Free Stray Love by Kyo Maclear Page B

to watch me work, so I sit down at the lightbox and quickly sketch a deep-sea diver.
    When I’m done, I ask her if she likes drawing and she says, “Sometimes, but, you know, I don’t like to draw from life very much and I do things differently.”
    Then she tucks in the tag at the back of my shirt and offers to give me drawing lessons.
    O LIVER AND P IPPA DECIDED to take a pause from each other.
    I had seen it coming but it still depressed me. Pippa went to Paris so she could have “room to think,” and the postcards she sent me only depressed me further. I couldn’t put my mood into words but it was a feeling that some magical seal of protection had been broken.
    Oliver’s unpredictable behaviour didn’t help matters. From the moment Pippa left, he was a nervous mess. He seemed to pour all his energy into worrying about me. The everyday world was suddenly a place of looming danger. Germs. Traffic. Bad roads. Leaning trees. Strangers. Street bullies I thought Oliver was calling “Nancy” scum until I realized he was saying “Nazi.” Meningitis. Drug pushers. Nails in the grass. So manyawful things could happen. I could feel the grit and meanness of the world entering me.
    On weekends now, Oliver found excuses to stay at home with me. He had never been the type of parent who played games, but with newfound enthusiasm, he taught me chess and poker and showed me how to bake ginger snaps while Mrs. Bowne recited instructions over the telephone. At night we continued with my “vocabulary expansion” and read from
The Hobbit.
We avoided the park. In fact, our entire existence seemed designed to avoid contact with the outside world.
    Oddly enough, Oliver began filing his best stories around this time. His reputation had been building ever since he landed an exclusive interview with Prime Minister Macmillan following his return from Africa. The focus of their conversation was his recent Wind of Change tour and his thoughts on independence. (
“The wind of change is blowing through this continent, and whether we like it or not, this growth of national consciousness is a political fact. We must all accept it as a fact, and our national policies must take account of it.”
) Oliver landed a second interview with the prime minister following the election of John F. Kennedy in the United States. That same month he broke the story of a Soviet spy ring in London. His editor at Novus was pleased. He began spending more time reading the foreign news. He rushed to file his own stories, then read the latest dispatches and cables from around the world. Algeria. Kenya. Paraguay. Sierra Leone. Angola. He said big things were happening. The Empire was being shaken at its roots.
    He put in a request for his first foreign assignment and asked his editor to consider his qualifications. Had he not proven his dedication?
    When Pippa eventually returned six weeks later, Oliverbehaved as if she had never marched out. He complimented her on her new black dress and Pippa eyed him with suspicion, as if waiting for him to say something mean. She seemed almost disappointed when he didn’t.
    While this went on, I stayed by her side, taking deep breaths to fill myself with her smoke and soap smell, and to verify that she was really back. I trailed behind her as she walked around the flat opening the curtains and windows, saying: “Why is it so dark and stuffy in here?”
    Soon after that, one night when I returned with Mata Hari from Mrs. Harling’s flat carrying a loaf of bread and reciting scenes from
The Avengers,
Pippa and Oliver both rose to greet me. They exchanged looks; then Oliver cleared his throat.
    “We were just discussing things,” he said. “We were wondering whether you would you like to spend more time with Pippa?”
    It took me a minute to comprehend this. Finally, I nodded and walked over to Pippa, wrapped my arms around her waist.
    Oliver promised to come back, improved.
    I probably would have been more worried had he