Free In Cold Daylight by Pauline Rowson Page A

crossly.
    ‘I am not living in London.’ I shouted.
    ‘And that’s it! What about me? Don’t I get a say in this? I’m the one who has to work there and travel back and forth. You can paint anywhere. ’
    ‘That’s just it, Faye, I can’t. I can’t even paint here.’ My anger subsided as quickly as it had risen. It was only then that I knew how much I hated this house, and how I loathed being even five miles away from the sea. Before I had met Faye I had lived opposite it, in a studio apartment at Old Portsmouth.
    ‘So what are all those images of the Festival of the Sea that we’re exhibiting? Rubbish?’
    ‘They’re mediocre.’ I moved away from her. I needed space. I tried one more time to make her understand. ‘I need to be near the sea, Faye. I need to breathe it, smell it, taste it. I need to see and feel it in all its moods, all its seasons.’ She was staring at me as if I’d gone mad. ‘This house is wrong.’
    ‘Then move.’
    ‘Not to London.’
    ‘We can have a place in London and an apartment here but we can’t do that without your father’s inheritance. Have you any idea of house prices these days? You haven’t exactly been earning a lot in the last couple of years.’
    ‘Jesus, Faye! You really know how to hit a man when he’s down, don’t you?’
    ‘Well it has to be said, Adam. My job’s kept us living here and allowed you to paint…’
    She nearly said it but snapped her mouth shut before she could. I heard her unspoken words
    ‘ instead of getting a proper job’. I turned away.
    ‘What’s happened to you, Adam? You’ve become so selfish?’
    I didn’t answer. There wasn’t much I could say to that. I went to the studio. I picked up Jack’s postcard. Turner had been a genius: creative, imaginative, and innovative. Everything I aspired to. Was Turner’s ‘The Fighting Temeraire ’ trying to tell me something? She was a warship. This was her last journey, is that why Jack had chosen it? Had he had known that this would be his final quest?
    I studied the painting: the brilliant sunset reflected in the water at the end of the day. I thought of Jack, of Alison and my father, their days had ended. I thought of my near miss on the way home from London. I knew it had been no accident. Whoever had been driving that Mercedes had intended killing me. It had almost been the end of my days too. He hadn’t succeeded but I had no doubts that whoever it was would try again.

CHAPTER 7
    Saturday night and I stared at my paintings in the ancient stone warehouse that had been converted to an art gallery and despised every single one of them, wondering if I was the only person who saw their faults. How could I not when the image of ‘The Fighting Temeraire ’
    burned in my brain?
    The room was crowded and hot. I nodded at people and even spoke to some but I was on automatic pilot. When I wasn’t thinking about Jack, and that Mercedes, I was thinking about my father’s funeral. I was cursing myself for walking out on Simon when I had. I should have extricated my files from that cabinet. I could have got Simon out of the study long enough to do so. Now I would have to wait until the funeral.
    By which time he might have gone through the file. I didn’t relish the fact of him knowing all about my sessions with the psychiatrist. His superior attitude would be more than I could stomach.
    I gazed around the room with a glass of wine in my hand. Everyone seemed to be having a good time and quite a few people had congratulated me. I was disappointed that Jody hadn’t shown up but there was time yet.
    My eyes alighted on Faye. She was elegantly dressed in a short midnight blue dress; her straight blonde hair was glowing after the three hours she’d spent in the hairdressers that morning and her silver jewellery showed off her fair flawless skin to perfection. She caught my eye, raised her glass and smiled at me. No one would have guessed that we had spent the day in a sullen silence, only