Times Like These Read online

  It helped that Bianca seemed to be taking no notice of her whatsoever. She stood in the middle of the room, lips pursed, brow furrowed. ‘Well, okay,’ she said at last. ‘I guess we’ll just give it a go.’

  Bianca glanced sideways at Merren and nodded. ‘If you can just stand over there, in front of the white curtain there, that should be fine.’

  Merren moved obediently over to stand in a stream of sunlight. ‘I might need sunblock on to stand here any length of time,’ she said. Either that or she’d end up with an awfully good case of sunburn, particularly on pieces of her skin that didn’t usually see the bright light of day.

  But Bianca was shaking her head and moving over to let a gauze drape fall over the window through which the bright light was gushing. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ Merren answered. ‘What sort of pose do you want me in?’ She tried to keep her voice as steady as possible asking the question, her gaze riveted on the artist.

  ‘How curvy are you?’ Bianca asked. ‘Penny was fairly curvy, which would be good, really, at the moment.’

  The question threw Merren and she looked down at herself. ‘Um, fairly, I guess,’ she said.

  ‘Can you show me, please?’

  Merren closed her eyes for a moment. How did she get here, again? Slipping the robe from her shoulders, she let it drop to the ground, standing there with nothing on, feeling the woman opposite her looking at her body.

  ‘Okay,’ Bianca said, and Merren opened her eyes. ‘Like this, I think, for starters.’ She lifted her arms above her head in demonstration, stretching one hand towards the tiled roof, and bending the other arm over her head.

  Bianca squinted sideways at her again. ‘Can you exaggerate the pose for me? I, ah, want nice, clean, unmistakeable lines.’

  Merren adjusted her pose, looking up at the ceiling, conscious of the woman’s attention on her, and tried to think of anything else but that.

  ‘Okay. Will you be able to hold that for a while?’

  ‘Yes,’ Merren said, and her voice came out in an embarrassing croak, but Bianca had already turned away to her easel.

  The room was warm, filled with a giddy white light, thanks to the sheer drapes drawn over most of the windows. Merren stood in her position and tried to find something to concentrate on. Something, anything, that wasn’t the woman behind the easel.

  She could see Bianca’s curly hair at the side of the easel, a glimpse of her face. She’d put glasses on, her eyes a pale grey behind them – very much like Suzette’s except perhaps not so stormy. More like the soft grey wings of the red-billed gulls Merren saw over the city every day. Their feathers were so smooth and dense that they looked more like fur. And the grey was pearly, luminous.

  Merren shifted uncomfortably, just the slightest movement, careful not to break her pose. Her mouth was dry. She hadn’t thought to bring a bottle of water, and she cursed herself for being stupid.

  She looked carefully away from the woman perched behind the easel with her pearl-grey eyes and fixed her gaze on an invisible point in the room. Stared into mid-air, determined not to move a muscle, to barely even breathe, and certainly not to look back at Bianca, whose hair curled in tight corkscrews that Merren unexpectedly found herself wanting to thread a finger through, pull taut, then let go to see them spring back into their tight curl.

  Enough of that, she told herself. These were not the thoughts to have when standing nude in front of someone. Her skin prickled all over and she could feel a dull, red heat growing on her cheeks. She closed her eyes for a moment. Bloody hell, Merren, she told herself, so the artist is attractive. She’s also a whole bunch older and is totally uninterested in anything but using you as a life-size mannequin.

  Her mouth was still dry, and she drew in another breath, deeper this time, figuring she probably needed the extra oxygen.

  A scraping sound drew her attention back to Bianca, who was on her feet, moving her easel until it was at right angles to where Merren stood.

  ‘Sorry about this,’ Bianca muttered. ‘I can’t get it right.’ She sat back on the stool in front of the easel, then immediately hopped up again, shifted the heavy contraption once more, back a little toward Merren, then groped for the stool, sat back down. Her face was furrowed into a deep, tight frown.

  Merren wanted to ask if everything was all right. Was that acceptable? What was the protocol when you were an artist’s model? She chewed on the thought, face tipped toward the ceiling, eyes glued to the artist.

  She’d call Renata back when she got home, she decided. Call her back and ask for Beverley’s number. Beverley had been doing this for years – she’d know what was and wasn’t appropriate.

  ‘Is everything all right?’ she asked before she was able to stop herself.

  Bianca blinked at her. She had a piece of charcoal between her fingers, but her hand lay limply in her lap. Not answering the question, she put out her hand, found the easel’s ledge and put down the charcoal, then took off her glasses and rubbed at her eyes.

  ‘This isn’t the way to do it,’ she said on a sigh.

  Merren was confused. The way to do what? ‘Am I doing something wrong?’

  But Bianca just shook her head. ‘No,’ she replied. Her voice was faint, and Merren didn’t know whether to believe her. Something was obviously wrong. The artist’s eyes were red-rimmed, strained, as though she were trying to hold back tears. Merren put her arms down.

  ‘Is there anything I can do?’ she asked, her own voice little more than a whisper.

  It was quiet in the room. Merren reached instinctively for the silky robe and pulled it on, holding it closed in front of her. She walked over to Bianca and put a hand on the other woman’s shoulder.

  ‘Are you all right?’ she repeated as she touched her.

  Bianca jerked back on her stool and lost her balance. Merren, grabbing at her, snatched her back from toppling completely over, and held her until she steadied.

  ‘Please,’ Bianca said. ‘Take your hands off me.’

  Merren let go, held her hands up and took a step backwards, then realised that the robe was gaping open, and she was standing over the poor woman, her boobs hanging out. She fumbled for the tie around the waist and cinched it tight.

  ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’

  Bianca shook her head. She shuddered and drew herself taller on the stool. ‘You can go and get dressed,’ she said.

  Merren backed up another step. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated. ‘I didn’t mean to overstep.’ She gestured at the spot where she’d been posing. ‘I can go back there and stand just like you told me too. Nothing else is anything of my business; I’m sorry.’

  Bianca wouldn’t look at her. She stared at the paper on the easel, refusing to turn her face towards Merren, even when she spoke.

  ‘No, I should be apologising,’ she said. ‘You just startled me, that’s all.’ She wiped at an eye with the heel of a hand and sniffed, attempted a smile, but still didn’t look at Merren. ‘But that really is enough for today. You can get dressed and go home.’

  Merren nodded, not knowing what was going on. Only, it was obvious something was. Did she push to know what, or did she back off gracefully?

  She didn’t know Bianca. Didn’t even know her last name, for that matter. So she nodded. Shuffled over to the screen and hid herself behind it. Dug up her underwear and slid them gratefully on. Perhaps nude modelling wasn’t her thing, after all.

  There was the sound of the stool scraping back against the flagstones on the conservatory floor.

  A door opened and, a moment later, closed.

  Holding her jeans in one hand, clad only in her knickers, Merren stepped out from behind the screen and looked disbelievingly around the room.

  It was empty. Bianca had left.

  Blinking, Merren stared at the empty room, then padded across the cool stone floor to the easel in the middle of the room. She looked at the paper on it, s
tared at it for a long moment.

  It was blank. She looked around again, still holding her jeans, unaware for the moment that she was practically naked, then went to one of the windows and peered out.

  The path to the house was empty; the front door from which Bianca had emerged only a short while ago was firmly closed.

  Merren went back to the screen and pulled her jeans on and the rest of her clothes. She did it in silence, wondering about what had happened. Wondering what had made the beautiful artist cry.

  She was sure she’d seen tears on those soft-skinned cheeks.

  She was still thinking about it when she let herself out of the studio and walked down the driveway, casting a last, curious glance at the house, behind whose windows nothing moved.

  Chapter Four

  Bianca stood in the middle of her bedroom, mortified, hands pressed to her cheeks. She’d taken her glasses off, stuffed them in the pocket of her smock and now she pressed her fingertips to her closed eyes, trying to keep the tears in, trying not to lose it. Her composure. Her sanity.

  What had she been thinking? That she could just pick up the piece of charcoal and because she’d decided she could still, somehow, be an artist, that it would all work out? That she’d just be able to do what she had always done?

  Shuffling over to the bed, she sank down on it, then immediately got up again and waded through the shadows over to the window. Her room was upstairs, and she groped in her pocket for her glasses again, put them on, and stood sideways to the glass, tilting her head to see as best she could the path from her studio down the driveway.

  The woman was a blur, shutting the studio door behind her and walking slowly away from the house. Bianca could make out dark hair over a paler oval of the girl’s face looking towards the house. She shifted back a step from the window but kept trying to look.

  The young woman had a nice voice. Even if it had had a disconcerting amount of concern in it, which meant that she really had been losing it.

  But of course she had! Bianca hugged herself and the hazy figure below moved down the driveway and out of sight. She turned away from the window and took her glasses off, shuffling back over to the bed and putting them on the night stand. Eyes closed against the blur of the room, she climbed onto the bed, reaching blindly for one of the soft blankets to pull over herself and turning her face towards the pillow.

  She lay there in a state of dark suspension, eyes closed. Sometimes it was a relief to just take her glasses off and come to lie here in the darkness where she didn’t have to give herself a headache trying to figure out all the time what she was looking at.

  Yes, she’d liked the woman’s voice though. And the little she’d been able to see of her was perfect. A good height, really, and not too big, not too small. Just right. Bianca smiled despite herself. The young woman was a modern-day Goldilocks. Just right. Her hands had been warm, when they’d touched her. Not too hot, not too cold. Just right.

  But it had been startling, when those hands had touched her. This was why Bianca didn’t like going out anymore – she couldn’t see well enough to notice properly when people had moved close to her. It was always a surprise when they appeared at her side. A shock.

  The woman – what was her name? Something unusual. A smile curved along Bianca’s lips, unnoticed. Merren. Was that it? She thought so.

  Merren had moved without speaking. She’d simply appeared out of the shadows, a hand on Bianca’s shoulder, a rich voice that sounded like warm honey asking her if she was okay.

  Bianca patted her own fingers towards the spot on her shoulder where Merren’s hand had landed. The skin there burned with the memory. Bianca swallowed. Rolled onto her back, kept her eyes closed, stared up at the ceiling through her eyelids, heard her own voice, choked and upset, tell the model to take her hands off her.

  She sat up. What was she doing? Lying on her bed mooning over a stranger with a pretty voice? A woman she’d just humiliated herself in front of? There were more important things going on. She swung her legs off the bed, flung out a hand for her glasses, and knocked over her water glass instead.

  ‘Shit!’ Her hand was wet. The glass bumped to the floor, and she heard it roll under the bed, miraculously unbroken. Staring at the window ahead of her, she sat on the bed and tried to see out of the side of her eyes the extent of the damage. Then gave up and spread out her fingers instead, feeling the soaked blankets and pillow.

  ‘Shit.’

  The bathroom was at the far end of the landing, and she walked there on unsteady legs, snagged the towel hanging there and returned to her bedroom, pressing the thick cotton to the wet blankets, trying to mop up the worst of it.

  Her glasses were wet too, and she fumbled with them, drying them on a corner of the towel. When they were back in their place on her nose, she sighed, thinking of the water glass somewhere under her bed, and slid down onto her knees, bending over to slap a hand at the floor under the bed.

  Wherever it had landed, it was out of reach, and out of sight. Bianca sat back up and hugged herself, giving up on the job. It would have to stay there, and maybe it was time to think about drinking out of a damned sippy cup or something. Something that wouldn’t spill when she knocked it over.

  Which she would.

  Because she was going blind.

  She turned all the lights on in the kitchen, stopping to give herself a moment to adjust. Her appliances and the kitchen table swam out of the darkness and she skirted her way around to fill the jug, holding it under the tap with one finger inside it to feel when the water reached the right level, cursing as she always did now at how this had become second nature to her.

  She set the jug to boil, found her teapot and set it on the counter in front of her, going by outline and memory to pick up the cannister of tea. It was a new blend, this one, and she sniffed at it. Supposed to lift the spirits.

  Well, she had spirits, and they certainly could do with a lift. She dropped the teabags into the pot and tapped her nails against the marble counter while she listened for the water to come to a boil. She flicked the jug off before it did, and filled the pot, trying not to scald herself.

  That, at least, was getting easier as time went by. She put the pot on the table and searched for a cup. Of course, they were exactly where they were supposed to be, because if they weren’t, she’d be lost in her own house. And that was something that couldn’t be allowed to happen.

  Sitting down at the table, Bianca stewed along with the teabags. She smoothed her hand over the silken grain of the old Rimu table, the wood almost warm under her fingers. She delicately explored the old nicks and dents in the table, seeking them out without really paying attention to what she was doing. It was calming though, and she thought that maybe what the doctors said was true – that her other senses would heighten, the less that she could see.

  Abruptly, she flattened her palms on the table and the tears threatened again. She sucked in a breath of air that was scented with the gently steaming tea and the flowers from her garden that stood in a jug in the middle of the table. Where she couldn’t see them.

  She needed to be able to see. Her other senses be damned. She was an artist – a painter. She needed to be able to see.

  Closing her eyes, she amended the statement with a sigh and drooping shoulders.

  She needed to be able to paint. That was the important thing, and the thing that needed to be tackled now, before she lost anymore of her sight.

  It could be done, she was positive of it. A wince. She couldn’t afford to be anything but positive of it. If she couldn’t paint, then what was she?

  She would be nothing.

  Her throat was dry. Was the tea ready yet? It was too easy to lose track of time in this constant blur in which she lived. Reaching out, she found the teapot and touched its round and portly side. Her wife had bought this teapot, and a sad smile lifted the corners of Bianca’s lips. Bess had brought it home from the flea market, holding it high over her head, face shining with
a happy grin, as though what she’d found really had been a treasure, rather than a fat little teapot with big yellow daisies painted all over it.

  Bianca couldn’t really see the daisies anymore – she couldn’t see anything except from her peripheral vision, and that was a distorted blur – and she was terrified of breaking the pot. Picking it up, she poured carefully into her mug, then set it back on the table, thinking she’d buy a replacement. Something plain, something she wouldn’t shed a tear over when she dropped it. Which was bound to happen.

  Her head was heavy, and she rested it in her hands, closing her traitorous eyes. She couldn’t drive to the shops anymore and hated going to them. It was too disorienting. She couldn’t process the distorted information coming through her eyes quickly enough. She never knew where she was.

  She paid the kid next door to do her shopping for her.

  No one else knew she was going blind.

  Macy, her agent, thought she was too busy painting to go out and about at the moment. When she called, which she did every few weeks, Bianca made all the right noises.

  Everything’s going brilliantly, she told her. No problems. Hard at work. No, I don’t want you to see them yet. Yes, it’s a new series. Trying something new.

  Bianca lifted the cup to her lips and sipped at the tea. Her pulse was racing. She couldn’t keep up the charade for much longer. Hence today’s abortive effort. Putting down the cup, Bianca raised her wrist to her forehead and sighed. Pushed the cup away and laid her head down on the table, cushioned on her arm.

  There had to be a way. And there was, she knew it. There was a way for her to keep painting, if she could just figure it out.

  She stared out at the blurry room. Tapped her free hand against the table. Smelled the flowers, the tea.