talent or that they understand art.’
‘Why did you accept the residency if you feel like that?’
‘Because it pays.’ She spoke as if the answer was obvious. ‘I don’t have a rich daddy like Caz – my mother brought me up on her own – and I don’t make any money from my painting yet, so I do this. It’s better than stacking supermarket shelves or pulling pints. Just.’
He nodded back at the sketches. ‘Of course, this doesn’t prove anything. You could have done them anytime.’
‘But I didn’t.’ Her frustration was obvious.
‘Why did you dislike Simon Walden so much?’
‘I didn’t dislike him.’ She turned away. ‘I just didn’t see the point of him. If you don’t mind stepping over the needles in the morning or being harassed by the neighbourhood drunk, Hope Street is a pretty cool place to be. It’s the best house I’ve ever lived in. And I don’t mind those things. I didn’t need a man to protect me.’
‘Did Caroline?’ Matthew was surprised. He’d had them both down as strong, independent women.
‘Nah, but that was one of the excuses she gave for letting him stay. That we’d be safer with a man in the house. Which was pretty daft. We could have been letting in a maniac.’
‘Was he a maniac?’
Gaby didn’t answer immediately. ‘He was pretty screwed up. Especially at first. Depressed, I suppose, but no, I didn’t think he was dangerous. I just found him unsettling.’ She looked away for a moment and when she turned back the words sounded like a confession. ‘I painted him.’
‘Can I see?’
She shrugged and pulled a canvas from the stack by the wall and propped it on the easel. Matthew looked. He thought he should say something intelligent but he was embarrassed again. What did he know about art? The embarrassment got in the way of an honest response this time, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the painting. It was just of Walden’s head. The likeness was there at first glance, then everything seemed to shift under Matthew’s gaze. There were blocks of colour that he had never seen in human skin. Matthew took a few steps back and looked again. Walden was staring into the distance, frowning.
‘Did you do this from a sketch too?’ Again, Matthew felt the ignorance seep into his face like a blush. Growing up with the Brethren, he’d learned so little of the world that his brief time at university had been an act, a performance. He’d pretended to understand the references to bands he’d never heard of and films he’d never seen. At school, he’d considered himself an intellectual, but every day since there’d been the fear of being found out as a fraud. It had taken him a while to be open with Jonathan. There were still times when he felt the need to pretend.
Gaby didn’t seem to think this was a stupid question. ‘No, I did this from a photograph.’
‘Why? I mean, why did you want to paint him? Did he have an unusual face?’
‘No, not at first glance, at least. You wouldn’t look at him twice in the street. I suppose I wanted to understand why he’d got under my skin.’
‘Did you find him attractive?’ Matthew thought this was one of the oddest interviews he’d ever conducted. Gaby had pushed to have Walden excluded from the house but there was something about her obsession that felt like a teenage passion.
He’d expected an angry response to the question. No, of course not. He was a creep. But she was thinking about it, deciding how much she wanted to tell him.
‘Perhaps,’ she said at last. ‘Perhaps I did. There was something about him, despite the moodiness and the occasional bouts of anger when he’d had too much to drink. Something compelling. I’d never thought about it until I started painting him.’ She stared at Matthew. ‘Crazy, huh?’
‘Did he ever talk to you about his life before he ended up at the hotel in Ilfracombe?’
There was a pause and again he thought she was choosing how much to say. ‘Once. Indirectly. It was after one of the Friday meals. Simon always cooked for us on Fridays. He said he was keeping his hand in. He’d throw us out of the kitchen early in the evening and tell us only to come back when he was ready. Usually we went to the pub. It was the one night of the week that Caz was prepared to let her hair down. Sometimes Ed was there,