Maybe I was.
The view of the landscape was breath-taking, but not so much as the room itself. A stack of old patio furniture was piled at the far end, but the rest of the room was filled with easels and brushes and canvases at various stages of completion. A heavy workbench in the centre of the room housed a collection of sprays and varnishes and palette tools, and underneath were pull-out trays of paints, in all the colours of the rainbow, perfectly arranged and at odds with the random arrangement of everything else in this place.
I looked through a stack of finished abstract pieces, and the colours and depth made my heart sing. An interpretation of the world through the window, in twilight, could have been hung in any posh gallery going, it was so rich, so alive, so skilled.
The other easels were facing the opposite direction, and I had to step further into the room to appreciate them.
Oh… my… God…
My cheeks burned, even though he was miles away, and I fought the urge to scurry away, to the safety of his bedroom where his sheets were still covered with us, and sex, and the rush of last night.
I felt like an intruder here, but I was transfixed, compelled to walk further, closer to the girl in the painting.
The girl in the painting was me, she had to be me.
She had my hair and my eyes and my nose, and she was posed like me, the way I posed myself in my paintings.
I flipped through more box canvases to the side, and they were more of the same… a woman craving release, shackled, or tied, or held down by strong hands. His hands.
Oh God, they were beautiful.
They were so beautiful.
All those nights of dreaming and hoping and rubbing myself to orgasm weren’t just idle fantasy.
He was real, and he was dark like me, complex like me, tainted and perfect and everything I ever wanted. And my heart had known it, even when my mind hadn’t.
I was looking for more when I saw another pile in the corner, but these were different.
The brushwork was exceptional, razor-sharp and skilled, with a lattice effect of cross-hatchings to govern the overall appearance. This was special art, art that gave you butterflies and artist envy. I brushed the dust away from the signature, and made out a clear AR.
Anna.
I found a picture of her on the mantelpiece, and she was just as beautiful as a teenage weirdo like me would fear. Her dark hair was bouncier than mine and she was curvier, prettier, lovelier.
And dead.
She was dead.
I felt like such a horrible, jealous little cow.
I closed the door on the art room, and decided to stick to the safe option.
The laptop was still signed in, and I was about to log back into Facebook and mind my own business when a directory icon caught my eye on his Desktop.
Anna Mark Private
Private.
What is it about the word private?
I didn’t want to look, I really didn’t, but I was guided by some morbid fascination that took control of my fingers and tapped that double click, and the directory contents window sprang up in front of me.
Pictures. Loads of pictures.
I scrolled down.
Videos, too.
I caught a flash of nakedness, and looked away with my heart thumping in my throat. And then I knew I was doomed.
Oh shit.
Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.
This was really none of my business. It was absolutely, definitely, one million-billion percent none of my business.
But I couldn’t stop myself clicking Play.
***
Helen
Anna had beautiful dark eyes, and there was a sadness in them that reminded me of open fields in a rain shower. I could almost feel the rain on my skin. She was a proper artist, I could tell. One of those people with sadness in their soul, that hear the lonely song in everything.
Like me. But I wasn’t a proper artist.
I was just a kid, and seeing Anna Roberts on camera just hammered that home to me all over again.
She was lying on the same sofa I’d been sitting on the night before, but it looked newer, and wasn’t covered in magazines. She was staring at the fire in the grate with her feet resting on the arm of the chair, dressed in white satin that crinkled across her breasts and showed almost everything. There was a lot to see, too.
The cameraman moved closer and knelt at her side and her smile filled the screen, so dazzling, and happy, and in love.
She was so in love with him, and it knocked the air from my lungs.
Mr Roberts’ voice was still the same.
“How is my beautiful wife?”
“She’s tired.”
“She should go to bed.”
“She should go to bed with her beautiful husband.”
I felt a flash of guilt, as though I’d been in her place, trespassing in someone else’s sheets.