The Girl in the Painting Read online

And with that, he turned away and disappeared into the crowds around the painting.

  Chapter Eight

  ALMOST NOTTING HILL, LONDON

  Simon hadn’t stopped thinking about Cori since their first proper meeting.

  That night, he went into his makeshift studio and looked at all the paintings he had completed recently. They were tourist favourites: Tower Bridge; the Victoria Embankment on a winter’s evening, strung with lights between the lampposts; Covent Garden; the Serpentine, snaking, as its name suggested, through Hyde Park. They sold and they sold well on the Portobello market stall his friend ran. But they weren’t enough. They lacked the passion and the drive he had once had and, to his eyes, they were dull, lifeless images that a photograph could have captured equally effectively.

  Sylvie had a lot to answer for. His heart just hadn’t been in his painting since the break-up. He missed his old workspace as well – the light had streamed into the Chelsea garden flat they had bought together, and the small second bedroom of his current home was nowhere near as good to work in. Sylvie had been the inspiration, the driving force behind his work. They had met at the Slade School of Fine Art; he had been swept away by the talented, dark-haired Parisian and they had made plans – big plans.

  This had all been very well, until he came home from the Tate six months and three days ago, and walked into the middle of Sylvie’s latest love affair.

  The trouble with being an artist and seeing things no one else generally saw, was that something like that stuck in your mind, perfectly executed in every detail. He saw the sinews in her neck as she arched backwards, her full mouth slightly parted. He saw the sweat glistening on both their bodies – and the amused look in Sylvie’s sloe-black eyes as she pulled a shirt on to cover herself. It had been her lover’s shirt, Simon had realised; and he didn’t know if that was more insulting than her wearing Simon’s shirt.

  The image had been a mental block to his creativity ever since. Simon hadn’t managed to put anything down onto canvas apart from the trite, souvenir pictures he produced for Portobello in all that time.

  He took a deep breath and moved a half-finished sketch of Nelson’s Column off the easel onto the floor, and put a large, blank sheet of stiff paper in its place; then he grabbed the softest, darkest piece of charcoal he could find. He decided if he couldn’t ignore the picture, he would paint it out. He would get it out of his head and onto the canvas. He would erase Sylvie and all her sultry Angelina Jolie sensuality from his memory and his life.

  Then, once the image had taken shape and he had drawn every curve and every bead of sweat on those two bodies, he would load a brush with thick, black paint and cover the whole of it. Then he would rip it up and start something new.

  Chapter Nine

  TATE BRITAIN

  ‘Someone looks tired,’ said an amused voice behind him. ‘Didn’t you sleep well?’

  It was the next day, and Simon hadn’t dared leave the Millais Gallery all morning, just in case Cori showed up. He turned and saw Lissy.

  Lissy’s family had connections somewhere, and as such she tended to come and go as she pleased at the Tate and nobody questioned her. She did, however, love the place and it clearly showed in her boundless knowledge and enthusiasm. Simon didn’t think she had a paid career at all, anywhere – but she dabbled in many things, she told him, and one day she might find something she wanted to settle to.

  ‘Good morning, Lissy,’ Simon replied. ‘No, I didn’t sleep well. But I was working – so it’s nothing interesting for you to speculate over, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Oh, Simon.’ Lissy sighed. ‘What are we going to do with you? Honestly, if I could get my hands on Slutty I’d wring her neck. She’s put you off girls, hasn’t she?’

  Simon shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t say that. I’m just … proceeding with caution.’

  ‘Six months is a lot of caution,’ said Lissy.

  ‘How long has it taken you to get over Stefano?’ replied Simon. ‘We’re talking three years now? Maybe four? I don’t see you rushing into anything serious.’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ replied Lissy, sniffing. ‘He’s an idiot. But at least I’m having fun and that’s what you should be doing.’

  ‘Well, maybe I should be,’ he said.

  Lissy blinked. ‘That’s the first time you’ve ever agreed with me about it!’ she said, suddenly delighted. ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Her name?’ asked Simon. ‘What makes you think there’s someone I should be naming?’

  ‘Because I’m not stupid,’ replied Lissy. ‘There’s paint in your cuticles and it’s green and white. That means you’ve moved on from the tourist trap paintings and done something different. Probably involving grass or trees or something pleasant. You’re not covered in brick colours or building colours.’

  ‘Hyde Park is green,’ said Simon.

  ‘And white? And – oh look – yellow?’ asked Lissy, peering at his hands more closely. ‘Bright colours. Nature colours. Happy colours. So – what’s she called?’

  Simon shook his head. Lissy astonished him. It wasn’t even worth trying to fight it.

  ‘Okay!’ He raised his hands up and spotted a little red smear as well, just on his third finger. ‘You win. She’s called Cori. It’s short for—’

  ‘Corisande,’ fired back Lissy. ‘I believe she was the mistress of a French king in the fourteenth century.’

  ‘Fifteenth,’ replied Simon. Lissy glowered at him. She hated being corrected. And, to give her her due, she was often very much correct. But not in this case. Simon cheered himself inwardly.

  ‘She told you that, did she?’ asked Lissy.

  ‘Yes, she did,’ replied Simon. ‘Yesterday. She was interested in Ophelia. We had a chat about the PRB.’

  Lissy looked thoughtful for a moment. ‘The PRB? And you say she was called Cori? What does she look like?’

  Simon didn’t hesitate to answer; Cori’s face was on his mind all the time. He felt he knew it better than his own – and she had definitely haunted his dreams last night.

  ‘She looks just like Ophelia. Long red hair, big eyes, pale complexion.’ He smiled at the thought. ‘I’ve seen her a few times in here. Yesterday was the first time I managed to speak to her.’

  ‘So what you’re saying is that she doesn’t look like Ophelia.’ Lissy prodded him in the chest with her forefinger. ‘She looks like Lizzie Siddal. Or …’ she moved her finger away from his chest and wagged it at him ‘… we might now say she looks like Daisy Ashford. That’s very interesting. Very interesting indeed.’

  And then, to Simon’s puzzlement, she nodded, turned on her heel and walked off towards the exit.

  Chapter Ten

  KENSINGTON

  Cori was trying to locate some of her resources for work. She currently had three boxes open and discarded in her lounge and still hadn’t found what she needed.

  The beauty with being a self-employed web designer was that you could work from home, and this was what Cori did. However, the downside was that if you couldn’t work, you couldn’t make money.

  It wasn’t an enormously insurmountable problem at the minute, thankfully. She had the mews house now and the sale had left her a bit of extra money – well, quite a lot of extra money, if she was honest – to use until she got back to it again. The little room – well, large room – at the top of the house was screaming out to be made properly into her office; and it was her office, to all intents and purposes, it just wasn’t fully functional yet.

  At the minute, the computer was the only thing in there that she had set up, but at least the house was starting to look like her own. It was pretty quirky inside, now she had her mismatched furniture in place and had bought some extra bits and bobs. She had somewhere to sleep, sit and eat now – and not all at the same time, in the same place, which was how it had been up until about three weeks ago.

  Cori’s mobile rang and she cursed, looking around the room, wondering where on earth the phon
e had hidden itself.

  She finally located it underneath a cushion, which she threw angrily across the room; then she checked the number on the display and saw it was her granny. ‘Hi, Granny!’ She knew she sounded breathless and distracted.

  ‘Cori? Have I called at a bad time?’ Her granny sounded contrite. ‘Sorry, love. Just wanted to see how you were getting on.’

  ‘No, it’s fine,’ replied Cori. She lowered herself into her favourite armchair and moved another cushion out of the way. ‘You just caught me, though. I’m heading out soon.’

  ‘Ooh, anywhere nice?’ she asked.

  ‘Well, actually,’ said Cori, ‘I’m going to the Tate.’

  ‘Again?’ replied her granny. Then the old lady laughed; it was a particularly dirty sort of chuckle, Cori thought, for a woman of her age. ‘There must be something there that you really like, eh?’ she said.

  ‘Yes. The paintings,’ said Cori, defensively. She felt her skin prickle as she blushed. It wasn’t all about the paintings now though, was it? She hadn’t had too long a conversation with Simon Daniels, but she knew exactly what that cultured, dark chocolate voice sounded like and had, she admitted to herself, wished it had been his voice on the other end of the phone this morning. Hell, his voice and his face – especially his eyes – had been invading her thoughts since she met him.

  ‘Nothing else?’ her granny asked. ‘No new friends I need to know about?’

  This time Cori’s cheeks didn’t just prickle, they burned. ‘Nothing else,’ Cori said, tightly. Then she closed her eyes and lifted her scarlet face to the ceiling, exasperated with herself. It was useless to try to hide anything from the woman who often knew her better than she did herself. ‘Well, okay. Yes there is something else.’ She opened her eyes and fixed them on the door to the staircase. ‘Or someone else, I suppose. He’s called Simon and he works at the Tate and he’s asked me for coffee. He’s interested in the PRB.’

  ‘Oh, very nice!’ said Granny. Cori could just imagine her relaxing into the sofa for some more gossip, possibly even punching the air as her suspicions were confirmed. Nothing was beyond the realms of possibility with her granny.

  The woman had driven down to visit her last month, for goodness sake. She’d tackled the M25 and everything.

  ‘It’s good that you’re moving on from Evan,’ continued her granny, throwing Cori slightly. ‘That man was no good for you. What do they say nowadays? It was a toxic relationship?’

  Cori smiled into the phone, feeling a great rush of affection for the woman at the end of the line. ‘Definitely toxic,’ she said. Her granny didn’t know half of it – she’d welcomed her granddaughter back with open arms when it all fell to pieces and Cori left the house she and Evan had lived in.

  The house had been an old vicarage in a chocolate box village with a river running along the bottom of the garden and it should all have worked out perfectly. But Granny had never probed too deeply – she didn’t know about the pregnancy scare or the fact Evan had coldly told her to ‘deal with it’ because he ‘didn’t want to have a baby with her’.

  Granny just knew Cori had ended up back on her doorstep and said it was over.

  And then Cori had decided to move to London and make a fresh start. And why not?

  True to her word, after a lengthy conversation with her granny, Cori headed off to the Tate. As she closed the door to the mews house extra-firmly – the old wood had a terrible habit of warping and not shutting properly – she had to take a deep breath to steady her nerves. Simon, she reminded herself, was highly unlikely to be another Evan.

  She walked to the tube station and barely registered anybody else on the street as she left the quiet little square in Kensington and joined the flow of foot traffic. Instead, she was thinking about Simon. There was no harm, she justified to herself, going back to the gallery and seeing if he was around. It was free entry, after all. And if he wasn’t there, then she didn’t mind spending some quality time with the Pre-Raphaelites.

  If he was there, he might meet her for a coffee as he’d said, sooner rather than later.

  Which would be very nice indeed. And, if he wasn’t able to meet her, she’d simply head off to the V&A. She had some leads she wanted to follow up about a commission for an upcoming exhibition and she would make the most of the day.

  So, with an alternative end to her expedition in mind if it didn’t all go according to plan, she walked into the Tate, secretly hoping, however, she wouldn’t end up at the V&A – at least not today.

  He had been discussing the symbolism in Ophelia with a greasy-haired bohemian-type art student. The student had, like so many others, rediscovered Ophelia on the back of the diary article and had brought his girlfriend with him to see it. They’d been a nice young couple, but a sixth sense told Simon to abandon the discussion and turn around.

  He looked along the gallery and there she was. Her hair was loose today and she was wearing a long, green, flowing skirt and a white vest top. It gave the impression that she was floating through the room towards him and he thought that he had never seen anything so beautiful in all his life.

  He wished he could stop time; just freeze-frame that moment and capture it, dreamlike, in watercolours.

  He walked through the gallery to meet her halfway, the people in the room blurring into the edges of his vision. He knew he was smiling and he couldn’t stop himself.

  And the best thing? She was smiling as well.

  ‘Cori,’ he said. ‘You came.’ Later, he’d think how ridiculous it was that he couldn’t come up with anything more imaginative to say. But she didn’t seem to mind.

  ‘Of course I did,’ she said, stopping just in front of him. ‘I’d never pass up an opportunity to talk about the PRB.’

  ‘Me, neither,’ he said. ‘Can I interest you in that coffee at all?’

  ‘I think you could,’ she said.

  ‘Well, that’s perfect timing. I do believe I’m due my lunch break.’

  ‘Definitely perfect timing,’ she replied.

  And she was still smiling.

  Chapter Eleven

  The thing with Costa coffee shops was that they were the same the world over. Cori could order what she wanted, no messing, and not be distracted by anything new or different; apart from, of course, if that new or different thing was Simon.

  They had left the Tate and Simon had taken them to a little Costa, quite nearby, that he often spent his lunch hours in. Cori was already halfway through a large latte, and realised she was buzzing; and it wasn’t just the caffeine that was doing it.

  Sitting there, in a window seat, with Simon opposite her was the most comfortable she’d been in a man’s company for quite a while.

  He didn’t look as if he was bored either. The conversation had been easy, their interests very similar. By now, he knew she was a slightly frustrated web designer with an adventurous granny and she knew he was originally from Sussex but had gone to Slade and began working at the Tate after that. He also had a doctorate in the PRB, but tended not to use the title very much.

  ‘One day,’ he said, ‘my intention is to have my own exhibition somewhere. A proper exhibition.’ He’d spread his hands out on the table and looked down at them.

  Her eyes followed his and she noticed he had smears of paint on his fingers. They were long, artistic fingers.

  ‘What I’d really like to do,’ said Simon, ‘is to reinterpret some of the Pre-Raphaelite paintings. I’ll do it someday.’ He looked up and smiled. Again, those fathomless eyes. Cori felt her jaw slacken a little as she fell into the navy blue depths. She wondered what it would be like to wake up and see those eyes first thing in the morning, half-heavy with sleep, looking into hers. ‘I’ve just got to get my inspiration first,’ he said. And those eyes were actually looking into hers. That little spark deep inside them flickered again and Cori couldn’t look away any more.

  My goodness.

  She pressed her hands against the latte mug and hoped Simon wouldn�
��t see them shaking.

  ‘The thing is,’ he said, ‘I haven’t done any proper painting for about six months. However, I—’

  Rat tat tat.

  They both looked up, startled, as somebody knocked on the window, right next to them. A small, dark-haired person was waving madly and grinning through the glass like a very attractive pixie.

  Cori took in the bobbed hair with the pink streak down the side and the effortless designer look the girl had. She also noticed the girl’s amazingly curious eyes – one blue and one green – and, although Cori knew very little about designer labels, this girl clearly did. Whatever brand she was wearing looked stunning. Cori knew that she personally would never, ever try to get away with skin-tight jeans and towering stilettoes; but this girl managed it and managed it well.

  She always had done.

  ‘Lissy!’

  Cori and Simon both said it at the same time.

  Lissy, as if she’d read their lips, smiled and waved maniacally this time.

  ‘Wait there!’ she shouted through the glass. She must have been shouting quite loudly as they heard her through the glazing. ‘I’m coming in!’

  Cori and Simon simply stared at each other.

  ‘That’s Lissy de Luca,’ said Cori, rather unnecessarily.

  ‘It most certainly is,’ replied Simon. ‘Bloody hellfire.’

  ‘Fancy meeting you here!’ said Lissy. Then she laughed; it was a little, tinkling laugh, as if she’d made a huge joke. ‘Well, not so much of a surprise to see you here, Simon.’ She turned to Cori. ‘He’s always here on a lunchtime. It’s very easy to track him down. But you, Cori Keeling. I would never have thought to see you here!’ She elegantly slid into the seat next to Cori, and smiled at them both somewhat triumphantly. ‘Cori and I went to university together. We were on the same art history course,’ she told Simon. ‘She’s always looked like Lizzie Siddal – clearly, you were right about that, most definitely. And she knew so much about the PRB it was unreal. I had my suspicions it was the same Cori when we were talking this morning as I really didn’t think there could be two Coris like that. Especially when you said about the French king’s mistress. That’s exactly what she told me when we met as well. So, Cori. What are you doing in London? And if I may say so, it’s wonderful to see you again.’