my stomach writhed like a sack of snakes. Mia and Ruby had forbidden me from walking because they said it would make me sweaty. Or sweatier, I thought in my seat, peering underneath my jacket to see dark damp patches already spreading across my armpits. I was wearing a knee-length green dress of Ruby’s which belted at the waist. ‘Emphasizes your tits,’ Ruby had said.
I’d replied that I didn’t have any but she said that was rubbish and I needed to stop hiding them in ‘boring old work shirts’.
While sitting on a stool in front of her bathroom mirror, Mia had set to with a bewildering array of make-up brushes. Foundation, concealer, highlighter. Dab, dab, dab. A light dusting of eyeshadow. ‘Just to make your eyelids less purple,’ she’d explained. ‘And you need to sort out your brows.’
‘What’s wrong with them?’
‘They need their own stylist. Hold still.’
A waggle with an eyelash curler. Multiple coats of mascara. Eyebrow gel. Bronzer smoothed across my forehead and down my nose. The flick of a blusher brush along my cheekbones.
‘Lipstick,’ mused Mia, scrabbling through her make-up bag.
‘No,’ I insisted. ‘I’ve got some Carmex in my bag.’ Thinking of it on the Tube, I reached for the small pot and unscrewed the lid before running my finger along my mouth. I exhaled into my hand to check my breath. Better have a Smint.
When the doors opened at the station, I was so nervous I didn’t want to get out. Then, while the escalator rolled upwards towards daylight, I rechecked my armpits and reminded myself to keep my jacket on at all times.
As I walked under the archway into the academy’s cobbled courtyard, I slipped my fingers underneath my sleeve to feel my pulse. Should it be beating that fast or was I seconds away from a medical emergency? I looked up at the pale stone of the academy walls and started counting the windows as a distraction: ‘One, two, three, four…’
‘Florence! Over here!’ said a voice, and I squinted in the corner to see Rory waving. He was leaning casually against the stone wall in a pale blue suit and a brown trilby and didn’t look nervous at all, but if you’d asked me my own name and what year it was, I couldn’t have told you. To me, he seemed as intimidatingly handsome and composed as a male model.
‘Hello,’ he said, when I neared him. He took off his hat and leant forward to kiss me on the cheeks. That citrus smell again.
‘Hi,’ I managed back, already blushing. I could hardly look at him but when he caught my gaze, I saw his eyes matched the colour of his suit.
‘Shall we go in?’ he added. ‘It’s had terrific reviews. Have you read any?’
I shook my head. I didn’t know much about art – art books were Eugene’s territory.
Rory rattled on as he held open the main door and led us towards the staircase. ‘I’m not a huge fan of their religious work. Too flowery and idealized. But the Telegraph called this “a sexy riot of flesh” and I thought, well, we can’t miss that, can we?’ He laughed and stepped up to a desk at the top of the stairs. ‘Two, please.’
I looked up at a huge poster on the wall in front of us. ‘Sex, Power and Violence in the Renaissance Nude,’ it said, above a painting of a naked woman, asleep. One hand was draped over her head, the other was rootling between her legs.
‘Medieval masturbation,’ said Rory, nodding at it.
I laughed and blushed again. Was it possible to die from blushing?
‘Come on,’ he said, and I felt his hand on my back as he ushered me through the door into the first gallery. I edged my way around a large woman in a fur coat to read an introduction on the wall but the text was too small.
‘Let’s not bother with that,’ said Rory, waving a hand at the wall. ‘I’ll tell you about them as we go.’
It was excruciating to begin with. The first painting we stood before was by Titian, a naked Venus washing her hair in the sea, nipples as bold as raspberries. ‘See that?’ said Rory, pointing at a shell floating beside her thigh. ‘She was born and carried ashore on it.’
Next were a naked Adam and Eve, Eve rubbing an apple forlornly against her cheek. Then a picture of a fat and completely hideous baby Jesus by a Flemish painter. With each one, Rory explained its