Gilly had slammed the print room door behind her as she left, muttering a series of insults that might have made even Edie blush had she heard them.

The next day, Gilly had woken early and listened to a light rain pitter-pattering on the shed’s roof, and hadn’t been sure she could be bothered to sketch more rubbish. What was the point? She might as well sleep in the shed all day because it was unlikely that Edie was going to garden in the rain. Gilly had enough snacks to tide her over and a bottle of water that she had sneakily refilled from the print room sink. Edie probably wouldn’t even notice if she didn’t turn up for her lesson that afternoon. Even if she did go, Gilly had thought, the old bat would tell her that what she had done was wrong and to try again. Edie was clearly just trying to fob Gilly off until she got so sick of it all that she chucked it in and left her alone.

Nature was calling, though, which meant Gilly had needed to make her way down to the public bathroom on the main street. It was as she’d crossed the street that she’d looked up and seen the web of wires that criss-crossed between the telegraph poles, the shapes they cut into the low grey sky. She’d ducked under the bakery’s awning out of the rain and looked up at them for a while. Then she’d taken out her sketchpad and drawn what she could see. On her way back up the street she’d added the shape of the door handle on the bathroom and the way the raindrops magnified the letters of the word ‘unoccupied’. Later still she’d drawn the natural pattern that leaves made beneath an elm in contrast to the right-angles of the man-made kerbstones on which they had collected.

‘All right,’ Edie had said that afternoon, as she’d looked once more at Gilly’s pad. ‘Now we might actually be getting somewhere.’

The artist had put down the sketch pad and disappeared through the door that led to the rest of the house. She’d returned a few minutes later with a tray bearing two mugs of tea and two plates of Victoria sponge thick with cream and jam. This Edie had set down on the bench. She’d glanced at Gilly.

‘Well, sit down, then,’ she’d said, nodding at one of the stools pushed beneath the worktable. Gilly had done as she was told, and Edie pushed a mug and a piece of cake in front of her before settling down herself. Then she’d reached over and tapped one of the sketchpad’s pages with a long finger. ‘Now what I want you to do is pick one of these new sketches to work on. Whichever one you like best.’

‘Does that mean I get to start playing with the knives?’ Gilly had asked, around a large mouthful of cake.

‘Not on your nelly,’ Edie had told her. ‘And don’t talk with your mouth full, it’s disgusting.’