“I don’t hate your work, Maisie,” he said. “It inspires no feelings in me at all; that is the problem. I look at your ‘art’ and I feel nothing. It is old-fashioned, meaningless and dated. Pictures of horses? What does that say to me about modern life, about the world we live in now? No. I will not sugar-coat it for you just because you are younger than the others. You have technique, it is true, but it is worthless unless you produce work that sparks emotion, that speaks from your heart and soul. This school is about work that feels fresh and avant-garde – art that shocks with its spirit and courage. This is what a real artist does, Maisie. If you think you will make it through the Paris School with an A-grade by drawing pretty ponies, then you are wasting all of our time.”

And with that, Augustin turned his back on me and walked out of the room.

I stood at the front of the class after he’d gone, and I stared at my picture. Really? Was it so very bad? The horses were accurate enough. I walked back and forth examining the other pictures stuck to the wall, looking hard at the other works, the ones that he’d singled out as his favourites. He liked their modernism, their daring. If I put my own wounded feelings aside, perhaps I could see a little of what he saw, but even if I did see it, I knew I couldn’t imitate it. If I’d tried to copy, then my work would have even less heart than Augustin claimed it did now. I couldn’t do some ridiculous mimicry of the scribbles and blobs that I saw before me. All I’d ever wanted to do was to paint horses. Unfashionable, dated, what was the other word he said? Oh yes, meaningless. Meaningless horses.

There was a whole afternoon of class still to come, but what was the point in sticking around? Augustin hated my work, and I hated being here, and right now all I could think was that this whole art school thing had been a stupid, crazy mistake and all I wanted was to go home.

I was crying again by the time I left the school grounds. I ran out on to the street and I was wiping my eyes as I went round the corner, which is kind of an excuse, but not really, because even with blurred vision you would think I would be able to see a horse right in front of me.