went rigid, sitting down on the bed next to The Orchard. The old mattress gave way beneath her, and Teresa thought suddenly how squalid the bed looked, and how stupid Olive was to put up with such a state of being when she could clearly afford something better. They could even go into Calle Larios in Malaga to buy a new one – she could offer to take Olive, letting her try mattress after mattress until they found the perfect one. But Teresa kept silent, the deft pencil edges of her brother’s face reworking themselves in her mind’s eye.
‘I don’t want it on my wall,’ said Olive.
Teresa frowned. It seemed a flat protest. She came up to the edge of the bed, her hands on her hips. ‘You could sell this in Malaga, señorita,’ she said. ‘You could make money.’
Olive flicked her eyes up. ‘Money? We’ve got money coming out of our ears.’
Teresa flushed. ‘You could go away.’
‘But I like it here.’
‘Paris. London. New York—’
‘Tere. I don’t want people to know. Do you understand?’
‘If that was mine, I would show the world.’
Olive looked over at the painting. ‘Say you do show the world. But the world might not like it. Think of that. All those hours, all those days and months – years, even—’
‘But I would like it, so it would not be important.’
‘So why bother trying to please the world in the first place? And, I can assure you, you will never truly like it, if you do it yourself.’
‘Then why are you doing it?’
Olive got up, lit a cigarette and stared out of the window. ‘I don’t know. I’ve never known. I just do it.’ She looked over at Teresa. ‘All right, I know that’s vague. It’s just – it feels as if there’s a place, a shining citadel of perfection I have in my mind. And with each canvas and sketchbook, I’m inching closer and closer to it, to the place where my paintings will be a better reflection of the person I am, a different reflection. And I will fly.’
She rubbed her forehead and came back to lie on the bed. ‘Why are we so trapped by the hours, the minutes of every day? Why can’t we live the life that’s always out of reach?’
Her voice broke, and Teresa reached out a hand to Olive’s arm. ‘I’m sorry, Tere,’ Olive said. ‘I’m probably mad. But it’s how it’s always been. I just wanted to show someone. I’m glad you liked it.’
‘I love it. Me ha encantado.’
‘Here.’ Olive was brisk again, leaping off the mattress with her cigarette still in her hand. ‘Take these. You might like to look at them.’ She reached down for a book on Renaissance painters, and an old Vogue, and handed them over. ‘The magazine is my mother’s, but she won’t mind.’
Teresa flicked through the Renaissance book, colour plates of men and women in their finery, their skin taut as boiled eggs, bulging eyes, delicate ringed fingers and swathes of damask on their shoulders. Strangely elongated Virgin Marys, darted with a yellow beam of the Annunciation; nightmarish scenes of mythical beasts; men with five legs; women turning into pomegranates. She read the names silently: Bellini, Bosch, Cranach. It was another language to learn and assimilate, to wield like a weapon.
The Vogue was well out of date, but Teresa didn’t care. It was hers. She was glad it was already a year old. Sarah barely glanced at her magazines before dumping them on the floor of her bedroom, their colours and allure a siren that Teresa was astonished her mistress couldn’t hear. But she didn’t want Olive getting into trouble.
‘Are you certain your mother will not mind?’ she said.
‘She won’t even notice. Isaac is still here I think,’ Olive said, putting away the sketchbooks and The Orchard under the bed. ‘We should go and see what my mother wants with him.’
Teresa pushed down the cloud that rose in her chest at the mention of Isaac, closed the Renaissance book and followed Olive out.
*
Isaac picked up the second glass of lemonade and clinked it against Sarah’s. He was used to women being like this around him; feline, flirtatious, sometimes giddy. He never encouraged, but this only seemed to make their behaviour more pronounced. It was almost clownish – and yet he had learned not to assume immediately what women wanted from him. It might look like one thing, but it was quite often another.
He thought of how essentially different Olive was from her mother,