at the drawings she’d done so far. She cracked the book. There was Alan Cherney, her first impression of him, and she thought she’d done a good enough job. Having spent more time with him the previous night, she now thought that his cheekbones were a little more pronounced, his lips just a little thinner. Later, she’d draw a new picture of him.
She flipped the page and looked at the self-portrait she’d drawn, then quickly flipped the page again to look at Jack Ludovico. She stared. It no longer really looked like him, at least not the way she remembered him in her mind. Close, but the eyes were wrong, and the face had a different shape. How had she drawn him so wrong? Or had this been the way he looked, and she was remembering him wrong?
She really studied the picture, her heart beginning to race in her chest. Now she was sure it was not the picture she had originally drawn. Someone had gotten hold of the book and changed it. No, she told herself, not possible. And if that wasn’t possible, then she’d changed it herself, gone back in and altered the features somehow. But why would she do that? And why couldn’t she remember doing that if she had?
The train came to a rasping halt. There was an indiscernible announcement over the loudspeaker that could have been saying something about Porter. Kate stood and looked through the grimy window of the train. They were at Harvard Station, one stop away. Even more people were squeezing their way into the car. Why was no one getting off?
Her heart hammering, Kate pushed her way through the herd of passengers and out onto the platform. Clutching her sketchbook, she gulped at the air as the doors shut and the train moved away.
Chapter 19
Kate made it to her class with five minutes to spare. After leaving Harvard Station, she was able to navigate down Massachusetts Avenue toward the Graphics Institute, housed in several rooms of a gray Victorian mansion. It wasn’t too far to walk, less than a mile. Walking briskly in the open air cleared her head a little, and she decided she’d overreacted to the drawing of Jack Ludovico. So she’d got his face a little wrong, after meeting him briefly. That was all. She’d just come to a new country, and she was jet-lagged.
The class was easier than she’d predicted. She was worried that the instructor would have the students go around the room and introduce themselves, but as soon as she walked into the second-floor classroom filled with twelve stations, each with its own Mac, she was simply told to take a seat. The instructor, who had a southern twang and a large ginger beard, jumped right into an explanation of the tools of InDesign. Kate was slightly familiar with the program, having been shown the ropes by the art teacher from the hospital she’d been held at after George Daniels’s death. Kate had always been artistic. Her first great love had been coloring books, and she sometimes wondered if that would be how she’d spend her declining years as well, an old lady doing paint-by-numbers morning to night. Even from a young age, she realized that being lost in an art project, or even simply doodling in the margins of a notebook, was the one sure way she could relax. It turned out to be the same with computer graphics, once she got past her initial fear of not understanding the programs. She had become very good at Photoshop, and picked up some freelance jobs through a graphic design temp agency in South London. She’d decided that, for better or for worse, she’d make it her career. It was a far better option than becoming a portrait artist, which is what her mother had been pushing her to do. Doing someone’s portrait was inherently intimate, in a way that made Kate nervous just to think about. Plus, the chances of disappointing a client were somehow much higher when doing their portrait.
After class, the girl sitting next to Kate, who was so tiny that Kate initially thought she was a child, introduced herself.
“My mother’s English, too,” said the girl after hearing Kate’s accent. “English by way of Pakistan.”
They walked from the classroom to the street together, then stood for a while, talking. Kate told the girl, named Sumera, about the apartment swap and the plan to live in Boston for six months.