with interest; I waved, dimly, and she smiled, disappearing up the stairs.
‘She’s fine,’ Tom said, wearily. ‘She just needed some fresh air.’
‘Really?’ Robin said, her tone arch. She turned to me. ‘Fresh air?’
I nodded. I felt oddly ashamed, a swell of guilt rising as I tried to recall my reasons for leaving her behind.
‘Wanna go home?’ Robin said, after a pause. I felt the world lurch forwards, and another wave of nausea struck me like a punch to the gut.
‘Home sounds good.’
‘Okay,’ Robin said. She turned again to Tom, who was already walking back towards the stairs. ‘Thanks for looking after her,’ she said, though I thought I heard a note of sarcasm in her voice.
‘Any time,’ he replied, without looking. His footsteps echoed up the steps as we left the tower, and stepped out once again into the night. The brief moment of warmth in the reception hall served only to heighten the cold outside, which now felt biting and cruel. We walked in silence, down the hill towards the edge of campus, through a dark passage lined with chicken-wire fences and overhanging trees fused into a tangled canopy above.
‘I’m sorry for leaving,’ I said, a little relieved at the sound of my voice which, for the first time in hours, sounded like my own.
‘It’s fine,’ Robin said, a few paces ahead. We walked a little longer in silence, before she added, ‘I had a fight with Andy. I think we’re over.’
I felt a rush of relief at this, the implication that perhaps her tears were not on my account, but his. ‘I’m sure it’s not that bad,’ I offered, awkwardly.
‘How would you know?’ She turned to me, eyes flashing anger.
‘I don’t, obviously,’ I said. ‘What I mean is …’ I clawed for some non-committal phrase, something to appease her. ‘I don’t know. Maybe it’ll be better in the morning. You probably just need to sleep on it.’
She sighed. ‘I don’t want to be rude,’ she said, slowly. ‘But what experience do you have, exactly, that puts you in a pos-ition to be doling out relationship advice?’ Her eyes were dark in the orange glow of the street lamps, her shadow long and distorted up ahead. I felt my cheeks burn red hot, and, grateful for the cover of night, I looked down at my feet, watching the fabric of my shoes flash and listening to the tap of the pavement as we walked.
When we reached the mermaid, Robin leaned in and gave me a stiff peck on the cheek, gripping the hair at the nape of my neck with a clutch that felt just a little tense, her squeeze a little too tight. Without a word, she turned and walked away, her figure casting a long shadow as she disappeared into the night. I walked home in a stunned trance, remembering as I reached my front door that I had told my mum I’d be staying at Robin’s (her house a cover for a party expected to go on until dawn). I climbed the stairs and nervously crawled into bed, my mind uselessly grasping for answers as I tumbled into a cold, dreamless sleep.
Robin chewed her pencil, turning it about in the gap between her teeth with a hollow click. I rose from my seat, ostensibly to sharpen my own pencil. In fact, I was bereft of ideas and looking for something to steal. Annabel’s cryptic prompt: ‘Destination’. The air was milky, tinged pink, the windows draped in gauze and tulle. A faint smell of slowly rotting flowers mingled with clay and turpentine on the air. Annabel – whose cheekbones pressed up against her wrinkled skin in smooth points, and whose white hair hung down her spine in thick, loose rings – liked to change the studio weekly, following some unspoken theme. Sometimes spartan, white and clean and sometimes moonlit, the sky blocked by starry batiks and luminescent, the effect was one of perpetual change: our ways of seeing challenged, time and again.
Annabel hadn’t spoken to me directly for several weeks. Hadn’t even looked at me, in fact, though occasionally I’d feel as though I was being watched, sitting in the studio trying to untangle the threads of a lecture, or a prompt. But whenever I looked at her, she seemed to be absorbed in a book while chewing thoughtfully at a hangnail, or scrawling furiously in a paint-flecked notebook, as though none of us were there at all.
Muddled sketches of airports and cars; pastel beaches and sunbathers, both realist and cartoonish, idealized or grotesque: my fellow students had responded to the prompt as unimaginatively as I had, though with varying degrees of success. Except, that is, for Robin. Hers was a dark, gloomy charcoal sketch, black dust lining her fingers and smudged at her wrists: a wood of trees curving claw-like above a rocky path. Emerging from the light at the end, two figures stood in silhouette, limbs monstrously thin, the backs of their hands barely touching, brushing against one another.
Hers was the only work Annabel would peer at from above, as she made cursory circuits of the class (usually only as the Headmaster passed, his passion for ‘active teaching’ being taken rather literally, for Annabel, at least). I watched the other girls watch Robin with an envy that disappeared in an instant, a shadow only seen in the corner of the eye, a weakness for Annabel’s attentions none of us would willingly admit. But I felt it – the dim awareness of it was its own kind of shame – though when she passed I leaned farther forward, arms wrapped around my work, embarrassed at the childish scratch and scrawl.
Annabel looked up as though about to speak, interrupted by the shuddering bell, the shuffle of students awakened from the silence. ‘Complete these for next session and we’ll discuss,’ she shouted over the noise, ‘and try not to be too vapid, if you can possibly manage it!’ She paused, and turned to me. ‘Violet – a word, if I may.’
I froze. Robin turned to me and grinned, stuffing the drawing carelessly into her bag. She shuffled past, mouthing ‘See you later.’ I smiled, weakly, my stomach churning with fear.
As the studio emptied, Annabel rifled through a mass of papers, not looking up. I stood, nervously mute, as the plastic clock ticked a full minute above. ‘Here we are,’ she said at last, handing me a crumpled sheet of paper. ‘You wrote this?’ I felt a knot of shame, sensing what was coming next. It was a belligerent, thoughtlessly thrown together admissions essay, drafted in the hope my application might be rejected, before I’d been tempted by the photos of ancient archways, the sun blooming behind the Campanile. Though I’d succeeded in impressing Annabel so far – or, at least, had avoided the cold glare of her attention – I’d known, somehow, that it would come back to haunt me.
‘“The purpose of art”,’ she said, reading my words, ‘“is to horrify the idiots who say they have taste. Taste means nothing. Fuck taste. The idea itself is a relic of a version of history that doesn’t apply to me, or anyone not closer to being buried than being born.”’ She looked up at me, eyebrow sharply raised. ‘You wrote this?’
‘Yes, Miss,’ I said, staring down at the page.
‘And you believe it?’ I looked up. She stared at me, eyes cold, rolling a silver pen between her fingers.
‘I … Well, kind of.’
The rolling stopped. ‘Kind of?’
‘Yes.’
‘Yes, kind of, or yes, you mean it?’
‘Yes, I mean it,’ I said, finally, though in truth I wasn’t sure – the words then had seemed a little much, and now, absurd. It was a guess, a leap: grasping for the answer she wanted to hear.
‘Good,’ she said, softly. ‘Very good. Violet, I hold advanced classes for those students I think have promise.’ An endless pause; I looked away, unable to hold her stare. ‘I’d like to invite you to join our little study group, if you’re interested.’
The blinds whipped furiously in the breeze. ‘Yes, Miss. I mean, Annabel. Sorry.’
‘Good. I’m glad to hear it,’ she said, rising from her chair and walking towards the window. ‘Though I would ask that