across the room.
‘You wanted to move with me, Darren. I was going to go into halls and you wanted to get a flat together. You knew I’d be out tonight, don’t start with me.’
Darren just stared at her, lip curling up. Oh, how she hated that look, that judgemental ‘you’re so ridiculous’ look. ‘You’re drunk.’
‘Yes. Again, kind of the point of Freshers’, which you’d know if you went to uni.’
‘Yeah, well, see how well photography turns out when I’m supporting you with my boring real job.’ Darren walked into their bedroom. It was the first time Tig regretted moving in with him, but it wasn’t the last.
‘Tig?’ Hunter tugged at her sleeve. ‘Does this look like a Degas?’
She looked down at the six-year-old’s drawing of a ballet dancer, copied from a large print his mother had hung in the study. It looked like a six-year-old’s drawing of a ballet dancer.
‘Brilliant use of light and dark, Hunter! And the softness of the limbs is really excellent.’
Hunter’s mother would want an update on his progress tonight, want proof that her little angel was adapting to the different ‘artistic protocols’ she wanted him to excel in. The whole idea was exhausting.
‘Mama said if I can paint a ballerina properly I can get an Xbox,’ Hunter told her proudly.
‘Well, that’s what Degas’ mother said, too,’ Tig replied, and tried to stamp down on the vitriol she felt for these fake liberals. Yes, she wanted these kids to have extra art lessons if they loved it. But what was wrong with sitting with your kids and letting them draw in crayons? Except then she’d be out of a job.
She collected her money, spent twenty minutes convincing Sylvia that Hunter was progressing artistically ‘as predicted’, as if you could plot a graph to artistic stardom.
‘We’re so glad we found you, Tigerlily!’ Sylvia held Tig’s hand in both of hers. ‘We don’t know what we’d do without you!’
Let your child develop at a natural rate, based on their own interests? Tig thought ungenerously, but smiled all the same.
‘I love your outfit!’ Sylvia grinned as she led Tig to the door. ‘It’s so ethnic! It’s so wonderful for Hunter to be exposed to different types of people, especially artists!’
‘Well, we are a strange bunch, aren’t we?’ Tig said in a jolly voice that wasn’t her own, and hated herself for it.
She jumped on her bike, and realised she didn’t want to go to Ame’s. She didn’t want to go to Entangled, or the studio, or anywhere where she’d have to think about anything. In fact, there was only one place she wanted to go. She stuck her bike on an empty tube train, going north, up to the end of the line, and then rode out onto the country lanes, down past her school, past the pub she’d had her first legal pint in (and the many illegal ones before that), and eventually, as the greenery expanded, she turned up a little lane to her parents’ cottage. It was still home. For a while, the little studio she’d had with Darren whilst she was at uni had felt like home, then the one-bedroom they got out in Cricklewood, which was more grown up, where they had proper cutlery and felt like grown-ups. But the Hobbit Hole, as her parents had named it, would always be home. At least until she got out there and made one just for herself, which seemed to be the only option lately.
An auburn-haired woman came trudging around from the back garden, wellies on, bright head scarf and ruddy complexion. Her leggings were patterned, muddy at the knees from where she’d been kneeling in the flower beds, no doubt. Tig loved that she looked like her mum, that her red hair was a brighter version of her mother’s, whereas her sister’s dark hair echoed their dad. Helen James was a beautiful woman, who only seemed to become more herself as she aged.
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