Her shadow lay across the floor and danced on the wall as she moved. Silence. The double tap of her feet echoed as she walked, heel and toe, tap-tap, tap-tap, as she moved through the long room.
For a moment, she thought there was an echo. The sound of her feet seemed to go on for a second after she had stopped moving. She stood there, listening. She moved again, and her shoes made their light tap-tap on the floor. This time there was silence, then she heard it again, like an echo of her own movement, hush-hush, like soft shoes moving across the floor. Weird. That’s weird. It seemed to be coming from the downstairs gallery. She ran lightly down the stairs.
‘Hello?’ she said. The empty space gave her voice an echoing quality. The downstairs gallery was in darkness. She looked round. The main entrance was still locked, but the light for the alarm was out. Someone had switched it off. She felt herself relax. Jonathan. He must have come back for something. She didn’t bother turning the lights on, but went through the doors watching the interplay of shade and shadow, the window frame a lattice shape lying across the floor. He must be in his office.
As she moved past the pillars, something caught her attention. A sound? She looked round, but the gallery was empty behind her. Then she saw someone sitting in front of one of the windows, half concealed behind a pillar, hunched forward as though whoever it was, was watching intently something on the canal below. Her heart thumped, then slowed as she realized who it was. It was the young woman who lived in the flat next door to Eliza’s. ‘Cara?’
The woman jumped, turning quickly, almost overbalancing. ‘I didn’t…I…’ Her eyes focused on Eliza standing behind her in the dark. ‘Eliza.’ She struggled to her feet, hampered by the sling in which she habitually carried her baby, Briony Rose. In the dim light, her eyes looked wide and startled.
She must have used the inside stairs that led to the gallery. There were plans to put in a separate entrance at the bottom of these stairs, but for the moment the occupants of the flats were only supposed to use them in an emergency. In practice, Eliza used them most of the time, and Cara had started following her example.
Eliza looked at Cara. ‘Did you turn the alarm off?’ she said.
Cara nodded. ‘I’ve seen Jonathan doing it, so I know how it works,’ she said. ‘I was going to switch it all back on again, honest. I’ve done it before. I love the gallery. It’s a lovely place to sit. I was going to go in a minute.’ She was talking rapidly, nervously, her eyes looking beyond Eliza into the gallery behind her. The baby gave a brief cry of complaint.
Eliza bit back the comment she had been about to make. She could deal with this later when the baby was settled. ‘I need to lock up,’ she said briskly. ‘Come on.’ She waited as Cara scrabbled round for her bag. ‘Here, let me carry that.’ She picked up the cloth carry-all that the other woman always toted around with her, and slung it over her shoulder. ‘Come on,’ she said again.
Cara followed her slowly, looking back over her shoulder at the window. A rendezvous? Was Cara in the habit of meeting a boyfriend on the canal towpath, or in the gallery? There didn’t seem much point when she had a perfectly good flat upstairs.
She headed up the stairs, stopping when she realized Cara wasn’t following. ‘Cara?’ she said.
‘I’m coming.’ Cara had stopped to look at the poster for Daniel’s exhibition, the reproduction Eliza had been looking at earlier, the hanging man. She gathered the baby closer to her. ‘It’s horrible,’ she said.
‘I suppose it is,’ Eliza said briskly. Cara still seemed reluctant to move. ‘Do you want some coffee?’ Eliza regretted the impulse almost as soon as she had spoken. She was cautious about socializing with Cara. Eliza felt sorry for her, but she didn’t want – she didn’t have time for – the demands a lonely teenager might make on her.
‘OK.’ Cara seemed to make a decision. She looked back at the gallery and then followed Eliza up the stairs. Eliza set the alarm and locked the doors behind her. She thought she heard the echo again as she and Cara walked towards the exit that led to the flats, but when she stopped and listened, everything was quiet. The alarm was sounding its single note, then dropped a tone and stopped. Eliza found herself listening, waiting for the alarm to go off in response to an intruder in the gallery, but nothing happened. She relaxed. ‘You really think it’s bad, that painting?’ Cara said as she followed Eliza up the stairs. She was talking about Daniel’s poster.
‘Not bad,’ Eliza said shortly. ‘Disturbing.’ Something was nagging at her and she wanted to pin it down, but Cara’s chatter was distracting her.
‘Why does Jonathan want to exhibit him?’ Cara went on. Her eyes were nervous, darting round the walls of the stairway and landings.
‘Who? Daniel Flynn? That reproduction is just a part…You need to see the exhibition as a whole.’ Eliza was trying to fit her key into her lock. She could never get it the right way up. If Cara had been upset by that small detail, then she would find the rest of it devastating.
‘I know. I thought…It’s creepy, that’s all.’ Cara followed Eliza through the door into the flat.
‘Good art is meant to disturb you. But it’s only here for a week.’ Eliza dumped her work bag and Cara’s carry-all, and switched on the lights.
‘Hey, nice!’ Cara looked round the loft space.
Eliza was pleased. The Trust had run out of money before the loft conversion was complete. Her loft had been renovated to the point of habitability, the roof and the walls repaired, plumbing installed, the floors fixed. She had moved in to bare bricks and raw timbers. She had needed accommodation urgently. There was no time – and no money – for carefully thought out schemes. She had painted everything white and black, had moved in with her bed, her chairs, her lights and her painting equipment. She’d arranged the room carefully to create living and sleeping and working spaces. Now, it looked spacious and inviting, the chairs made splashes of colour close to one of the arched windows overlooking the canal. At the far end of the room, Eliza had set up her easel, and her painting, her Madrid painting, glowed its Mediterranean warmth against the winter night. Behind her, the kitchen welcomed with red tiles and bright pots.
Cara moved over to the window and hovered uncertainly, the baby sling distorting her outline like a misshapen pregnancy. Eliza shifted the papers that were set out on the chairs, photographs, slides, notes, some of her planning for the exhibition. ‘Why don’t you put it – I mean her, down?’ she said.
‘She might wake up,’ Cara said. ‘She cries a lot.’ She looked at the child, an expression of bafflement on her face, then went over to the chairs as Eliza went to make coffee, and began to unhook the sling. The baby stirred as Cara put it down, tucking a shawl round it. ‘I get so tired,’ she said. She slumped into the chair next to the one she had put the baby on. ‘It’s a lot, when there’s only you,’ she said.
‘It must be hard work,’ Eliza said. She wondered what Cara had expected. She poured out the coffee and put it on the table. She looked at the infant’s sleeping face. She didn’t know much about babies.
‘You know,’ Cara went on, ‘I thought that having a baby would be…you know, it would make me special. Now I’m just…I dunno.’ She shrugged.
Eliza looked at Cara, wondering how to respond to that. Cara was tucking the shawl around the baby as she spoke, and her eyes were shadowed with tiredness. Her face, under the dramatic make-up she favoured, looked thin and pinched.
‘Do you need a baby
