Not possible Andy, not possible.

I remembered her saying that after she had drawn something, she never forgot it. She could close her eyes and see the thing exactly as it was, not the drawing she had made of it, but the thing itself.

There was one of the fountain, and another of the manor from the front, not quite right so she’d ruined it by drawing two smiling stick figures on the roof. A few of the sketches were from art class, a still life, a copy of a painting of a platter of fruit and what looked like a baboon, a miniature picture of the temple and the lake—and there were sketches of us. I knew she had done them, indeed I had seen them before. Peter wearing a daisy chain. Me. Marcus. Why are you doing this to me, Em? Me again, on the lawn looking away, the shoulder wrong but the eyes right. A half-finished portrait of David, all wrong; you could see why she had given up.

But there were others, others I hadn’t seen. A sketch of Marcus. And then another. And then a lot more. Different poses, quite a few portraits of his face. Proper finished pictures, time spent on them, time and love. I had the sketchbook on my lap. Lead had come off on my fingers and I wiped them absently on my trousers. Marcus sitting half in and half out of the shade with his eyes closed. Marcus lying in the grass.

I hadn’t really been listening to the tape, but the music swelled now to fill my ears, not shouty but soft, soft, full of longing. I picked up the case and looked at it, properly looked at it, reading the listings.

Love song, after love song, after love song.

CHAPTER 22

THE SECOND SET

I did not know what to do with the tape Em had made for Marcus. In the end I took it, and let myself out, and when the Whites had gone to bed, I listened to it, over and over on the stereo in Peter’s room, with the volume low in a way that I had not listened to music in years.

After much deliberation, I left it in Darren’s room, inside the visitor’s book, on a Friday evening, knowing Marcus came in on Saturday mornings.

On the walk back, Oliver called again. Sometimes he tried to woo me back. A couple of times he’d threatened me with violating the terms of my contract.

“What are you going to do? Volunteer in Liberia? Build yurts in Mongolia? Start a cheese farm? A yoga camp? Are you going to train in the art of vaginal steaming? It’s all bullshit and you know it.”