The day before, after she’d spoken to her mother, she’d strolled to the beach and spent hours sketching and then painting. At first the blank sheet of paper glaring up at her had felt intimidating, almost like an accusation. She’d made a few strokes with her pencil and her hand had felt stiff and uncertain. She was used to guiding and teaching. Less used to creating something herself. But who was going to see it? Fortunately the beach had been virtually empty and no one had seemed interested in looking over her shoulder. Eventually her hand had started to move with more confidence, as if it had finally remembered what to do. She’d stayed on the beach until her skin had started to burn, and then piled all her equipment into her bag and strolled home. She could have used any room in the house to continue her painting, but instead she’d rummaged in one of the kitchen drawers for the old rusty key that opened the summerhouse at the bottom of the garden. These days it was used for storage, but at one time it had been Liza’s favorite place.

The lock had been as rusty as the key, but with a little oil and lots of maneuvering she’d managed to open the door. All the memories had come rushing back. The summerhouse had been the focus of so many of her childhood games of make-believe, constructed to fill the long weeks when her mother was away. It had been a bookshop. A hospital. A pirate ship. She’d been a wild child who lived in the woods. A fairy princess. A good witch.

And now, today, she was an artist.

Energized by this project that was all for her, she’d cleared out cobwebs and broken plant pots, brushed a thick layer of dust from the floor and polished the murky windows to let the light flood through the glass unrestricted. After a few hours of hard work she’d turned the place into something that could be described as a studio. She’d rescued her old easel from the back of her mother’s garage and set out her paints on the table. Pastels, watercolors, oils—she’d worked in a variety of mediums in her time and was excited to do so again. She’d experiment with all of it and see what she found most absorbing.

Too excited to take a pause, she headed back to the house for long enough to make herself a simple sandwich with the remains of the fresh crusty loaf she’d bought from the deli and some thick sliced ham, poured herself a glass of chilled white wine, and carried both down to the summerhouse.

With the windows open she could hear the sound of the birds in the garden and the occasional bleat of a sheep from the field behind the house.