Free How to Fall by Jane Casey Page A

her watercolours but I didn’t really know why they were supposed to be good. Mum’s artiness was something else that had passed me by. I had inherited Dad’s logic instead, which seemed a fair trade.
    The room smelled of paint and varnish – the classic artist’s studio – but there was a stale quality to the air. I was glad I had left the door open to allow the fresh green smell of damp earth and crushed grass to fill the space. The main thing that made it a bit different from the usual studio, at least in my eyes, was the collection of dog beds stacked up against one wall beside a basket full of toys of various shapes and sizes. On a high shelf, I spotted jars of Bonios and cat treats, and as I walked across the room I kicked a jangling ball that skittered away into the corner. Catering for the clientele, I supposed.
    I was really there to see Freya’s paintings, I reminded myself, turning towards the right side of the studio where Petra had said I would find them. There was a stack of canvases leaning against the wall, wrapped in an old dustsheet. I pulled the sheet away carefully and saw I had guessed correctly – Freya’s signature was on the bottom of each painting. It was a scrawl, a confident F and a low, looping y the only identifiable bits, but it matched the signature on the pictures I had seen hanging in her bedroom. I wouldn’t have recognized the paintings as hers otherwise. Darcy had said she was trying out new things, experimenting with her style, but these were strikingly different from one another. I flicked through the canvases: abstract paintings where the paint was plastered on in layers, a still life of a bowl with cherries in it that was as realistic as a photograph, and right at the back some studies of a half-dressed girl that I identified after a moment’s confusion as Freya herself. Rationally, I knew I wasn’t the subject of the paintings but there was still something unsettling about them, something uncomfortably intimate about seeing my double posing with her naked back to the viewer, piling up the great weight of her hair on her head. The colours were muted, the tones of her flesh pale and ghostly, and I could understand why Tilly had hidden them at the back of the collection. The Freya they depicted was a wraith, otherworldly, and I wondered if she had had a premonition that she was going to die young. I wondered if she had planned her own death, despite what her sister thought. Dressing for the occasion would have drawn attention to her, and attention was presumably not what you wanted when you were planning to fling yourself off a cliff.
    I was staring at one of the semi-nudes when I became aware of something – a disturbance in the air more than an actual sound. I glanced over my shoulder to see Will Henderson standing in the doorway, watching me. With a smothered exclamation I let go of the paintings I was holding so they fell back against the wall. The clatter sounded shockingly loud in the quiet studio, and my voice sounded too loud too.
    ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
    ‘I was just about to ask you the same thing.’
    ‘You first.’ I started to rearrange the paintings – more for something to do than because they needed it.
    ‘I saw you coming down the garden. I thought I’d drop in.’
    ‘Why?’
    ‘To say hello.’ I raised one eyebrow, not even trying to hide that I was sceptical, and he laughed. ‘OK, OK. To find out what you’re doing here.’
    ‘That sounds more like the truth.’
    ‘I was curious.’ He leaned against the doorframe and crossed his arms. ‘Are you looking for something?’
    ‘Not really. Just nosing around.’ I didn’t want to talk to him about what I was doing, I realized. I couldn’t have said why that was the case, but it was true. I went for a half-truth instead. ‘I hadn’t seen Tilly’s work before. I was curious.’
    ‘Those aren’t Tilly’s paintings.’
    I looked down. ‘No. I know.’
    ‘Still wondering