Page 35 of Watching You
‘Mum,’ Mol’s voice was the gentlest of warnings. She didn’t want anyone in her space. It was the one place she didn’t have to pretend to be okay. ‘We talked about this.’
‘It’s lunch. There’s a norovirus alert at the hospital so most surgeries have been cancelled and I’ve done more hours than I should have this month, so they took me off the rota and told me to go home.’
And you didn’t come home last night– those words hung in the air, unspoken.I’m worried sick about my daughter. I know you’re drowning. Why won’t you hold my hand to pull you out of the water, when I offer it to you?
Molly didn’t invite her in but knew there was no way of stopping her, so Beth walked close, hugged her daughter with her free hand, kissed her cheek, and bustled past.
‘Gosh, this place is cleaner than I’ve ever seen it. And you’ve been busy! So many new canvases. Are they all completed? Why are they covered? I’ve never seen you do that before.’
Before Mol could stop her, Beth walked up to the nearest one and pulled away the sheet covering the painting. She gasped, stared, frowned, looked at Molly then back to the picture. When she was finally able to tear her eyes off the image, she turned to Mol aghast.
‘What is this?’
Molly shrugged.
Beth strode to the next covered canvas and pulled the sheet away. And the next. And the next. There were nineteen in all, a few unfinished but most were complete works that could have gone straight into a gallery if they wouldn’t have horrified the patrons.
‘Molly,’ Beth whispered. ‘We have to talk about this.’
‘You’re overreacting,’ she replied, already picking up sheets off the floor and starting to re-cover the paintings.
‘Stop,’ her mother insisted, pulling the sheets from her hands. ‘Darling, these paintings are … they’re—’
‘Just say it,’ Molly told her.
‘Concerning. Disturbing, even.’ Beth walked back to look at the bowl of rotting fruit in the first picture. ‘Brilliant, too. Quite extraordinary. As good as Adriaen Coorte’s gooseberries but a nightmare version, and the hyperrealism is as exquisite as Christiane Vleugels’. Mol, I know things have been awful. I know it feels like life will never get better, but this goes way beyond a dark frame of mind. Everything on these pictures is rotting, disintegrating. And as for the dead animals, birds and fish …’
‘I’m just processing what’s happening to me. It’s good for me, I think.’
‘But you’ve done so much. Oil paintings of this size and this detail – this would be a lifetime’s work for some artists. Have you been sleeping at all? I’ve never known you produce work this fast.’
‘It’s better for me to be busy,’ Mol said, but her voice made it more question than statement.
‘Oh sweetheart, let’s just move. We’ve talked about it. I think it would be best. We’ll put the house on the market, and I can get a job anywhere in the UK. The south coast is nice. Maybe the New Forest. Cornwall, even. We can go as soon as I’ve got a new job. We’ll rent until the house is sold—’
‘You can’t move away from the internet, Mum. It’s everywhere. He’s destroyed my reputation, my work, my personal life. My name. Cornwall can’t fix that.’
‘Then we’ll go back to the police and we won’t stop until they find this bastard.’
‘God, Mum, would you wake up? I know you mean well but it’s not your life he’s destroyed. I don’t even know what’s real any more. I see a dead pigeon in our driveway and I’m convinced he threw it there. If a letter arrives with a ripped edge, I think he’s been going through our post. I walk along the street with my phone camera pointed over my shoulder so I can see who’s behind me. I can’t see beauty any more, that’s why these paintings exist. I never knew the meaning of the word corruption until this started. My life is over!’
‘It’s not—’
Molly screeched. ‘Yes it is! I can’t date, I can’t go online or go to galleries, I can’t sell my work, I can’t sleep and I can’t eat. I tried fighting fire with fire and announcing online that I was being harassed but I was just shouting into the void. He’s launched a hate campaign against me, and he’s very, very good at it. No one can help me. Not even you.’ She clutched her stomach and fell to her knees. Beth moved towards her, but Molly held up a warning hand. ‘Don’t.’
Beth looked around at the canvases filled with death and decay, decadently and extravagantly portrayed, so realistic that it was impossible not to want to reach out and touch each scene. Her daughter, her beautiful, talented adult daughter, was curled up on the floor, forehead touching the cold concrete floor of her studio, broken. Utterly, utterly broken. For the first time since Beth had become a mother, she was powerless and terrified. And she knew in her heart that they hadn’t hit rock bottom quite yet.
Chapter 27
9 June
Connie and Baarda were on a video call from their temporary office at the police station. On the screen was a young woman. In the background were patio doors that opened onto an orchard, and in the distance two figures could be seen wandering around and occasionally picking something off a bush or a tree.
‘I’m not sure how soon we’re going to be finished here, Midnight,’ Connie said. ‘So don’t accept any new consultations. This is proving harder than I thought it’d be. The lack of evidential leads is confounding.’
‘Confounding?’ Midnight laughed. ‘Either you’ve spent too long in the UK or Baarda is brainwashing you. Did you get the request I sent for a series of training workshops with the FBI in October?’
‘I did, and we’ll do it as long as nothing serious comes into the diary that’s a conflict. Could you reply with that caveat?’
