Page 132 of Off the Pitch

HugoI have two

KitHow has this never come up before?!

Hugo

Scotland suited Kit. There was no doubt about it.

Ever since we’d arrived, he’d seemed more carefree and at peace, as if the stress he’d been carrying around with him for the last few weeks had melted away.

In the three days we’d been here he’d dragged me out walking for miles, up and down tiny paths through the heather until it felt like we were so high up that we could touch the sky. We could certainly see for miles, and the views were breathtaking.

Today we’d driven the car a little way down the road, the boot filled with art supplies and a hastily thrown together picnic, to explore the path around a local loch nestled between two peaks. Kit had found the perfect spot to start painting, and I’d settled myself on a blanket with my ocean colouring book and a pulpy crime thriller I’d found in a charity shop near my flat.

Kit had refused the idea of taking photographs and painting back at the cottage, saying if he couldn’t paint outside then he might as well just be in London. It mostly made sense to me, except the weather app on my phone was predicting rain, and the idea of carrying everything back to the car in a downpour wasn’t a fun one.

I tried to forget about it, since the sky was currently clear, and settled back on the blanket with my book, losing myself in the cheesy story. It wasn’t anything I hadn’t read before, but I always liked to see if I could work out who the killer was before it was actually revealed. Nine times out of ten I was wrong, but it was still fun to try.

When I looked up sometime later, Kit was humming happily to himself, his tongue sticking out between his lips as he concentrated. I loved watching him work, but usually he was hunched over a computer or a sketchbook, not standing tall with charcoal splotches on his nose and fingers and purple and white paint staining his palms. There were splashes of dark blues and greens farther up his arms, indicating the other colours he’d used. From my position on the ground, I couldn’t quite see what he was working on, but I didn’t mind.

Kit would show me later when he was ready, and I didn’t want to disturb his concentration by asking. I picked up my book again, sinking back into the story, totally relaxed for the first time in months.

The rain held out for most of the day, and it was only when we were considering packing up that it started spitting. For the last hour black clouds had been forming overhead, rolling across the sky and making it difficult to read. It was late into the afternoon by that point, we’d eaten most of the picnic, and Kit had been working solidly again for the last few hours.

“How’s it going?” I asked.

“Fabulously,” he said, giving me a beaming smile. “I’m having the most fantastic time.”

“I think it’s going to start raining,” I said, gesturing to the darkening sky which I assumed he hadn’t noticed due to his absorption in his work.

“Oh bollocks,” Kit said as he brushed his hair away from his eyes, leaving a smear of paint across his forehead. I couldn’t help but chuckle.

“What?”

“You’ve, um, you’ve got something just here,” I said, tapping my own forehead. “And here, and well, here too.” I laughed as Kit touched the spot I’d pointed too on his nose, inevitably making it a thousand times worse.

“I’ve just made it worse, haven’t I?”

“Well… you haven’t made it better.”

“This is why I never paint at your flat. I mean, you have a cream carpet. Can you see how badly that would end?”

“In all fairness, I fucking hate that carpet,” I said with a shrug. “Hélène decorated everything, and I haven’t gotten around to changing it yet.”

“Wooden floors are always good,” Kit said as he flopped down onto the blanket next to me and grabbed a piece of shortbread from the remains of the picnic. “They clean a little easier. At least I think they do. I tend to put a huge dust sheet down in my studio and then it doesn’t really matter. Well, I do when I remember, which is not all that often.”

I snorted.Not all that oftenwas Kit speak for never. “So by ‘I tend to’ you mean you intend to but never actually do?”

“Exactly.”

“You’re adorable you know.”

“I know,” he grinned, grabbing another biscuit. “That’s why you put up with me.”

“It’s not difficult,” I said. Leaning over, I planted a kiss on his cheek, trying to aim for a patch of skin that wasn’t covered in paint. A spot of rain landed on my hand as I sat up, and then another landed on my temple.

“Well, I think that’s our cue,” Kit said, hopping up. “I hope it’s dry enough to move.” He peered at his work. “I’ll just have to carry it carefully.”

For the first time I looked at the canvas and gasped. It was stunning. A loch under darkening skies, dark purple clouds rolling across it while a small shaft of light rippled across the water’s surface. Around it, peaks soared into the sky, rugged and wild. There was something wild and raw about it that made my heart sing in a way I couldn’t explain.

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