‘Feeling better this morning?’
Leonardo looked over his shoulder at her. He was wearing the old hoodie, but only because he was painting and didn’t care too much about ruining it, presumably.
‘I’ve brought you breakfast,’ she said, putting the Starbucks paper bag down beside him. ‘Hopefully in a couple of days I won’t have to do takeaways any more. They’re starting to fit the kitchen today. So you’d best lie low till they’re gone.’
‘That’s what I’m good at,’ he said, leaning over to make the tiniest alteration to a brick red terrace of houses he was in the middle of depicting.
He put his brush in a jar and picked up the paper bag, taking it over to his sleeping bag.
‘You didn’t answer my question,’ he said, looking hard at her. There was a smudge of blue paint on his cheekbone and his hair was mussed again, stubble dotting the lower portions of his face.
Jenna tried to banish the flip-flopping feeling she got from looking at him. Aesthetic appreciation is fine, Jen. Ogling is not.
‘I’m good, thanks. Slept well. You need an old shirt or something.’
He uncapped his coffee and gave it an appreciative sniff.
‘Why?’
‘To paint in a tracksuit seems all wrong somehow. You should have a great big smock and a floppy beret.’
Leonardo laughed. ‘When I want to look like a tosser, I’ll let you know.’
She walked over to the painting and inspected the progress he had made.
‘This is just stunning,’ she said. ‘Their faces – each one of them is a person, not a lumpen crowd. All human life is here. You’re very observant.’
‘I watch people,’ he admitted, blowing at the steam on his coffee. ‘Always have done, since I were a scrap. People’s faces are interesting, aren’t they? They say a lot more than words do, half the time.’
‘Yes,’ said Jenna. ‘You know, before I started work on Talent Team, we had a briefing on how to stay poker-faced during the acts. How not to give away what we were thinking. It’s extraordinarily difficult.’
‘I bet you got it, though.’
‘I can do it when I’m watching a new act. Not so much in other circumstances, really. What made you such a watchful child?’
Leonardo had to put down his coffee, fearful of spilling it on Bowyer’s fur and scalding him. He stroked the cat on his lap as he spoke.
‘My mother. She said one thing and meant the other. She did that a lot. It worried me, so I had to learn to watch her face, then I’d know what she meant.’
‘How odd. Why was she like that?’
‘Survival, I think. She had a rough life. I used to watch her telling the latest boyfriend what a big man he was, when really she meant he was a handy bastard and she was afraid of him. And she’d tell me off, in front of them, but she never meant it. She only did it because they wanted her to. Once I got that, I was less worried. I knew she still loved me, after all.’
A wave of sympathetic tenderness almost bowled Jenna over. She wanted to rush over to him and hold him, seeing the anxious child he must have been behind the swaggering young man.
‘Oh,’ she said. ‘That must have been hard.’
He shrugged, tipped the cat off his lap and took a mouthful of coffee.
‘Is she still around?’ asked Jenna. ‘Your mother?’
‘She’s still alive,’ he said. ‘I don’t know about around. She’s in and out of hospital a lot. Depression.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He shrugged again. ‘Not your fault,’ he said shortly, rummaging in the paper bag for the egg muffin she’d brought. ‘What about your folks? They left town, didn’t they?’
‘They’re in Spain. Marbella.’