Free Life Drawing for Beginners by Roisin Meaney Page A

took a deep breath and walked on, willing the next two hours to fly by, telling herself to rise above it and pretend it wasn’t happening.
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    Audrey turned in the college gates and hurried up the driveway, blotting her damp, rosy face with a tissue. She approached the entrance, panting heavily, hardly registering the older couple who were stowing something in a car boot, their backs to her.
    In the lobby she waved distractedly at Vincent as she rushed past his cubicle. Hopefully he’d assume she had a good reason for turning up almost fifteen minutes after the starting time, as indeed she had. A moped that wouldn’t start, despite having just been serviced, surely constituted a good reason.
    But Lord, how unprofessional to arrive late to your first-ever evening class, when you were the teacher and naturally expected to be there ahead of everyone. How bad it must look, how they must all be regretting that they’d chosen her class.
    She burst into the room, full of flustered apologies: “I’m so sorry”—fumbling at the buttons of her jacket as she approached the desk—“my moped refused to start”—her blouse stuck to her back, her armpits drenched —“so I had to race all the way”—her face on fire—“you must all think I’m just the most careless person—” She flung her jacket on the chair, trying to catch her breath, doing her best to compose herself, forcing a smile as she panted to a halt.
    They regarded her silently. Five faces registering varying degrees of concern, no disapproving expression that she could see. At least they’d all waited, at least none of them had walked out when she hadn’t shown up at half past seven.
    Audrey patted her hair, attempting to marshal her thoughts—​and as she scanned the room she realized with fresh horror that her model was nowhere to be seen.
    —————
    Michael ran his hand along the row of photo albums on the bottom shelf of the bookcase until he came to what he wanted. He pulled it out and brought it to his armchair.
    For some minutes he sat with the book closed in his lap, staring at the framed photo of his wedding day on the mantelpiece. Ruth wore a white fur stole over her dress—they’d chosen New Year’s Day to get married—and carried a small bouquet of white flowers. She leaned into Michael’s side and gazed up at him—such a little slip of a thing she’d been—and they both looked perfectly happy. If they’d known what lay ahead, how little time they’d have together, what a mess Michael would make of everything after she’d left.
    He opened the album and turned the pages slowly. Like all parents, they’d gone mad with the camera for their firstborn. Ethan had been snapped in all manner of poses. Lots of him fast asleep, curled on his side, mouth pursed, clutching Bun-Bun, the little blue rabbit that someone—Michael’s mother?—had given him, and that had gone to bed with him for years.
    In others he was sitting on somebody’s lap, or on a rug out the back, his face and hands covered in ice cream, or standing by the clothesline, podgy hands hanging on tight to the pole. Michael remembered, with a fierce stab, Ruth running in from the garden to snatch up the camera, shouting Quick, he’s standing, he’s staying up!
    And there he was later, toddling around by himself, grinning up at the camera in little shorts and a T-shirt with Mickey Mouse on the front, splashing naked in a paddling pool, sitting in front of a birthday cake with two candles.
    Michael turned a page and looked at Ethan on a couch, his baby sister in his arms. He would have been three then, or almost. About the same age as the child who’d come into the shop with his mother.
    The white-blonde hair was similar—but lots of young children had hair that color. Ethan’s had darkened to a midbrown by the time he was six or seven. The faces were different, the boy in the shop was peaky, with none of Ethan’s chubbiness—but that could be down