Gaby had often been left to fend for herself. Linda had always been a grafter, cleaning offices, stacking supermarket shelves, just to put food on the table. But as soon as Gaby had got to secondary school, she hadn’t been around much. She’d had Gaby while she was still a teenager and felt she’d missed out on life. Once Gaby was halfway independent, her mum had started making up for lost time. There’d been so many boyfriends that Gaby had lost count. Gaby had just got on with things, had felt her way through life without, it seemed, any rules.
She’d discovered art even before school, scribbling on scraps of paper, losing herself in the designs to block out the chaos of the flat; her mother’s constant exhaustion from work had meant there was little energy to keep on top of things at home. In class she’d doodled instead of listening to teachers. It had been a rough school in a poor area and they’d just been grateful that she was quiet, not disruptive. She still had a maths book decorated with cartoon dragons, strange imaginary landscapes. An art teacher had been her salvation, praising her creations, sending her out at weekends to look at galleries, showing her a different world.
Gaby had come into her own at art college, made friends, become the joker in the pack, still living at home and including Linda’s exploits in stories to entertain the other students. They’d been mostly middle-class kids, with an eye to making it in advertising or film. Her passion had always been painting. A year after college, she’d been doing the same sort of work as her mother – bar work, cleaning – putting off the inevitable slide into teaching, when she saw the advert in the Guardian for an artist in residence at the Woodyard Centre in North Devon. She’d skipped most of the details, just seen there was a salary she could live on. And the words studio space had jumped out at her.
Sitting on the little train easing its way down the Taw Valley from Exeter to Barnstaple, she’d seen paintings in the dense trees, the water and the watchful heron, and decided she wanted this job more than anything else in the world. She’d been interviewed by two men: Jonathan Church, who managed the whole of the Woodyard Centre, and Christopher Preece, who was chair of trustees. Jonathan had already shown her around the centre, describing its philosophy. ‘This is a space where everyone should feel comfortable – the A-level students attending specialist masterclasses and the guys in the day centre who have a learning disability. We very much believe in art for everyone.’ She hadn’t said she only cared about her art. She’d seen the big empty room in the roof and imagined herself there, painting. She’d have promised the earth to get the gig.
The interview had gone well. She’d always been good at telling people what they wanted to hear. And then Christopher Preece had asked her if she’d need somewhere to stay. ‘I could put you in touch with my daughter. She’s looking for a lodger.’ They’d met that evening and Caroline had showed her the house, the room. The place had been pretty boring then, magnolia paint, hardly any furniture.
‘I need so much stuff,’ Caroline had said. ‘But the budget’s pretty tight and I don’t want to ask my dad.’
So, Gaby had introduced her to the joys of charity shopping, freecycling and eBay. As the house filled with Gaby’s purchases and creations, they’d become close friends. Very different – Caroline was so earnest, reliable and punctual and Gaby was none of those things – but strangely interdependent. Gaby cared what Caroline thought and didn’t want to upset or offend her. She thought she’d lightened Caroline, made her more fun. Now, hearing the key in the door, she wondered how she would break the news of Simon Walden’s death to her.
Gaby must have been sitting almost in the dark with her daydreaming because when Caroline flicked the switch as she came into the room, the sudden light came as a shock.
‘What are you doing?’ Caroline disapproved of drinking too much in the week, though she didn’t mind letting her hair down if the mood took her.
‘It’s Simon.’ Gaby turned around in the low sofa and looked at Caroline.
‘What about him?’
‘The police were here earlier. He’s dead.’
She saw that Caroline was as thrown by the news as she had been. They both had their own