Free Louder Than Words by Laura Jarratt

rude of us not to have given some time to the other artists so we trudged round their work too, listening to erudite types expounding on the merits of each piece. Or actually trying not to listen, but those people always have such loud voices that you can’t shut them out.
    We stopped in front of a sculpture and I had the first glimmer of genuine interest I’d had in the whole two hours we’d been here. At first glance it looked like a heap of twisted metal and no more, but look closer and you could see tiny creatures hiding within – a field mouse, a butterfly, a wren . . . I walked round it, looking for more. I heard Josie exclaim and I knew she’d begun to see too.
    But Silas . . . Silas never did see it. Because just as he began to focus on the sculpture to see what had so attracted our attention, a girl stepped into his line of sight.
    I caught her scent before I saw her, a subtle, warm waft of fruit and spices. She stood, one hand on her hip, one foot turned out in front of the other like a dancer. Silky black hair fell straight past her shoulders, framing a heart-shaped face with porcelain skin which appeared to be free of make-up. She was dressed entirely in black: black jeans, black T-shirt, black canvas parka with a fishtail back that reached her knees and black Converse sneakers. She was small, maybe five foot two, and slim enough to be jealous of, but with enough curves to be even more jealous of. I felt Josie draw in a breath of envy beside me as she spotted the girl.
    Josie was pretty, yes, but this girl was in another league. It wasn’t any one of her features individually that made her beautiful, but all put together she exuded something that even Josie and I could see.
    Silas looked like he’d been sucker-punched.
    ‘You like this one?’ She spoke to me first, not to him.
    Nod.
    ‘Then you like hidden depths,’ she said with a secretive smile. She turned to Silas. ‘How about you?’
    ‘Er . . . yeah . . . er . . .’ Silas’s cheeks had turned a faint pink.
    Josie kissed her teeth and turned back to the sculpture.
    The girl gave her a faintly amused glance and then proceeded to ignore her.
    ‘I noticed you walking around.’ I wasn’t sure which of us she was talking to. ‘Why do you come to an exhibition if you don’t like it?’
    Silas finally appeared to find words again. ‘Oh, our mother’s exhibiting so, you know, we’ve seen all her stuff before.’
    ‘Clarissa Ramsey is your mother? Wow, that’s amazing.’ But she didn’t say it as if she found it amazing. More like she was secretly laughing at us because that’s how we expected her to react. She’d said what most people said when we told them who our mother was.
    Josie wandered off to look at the next sculpture and I hesitated, caught between following her and worried about what would happen if I did. Silas was being highly weird with this girl.
    ‘It’s kind of more interesting for us to look at the other exhibitors,’ he said, apparently not minding if she was laughing at him.
    ‘Of course,’ she said, swapping her feet round in that strange half-third position she was standing in. ‘So what’s your favourite work today?’
    He opened his mouth to answer her and then stopped, flummoxed.
    ‘Cat got your tongue?’ she said, starting to look away across the gallery as if he was boring her.
    Silas laughed, a hard, surprised snort. ‘Looks like it,’ he said.
    She looked back at him, mild interest reviving. ‘So do you have a favourite piece?’
    ‘Not really.’ He shrugged.
    ‘Honesty,’ she said thoughtfully, running her tongue over her teeth – small, white, even teeth. ‘Finally.’
    He gave a rueful smile and stared at his feet. I could tell he was thinking he’d blown something. Suddenly, passionately and desperately, I hoped he had.
    ‘Lara,’ she said abruptly, holding her hand out to shake in an oddly adult gesture. How old was she? Around eighteen?
    My brother took her hand in a firm but gentle