Gilly had spent hours walking around Newton Dunbar, drawing this and that: a plant in a pot, a leaf, a cat sitting on a windowsill, the old clock in its narrow tower of yellow stone that stood at one end of the high street. By the time evening was falling she’d filled a few pages and returned to Edie’s studio, bored and frustrated. She’d shown them to Edie without much enthusiasm. The artist looked through them and then handed back the pad.

‘This is what you think other people are interested in,’ she’d said. ‘I want to see what you’re interested in. Try again tomorrow.’

Gilly had nearly told Edie where to shove her pad there and then. Patronizing bitch is just winding me up, she’d thought. The artist had looked back at her with her arms crossed and one eyebrow raised, as if to say Come on, prove me right about you. They’d stared at each other across the workbench and Gilly knew there was no point arguing. She’d gritted her teeth and taken the pad back, and was at the door when Edie spoke.

‘They’re not bad, all things considered,’ she’d said, waving a thin finger at the sketchbook that Gilly had stuffed under one arm.

The next day she had wandered around the village again. Gilly hadn’t started sketching until gone noon, and even then it was only because she’d needed to produce something, anything, to show to Edie. She drawn the front of the Co-op, a car, the bus stop. Gilly thought she’d done a pretty good job with each image. They looked exactly as they were supposed to, at least. Edie had flicked through her sketches carefully and then handed back the pad.

‘You’re still not seeing,’ she’d said. ‘You need to stop looking and see.’

Gilly had snatched back the sketchbook and it was all she could do to stop herself from throwing it across the room.

‘That doesn’t make any sense!’ she’d shouted, frustrated. ‘I’m doing exactly what you told me to do! This is stupid.’

Edie had shrugged, unperturbed. ‘Fine. You’re the one who wanted me to teach you. We can stop any time you want. It’s no skin off my nose.’

Gilly had stared at her for a minute, thinking very hard about walking out and not coming back. Then she’d looked over at the big print of the lighthouse on the wall. It still fascinated Gilly as much as the first time she’d seen it. How could anyone cut their way to a picture like that? She still wanted to be able to do that, and putting up with Edie was a means to an end.

She’d still turned and stalked to the door, but she’d taken the notepad with her.

‘There’s no point seeing with any other eye but your own,’ Edie had said to her turned back. ‘We all look at things differently. If we didn’t, there’d be no war, but there would also be no art. If you want to produce good art, you need to know what it is you want the world to see from your perspective. And if you’re going to take up my time, you are going to do this properly, or not at all.’