held the brush between your toes.”

“How dare thee.”

“And if I don’t have a face? Doesn’t say much for your capturing of my inner soul, does it? Sexist pig.”

Art closed his eyes, and bowed his head gravely. “Hmmm. I wouldn’t want that, it’s not good for publicity.” He sliced a pointed finger through the air. “Alright. Let it hereby be said that I’ll continue to capture you, even if my arms end in stumps and your face slides right off your skull.”

“Deal.”

I leapt from the chair to plant a kiss on Art’s forehead. “And then I’ll paint you afterwards.”

He shook his head. “No. You have to wait until my birthday next January. That’s the tradition. We paint each other on our birthdays. That way it means something.”

That was almost a year away. I felt guilty. It had been Art’s birthday six weeks before and I’d only given him the study lamp he’d asked for.

“Then I’ll get some practice in.”

“Nope, this is spontaneous soul-catching. No cheating, no practising.” He winked and flicked me back to the chair with his finger. “Don’t want you getting better than me.”

I sat back down in silence, my chest a little bit tighter than it was before. Looking down, my knees were spotted with splashes of green watercolour from Art’s palette. I licked my thumb and rubbed the marks until my skin drank them in.

We spent the rest of the sitting in quiet, me trapped in time while Art swept his paint into the blank corners. I had no idea how such bright and violent strokes could possibly mirror this still and silent me. Art finished his masterpiece by swearing at the paper, one hand still clutching his paintbrush and in the other… a roaring hairdryer.

On announcing that the portrait was finally completed, he asked me to close my eyes while he spun the easel. At the press of his lips on my nose, I saw myself.

Art had painted me from the waist up, wearing my cotton robe. I had been right – he wasn’t an artist. My hair was wild, coiling like a tangle of hazel branches. My face was an egg – a blank and milky oval which could have belonged to anyone, crisscrossed with pale blue and green, a pursed little mouth, and a pink blob for a nose. The eyes weren’t mine. Mine squint, but Art had made them bright almonds, almost feline in their curves. He had the colour right though, a muddy brown. The sweeping abstract strokes must have been the background, which he’d filled in with wide emerald stripes, a bit like ferns. The portrait had the shape of me, but I couldn’t help but think Art had tried to show something I wasn’t. I didn’t mind though. I wanted to be those colours.

We left the portrait on the dining table to dry, taping down the corners to halt any further warping. The rest of the day was spent in a semi-doze. I went up to the loft to visit Nut every few hours, refilling her food bowl with jellied vitamins and tinned slop, clicking and tutting under my breath to prick up her tail and send her galloping towards the food. Art retreated to his study again, only returning to watch me blow out the candles and cut the cake when night came. We sat for a calm and lovely twenty minutes together, legs entwined on the sofa, stuffing our faces with three-quarters of a cake meant to serve eight. All the while we sniggered under our breath like schoolchildren at what Easton Grove would have thought of our greed.

As Art padded back up the stairs, I burrowed down beneath the blankets, still smiling. So much had changed for me in the last year. I’d met Art, and he’d brought out a side of me I’d never imagined in a million years to be there. I was interesting. I had moved into a house, a grown-up house, on a street shared by established families and successful couples. You never saw an unhappy face. I felt safe, and for the first time I had back-ups. I was now a member of one of the most exclusive healthcare systems in the