Keating side. But the hair?’ She huffed out a bitter half laugh. ‘She always said that she gave me the one thing that made me stand out.’ As Sia spoke the words a childhood hurt rose up within her. That horrible scarring feeling that she wasn’t enough on her own, in her own right, that everything she had was dependent on and because of her mother. She couldn’t see past the memories and thoughts to find Sebastian. She was lost to it now. ‘I tried to dye it once. Brown. It didn’t work that well,’ she said flippantly of one of the most excruciating moments of her teenage years. ‘It turned into this kind of sludgy, streaked mess. I thought Mum would lose her mind. But she didn’t even notice.
‘There was quite a lot my mother didn’t notice when I lived with them,’ she pressed on, unable to stop now. ‘Bedtime, I could stay up as long as I liked. Mealtimes, whenever and whatever I wanted, as long as I could get it for myself. School was an if and when thing,’ she said, shrugging, ‘which for my mother was very little of the “when.” I learned my trade at my father’s feet. Even at the age of seven I did a mean Pollock,’ she said honestly and bitterly.
‘And Mum had one focus in life—Dad. She loved him. She loved him more than anything else in this world. She saw only him. And when he didn’t see her, when he would spend weeks lost in front of his canvases, locked in the studio day and night... It hurt her. Broke her. Initially she would rage. Throw anything she could get her hands on—glasses, plates... There was a particularly close call with a kitchen knife once,’ she said with a wobbly laugh as if it had been humorous rather than terrifying. ‘Oh, the things she would scream at him.’
You’re a photocopier! Good for nothing but copying.
You’re not even an artist. Piss artist, more like.
Sia shivered at the memory, the shrieking South London accent cutting through the beautiful warmth of the Caribbean and reminding her where she came from. She felt the sheen of tears in her eyes covering a pain so close to the surface, like the shimmer on an over-inflated balloon, and she vaguely wondered if it was about to burst. Perhaps it already had and she just hadn’t noticed.
‘The neighbours called the police one too many times and she spent a few weeks in prison. Dad barely noticed, but he was there to pick her up. After that, she tried a different tack. She thought she could make John Keating jealous,’ Sia scoffed. ‘There was this party, very bohemian. Mum had draped silks over cheap lamps, candles everywhere. It was a miracle the place didn’t burn down. She was all over the shop, flirting desperately with men, trying to provoke some kind—any kind—of reaction from my dad. And the most painful thing about it all was that I could see, everyone could see, that he just didn’t care. He didn’t laugh, he didn’t get angry. He may as well have just told the men that they could have her,’ she said, pressing her lips together against the hurt cry of her childhood wanting to get out.
‘You asked me who stole my passion?’ she said, finally turning to Sebastian, seeing him in the present and not hidden by the past. ‘She did. My mother. She taught me that passion was selfish, cruel, mean and hysterical and, in the end, utterly pointless. So forgive me if I don’t live like you. Love like you. It’s because even if I took the risk to, the fact that I could end up even remotely like her? Not worth it. Ever.’
She turned round and would have stalked off had Sebastian not slipped his arm around her waist and held her against him to prevent her from leaving.
‘That wasn’t passion, Sia. What your mother felt, what motivated her actions...it wasn’t passion,’ he said gently, as if trying to soothe her, unconsciously evoking the very thing they were talking about and the last thing she wanted.
‘Please...’ she begged, hoping that he would stop, wanting him to continue, to say something that would lessen the pain of her heart breaking—for the past and the present.
She heard him sigh as if he’d lost some internal battle. Felt his head bend, as if in defeat, to rest on her shoulder, leaning ever so slightly into the crook of her