Free Life Drawing for Beginners by Roisin Meaney Page B

to how he was being brought up. A steady diet of junk food probably, and precious little fruit or vegetables.
    Michael sat back and closed his eyes. What was the point of this? He’d made his choice, he’d sent them away, and chances were he’d never see them again. He shut the album and returned it to the shelf. He switched on the television and watched as someone tried, excruciatingly slowly, to win a million pounds.
    —————
    “Remember we’re just trying to get the overall shape of the body here,” Audrey said. “Forget about detail—in these short poses we’ll map in the holistic view quickly, so look for the curve of the spine, the angle of the head, the positioning of the legs. And don’t worry about getting it right, let’s just enjoy the form.”
    She walked among the tables, keeping up a running commentary of instruction, demonstrating how to produce a rapid sketch, how to use the pencil to gauge proportions, how to relate the various body shapes to one another.
    After the first ten minutes she’d picked out Zarek’s natural affinity with his pencil, and James’s rough, brave efforts. She observed Irene’s flamboyant but amateur attempts; Meg’s overreliance on her putty rubber; Fiona’s hopeful, haphazard scribbling.
    Along the way she also noted Irene’s cleavage—could that tan be real?—Meg’s silver earrings that were shaped like tiny scissors, the small, dark brown mole on the back of Fiona’s neck, the flecks of white scattered through James’s almost black hair. And as she walked around the room taking everything in, Audrey offered silent, fervent thanks that after the shakiest of starts, her first life drawing class was finally under way.
    Once she’d established that her model wasn’t in the room, she’d instructed her band of students to rearrange their six tables so that they formed a horseshoe shape. “After that,” she told them, pulling rolls of masking tape from her bag, “you can take a wooden board from the table at the back and attach a page from your pads to it with this. I’ll be right back.”
    She’d hurried from the room, praying that Jackie was in the vicinity—surely she’d have gotten in touch if something had prevented her from coming? But what if she hadn’t bothered, what if she’d simply changed her mind? Surely not—she hadn’t struck Audrey as that kind of person when they’d met.
    She might have lost her nerve though, and been too embarrassed to let Audrey know. How could anyone conduct a life drawing class with no model? Audrey wondered wildly if Vincent the caretaker could be persuaded to sit for them.
    She pulled her phone from her pocket and jabbed at Jackie’s number. It was answered on the first ring.
    “Hello?”
    Faint, nervous—but at least she’d answered it. Audrey closed her eyes and crossed her fingers tightly.
    “Jackie? It’s Audrey. Where are you?”
    “I’m here, I’m in the bathroom, but I can’t—”
    “Hang on—I’ll be right there.”
    Audrey dashed towards the toilet block, heart in her mouth. She pushed the door open and burst inside—and there was her model, huddled by the bank of sinks in a blue dressing gown, deathly pale, her shoes and socks still on, a rucksack clasped to her chest, an expression of abject fear on her face.
    “I can’t do it,” she blurted as soon as Audrey appeared. “I’m really sorry, I thought I could, but I just can’t. I feel sick. I can’t go in there. Please don’t make me. I’m sorry, I know I’m letting you down, but I can’t.”
    It was what Audrey had been dreading. Jackie had had too much time to think about the implications of presenting her naked body to a group of strangers. Her initial confidence, which Audrey had bolstered so carefully in the café, had worn off and left her terrified.
    Audrey put an arm around her shoulder, searching her mind for the right words, praying for a miracle in the next minute or two. “Jackie, if I had a euro for every